Dan's Projects

Need a New Place

2012-01-22T19:13:00.000-08:00

It's gotten pretty clear that this arrangement on Blogger isn't working out. Among the issues I'm looking at is getting away from Google - anybody have suggestions on where my projects can go in the future? I'm aware of a few places for certain types of content (MOCpages for LEGO, RobotBox for robotics, etc), but I'd like some sort of general portfolio site as well. I've clearly failed to find the right amount of more traditional blogging to include alongside that sort of content, but I'd like a platform that encourages something of that as well.

Any suggestions?

Maker Faire NC recap

2010-05-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

The first annual Maker Faire NC was April 25th, 2010, and it was quite a success, with over 2000 people coming to see more than 50 of us showcasing various things we've made.

I ran a display called LEGO DIY, which featured original creations from myself, BrickJournal editor Joe Meno, and Brickapolis. This was my first time running a display by myself and using my own models to anchor a display (generally I'm more active in group layouts instead). You can find information on all of the creations (and the modified set) I did on the NCLUG post I wrote for the event.

I believe that all the photos and videos you could possibly want (and plenty extra to spare) can be found in the official Maker Faire:NC 2010 flickr pool. I'm gratuitously over-represented in there, but for the purposes of this blog I guess that counts as less of a bug and more of a feature. I also have three photosets of my own (I only added a handful of photos to the group pool): Maker Faire NC setup, Maker Faire NC 2010, and Scrap Exchange. The Scrap Exchange hosted the exhibitor's party on Saturday night, which was also a great opportunity for me to see all the exciting things they do there. I picked up a variety of interesting things from their barrels that you can fill bags from - some of which I was actually able to use with my LEGO pneumatics to make a quick repair during the show.

The event was well-organized, especially considering that this was the first time out. It was a great show - my only regret is not getting to see more of the other displays. I'm not sure how long they'll keep the list of exhibitors from 2010 online, but there were quite a few displays that I'm interested in looking into further. Isn't that the point? That we all want to try out some of each other's hobbies afterwards?

Word when I left that night was that they'd start looking for another location in Durham for Maker Faire NC 2011 within the month. Since I will probably be involved again in some way or another (I might do a similar display again, might get a proper NCLUG group display going, or might opt to go the musical performance route with my Mindstorms band instead), I will keep you posted.

This Exists

2010-05-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

This (an all silver Rubik's cube where the boxes are all different dimensions) exists. I need one, if only to make my little corner of the world a happier place.

That is all.

What I Was Doing Mother's Day Weekend

2010-05-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

For a glimpse of how BrickMagic went on Mother's Day weekend, check out the BrickMagic flickr pool (all of my ~500 photos have been added here).

I'm also one of the 11 builders featured by name in this wrap-up at motherboard.tv.

I don't intend to do a full recap - since this was the first year this event was put on, the negative stuff will be sent to Joe sooner or later as feedback and chalked up as lessons learned. Many of the highlights aren't things we can share much of (set designers showing us prototypes, private info on the idea house, etc). I'm told that some video was taken for the BrickJournal website, but I have no what (if anything) will surface. Time will tell. I need to move on to the next thing now.

Neglecting this for a few days...

2010-05-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

Just a head's up as to what's going on - I know I need to revisit a few topics from the past few weeks, but nothing additional will be done here until well after BrickMagic. Sorry for the inconvenience, but there are only so many hours in the day and I cannot prioritize this now.

From the Maker of the Barrel Monster

2010-04-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Recap posts of the past few days are coming, but first, here's an exciting piece of art I accidentally saw on Saturday. This "Street Knight" was built by Joe Carnevale of Barrel Monster fame. Apparently it was installed Saturday morning as an Earth Day festivity (you have to love the recycled art tone of it). In any case, it's spectacular and you can appreciate it even with a quick drive by (it's on a street corner in the Cameron Village mall, and I was able to admire it for a minute while I was sitting at the red light on my way to Maker Faire NC from the NCLUG meeting).

Here are a few links to news coverage (with any luck at least one of them will keep the page live for a while):
WRAL
News & Observer
Raleigh Telegram
Green Diary

This is apparently not a permanent exhibit, that last link indicates plans to sell it to a "local" (I'm assuming Raleigh-area) gallery in the next few weeks if a permanent location at Cameron Village cannot be found.

Maker Faire NC

2010-04-25T04:29:00.000-07:00

Maker Faire NC is TODAY from 9 AM to 9 PM, in Durham, North Carolina. Additional details on my display at http://www.nclug.us/index.php/2010/04/maker-faire-nc-this-weekend/

Display set-up photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157623802813275/

Minifig-scale Desk

2010-04-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Here's another small project I built fairly recently: a minifig-scale LEGO desk. Most of the parts for this were taken from a copy of the Crystal Skull temple Indiana Jones kit. The photos didn't come out well (I rushed photos of quite a few things so I'd have more links ready for Maker Faire NC), but the desk itself is a design I'm happy with. Note that the dark tan tiles are set back a tile's thickness from the frame of the desk. I'm also happy with the blotter and the drawer pulls. A great use of that small amount of dark brown and dark tan you can't build much with!

