LEGOPalooza planning

Tonight I'm going to be at the NCLUG dinner. I'm not preparing to take any models up with me, but the SD card in my camera has photos of a bunch of stuff I'm planning on / thinking about bringing. We'll probably discuss a few other things (parking, town baseplates, train track, etc) and I'll probably have other stuff I'll be planning on bringing by the end of the night. Anyway, for those of you who aren't in NCLUG, a sampling of photos are up at this Brickshelf Gallery. That's just a few highlights - I have some additional photos and ideas that are still only on the chip. I expect to have plenty of good photos of the event itself in a few weeks, which ought to be enough to catch you up. Feel free to let me know what you think of anything in the photos here - comments are enabled and I'm open to suggestions and criticism on everything pictured.

EDIT 11:57 PM: Well, that went well. I had a pretty stellar shopping trip at Brier Creek before I showed up - wound up being a little late after that Goodwill run took longer than expected (I did buy this Mars Mission set there, basically new but missing the instructions - anyone have the instructions and willing to scan/lend them to me?). I also picked up a ton of stuff on sale at Hallmark and Barnes and Noble - they're running 75% off of a ton of things.

Onto the dinner - we didn't sort out too much. We're apparently now planning a Pirates island. I'm planning on trying to assemble the one ship I've located in time for that (I believe it's this one). Nobody else seems excited for next year (I figure I'll have found most of my other Pirates set by then and will be ready to do a larger layout). I'm also bringing extra blue baseplates for water (but I think Carin said she's bringing a blue tablecloth to use for that purpose too). The town will be fairly small this year - I believe I heard "one table" thrown around for a size. It's not even a sure thing that there will be a train at this point. I'm bringing extra train track and road baseplates no matter what though - just to make sure we have plenty of them regardless of how things end up. My Harry Potter-related plans are now set in stone - I'm going to be adding regular train wheels (and magnets, in one case) to my Hogwarts Express cars and contributing them to the Harry Potter diorama display (IIRC, my complete HP sets and some 9V train track will be added to the HP set display - which I think we settled at the Christmas party). Joe filled me in on how the parking situation works out - apparently we're given some sort of vouchers to use to "pay" for it.

Oh, and the picture of a face thing that I think was supposed to be Elvis was given a resounding thumbs-down by everyone who saw it. That's not coming, then.

Here's the scorekeeping for tables/what I'm bringing for each:

1 table for my "history" display (I'm contributing some MOCs: small sculptures, over sized bricks, a lamp, a LEGO logo mosaic; sets: the Sopwith Camel, probably a set or two from a few "representative" themes; vintage parts/sets; and a background poster of some sort with NCLUG background, LEGO background, and LEGO info on it) - I don't think we settled who would be making/bringing an NCLUG sign to put here. I forget who, but somebody on the mailing list offered to bring some vintage boxes too.

2 tables an Aquazone layout. I'm contributing "playscape" bases, some sets, and possibly a few MOCs for this. I also have a few extra parts that I'm planning on bringing for this (bushes, sharks, sea creatures and such). I expect to have at least 3 loose subs, I have located two of the playscapes, and I have 3 10"x10" baseplates that I will have filled by then (the Shark's Crystal Cave set and then some sort of Aquanauts base - likely modded to include lights/motors).

1(?) table for a Town layout - I'm bringing the train shed set (unassembled), train tracks, and various street baseplates. I have no idea if any of my stuff will be used or not, though. At the moment, I'm NOT planning on bringing any train cars for this, but I could try to have a few ready (from sets) if we decide for sure on wanting to do a train. I'm also NOT bringing any town buildings, contrary to what I originally told people.

1 round table for a Pirates layout. This is a new plan that was just made tonight, and I don't anticipate being able to get much ready for it with the time we have remaining. I'll probably bring a ship - is there Wi-Fi at the planetarium so I can get instructions off of Peeron there, or do I need to make sure it's assembled beforehand? I'm bringing blue baseplates for this, and I guess my sharks might show up here instead of in Aquazone too.

