I was a bit shocked myself when I opened the browser this morning and saw this, as many of you probably saw too:
Of course, I knew we were at 97% of our 10 GB/month bandwidth limit on Monday, but I was just being cheap and hoping we’d squeek by through the end of the month. I guess the downtime is actually my fault. Sorry! Anyway, I’ve upgraded our hosting plan, so we now have plenty of room to grow.
Hey all you castle-lovers out there!
Classic-Castle has announced their fifth annual Colossal Castle Contest! Let me tell you, these are a blast. I’ve entered every year and they just keep getting better and better.
Check out the prizes and the rules, then get building!
No, but hosting a site that gets nearly 2 million hits a month isn’t free, so we’ve added a way for our loyal readers to help us out. ;-) The next time you buy LEGO from the LEGO Store online, please consider clicking through from Brothers-Brick.com first. If you do that, we get a (very small) percentage of the sale, which will help to cover costs like Web hosting.
So, if you appreciate what we do and want to show your support by helping us out, please consider buying some LEGO!
Q: The links don’t actually go to LEGO.com. What’s with this LinkSynergy.com business? Is this safe?
A: Yes, this is safe. The LEGO Store Affiliate Program uses a service from LinkShare.com to give participants like us credit for our referrals. Once the service registers your click, you’ll be immediately redirected to LEGO.com.
Q: Does Brothers-Brick.com share my personal information with LEGO or LinkShare?
A: No, in accordance with the Brothers-Brick.com Privacy Policy, we will never share your name, e-mail address, or other personal information with third parties.
You all remember Omicron Weekend by KeithLUG, right? I hope you do. Because its gone. Like, forever. Like giant, robot, Mecha-Godzilla gone…
Check out the carnage….
The Brothers Brick would like to extend our condolences to Mike, Ryan, and Keith (and, of course, the Monkey).
Cafe Corner. Market Street. Cement Mixer. Recycle Truck. No longer is the Town theme reserved for endlessly repeated police stations, firehouses and construction vehicles. 2007 has been a truly awesome year for LEGO Town, and it only gets better. Feast your eyes on this set that can only be as a masterpiece:
10184 Town Plan
Check out the Classic-Castle thread for more discussion and pictures.
EDIT: More, high-quality pictures are now available on BrickJournal.com, including pictures of the interior (some pictured below).
For anyone who didn’t know, the man pictured is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of Ole Kirk Christiansen, the inventor of LEGO. 10184 Town Plan is a remake of 248 Town Plan Board. The boy seen in the original set is, in fact, Kjeld.
Editor Joe Meno has announced that the latest issue of BrickJournal (issue 9) is now available for download.
Joe says that this will be the last free issue, and that the journal will be available in printed form starting next February. Read more about this change in his announcement on LUGNET, where you’ll find the link to the download site.
Those of us who attended BrickCon 2007 last weekend learned that Will Chapman of BrickArms is working on some new weapons. Will generously gave me some early prototypes to show off to everyone out there interested in custom accessories for their minifigs.
The first two weapons should be familiar to fans of a certain trilogy of popular video games:
Will is also working on some real-world weapons, including the M1 Garand rifle:
In a session on Sunday morning, Will also described his development process, including how he uses test molds to create small batches of prototypes before committing to a final design. I thought the test molds were really cool, so he lent me an early version he used to design the M1 Garand:
Will asked me to remind everyone that he’s just experimenting at this point, and he can’t guarantee that any of these will make it into production. I personally think these are very cool, and can’t wait to see the final versions.
StarWars.com has the first high-resolution images of box art from one of the upcoming Indiana Jones LEGO sets, 7620 Motorcycle Chase:
Based on the three I’ve attended, the last day of LEGO conventions primarly seem to involve three activities:
People who’ve uploaded photos since Saturday (includes photos through Sunday):
Invasions
Group Photos
Builders’ Lounge:
Castle:
KeithLUG:
Teardown
Nathan Proudlove ships himself back to Manitoba in his Blacktron II box (I get to keep the SHIP):
This is how The Omicron Weekend got home:
I’ll add more stuff tomorrow (interesting news as well as cool LEGO creations). That’s it for tonight!
Photos from day 2 are starting to show up from the following people:
Here’s what I did today:
9:00 A.M.
LEGO Store Pick-a-Brick at the event venue included large bins of minifig parts (10 pieces for $5). I picked up several more yellow Slave Leia minifigs, along with torsos from the green Scout Trooper torso, among other cool finds.
9:30 A.M.
Saw prototype of some stuff…
10:30 A.M.
Scrambled to do some last-minute setup of my steampunk, post-apoc, and castle stuff.