Pretty much everything done in this desk has been done elsewhere - the techniques aren't particularly complex, but they work well.

Modifying LEGO Set 8880

2010-04-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

LEGO set 8880, the Technic Supercar, is one of the greatest LEGO sets of all time (you can argue otherwise, but you would be wrong). When I finally bought mine on eBay (you can buy used copies in decent shape there for roughly the original retail price), mine had a few parts that were incorrect. Since an incomplete set can't really hold up as a collectible, I went ahead and started modding mine. The obvious things to change were places where other parts are more appropriate, but didn't exist back in 1994. So I focused on a few changes, based on newer parts (and preserving the look and feel of the set as much as possible):

1. Allow the suspension to use more of the large springs' shafts.
2. Secure the steering to prevent half-bushings from falling off (a minor issue normally, exaggerated by change #1).
3. Expand the wheel wells so that the wheels never get stuck (this worked in the original it but change #1 broke it).
4. Add a Power Functions motor (motorizing this kit is generally considered impossible).

The suspension and steering came out well. The motor only works in second gear, and even then I had to keep the trunk open for it and sturdy up an axle (the chain for the engine is the weak link). Change #3 does make the front of the car visibly less smooth, but functionally is fine. Long story short: I need to design my own supercar from scratch one of these days.

More details on flickr, along with a display idea (put the car "up on blocks" and use a mirror underneath to make more of the internals visible).

9V Thomas the Tank Engine

2010-04-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

My 9V Thomas the Tank Engine model has gone unblogged for no apparent reason. The photos sort of speak for themselves in this case, but here's a blog post for it. The photos are on flickr (with an outdated tongue-in-cheek description), and yes, this model will be at Maker Faire NC this weekend.

Test Post

2010-04-17T17:26:00.001-07:00

Testing out some layout changes...

Looks like the new layout is loading reasonably well in IE 8, Firefox 3.6.3, and Chrome (in spite of a typo I had earlier that broke it in Firefox). Time to stop messing with it.

I'm planning on dumping some additional content on here this week so that I'll be able to direct people here to see more about various models I'm bringing to Maker Faire NC.

Link Dump / Robotics Inspiration

2010-04-13T20:49:00.001-07:00

I recently attended most of a (telecast) lecture by Andrew Ng. The lecture was primarily about various algorithms used to control STAIR. STAIR uses ROS with various software stacks and low-level programs that are piped, linux style. There were some pretty spectacular things here to look into further, and I've barely started going through the information in these links. I was impressed by the ability to identify and manipulate unseen objects the most. Speaking of which, it looks like they have a downloadable STAIR Vision Library that works with OpenCV, which I've also been meaning to try out (I suspect that once I'm past my current run of events, I will focus on building a robot with some sort of computer vision).

There's a very good chance that I will be building a simple robot to monitor the "lab" at work. Since we're not moving the office to a new location before the summer, we've started renting out a second office in the same building for our lab. The lab gets very hot - we're running large amounts of computers and networking gear in there. Having it in a second office means that it can use a separate air conditioning system instead of overworking the AC system that we need to keep people like myself from overheating (as it is, we have fans set up outside of cubicles in a few places). When I heard that we had a need for something that could remotely tell us the temperature over the internet, the part of my brain that remembers "crazy things people have used Arduino and Twitter for" leaped into action.

First, I found out that homebrew RCX temperature sensors are easy enough for someone with my level of electronics skill to build. Then I realized I could get away with tethering a simple RCX-based 'bot to a random Linux PC (need to check on serial ports yet, but I don't expect much of an issue there), and set to figuring out if I needed additional drivers to run an old serial port IR tower on Linux. It turns out that running the LEGO hardware on Linux is easy, complete child's play, and that there's even a perl module for it. If that's too easy, there's also a command-line interface for NQC that I had completely forgotten about. The remaining issue now is just buying the resistors necessary to build the homebrew sensor (the one described here can't be found easily online, but I will try a RadioShack tomorrow)- the rest of this can be done at work. Of course, once you have an RCX on the loose already, it's not hard to imagine us finding ways to expand on the idea...

On Data Lock

2010-04-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

Since I've had a few nitpicks over my description of Facebook as a closed service, let's talk a bit about open data. This is hugely important in the social media realm and in politics, and I'm passionate about it in both fields. Fortunately, enough other people are at least as passionate about this as I am and have already put in the time to put some clear information on the matter "out there" on "teh intarwebs".