2 tables (maybe more) for Castle displays. I had forgotten that some people are doing castles until I heard the discussion on this tonight. There's a slight chance that I'll have a set or two ready, but I don't plan on contributing here.

1 table for Harry Potter sets. I'm contributing four small sets here. I'll also have extra train track for the 9V Hogwarts Express.

1 table for Harry Potter dioramas that depict scenes from the books and movies. I'm contributing Hogwarts Express passenger train cars for this (with the modifications mentioned above).

Joe's doing some Mindstorms (NXT?) stuff somewhere, but I don't know how many tables that'll take. In any case, I'm not planing on contributing anything there.

4 tables are going to Rick's display. I'm not entirely sure what he's doing or if I should be contributing anything to that.

2 tables for Star Wars near the stage - the stage will have the UCS models (which are big enough to be seen at a distance like that). Unless enough of the black Technic rubber bands magically turn up for me to fix my Battle Droid, I won't be contributing to this (I haven't run this by anyone yet, but you can never have too many Battle Droids, right? It's a cool model and they have tons of them in the film. The only problem with the Battle Droids is that apparently the bands will snap in the heat conditions produced by moving vans...).

I keep hearing things about Adventurers/Indiana Jones, but I have no idea what's really going on there.

The Brickfilms plans are off - unless we find out that we have more electrical outlets than we expected (in which case, I may be bringing a laptop to show videos on - somebody else will have to provide the DVD / online resource to me though). I might also change my lamp and Aquazone plans depending on power too. I guess I should plan on bringing extension cords just in case (I'm not sure how many I'll find, though).

NCLUG Christmas Party photos

I have posted a Brickshelf Gallery of NCLUG Christmas party photos. I believe that these photos are all self-explanatory (especially since I intend to explain the lamp in a later entry). There was a draft, there were models (sorry my photos aren't clearer - you can't see just how great the cars and train cars were), there were people, and I even uploaded a few shots of Carin's great Christmas lights (there are more of those, but somewhere along the way I realized that I'm not supposed to upload non-LEGO photos to Brickshelf. Oops!)

NCLUG Tree Photos from Dec 31st, 2007

With my schedule being what it's been lately, I didn't have a chance to do any ornaments for the NCLUG tree at Tinsel Town (in Cary, North Carolina, at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre). I didn't even manage to make it there to see it until the 31st - and when I did finally get there, my SD card promptly decided that it was full.

Worse than that, though, is what I saw when I got there. I didn't see the train anywhere, for one thing. The other thing is that there were quite a few loose parts on the ground. I did what I could to make sure that none of the small parts that were loose would fall through the deck, but I was probably too late to save everything. I took a few photos of the carnage before I started moving loose parts onto the tree skirt.

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Photos above from left to right: Image 1036 shows the whole tree from a feet away, no flash. Images 1037 and 1038 show a few ornaments (also with no flash). Image 1040 shows a bit of carnage from whoever got to the tree while it was on display (and marks when I started using a flash).
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Photos above from left to right: Images 1041 and 1042 show more damage and parts strewn about. I made sure that all the small pieces had been safely moved onto the tree skirt before I left. You might need to expand the thumbnail to see what's going on. Image 1043 shows a few ornaments with flash. Image 1049 shows the tree from a few feet away with flash (I believe this is also from a different angle than the other full tree shot).

I have a few other photos of various Tinsel Town trees, but as I said, my SD card ran out of space before long. Also, I haven't started uploading to FlickR yet, and Brickshelf limits me to just LEGO photos (not that there's anything wrong with that...)

EDIT: Apparently I need to mess with my page layout a bit to make things show up predictably. Sorry about that...

Just rumours

I want to make it clear that I am still in fact very much alive. There were rumours that I had died in a blogging accident, but they are just rumours. Rumours likely caused by that avalanche I was trapped in while preparing to blog yesterday. To clarify, I was merely injured in a blogging accident. I'm not particularly interested in taking pictures of the effected limbs, but I'll be fine. Really.

I hope to have some more updates up for you over this weekend as well. I actually have new pictures, new models, and new ideas ready to discuss.