Marcos Bessa interviewed Mike Doyle, the builder who recently created the abandoned Victorian house. Ever since seeing Mike’s masterpiece I’ve wanted to interview him to learn how a new member of the AFOL community can create such stunning works. The interview by Marcos answers my question and provides further insight into Mike’s design process and more. I highly recommend this great read.
I really like this spaceship. Usually I have issues with busy spaceships but not this one. This one I like. Thanks Don Wilson (thepaleman9).
Mike Yoder (yoder42) made a small LEGO webcomic. There’s a lot of great action, and especially great models. Anyone else get an 80s or early 90s vibe here?
Warning! This post is not about LEGO bricks but about the community on flickr. If you have no interest in the flickr LEGO community then please just ignore it.
I went to visit one of my LEGO flickr groups the other day (Jan 29) only to find the above message. I’d got through a couple of minutes of before so I was a little bit suspicious. Inspection of my group list showed that LEGO 16+ had vanished from there too. Apparently it had spontaneously disappeared.
As the creator and an administrator of the group I was first in line to hear about it if something had gone wrong. I’d heard nothing. Over the following six days I’ve pieced together what happened. In LEGO 16+ we had a thread for leaks. All discussion in the group was only available to members of the list and one of those members had reported this thread to TLG. They had taken their usual action (lawyerly email) to flickr and Yahoo! (who are directly responsible for these issues) had decided to simply delete the entire group. Not the thread, not the links but the entire group.
I’ll note that I didn’t hear this from flickr but had to piece it together myself (with help). Immediately upon discovering the issue I contacted flickr about it. They finally got back to me today (six days later) with the following:
Hello gambort,
Thank you for contacting Flickr Member Support.
In joining Flickr, our members agree to abide by the Yahoo!
Terms of Service and the Flickr Community Guidelines:http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne
http://www.flickr.com/terms.gneYour group was brought to our attention through Report
Abuse. Upon review, we determined that your content and/or
behavior was in violation and your account was terminated.Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
questions, please feel free to reply to this email.Regards,
Flickr staff
which is extremely helpful. Having heard various horror stories about Yahoo!’s attitude to its users I’d already anticipated this response and was, sadly, not surprised. Incidentally the guidelines basically says that if Yahoo! don’t like what you do they can do what they like. This is standard but most sites choose to explain things.
So what has this got to do with you?
Well firstly if you were interested in what went on in LEGO 16+ you might want to know what happened to it. It’s gone but we’ve moved to AFOL 16+. NB. you must be 16 or over to join this group and it does contain bad language, bad taste and other things some people don’t like.
Secondly, if you run or actively participate in a flickr group you should be very wary of this. If you allow or actively encourage leaks there is a chance the entire group could be deleted. It’s totally unreasonable but Yahoo! have a reputation for behaving in just this way. You might also want to be careful reporting people.
Consider it a lesson learnt the hard way by me so you don’t have to. Yahoo! do not care about you, your group, or anything you have done. Make sure you have a backup in place for any vital discussion and try to back up your flickr photostream.
EDIT: I realise my original post doesn’t make my issue entirely clear here. The loss of LEGO 16+ was a minor irritation as it wasn’t really a resource so much as a discussion forum. It had been replaced by a functional equivalent within hours. The loss of some of my other groups (eg. LEGO Techniques) would be far more tragic and I’ll be making sure it’s unlikely (certainty is impossible given Yahoo!s arbitrariness) to keep it off the radar. I recommend others do the same. Yahoo! do not care.
Sean and Steph Mayo have provided an alternate shot of their snow effect that shows fabulous ideas for using parts, and gives insight as to how they accomplished their scene.
I’m particularly fond of the icicles and the snow on the tree!
Todd Wilder built an ornate box that’s also a puzzle, requiring its six compartments to be opened in order. Check out the gallery that shows sequential photos of this complicated but fun process.
UPDATE: Todd has uploaded a gallery showing the question mark tessellation.
Thanks for the tip Pepa Quin!
UPDATE (April 18, 2011): LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets are out now.
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After numerous leaks across the internet, pictures of upcoming LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets are officially revealed on MTV. There are photos of 8 sets including Queen Anne’s Revenge, Aqua de Vida, Cannibal Escape, Captain’s Cabin, Isla de Muerta, London Escape, The Mill, and Whitecap Bay. Be sure to check them out by clicking through the gallery.
Meanwhile, a short trailer for the related video game is also out.
Via FBTB
I recently finished re-reading Treasure Island for the first time in more than twenty years, and went looking for some Pirate LEGO to blog. Rod Gillies (2 Much Caffeine) was happy to oblige, with his many entries for the Jolly Roger Contest over at Forbidden Cove.
I particularly like the light blue water accenting the shore and boat in this little diorama:
I also love the cascading water in “The Fountain of Youth”:
Check out the full photoset for more gems.
Karwik has created a beautiful rendition of Drzymała’s wagon with a wonderful backdrop of trees. His use of colour and texture in the otherwise plain wagon is truly masterful and the trees are almost certainly the best I’ve seen. I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t post this.
Looking for something to get your mind of the snowy, cold winter? PCHLUG has just the thing for you. Their first creativity challenge, aptly called the PCHLUG 101 Challenge – California Dreamin’, starts tomorrow. The premise is to build an entry based on the theme with 101 bricks. The theme for February’s challenge is, as you might have guessed, California Dreamin’.
What’s in it for you, you might ask? Prizes.
BrickJournal is the official sponsor of this contest, and is giving away a one-year subscription to their magazine for the first-place winner!
Second place will receive #8017 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, and third place will receive LEGO #7746 Single-Drum Roller.
Contest information, including rules, can be found here, and entries can be submitted via their Flickr group. If you have any questions about the contest, you can ask them here.
This contest runs from February 1 through February 28, 2011, so best get building!
There’s been a ton of great creations posted in the past few days, and this one by Matija Grguric is certainly no exception. This castle has survived the times and is now transformed into a modern day historical attraction, complete with tourists of course! Check out the gallery with detail shots on Flickr.
Has it been international LEGO building weekend or something? I’ve got a whole stack of new and great models popping up in my flickr stream today and I’m not really sure why. So you get a roundup post of Aurore&Aube, Soren Roberts, Anthony Sava, Pete Reid and zachmoe.
