It’s been nearly a century since World War I, but the echoes of that horrific conflict still echo across the years. Each November 11, people all across the world pause to remember all those who died in the war. Here in the States, Veterans Day honors everyone who’s served in the armed forces.
Jason Allemann has built this gorgeous scene “to honour all those who have fought for freedom in the world.”
Iain Heath of The Living Brick is apparently too modest to blog his own LEGO creations these days, so we’ll do it for him here. If there’s something that was missing from 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, it was a pair of smelly hippies named Credence Sandstorm and Crystal Bliss.
The circle of life is now complete.
Important: This is not the raffle post! Leave your raffle entry comments on Win LEGO Super Hero minifigs early, not here.
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We’ve heard from readers anecdotally that some of you have had trouble registering or leaving comments. Unfortunately, the reported numbers were low enough, and we just never had enough info to get to the root of the problem until recently, so weren’t able to fix it. As it turns out, there were a few related issues that all contributed to the problem.
First, some Internet service providers only allow inbound email from domains on a “whitelist.” If you’ve registered here on Brothers-Brick.com using the email address provided by your ISP, such as t-online.de or comcast.net, or if you have your own custom domain that you’ve used to register, email — including the registration confirmation message — from us may get blocked. There’s nothing TBB can do about this, but there’s something you can do. Please try registering again with an email address from a free webmail service, such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. If you use your ISP mail as your primary email account (or don’t have a webmail account), you can always set up the webmail to automatically redirect all messages to your regular address.
Second, many of you haven’t been able to change your auto-assigned passwords after you registered. We fixed this one a while ago.
Finally, those of you using Internet Explorer 9 have been unable to comment at all. I’m contractually obligated to say that this is our old code’s fault, not IE9’s. ;-) We’ve also fixed this.
We’re still going to keep the registration requirement for leaving comments, but we hope we’ve at least eliminated the bugs enough to enable those of you who’ve encountered any of these three issues to start leaving comments again. Thanks for your patience!
I have a WordPress.com account. Why can’t I leave a comment here on TBB?
Although Brothers-Brick.com runs on WordPress software, the WordPress.com registration system is completely separate from any “self-hosted” instances of WordPress. You’ll need to specifically register here on Brothers-Brick.com to leave a comment on a TBB post.
I left a comment a while ago but it still hasn’t shown up. What’s going on?
First-time commenters are moderated to make sure they’re not spammers. One of our administrators needs to look at the comments from any first-time commenter and approve them. Any future comments after that will appear immediately. We’re not online 24 hours a day, so there may sometimes be a delay in moderating first-time comments.
LEGO fans in Switzerland are hosting the ExpoLego event November 19 and 20, 2011 in Concise (near Yverdon). With a display space of over 300 square meters, the event will feature Star Wars, System, Trains, and many custom LEGO models built by LEGO fans.
The public exhibition costs 3 swiss francs for kids and 6 for grown-ups.
Sylvain says, “In Switzerland, LEGO events are too rare, so enjoy!
They say you’re not a real LEGO Space builder until you’ve built a SHIP — a “Significantly Huge Investment in Parts” — that’s at least 100 studs long. As tempting as it was to take on that challenge, I was having so much fun with my little microscale fleet that I decided I wanted to stay within a size that was a reasonable addition to the carrier, cruiser, destroyer, and other little ships I’d built before BrickCon.
Spurred by a rival fleet Mike Yoder built, I set out to add a battleship. Thus was born UES Vanguard, the flagship of the United Earth Federation interstellar fleet.
Despite limiting myself to 55-60 studs, I still struggled with the engineering problems of creating something that wasn’t just built from bricks and slopes stacked on top of each other — something I know regular LEGO Space builders solved years ago. By the end, Vanguard was basically built as a “normal” LEGO (SYSTEM) skin enclosing a Technic latticework. That makes it strong enough, though, that I can hold it with one hand near the back and swoosh it around the living room. Sweet!
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
In a surprising turn of events, you’ll be able to get next year’s LEGO sets directly from LEGO, rather than watching them trickle in (frequently at inflated prices) at big box toy stores: LEGO informs us that they’ve just listed a substantial number of the January 2012 LEGO sets on the LEGO Shop website.