While I would have preferred a more complete checklist of "social media" services, the article Wired posted a few months back entitled What Do We Want? Our Data. When Do We Want It? Now! does a pretty good job of summing up one of the biggest issues with social media sites - some of them let you take your data off the site, while others try to trap you in. The issue is actually a bit more complex in some cases - Flickr's policy, for example, is that only Pro users can use the bulk export tool to download all of their photos at once. For an initial overview, though, Wired's got the bases covered.

The world of open data in government has hit similar snags. Although this was one of the big things in Obama's favor last election (and the other side expressed interest in the topic as well), the current administration is still having trouble getting this right. Sunlight Labs has been tracking the progress on this front, criticizing fairly but lightly in the way that a group lobbying for openness must (Although a volunteer effort and something of a watchdog group, they are still essentially lobbying at some level). One of the biggest issues has been Adobe's lobbying efforts holding sway with many government offices even though Adobe formats aren't truly open. In most cases, a PDF file is more like a picture of a document instead of an actual useful document.

There are, of course, many other issues related to all of these - for government data, we want to be able to write programs that can parse and re-use the data, and with social network data, the ideal would be to make it possible to share between networks and directly download (and/or remove) all data and directly upload large amounts of data on any given site. I have a laundry list of issues with Facebook (expect me to post that here sooner or later - I actually logged on to that site once last week and saw it's as bad as it was two years ago when I previously logged on. Since I do not put any content on there, I will not be adding it to my "Stalk Me!" list on the sidebar here), but data lock seems to be one of the bigger problems and one of the few that most of us can agree on.

(In case you couldn't tell, this is one of a number of older "drafts" I've recently decided to clean up and post. Data lock is an important topic and while this is clearly just a start, I can always revisit this - so here's this much to get things started.)

Pneumatic Walker From Only LEGO Set 8049

2010-04-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

When I realized I'd have only one week between LEGOPalooza and Robot Rumble in which to build a new robot, I decided I needed to pick a small project to do. Having already sized up the 2010 LEGO TECHNIC Log Loader (8049) kit to determine that it included the necessary pneumatic elements to build a simple pneumatic walker, I decided to try building a walker with that set. So with one week on the clock, the challenge was set: build a functional walker, controlled by a pneumatic circuit, without cutting tubes, and without using any parts that aren't found in that set's box (and at the same time, leaving most of the set's parts still available).

The version brought to Robot Rumble was a bit rough, strained a few parts, and squeaked when certain parts rubbed together (this came in at 100 pieces). A revision was needed (this came in at 109 pieces). I made instructions for both versions (1, 2). I only recommend the second version, which features my later performance improvements. You might be able to make another walker that runs even more smoothly using the parts from this kit, but as far as I am concerned this challenge has been met.

The easiest way to browse the photos that make up the instructions is via flickr. You can come back and read the description of what's going on in this model after you've tried building it (it's alright, it'll still be here).

Pneumatic logic works in much the same way that electronic logic works, but instead of electricity controlling the flow of electricity, pressurized air is controlling the flow of pressurized air. You can actually use LEGO pneumatics parts to build a variety of logic gates. There's nothing stopping you (in theory) from building an entire computer out of nothing but pneumatic logic gates. Personally, I like the pneumatic circuit I used in this model as an extremely primitive example of a two-bit pneumatic counter with no carry-over digit (yes, I'm just that nerdy). When you're limited to this few valves and pistons, though, it's hard to do much in the way of complex circuitry - so you don't really need to understand logic gates to follow what's happening here. Eric Brok documented this sort of pneumatic control system some years ago, and did it in a clear, less nerdy way, complete with color-coded schematics. In my model, the white parts show you where a piston is connected to a valve, and the pistons control each other's valves like in Eric's first illustration.

Pneumatic walkers were once considered something of a fad and a classic project among LEGO Technic fans. Pneuma-Ped is a good example of a somewhat more complex model, but some of the ones on LUGNET's list are much more ambitious (also, expensive and parts-intensive - the difficulty of getting pneumatic elements at a good price is part of why I set this challenge to myself to use only parts from one kit that's currently widely available).

I highly recommend buying this set from one of these two links (I receive a small commission for each kit bought through these links):
Buy LEGO TECHNIC Log Loader (8049) via LEGO Shop-at-Home
Buy LEGO TECHNIC Log Loader (8049) via Amazon

If you want to try something similar without this kit, or buy additional parts to build a more complex machine like this one, you can order parts online. Some LEGO pneumatic elements are currently available (in some cases, exclusively available) through LEGO Education. All manner of LEGO elements can be bought individually through various sellers on BrickLink.

