Monthly Archives: April 2012

Sad news: Heather Braaten found

It’s with a heavy heart that I share emerging news that fellow LEGO fan Heather Braaten’s body was discovered yesterday afternoon.

Thank you to everyone who helped get the word out last week that she was missing. For our global readers, we’re going to conclude coverage of this tragedy here on The Brothers Brick at this point. If you’re interested in learning about local arrangements for services, please join the SEALUG mailing list or keep an eye on news here in Seattle.

Our thoughts are with Heather’s family and friends. If you’d like to share something, please feel free to do so in the comments. As we’ve done with other members of our community who’ve died, we’ll pass along your thoughts to Heather’s family.

If you have photos of Heather or her LEGO creations, please feel free to add them to a new group on Flickr.

Massive LDraw part update

While I usually don’t blog LDraw part updates, I’m making an exception for the latest one since, as far as I can tell, it’s the biggest yet, with 601 new parts on offer. In addition to an increase in the number of new parts available, the library of 12V train system parts is almost complete. Many thanks must go out to all parts authors and reviewers, especially those who’ve recently started, and to Chris Dee (the Parts Library Administrator), Phillipe Hurbain and Steffen for the huge work they’ve put in to this latest release.

And to those who’ve never heard of LDraw, or are interested in checking it out, please visit the forums.

The Avengers movie poster looks awesome in LEGO

LEGO Marvel sets are coming out shortly (watch this space, as they say), as is The Avengers in movie theaters. LEGO has recreated the poster for the movie with the minifigs from the upcoming sets, plus some that aren’t currently scheduled for any sets.

LEGO Avengers Poster

I’m still not sold on Tony Stark’s Iron Man helmet/mask, which looks a bit huge in the photos I’ve seen, but it does look great here.

Via FBTB.

Vintage Atari project reaches 10K on CUUSOO [April Fool’s]

While Iain Heath and I were geeking out this weekend at a comic book convention, something strange happened.

OMG WE DID IT!!!

Flickr user atarifan401 managed to marshall the powers of vintage Atari video game fandom to follow in the footsteps of LEGO Minecraft and LEGO Shaun of the Dead to reach 10,000 votes on LEGO CUUSOO.

To be honest, I think these designs are, well, not that great. It’ll be interesting to see what transformation they undergo as LEGO works through the design process with “atarifan401”.

801 Grand Ave. towers over Micropolis

Chris Hettinger (iNeedMoreBricks) has reproduced Iowa’s tallest building in LEGO. Chris’s model spans all 45 floors of the original, and is built from 2,774 LEGO elements.

801 Grand Ave. - Micro-scale MOC by Chris Hettinger

Dave Lartigue invents automatic LEGO sorting box [April Fool’s]

Dave says, “One of the biggest hassles involved with building with Lego is sorting. Oh sure, I could keep all my bricks in a big tub, but it’s easer to work with them if they’re sorted. Fortunately, there are all kinds of gadgets and gizmos you can use to more easily sort bricks by size. Unfortunately, I mostly sort by color, and there isn’t an easy way to do that.”

Thankfully, Dave invented the Brick Sorter, a device that uses symbols written on glossy cardboard and a simple shake of an Amazon.com box to pull the target color out of the unsorted mess.

LEGO brick sorter

Hard to believe? I thought so too, until I saw the video:

Read all about it on Dave Ex Machina.

I Pity the Fool!

This little gem by Nathan Proudlove (Proudlove) seemed especially appropriate to post today. It’s also pretty impressive, considering it’s only 4 studs wide. Great job building the iconic stripe at that scale.

a-team van