Future Boy Conan was an animated Japanese TV show in the late 1970s that helped solidify the reputations of renowned Studio Ghibli animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
Luís Baixinho has created a beautiful plane inspired by the Falco in the TV series:
I’d love to see Luís’ take on the gunship from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
The worldwide response to the 50th birthday of the LEGO brick today has been amazing.
As Nathan posted late last night (our time), Google LEGO’d their home page. Naturally, somebody (namely Antonio Manfredonio) had to build it with real brick:
Finally, LEGO Certified Professional Sean Kenney made a cake:
Well, not really. Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson created a time-lapse video of himself building the Ultimate Collector’s Millenium Falcon:
Joel wonders what to do with all that LEGO now that the Falcon is done. I vote for more ships of his own design. You’ve got some skills, dude!
Thanks for the tip, Xeni!
EDIT: I didn’t read the whole post earlier, but Joel also has a great list of his nine favorite LEGO sets. From 497 Galaxy Explorer to 7036 Dwarves’ Mine, it’s a great list indeed.
Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo has put together a fantastic LEGO timeline:
Click the pic to check out the larger version in Jesus’ post, along with a whole bunch of cool facts and figures about the LEGO brick.
Today (Monday, January 28) is the 50th birthday of the LEGO brick as we know it today.
You’ve come a long way, our favorite little plastic brick! Happy birthday.
Each of us has our obsessions, and it should be fairly clear from my posts over this past year that one of mine is 7036 Dwarves’ Mine (sadly, currently sold out from The LEGO Shop; UPDATE: 7036 Dwarves’ Mine is back!)
As a sucker for anything related to this wonderful set, I couldn’t pass up Alex Eylar‘s take on it:
That’s Alex’s favorite shot, and mine as well. Click the picture for the full gallery on MOCPages.
Thankfully, Jerac has a fleet of very tiny ships, led by the cruiser Van Helsing, to hunt them down and stake their ice-cold hearts.
(Via Brick Blogue.)
It all started with a man named Bucky. Well, maybe Bram. Okay, possibly Jon. Whatever. The latest building trend seems to be buckyballs, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons, rhombicosidodecahedrons, and ‘hedrons of all sorts. I’m going to call the trend Hedronism.
Here’s Bram Lambrecht‘s original (virtual) design, alongside the first one built from “real” LEGO, by Kevin Heckel:
Adrian Drake gave it a try, and Ley Ward tried a different design:
Finally, my favorite of the bunch, another buckyball by Ley:
Long live Hedronism!
LEGO has released various components as open source software in the past, including MINDSTORMS firmware back in 2006. The latest to receive the open source treatment is the protocol for the Power Functions RC (remote control) system:
Here’s the word from Billund:
Last year we introduced a range of products using our new electric building system: LEGO Power Functions. This new electric building system will open up a lot of possibilities now and in the future.
One of the new things we offer now is modular remote control. In the process of designing the Power Functions RC system we did a mapping of different RC functionalities. This mapping formed the basis of the Power Functions RC protocol and most of this is build into the Power Functions RC Receiver.
The RC Handset launched now provides direct ‘bang-bang’ control, but the RC Receiver supports much more functionality like PWM speed control and single pin operation.
Now that the Power Functions elements are available at the LEGO Shop online we have decided to release the Power Functions RC protocol as open source.
Please feel free to use any information from the protocol document for personal, non-commercial use only, provided you keep intact copyright, trademarks and other proprietary rights of the LEGO Company – have fun.
Gaute Munch
Technology Product Manager
LEGO Company
You can download the protocol document as a PDF, kindly hosted by the good people of Hispalug.
Naturally, various Power Functions products are available from the LEGO Store online:
Too much steampunk lately? Here’s something completely different, from Rocko:
Oh wait! Is that too steamy after all? Dang.