Everyone already knows that I’m most excited (oddly enough) about the newest LEGO City sets, what with their hillbilly moonshiners and rampaging bears. 4440 Forest Police Station
includes a bear, along with a hillbilly in a tree. There are eight other 2012 LEGO City
sets out as well.
LEGO dinosaurs return from extinction with the new LEGO Dino sets. 5887 Dino Defense HQ
includes a T-Rex, Raptor and Coelophysis, while 5885 Triceratops Trapper
has the horned dino we all know and love.
LEGO has listed nearly 30 new sets in half a dozen categories, so head on over and check them out.
Following close on the heels of the announcement about the closure of LEGO Universe at the beginning of 2012, The LEGO Group has just announced that the Design byMe program will also be closing in January.
Here’s the official announcement:
The LEGO Group is closing that part of the Design byMe customization service that allows consumers to order digital models in real bricks. We will be accepting orders until January 16, 2012.
Consumers will still be able to design what they want with LEGO Digital Designer and upload models into a public gallery as before. All existing models will be transferred to a new gallery on the LDD website. Consumers will also be able to download the instructions generated from LEGO Digital Designer.
The HERO Recon Team Hero Creator will be unchanged and consumers will still be able to build and buy their own customized Hero. Bricks can be bought separately, using the Pick a Brick service http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pick-A-Brick-ByTheme.
This is not the end of customization for the LEGO Group, but a revision. We believe in the future of customization, but the service we offer has to be right for our consumers and Design byME has proven to be too complex for children.
The original Design byMe vision was for a unique customization service, where consumers could design whatever they imagined, display it and get the model sent to in their own LEGO box. Design byMe as a concept attracts several million people each year to build a huge range of amazing creations using the LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) software. Despite this success, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service.
Over the years, we have also added other simpler customized building experiences like Hero Recon Team. However, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service. The feedback from Design byMe users has taught us that we would need to rebuild the entire setup of Design byMe to fix this. This would only make the service too expensive.
But, you say, this little scene by Gabriel Thomson (whose more recent LEGO version of the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site we blogged a week ago) is a Star Trek scene! What’s with the Monty Python reference, Andrew?
Wait, what’s that on the viewscreen? And who’s that in the fez?
Egads! It’s the Crimson Permanent Assurance!
I suspect the crew of the Enterprise will be completely fine in the face of marauding financiers. They do, after all, have a certain Time Lord on board…
Via The Living Brick, my favorite minifig-centric blog.
Each year, Nannan and several other organizers run a fundraising event for Toys for Tots called Creations for Charity.
The team has just listed several new creations in their online store.
Fine print: Creations for Charity is a fundraising event for the Toys for Tots charity organization. As such, donations to Creations for Charity itself are not tax-deductible. Creations for Charity is not affiliated with The Brothers Brick.
If you’d like to donate a creation yourself, the deadline for doing so is November 15.
Don’t miss Nannan’s writeup about last year’s fundraiser, which resulted in over $14,000 worth of LEGO for underprivileged children.
For those of you who missed the ARF Trooper minifigs during Star Wars Days back in May, the LEGO Shop
online has a limited quantity that they’re going to give away to readers of The Brothers Brick, FBTB, and Brickset over the next couple of weeks.
To get one, you’ll need a special code from us, FBTB, or Brickset. Here are the details from LEGO:
We have discovered a limited quantity of LEGO Star Wars™ Shadow ARF Trooper minifigures in our warehouse! Due to the very limited quantity we would like to give the fan community the first chance to receive these as bonus gift on any LEGO Star Wars holiday purchases that meet the Free Shipping threshold of $99.
The offer will be available Nov 7th – 21st or while supplies last. To add the LEGO Star Wars™ Shadow ARF Trooper to your eligible order simply enter code 4TBB (US) / TBBO (CA) at checkout.
Unfortunately, warehouses elsewhere in the world didn’t have a lost stash of ARF Troopers, so this is limited to North America.
Daniel Gran (shutinc) just finished a large LEGO Castle diorama with some lovely landscaping.
The waterfall alone is worth a closer look:
See all of Daniel’s photos in his photoset on Flickr.
Amazon.com keeps dropping the price of the recently released LEGO Architecture set 21010 Robie House.
Price was one of the big complaints when this was released, so quit complainin’ and get shoppin’! Looks like it’ll make a great dark red parts pack.
Via FBTB.
