Monthly Archives: February 2011

It’s a wonderful mess

Once again Peer Kreuger (mahjqa) has sent us a technic guest blog. Thanks again to Peer.

Some of our readers may already be familiar with LEGO Great Ball contraptions or GBCs for short. It’s a collaborative project where each participant builds a single maching with one purpose; to receive balls and move them to the next machine. When you get a couple of them, you can link them together to form a loop, and get one giant moving factory. Want to know more about that? Look here.

Then there’s folks who build selfcontained units, like Sqiddster has done. This is his third attempt, and it’s densely packed with all kinds of mechanisms. Don’t read this, watch the video instead.

Registration Open for Bricks by the Bay 2011, March 25th-27th

Announcing a LEGO convention for those in the southernWestern parts of the USA.

Bricks by the Bay 2011 logo

Registration is now open for the second annual Bricks by the Bay, taking place March 25th – 27th at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Last year’s convention was agreed to be a great success by all who attended, and this year’s takes place at a new venue with over twice the space! Also, this is the same weekend originally planned for Brickfest 2011 (now cancelled) so if you had planned to attend Brickfest, consider making a trip to California instead. Registration is capped at 400 attendees and almost 100 have already signed up, so register now to secure your badge. Early registration discount offered until February 25th.

For more info check out the Bricks by the Bay site. There is also a call for presentations; if you’re interested in hosting a talk, break-out session, or special activity, contact Paul Sinasohn here.

Théo shows off his curves

This little artillery platform by Théo (Titolian) is simple but looks lovely. I quite enjoy the curved cross-section, as well as those incorporated into the front. The part use for the back of the missile pod (a fire truck basket, if I’m not mistaken), is also quite nice.

M.A.P

Médecins Sans Planètes

This Ploughshare Evacuation Vehicle by Lord Pappadhum is both a solid little build and a nice twist on the space fighter concept by converting it into the workhorse of a futuristic non-governmental organization.

LEGO Lord Pappadhum Ploughshare Evacuation Vehicle

I really like both the simple color scheme and the red cross emblazoned treatment pod at the back.

Clear your mind

Hans Dendauw (tigmon74) captures the art of meditation in this well crafted vignette featuring the Ninjago minifigs.

Thanks for the tip Chris Phipson!

Interview with Mike Doyle

Marcos Bessa interviewed Mike Doyle, the builder who recently created the abandoned Victorian house. Ever since seeing Mike’s masterpiece I’ve wanted to interview him to learn how a new member of the AFOL community can create such stunning works. The interview by Marcos answers my question and provides further insight into Mike’s design process and more. I highly recommend this great read.

I’m too busy to post

Trepidation A1

I really like this spaceship. Usually I have issues with busy spaceships but not this one. This one I like. Thanks Don Wilson (thepaleman9).

Space Lounge 000

Mission:Space Lounge 001

Mike Yoder (yoder42) made a small LEGO webcomic. There’s a lot of great action, and especially great models. Anyone else get an 80s or early 90s vibe here?

A warning about flickr groups

Warning! This post is not about LEGO bricks but about the community on flickr. If you have no interest in the flickr LEGO community then please just ignore it.

WTF

I went to visit one of my LEGO flickr groups the other day (Jan 29) only to find the above message. I’d got through a couple of minutes of before so I was a little bit suspicious. Inspection of my group list showed that LEGO 16+ had vanished from there too. Apparently it had spontaneously disappeared.

As the creator and an administrator of the group I was first in line to hear about it if something had gone wrong. I’d heard nothing. Over the following six days I’ve pieced together what happened. In LEGO 16+ we had a thread for leaks. All discussion in the group was only available to members of the list and one of those members had reported this thread to TLG. They had taken their usual action (lawyerly email) to flickr and Yahoo! (who are directly responsible for these issues) had decided to simply delete the entire group. Not the thread, not the links but the entire group.

I’ll note that I didn’t hear this from flickr but had to piece it together myself (with help). Immediately upon discovering the issue I contacted flickr about it. They finally got back to me today (six days later) with the following:

Hello gambort,

Thank you for contacting Flickr Member Support.

In joining Flickr, our members agree to abide by the Yahoo!
Terms of Service and the Flickr Community Guidelines:

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne
http://www.flickr.com/terms.gne

Your group was brought to our attention through Report
Abuse. Upon review, we determined that your content and/or
behavior was in violation and your account was terminated.

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Regards,
Flickr staff

which is extremely helpful. Having heard various horror stories about Yahoo!’s attitude to its users I’d already anticipated this response and was, sadly, not surprised. Incidentally the guidelines basically says that if Yahoo! don’t like what you do they can do what they like. This is standard but most sites choose to explain things.

So what has this got to do with you?

Well firstly if you were interested in what went on in LEGO 16+ you might want to know what happened to it. It’s gone but we’ve moved to AFOL 16+. NB. you must be 16 or over to join this group and it does contain bad language, bad taste and other things some people don’t like.

Secondly, if you run or actively participate in a flickr group you should be very wary of this. If you allow or actively encourage leaks there is a chance the entire group could be deleted. It’s totally unreasonable but Yahoo! have a reputation for behaving in just this way. You might also want to be careful reporting people.

Consider it a lesson learnt the hard way by me so you don’t have to. Yahoo! do not care about you, your group, or anything you have done. Make sure you have a backup in place for any vital discussion and try to back up your flickr photostream.

EDIT: I realise my original post doesn’t make my issue entirely clear here. The loss of LEGO 16+ was a minor irritation as it wasn’t really a resource so much as a discussion forum. It had been replaced by a functional equivalent within hours. The loss of some of my other groups (eg. LEGO Techniques) would be far more tragic and I’ll be making sure it’s unlikely (certainty is impossible given Yahoo!s arbitrariness) to keep it off the radar. I recommend others do the same. Yahoo! do not care.

Looking to add a bit of weather to your scene?

Sean and Steph Mayo have provided an alternate shot of their snow effect that shows fabulous ideas for using parts, and gives insight as to how they accomplished their scene.

I’m particularly fond of the icicles and the snow on the tree!

Lego mystery box is a puzzle to open

Todd Wilder built an ornate box that’s also a puzzle, requiring its six compartments to be opened in order. Check out the gallery that shows sequential photos of this complicated but fun process.

UPDATE: Todd has uploaded a gallery showing the question mark tessellation.

Thanks for the tip Pepa Quin!

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets and video games trailer [News]

UPDATE (April 18, 2011): LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets are out now.

——–

After numerous leaks across the internet, pictures of upcoming LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets are officially revealed on MTV. There are photos of 8 sets including Queen Anne’s Revenge, Aqua de Vida, Cannibal Escape, Captain’s Cabin, Isla de Muerta, London Escape, The Mill, and Whitecap Bay. Be sure to check them out by clicking through the gallery.

Meanwhile, a short trailer for the related video game is also out.

Via FBTB