Yearly Archives: 2007

Microspacetopia!

The new LEGO Microspacetopia group on Flickr has inspired me to build some microscale spacey thingies myself:

Click the image to see individual photos of each microscale vehicle.

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Are you interested in joining the LEGO MINDSTORMS Community Partners?

This just in from Jan Beyer of The LEGO Group:

Are You a Hardcore LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT User?

Do you want to have a seat in our closed webforum, the Mindstorms Community Partners, where we involve you in our development and tests of new ideas, concepts, prototypes, products and discuss various issues like ideas for SW, HW, FW and wetware…?

Then send an application via email with a description of yourself, your involvement with LEGO MINDSTORMS, your special areas of interest, and a paragraph on why you are eligible to be an MCP member!

Send it to mindstormsnxt@lego.com with the header ‘MCP 2.0 application’.

Applications will be received from now and until 10 July 1200 GMT. All email applications received after this will be rejected.

Applicants must be 18 years old to apply.

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More Bubble Bobble characters from Arvo

It seems like we’ve featured just about every creation the Arvo brothers (interview here) have built, but that’s because everything they make is wonderfully constructed and beautifully presented. Some creations are worth revisiting:

Ramón and Amador have added another batch of characters from Bubble Bobble. Here are Hullaballoon and Incendo:

Willy Whistle and Stoner:

Bubble Buster and Baron von Blubba:

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Moon Tracker by Bram Lambrecht

Bram Lambrecht presents what would, for me at least, be a rather harrowing riding experience…

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Space Base by Inago100

Japanese blogger Inago100 doesn’t post to the usual photo sites (Brickshelf, Flickr, etc.), so I thought I’d share his latest creation — a microscale “space base” with lots of interesting details:

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News: Photo of LEGO Indiana Jones Minifig

I suspect this will put to rest any debate that the rendered images we’ve seen of Indy so far weren’t “real”:

LEGO Indiana Jones (photo)

Source, via Klocki.

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Fuchs II by Nick Dean

Nick Dean says: “A light, faster APC in the RAMM.” I say that I like the working hatch a lot.

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News: Early Picture of 7036 Dwarves’ Mine

Standard disclaimer: LEGO hasn’t confirmed that this is “real,” and this could be an early prototype (bear in mind how different the Viking sets were between prototype pictures and their final production versions).

From what I can see, this set has a lot of new parts:

  • A troll
  • New swords
  • Mining carts
  • Bronze or gold axe blades
  • Red or orange beards
  • Black or brown beards
  • Winged helmets

And since I looked it up:

The plural form dwarfs has been traced to the 17th century. The alternate plural dwarves has been recorded in the early 18th century, but was not generally accepted until used by Philologist J.R.R. Tolkien in his fantasy novel The Hobbit. Neither is the historical plural: dwarf was pluralized dwarrow in Anglo-Saxon.

EDIT: And the Exo-Force set — “7721 Bad Guy Vehicle”:

UPDATE: 7036 Dwarves’ Mineicon was released in October 2007, and returned to the LEGO Shop in June 2008:

iconicon

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Contests happening all over the place!

Given the potential for loot, I thought I’d pass on a couple of contests going on right now.

Klocki and zczuba.pl are hosting a sports-themed contest. Head on over to Klocki to read the details and see examples, but here’s some inspiration:

(News via VignetteBricks; “Red Card” by Nelson Yrizarry, currently going through brick-withdrawal. We feel your pain.)

Also via VignetteBricks, LEGO Europe just concluded a raffle for the gold-chrome C-3PO minifig otherwise only available randomly in sets here in the United States. The contest deadline was June 25, but you can see all of the entries on 1000steine.de. In my personal favorite, a rather enhanced R2-D2 steals the scene — as usual:

The final due date for the Classic-Space.com Moon Rover Contest is this Saturday, June 30th. You can see a list of all the great entries so far in this thread. Many of the entries feature wonderfully inventive wheels:

I know there are more contests out there, so leave a comment if I’ve missed something.

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It’s true that houses in Japan are small...

Having lived there for 15 years, I can attest to that. But Moko scales his house down to microscale:

(Via Klocki.)

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Vote for The Brothers Brick in the Blogger’s Choice Awards!

A reader in Brazil has been kind enough to nominate The Brothers Brick for a Blogger’s Choice Award in the “Best Photography Blog” category!

My site was nominated for Best Photography Blog!

We don’t know if it’s a “real” award, and perhaps “Best Hobby Blog” or “Best Geek Blog” might have been better categories, but hey, we’ll take it!

If you like what we do, please vote for us. If you love what we do, maybe you might even go so far as to nominate us in a couple more categories (hints provided above) and then vote for us in all of them! :-D

I’m off to nominate or vote for all my own favorites…

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Micro Vehicles by Peter Morris

I’m not sure this asteroid processor by Peter Morris qualifies as “microscale” given its size (it does), but it’s pretty darn cool. So are these other spacey vehicles:

Thanks for the tip, Ethan!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.