Monthly Archives: July 2008

Lego unveils WeDo [News]

The Lego Company has announced the upcoming release of a new robotics system, scheduled to be released in January of 2009. Geared towards grade school children, ages 7-11, WeDo is designed to introduce robotics to an age group that has been previously overlooked. By building robots that remain tethered to their computer, kids can write, download and tweak their programs, giving them the opportunity to see what changes occurred immediately. While it appears that, due to its tethered nature, it may have a limited use outside of the classroom, anything that introduces young children to robotics is a good thing in my book.

In a company press release, dated June 30 2008, Jens Maibom, vice president of LEGO Education, said:

“Building upon our successful 10-year history of bringing educational robotics to middle, high school, and university classrooms with the award-winning LEGO MINDSTORMS toolset, we are excited to extend this expertise to benefit an even younger audience. With a progressively competitive global economy, we know it is imperative to provide even younger children and their teachers with curricular-relevant, easy-to-implement educational materials to spark children’s interest in all manner of subjects. After observing classroom tests conducted in Brazil and the United States, we are confident that WeDo Robotics, the first product from LEGO Education designed to serve the classroom needs of emerging markets, will inspire teachers and motivate students in classrooms around the world.”

Check out more WeDo info at the Lego Education site.

Wedo! Can you?

HKLUG present LEGO Sports City

UPDATE: We’ve gotten lots of additional photos and behind-the-scenes details about HKLUG’s LEGO Sport City display from HKLUG.

HKLUG Water Cube

HKLUG kick off an Olympic themed exhibition featuring some creative models of Olympic landmarks. Read more about it in their blog entry. The “Birdsnest” and water cube are highlights.

Syd Mead talks about his one-of-a-kind LEGO Technic Spinner

Remember BB Gadgets editor Joel Johnston’s trip to Syd Mead’s house, where he saw the Technic Spinner that LEGO built for him?

Now there’s a video, in which Joel and Syd talk about the unique LEGO creation:

What do I have to do to get LEGO to build something for me? Oh right, design something awesome that influences an entire generation of people.

The greener side of post-apoc

Adrian Florea (Olog) swoops on the Vestas Windmill leak and enters the Picking up the Pieces Contest with his own apocalypse version of the windmill, inhabited by a survivor who is making the most out of this unique shelter.

BrickMaster January exclusive: mini Venator [News]

The BrickMaster January exclusive set is announced as a mini Venator revealed at Comic-Con.

Via FBTB

Comic-Con exclusive LEGO sets revealed [News]

For the past few months, LEGO fans have wondered what’s inside the exclusive secret Indiana Jones box available at Comic-Con (July 24-27) with a limited edition of 500. Just now, the set has been listed on Ebay with its contents, revealed to be the BrickMaster Indy jeep along with two natives minifigs and a small temple scene.

Furthermore, and to our surprise, an exclusive Clone Wars set is available as well with a limited edition of 1200. This kit includes full contents of the Hailfire Droid & Spider Droid set and the Droids Battle Pack in addition to five new clone minifigs and a special poster. Click on the picture below for more.

Via Brick Horizon

Another Troll bites the dust

It seems that the new Trolls keep popping up everywhere. Sadly this one was hunted down, beheaded, and hung on a wall. Check out Troll’s Head Inn by MrTS

Bokk in the land of dreams

Curzon79 suggests that when a troll has nightmares, he sees horrible, beautiful flowers and nasty, pretty butterflies:

Fitting a bed around the troll must certainly have been an interesting challenge, and those large brick-built flowers are great.

Crises at the Red Inn

Strange things are afoot in this lovely medieval inn by Crises. Click the pic for details:

Via Brick Town Talk.

LEGO Star Wars Clone Wars sets at Celebration Japan [News]

The new LEGO Star Wars Clone Wars sets will be available soon, but attendees at Star Wars Celebration Japan got an early look at some of the sets — and the minifigs in particular.

Edge (エッジ) over at レゴ系 (The LEGO System) was there, and took a bunch of pictures of the LEGO Star Wars booth.

Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker, and a bunch of clones:

Clones on bikes, including CC-7567:

An overall shot of the booth:

Bonnie Burton from the Official Star Wars Blog also took a handful of pictures of the Clone Wars LEGO, including close-ups of the nose art on the Republic Gunship:

The ladies of the booth:

See lots more pictures in Edge’s blog post.

Bridge from ‘Singularity Sky’

Flagship bridge

I’m a huge fan of Charles Stross’ books and short stories and am particularly fond of the anachronistic starship in Singularity Sky. Something about the combination of brass speaking tubes and faster-than-light drives just tickles me in all the right places. This is my attempt to do some vague amount of justice to the bridge featured in the book.

PS. If you like good sci-fi you should read as much of Stross’ catalogue as possible. The man is a modern great of the genre.

Super LEGO Monkey Ball

Harrison (corran101) makes creative use of the LEGO Astronaut Bubble to relive the glory and hilarity of Super Monkey Ball the video game.