11:00 A.M.
Public hours began, and I spent an hour stamping people’s hands and handing them raffle tickets. It was nice to meet Arpy in person as well.
12:00 P.M.
Lunch with Josh. Shop-talk about The Brothers Brick with delicious Greek food.
1:00 P.M.
Bumped into Caylin, so Josh and I went with her for a second lunch. At BrickCon, you learn to injest comestibles when you can…
1:37:50 P.M.
Best princess-themed Moonbase end-cap ever (with proud builder):
3:30 P.M.
Presentation by Bram Lambrecht about software he designed to convert 3D models to studs-out LEGO designs. Download the PDF from Bram’s LEGO site (252 KB PDF).
4:00 P.M.
Public hours end. Official Brothers Brick BrickCon 2007 photo opportunity (with honorary brother Steve Vargo in the background):
4:30 P.M.
Judged Steampunk and Castle creations for awards. Next year, I’ll be accepting bribes. It may not influence my decisions, but I will accept any free LEGO you may want to give me. Here I am (on the right) giving a critical eye to the joust pavilians, with Tom Raffert and Jim Foulds (from the LEGO Universe team):
Here’s Steve Vargo’s winning battle scene:
5:00 P.M.
Official BrickCon 2007 Classic-Castle.com photo shoot (look for better pictures later):
5:15 P.M.
Formal induction into KeithLUG. Rites were performed. Sacrifices were made. Swag was received.
6:30 P.M.
Award ceremonies and presentations. Got excited when Andrew Lee‘s name was announced for winning the microscale category (heard “Andrew B.”). I was surprised, because I thought the other Andrew had built better stuff. Apparently the judges agreed. Fortunately, I didn’t actually get up and embarrass myself…
Jim Foulds from the LEGO Universe project provided some details about the game. You can read what he had up on the screen here.
8:00 P.M.
Hung out with Steve Witt, Andrew Lee, Zach Clapsadle, and many others to build Cafe Corner floors for the Cafe Corner Tower. No instructions at our table, so had to reverse-engineer ours from a prototype (L to R: Andrew, me, and Steve):
9:00 P.M.
Watched the Dirty Brickster (LEGO white elephant game) and distributed chocolate.
10:30 P.M.
Drive home, eat chocolate chip cookies (I love my wife!), upload photos to Flickr (187 photos, 218.11 MB), watch Saturday Night Live (meh), and write this.
1:18 A.M.
Off to bed, with an event I need to be at later this morning at 8:30…
First of all, notice that NWBrickCon is now “BrickCon.” Cool.
I actually don’t have a whole lot to report, since the first days at LEGO conventions have become mainly social and acquisitive for me. In other words, I tend to spend most of my time chatting it up with people I haven’t seen in six months, a year, or never (if I only know them from the Web), as well as poring over minifig bins from sellers in the Brick Bazaar. Well, I guess talking with other fans — especially meeting people I’ve gotten to know online — and buying LEGO is pretty much all I end up doing for most of the con, but describing that to all of you out there who can’t be here won’t be especially interesting…
Pictures are a start, though. I’ve just uploaded all of my own photos to Flickr (photoset) and photos from other attendees are starting to show up in the BrickCon group pool.
In terms of LEGO creations I haven’t seen before (at least in person), I’m excited about the Miniland-scale Cafe Corner, a great steampunk section, KeithLUG’s Omicron Weekend, not one but two Mecha-Godzillas, new Moonbase modules, and a fantastic Castle display. I’ll highlight some of the coolest stuff once everything’s been set up and I’ve spent some time taking decent pictures. Of course, you don’t need to wait for my pictures. Check out Lonnon Foster’s photoset or Joe Meno’s setup set for great shots of some really excellent stuff.
Here’s the Miniland Cafe Corner (before complete setup, so still missing the street scene I saw later in the day:
And the afore-mentioned Mecha-Godzilla:
Bruce, yes, I’m excited to report that there’s a great selection of vignettes and microscale this year! Rest assured I’ll photograph both and tag them so you can find them for VignetteBricks and MicroBricks. Looks like you’ve already noticed Shannonia, though. ;-)
I’m off to bed.
Brickfilmers and Brickfilms.com continues to get more exposure. The Wall Street Journal has just published an article about brickfilming and includes interviews from Michael Green, Joshua Leasure, Robinson Wood, David Pagano, Zach Macias, Lewis Chen and myself, Nathan Wells. Purists should be pleased by my single quote. ;)
In addition to the article, there are two videos. If you’re interested in seeing brickfilms by those interviewed, click their names. Each link leads back to their Brickfilms Directory of films.
