The Brothers Brick

I hadn’t run across Markus Haindl‘s LEGO creations until I got an e-mail from him a few days ago. His latest mecha made checking out his Flickr photostream well worth my time!

Andrew Lee has been tinkering with this mecha for a while now, and this latest variant is reminiscent of Warhammer 40,000. The standard is extremely cool.

As this blog has grown, we’ve changed things a few times to make them better. Last December, we moved from Blogger to our own domain here at Brothers-Brick.com. We’ve also improved performance and reliability by changing to a new Web hosting provider. All of these changes were intended to make your experience more enjoyable, and as a result, we’ve had to become more professional.

One important thing that’s been missing has been a privacy policy. Privacy policies let users of Web sites know what personal information the site collects and how that information is used. It’s also an important component of legal compliance with laws like The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Using non-legal, non-technical language, we’ve written a Brothers-Brick.com Privacy Policy that we hope won’t change anything about the site’s experience for most of our readers. In addition to the necessary information about personal information and cookies, the policy also includes several links to online privacy and safety information.

One change we’ve had to make for COPPA compliance is restricting Contact Form use and commenting to readers over the age of 13. The software we use for the site simply does not have the features necessary to get your parents’ permission for you to use this site. I’ve added new notices on the Contact Form and above the comment box to reflect this change in policy.

What this means if you’re not 13 yet: If you’re a Brothers-Brick.com reader under the age of 13, the new rules mean that you will no longer be allowed to leave comments or use the Contact Form. You’ll all be welcome back when you turn 13.

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while. It was inspired by Anthony Sava’s Cold Winter’s Knight.

Here’s a closeup of the cave entrance, if you are into such things.

Soren Roberts takes a break from his usual spacey proclivities to build something with a more historical bent.

Via MicroBricks.

It’s official: You can add Adrian Florea to my Favorite Builders list.

I’ve admired Morgan19‘s minifigs ever since I noticed his great Firefly minifigs. The latest batch is a group of historical minifigs, entries for the Fine Clonier Historical Minifig Contest.

I might quibble with the “historical” nature of some of these, but it’s a great collection of minifigs, presented beautifully.

Check out this nifty castle by RebelRock.

Gotta love the studless water and he’s got Brickforge animals too!

UVN 99p Shyromal by Nnenn.

Spacer Jerac adds to his microscale Swiss fleet with the formidable dreadnaught Briareus.

Via Klocki and MicroBricks.

Back in April, I posted about LEGO Ambassador Mark Sandlin’s involvement with the Mars Mission theme. With Castle 2007 out for several months and anticipation building toward next year’s sets, Ben Ellerman takes some time to look back and reflect on his involvement in the development of the current Castle theme.

Here’s Ben in the LEGO archives in Billund, Denmark:

You can read all about Ben’s contributions to the Castle theme on LEGOfan.org.

Brothers Brick reader Kevin Guoh sent us a link to his Flickr photostream a few weeks ago, and I promptly lost his message in our mountain of reader submission e-mail. :-( Among his creations is this great DJ console (and don’t miss his floor lamp). Sorry, Kevin! Better late than never?

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Fans everywhere are running across better and better pictures of upcoming sets. Eurobricks is famous (dare I say notorious?) for finding leaked pictures, and this latest batch is no exception.

Bearing in mind that we don’t yet know if these are just prototypes, and that LEGO has not yet confirmed that these are even “official,” here are a few of my favorites (see Eurobricks for bigger pictures and several more I didn’t include here):

7622 Race for the Stolen Treasure:

7620 Motorcycle Chase:

7668 Rebel Scout Speeder:

7036 Dwarfs Mining:

7048:

Of particular note for Castle fans:

• Trolls in brown and green.
• Green dragon with armor.
• Two new helmets for the goblins and two more for the dwarfs.
• A new sword for the goblins and a new club for the trolls.
• Two new beard designs for the dwarfs.

(Confused? Then check out I CAN HAS CHEEZEBURGER?.)

Tired of dirty, muddy, radioactive futures? Then why not step forward into the future world Hippotam imagines: Clean and shiny.