The Brothers Brick

The Brothers Brick turned three a few months ago, but today is our second anniversary on Brothers-Brick.com.
And what a difference a second year on our own domain has made!

2008 stats
2007 stats

5,973,090 page views
2,006,339 visits
820,532 unique visitors
119,524 unique keywords from search engines
36,382 spam comments
12,307 real comments
4,824 unique referring sites

1,086,362 page views
337,158 visits
131,046 unique visitors
15,062 unique [...]

The latest Star Wars: The Clone Wars set available from the LEGO Shop is 7679 Republic Fighter Tank (aka TX-130 Saber-class Fighter Tank).

All orders over $99.00 ship for free, so I’ll just dangle before you some of the sales going on right now:

Going, going… Curved Rails for 9v Trains and Speed Regulator for 9v [...]

Sean Kenney recently posted this poignant sculpture of a “short” investor and a short-order cook. Click the photo to see more pictures on Sean’s site:

After marveling at Sean’s fantastic brick-built newspaper, I started wondering if the economic meltdown has affected how we buy or build LEGO these days.
Are we buying less LEGO? Buying more [...]

As several of us spend more time away from the computer getting ready for BrickCon in less than two weeks, the creations we don’t blog begin to stack up. But remember, The Brothers Brick is not the only LEGO blog on the net!
I believe the LEGO blogosphere is better when there are lots of us [...]

UPDATE (9/26/08): You can order your copy of the set by following the directions in How to get your 7979 Castle Advent Calendar, currently at the top of the front page.
UPDATE (9/25/08): Limited quantities of this set will be made available on September 26 in the US and Canada.
We’ve recently received news from The LEGO [...]

If you’re unfamiliar with Alex Eylar’s works, take a look at his gallery and you’ll soon conclude that his pictures are something else, especially when it comes to lighting. Luckily, Alex has written a nice summary and gave a good example of the role of lighting in transforming an otherwise decent creation into a masterpiece. [...]

Sometime or another, you may have thought about LEGO as art or even participated in a discussion. In this Brothers Brick exclusive editorial, LEGO Ambassador Roy T. Cook (aka Imhotepidus) challenges our popular views on LEGO art. As a university professor who teaches logic, philosophy of mathematics, and the aesthetics of popular art, Roy looks [...]

Warning: This is an opinion piece, and may not reflect the opinions of my co-bloggers, The LEGO Company, or custom-accessory producers (whose products appear here for illustration purposes only). This post may also include external links to opinions and facts you may not agree with, so read the whole post and share your own thoughts [...]

RAILBRICKS magazine hits its third issue this week with tips, reviews and ideas for all LEGO train fans. To quote the release the issue features
• PF Trains + 9v Train Tricks
• Creating Wooden Trestle Bridges
• RCX (PBricks) and 9v Train Integration
• Interview with Swoofty
• and much more…..
and having looked through it I’d have [...]

Over the last six weeks, we’ve been on a fun ride. Through a series of posts we’ve been exploring our chosen medium from a communicational point of view. In case you missed it, here are links to the other instalments:
0. Introduction
1. Context: the message
2. Context: the audience
3. Tools: Design & build, with case study #1
3b. [...]

Welcome to the almost final post in the series where we’re looking at LEGO models from a communicational point of view. Start at the introduction and read all of the other posts. It’s fun stuff.
This is going to sound crude to most of you. It’s true though. If you’ve followed this series from the beginning [...]

This is the fourth post in a series of six where we’re looking at LEGO models through a communicational point of view. Feel free to read the introduction, first, second and third post to get you up to par before diving into this one – it’ll help. Also, I’m sorry for skipping the promised case study yesterday. [...]

If you’ve been following the series of posts where we’re analyzing LEGO models as communication, chances are you’ve not quite agreed with me – perhaps you don’t recognize your own building style in what I write. That’s to be expected. But today I’m going to show you that regardless if you follow the model I’ve been building up [...]

Hey. You’re reading a series of posts where we’re looking at a LEGO model as a message, not just as a pretty sculpture. I’d recommend reading the introduction and the first two parts before diving into this one. It’s kind of important. An apology to all of you who comment – due to a busy [...]

Some of us don’t necessarily share our LEGO obsession with our significant others, as much as we try over the years to lure them into LEGO geekery with ploys as diverse as Paradisa, including the kids while building, DUPLO, collecting princess minifigs, or the latest adorable Creator sets.
Gizmodo’s Jesús Diaz was once such a man, [...]

Hey. You’re reading a series of posts were we’re looking at LEGO models as messages, not just pretty sculptures. I’d recommend reading the introduction and the first part before diving into this one. It’s worth it.
Last time we looked at how the label we give a message affects it. The conclusion? That you put pictures [...]

As said in the introduction, we are looking at LEGO models as a communicational message. This means putting MOCs (My Own Creation – LEGO custom models, remember?) on the same level as writing an article in a magazine, talking to Santa Claus, or creating a serious work of art. LEGO is just another medium. But [...]

I’ll admit it: like Tyler, I’m a legoholic. Few things make my stomach tickle more than seeing a good custom LEGO model, or MOC (standing for My Own Creation), as those of us in the hobby call it. But really, what is it that makes a good MOC good? Is there a way to find that [...]