For once I don’t have to rack my brain trying to think of a relevant song. Barney Main (SlyOwl) has already done it for me by basing a diorama on Ralph McTell’s song Streets of London. Be sure to click through the pictures in order to match the song lyrics to the diorama.
Last year, we posted an offer to connect people coming in by air based on their arrival times, enabling people to share transportation. That was before Seattle built a light rail line that’ll get you from the airport to Seattle Center for less than five bucks. Oh, and you get to ride a monorail along the way.
Mark Sandlin‘s Infothingy has the details:
For the graphically challenged (and to help people find this from the interwebs):
Be sure to click through the graphic to a great discussion of other useful ways to get to BrickCon for cheap — more money for bricks!
Matt Armstrong (Monsterbrick) has found a great use for all those empty x-pods. I’m sure I’m not the only person with a stack of pods that runs from floor to ceiling and then starts over, right? He’s done an elegant job of building a ship into a series of pods to make a ship in a bottle. Very clever!
Mike Stimpson (Balakov) takes us into the strange world of Salvador Dalí with his latest photo, a reenactment of Philippe Halsman’s Dalí Atomicus.
As always, the setup shot is nearly as amazing. Mike writes:
This was rather difficult, and wet. It took two and a half hours to set up, and 15 seconds before the set was destroyed by the chaos that ensues when you turn a hosepipe on a carefully balanced Lego scene.
That is so unbelievably cool.
Tommy Williamson (GeekyTom) recreates the complete set for Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report in Miniland scale, complete with trophies and bookshelves.
Check out all the photos on MOCpages and Flickr.
Nation, watch for Tommy at BrickCon in his Stud shirt.
Why yes, that is a BrickArms Cricket Bat and M1 Carbine.
Thanks to the generous folks at BrickArms, we’ll be giving away a bunch of these to those of you who contribute to Zombie Apocafest 2009 at BrickCon 2009 later this week. Each Zombie Defense Pack will include a prototype cricket bat and M1 carbine, along with other great stuff that remains Top Secret.
The cricket bats in particular will be in short supply outside these packs, and there will be a limited number of packs, so be sure to build something awesome.
Those of us who are into trains know that Anthony Sava has been working on his Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Duplex (4-4-4-4) Steam Engine #5544 for a year and a half. We know this because Tony has been posting work-in-progress pictures, asking for advice and generally running an interactive development system for all this time.
Since many people seemed to enjoy my Anatomy of a Warehouse post where I went through some of my own building stages I think this post should appeal even more. Anthony has documented about 30 images as he has progressed in this project.
Right at the beginning he asked for advice and suggestions on the nose which elicited many responses. As one of the most prominent features of the train it is really important to get this right and I think Tony achieved this admirably in his final version.
Later on Tony used LDraw to mock up various components of the train. I assure you the vanity of the example selection was accidental.
As the train got nearer to completion (this picture is four weeks old as of today) the design began to settle down (note the differences from the CAD image above) and more refined details started to appear.
A final pre-production version was completed a few days ago. Just lacking the stickers and any final tweaks. Tony thanks many people for their help but I’d like to thank him for spending the time on this excellent creation.
And I think we can all agree this train has aged rather well since its inception.
Making a good mecha is hard. Making a good carrier is hard. Making a good carrier that carries a good mecha all snugly folded is really hard. Fortunately Aran (Cole Blaq) managed to pull it off.
If I were a secret agent, I’d want one of these Tri-Runners by The Zipper. The gears give an appearance of functionality and the color combo makes this robot remarkable.
The battle bugs theme has spawned some unique insect-based mechas. This stick insect inspired battle bug by Jordan Schwartz is among one of the more novel species in its class. The creation is as fragile as it looks, and I’m afraid it may collapse if I stare too hard at it. Nevertheless it is armed with three ventral rockets and one on the tail.
It’s not so much that this was a slow news week, but that most of us have been too busy with last-minute preparations for a certain LEGO convention happening in just a few days to blog everything. Anyway, here we go.
The house that May built: James May’s LEGO house has been destroyed. Worse, a LEGO version of May’s cat Fusker built by a LEGO fan was stolen from the house.Sean Kenney presents a public service announcement for bikers. Its message is simple yet striking. Check out Red Light.