You are currently browsing the The Brothers Brick weblog archives for January, 2008.
Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo has put together a fantastic LEGO timeline:
Click the pic to check out the larger version in Jesus’ post, along with a whole bunch of cool facts and figures about the LEGO brick.
Today (Monday, January 28) is the 50th birthday of the LEGO brick as we know it today.
You’ve come a long way, our favorite little plastic brick! Happy birthday.
Each of us has our obsessions, and it should be fairly clear from my posts over this past year that one of mine is 7036 Dwarves’ Mine (sadly, currently sold out from The LEGO Shop; UPDATE: 7036 Dwarves’ Mine is back!)
As a sucker for anything related to this wonderful set, I couldn’t pass up Alex Eylar‘s take on it:
That’s Alex’s favorite shot, and mine as well. Click the picture for the full gallery on MOCPages.
Thankfully, Jerac has a fleet of very tiny ships, led by the cruiser Van Helsing, to hunt them down and stake their ice-cold hearts.
(Via Brick Blogue.)
LAML Radio has produced several episodes recently. James has been such a prolific host that I’ve not managed to keep up with the headlines! Here is the latest episode, featuring Aaron (Darkspawn) and me for the first time. We had an interesting discussion about the latest LEGO news and our observations and opinions regarding sharing MOCs online. Click here for this episode of the podcast.
Don’t miss the other recent episodes in January, with content including YouBrick, Blockland, minifig customization, and the book The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide.
Justin Vaughn (aka Mainman), answered the call of my Black Fantasy contest and created a most horrific biomechanical creature, called the Wail of Echoes Eternal. Way to set the bar high Justin; this is top quality work. Meanwhile I’ll be eagerly looking forward to what other players will step up with.
are belong to us.
It all started with a man named Bucky. Well, maybe Bram. Okay, possibly Jon. Whatever. The latest building trend seems to be buckyballs, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons, rhombicosidodecahedrons, and ‘hedrons of all sorts. I’m going to call the trend Hedronism.
Here’s Bram Lambrecht‘s original (virtual) design, alongside the first one built from “real” LEGO, by Kevin Heckel:
Adrian Drake gave it a try, and Ley Ward tried a different design:
Finally, my favorite of the bunch, another buckyball by Ley:
Long live Hedronism!
LEGO has released various components as open source software in the past, including MINDSTORMS firmware back in 2006. The latest to receive the open source treatment is the protocol for the Power Functions RC (remote control) system:
Here’s the word from Billund:
Last year we introduced a range of products using our new electric building system: LEGO Power Functions. This new electric building system will open up a lot of possibilities now and in the future.
One of the new things we offer now is modular remote control. In the process of designing the Power Functions RC system we did a mapping of different RC functionalities. This mapping formed the basis of the Power Functions RC protocol and most of this is build into the Power Functions RC Receiver.
The RC Handset launched now provides direct ‘bang-bang’ control, but the RC Receiver supports much more functionality like PWM speed control and single pin operation.
Now that the Power Functions elements are available at the LEGO Shop online we have decided to release the Power Functions RC protocol as open source.
Please feel free to use any information from the protocol document for personal, non-commercial use only, provided you keep intact copyright, trademarks and other proprietary rights of the LEGO Company – have fun.
Gaute Munch
Technology Product Manager
LEGO Company
You can download the protocol document as a PDF, kindly hosted by the good people of Hispalug.
Naturally, various Power Functions products are available from the LEGO Store online:
Dimitri Burakov is an incredibly talended LEGO renderer from Lithuania. He uses an array of programs to create anything from polished renders to professional instructions of LEGO models both official and fan-built.
I recently came across his works on Brickshelf and contacted him about cooperating on some projects. The results are amazing. Below is a beautiful rendering of my tripod mecha with sample instruction steps. In exchange, I shipped out a big package from S@H.
If you’re interested in having renderings and/or instructions done for your work by a professional, you can find Dimitri’s contact info at his Brickshelf gallery.
It’s only a thumbnail, but it sure is pretty…
UPDATE: Green Grocer is now available from the LEGO Shop.
Kudos to Anthony Sava.
Jason Whittenburg is a clever, clever man. He’s been running Jain’s Intelligence Daily for some time now – a collection of very useful resources. My favourite one is the brilliant Classic-Space custom model report, which essentially aggregates pictures from Classic-Space into an easily viewable package. Very neat, and it saves a lot of time. Another useful feature is Brickverse Today, which collects feeds from a lot of different LEGO blogs (including Brothers-Brick!) and showcases them in condensed form with links to the full articles. But the best thing is that all of this info is collected in RSS-feeds, ready to go straight into your reader!
After Paul Hartzog raised the idea Jason added another feature: the AFOL history database (or the Adult Fan of LEGO history database). This is a collection of all the important dates that has happened in the LEGO community to help us collectively remember, rejoice, and in some cases, mourn.
Or at least it will be with your help. See, right now there’s only 23 entries in the database. Do you know of something that has, when we look back at it, put its mark in the community? When was that particularly influential model built? That major website started? And there was that funny discussion that has become a running gag…? Put it in there! The RSS feed is configured to ping on the day of every event.
Even if some parts of JID is very much space oriented, all community moments are welcome. Jason has provided us with the resources – let’s make it the best it can be!
