Monthly Archives: June 2006

Author Douglas Coupland is a LEGO Fan

Douglas Coupland, author of books such as Generation X and Microserfs is apparently a LEGO fan. I noticed that several of his books have covers that incorporate LEGO into the design:

 

A quick search for Douglas Coupland LEGO turned up this article. Here’s Coupland talking about LEGO:

Thing is, we all played with Lego…. There just comes a time when you don’t go into that box anymore, and then for the next 30 years Lego’s been playing with me. Messing with my mind and my way of looking at things. I’ve [been wondering] all this time, where do I end and toys begin?

Apparently, though, Coupland’s dark age is over. The article describes an art installation he’s created (sorry, no pictures), in which he uses LEGO. I really like this next quote:

I had to build the Cape Cod house with two dormer windows, and my God! My fingers still had that weird Lego tingling feeling. I was still hunting down in the bottom of the box for that one piece. That sound? You remember that sound? Of stirring around in the bottom of a box of Lego? When I’m building things in my mind, I call it ‘shapehead.’ When I’ve got shapehead, I can’t sleep, I might as well just keep on building and building…

Nice. I guess that makes me a shapehead.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Minifigs

Here’s my non-decal take on the crew of NCC-1701-D Enterprise (click for full photoset on Flickr:

L to R: Deanna Troi, Worf, Data, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Jean-Luc Picard, Will Riker, Geordi LaForge, and Wesley Crusher.

Edit (6/10/06): I forgot to include my Borg drones when I first posted this:

Borg Drones

Lukas’ Castley Minifigs

It’s always a pleasure to see someone get into minifig building, and Lukas W.P. has made a lot of these little dudes lately. Hurray!

Here’s his latest batch, a “Hammer Dude,” “Rascal,” “Knife Dude,” and “Gypsy”:

Micah Berger’s Fantasy Creatures

For some reason, I don’t seem to have ever blogged Micah Berger’s great brick-built fantasy creatures. With an update to his gallery and a tip from another Andrew, this is a good an opportunity as any (some of these will be new, some not). ;-)

Here’s a minotaur and an “Ibixian”:

 

A hag:

A “Wood-Nelf” (look at all those minifig hands!!!):

And my favorite of the bunch — Puddleglum the marshwiggle (from C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair):

There are more great creatures (real and fantastic) than I can present in one blog post, so be sure to check out Micah’s Animals gallery on Brickshelf.

Guided Missile Cruiser by Markosbears

Brand-new Brickshelfer markosbears has posted a great Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser with lots of great detail (the images are huge, but worth the wait):

I love how the ship has such smooth curves in spite of being built with little square bricks.

(Thanks to Bruce for posting this in Classic-Castle Forums.)

Micro Cylon Raider by Arpy 2.0

My personal favorite (no offense to winner Mainman) in the recent Classic-Space BSG contest on Flickr (blogged five minutes ago) was this adorable little Cylon raider from Arpy 2.0:

Micro Battlestar Galactica by Justin Vaughn

A Battlestar Galactica building contest was recently held in the Classic-Space group on Flickr. With four entries, the pool wasn’t very big, but it resulted in several nice micro-ships.

Spacer Justin Vaughn (Mainman to most) won with with Galactica:

Superior Insurance against Enemies with Guns Everywhere

Linus Bohman merits two posts in a day with this sleek “S.I.E.G.E. tank”:

Bohman uses lots of pieces in interesting ways, including a gun built from old train rails. (Click the picture above to leave comments for Bohman on Flickr, or see more pics on Brickshelf.)

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The Omnibus LEGO Doctor Who Post

Hurray! Another all-in-one post inspired by a recent new LEGO creation!

The various Dr. Who TV series have inspired many builders recently, and since I only started to watch the most recent series on Sci-Fi this season, I had no idea what these builders were posting. Now I’m going to get caught up.

Here’s the most recent creation, the Doctor, his Tardis, and a Dalek by Flickr user Camera Wences:

A big Tardis by Brickshelfer balin:

A squat Tardis by Brickshelfer Earthman:

And one of the older Doctors by jjrailton:

The Omnibus Serenity and Firefly Post

I’m a huge fan of Serenity and Firefly. It’s always nice to see minifigs, vehicles, and vessels from the ‘verse, so (low lighting aside) I was pleased to run across Alex Peacock’s hover mule:

That reminded me of some other great mules and ‘verse LEGO creations I’ve seen on Brickshelf and elsewhere. Here’s a beautiful, larger-than-minifig-scale mule by Will Vale:

Another mule by Brickshelfer theReflexx:

The final mule of the day, by Brickshelf user Lord-Thrawn:

And last but most certainly not least, Christopher Doyle’s not-quite-minifig-scale Serenity:

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Bohman’s Space Minifig Weapons

Using an interesting technique discussed in this thread on Classic-Space Forums, Linus Bohman presents a couple really cool minifig weapons:

(A quick “program note”: Bear with us as Josh and I get caught up on a few days of creations we’d like to highlight. I can’t speak for him, but all my LEGO time has been spent building — a good thing — and writing far-too-long blog posts. We’ll be getting back to our usual fare now.)

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Reader Poll: Blog Feeds with RSS and Atom

A quick reader poll, plus semi-useful information unrelated to LEGO.

1) How many of you have subscribed to the two feeds available for this blog?

2) For those of you who subscribe to either the Atom or RSS 2.0 feeds, which one do you use?

3) Finally, do you prefer short descriptions or long descriptions in your feeds?

Okay, that’s it for questions from me.

Some of you might not know much about blog feeds, how they work, and how you can use them. The basic idea is that you “subscribe” to a feed from a Web site (like this blog) and you’re automatically alerted when there’s a new item in the feed (like a blog post). No need to check the site every day! The software you use can be on your computer (like FeedReader for Windows or Safari for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”) or on the Web (like My Yahoo!, Google home page, or Bloglines).

For those of you who are technically inclined, I highly recommend Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom by Ben Hammersley.

Note: Yes, I have a big backlog of great creations to post. I’ll get to them. ;-)

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