Instructions style and the "take photos as you take it apart" technique blatantly ripped off of http://nxtprograms.com/

My design is fairly similar to one I've blogged previously for LMOTD. Since that builder was working towards a different challenge (building the smallest possible walker), the end result is actually quite different. The similarities come from using it as inspiration - I'm having a hard time recalling if I was inspired by any other two valve / two piston walkers, but I liked the hexapod mechanism here and can't seem to locate other simple walker links offhand (if you have links I should share or cite here, feel free to drop me a line at 316danny@gmail.com)

EDIT 4/28/2010: There's now a video of this in action (thanks to Jesse Bikman, who took this video at Maker Faire NC and has added it to that show's flickr pool).

Interesting Links

2010-04-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

Time for a new link dump. Are you enjoying these?

The Internet Archive recently announced a new project called OpenLibrary. It's essentially Wikipedia for books. That's still needed, since LibraryThing lacks a good way of summarizing things for people interested in discovering books in a non-social manner (not that there's anything wrong with using social networking to discover interesting books - if you ask me, LibraryThing is an example of social networking done right because it actually uses the social model to purposefully manage meaningful data).

For April Fool's Day, XKCD decided to change the site's format to a command line interface. In addition to commands that were functional (and a few that just appeared to be), there were also jokes and games. That interface is still available for those of you who missed the joke or want to relive it (more than I can say for YouTube's TEXTp feature by the time I blogged about it at LMOTD). Most of the source code (some last minute changes were made during the day) is available on github. Naturally, the next step would be to build a version of this that can be used with YubNub - then you will have a true command line for the web (I'm not up for coding this myself due to lack of time, but I'm definitely excited about the idea).

YubNub is worth trying out anyway, if you're not familiar with it. The description of it on it's website probably isn't appealing to most, but trust me, it's worth it (I intend to revisit the topic in a future post and describe why I think all LEGO fans should use it - type "ls lego" into it if you want a taste of that).

Recent Photos

2010-04-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

I've recently uploaded several bunches of photos on flickr. I decided to give up and go pro. That gives me two years before I need to come up with a better photo solution (although notes and the social aspects of flickr do appeal to me, the thought of needing to pay Flickr/Yahoo! ~$2 a month until the end of time does not).

I'm particularly interested in feedback on the instructions for the pneumatic walker. A finalized version of those will appear soon, and I'd like to see that version be more user friendly in addition to the model itself being more functional.

Here are the new photo sets:

Robot Rumble 2010
Primitive Walker Concept
Walker I instructions (this is the one I want feedback on)
LEGO Technique Studies (I'll probably add to this one occasionally without posting about it here)
Joe Meno's February/March 2010 WITC
BrickFair 2009 (previously posted to Brickapolis' flickr account - but I wanted them on mine now that I've gone pro as well)
LEGOPalooza 2010
Over the Rhine March 13th 2010 (proof I need concert photo tips)

NXT Holonomic Drive Idea

2010-03-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Holonomic drive systems are difficult to build with LEGO. I've never successfully built one myself, but I started to try once and I see it as something that will be increasingly easy to do in the future. You can already see more three-sided elements showing up in current sets that will make this an easier thing to do. I'm hoping that someone with more time to work on this will take it up and be able to use my attempt as a starting point. If you do, let me know and I'll let my readers know.

From my one given-up-on attempt, here's my contribution to this:
The idea: use 3 of these modules (of which I only ever built this one - I doubt that this exact design would actually be able to hold the weight of a frame and a battery box to power it), and only power the ones you need to go a particular direction. The ball will function as an unpowered caster until a motor is turned on in either direction. When the motor turns on, the geared bar swings down and the wheel in the middle will power the ball. This is an extreme take on the poor man's directional transmission concept, and I suspect that it won't work so well once there's more weight on it - but it's an idea. Omni wheels would probably be harder to build but function more smoothly. Personally, I really like the idea of a wheel that can be powered selectively, but I think it would need to be much sturdier and more firmly powered than this.

More photos are on flickr (I finally went pro and started cleaning up my account, which is how I remembered I never did blog these photos) at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157623684905594/

(Recently Used) Programming Resources

2010-03-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

I've been stashing bunches of URLs at work that I've found useful. Some of these I might want to refer to in a non-work context, but they're all based on stuff I've been working with lately (perl, Git, Bash, Cacti, Linux, etc). Nothing too earth-shattering, but very handy. Here's the current list:

Git
Git - SVN Crash Course
Git Cheat Sheet

Perl
Pointers in Perl
Perl Regular Expressions
Perl Tutorial - Arrays
Perl File IO
Yubnub commands: perldoc, cpandoc

Vi (Don't use this often but frequently find myself in there and needto escape):
Vi Cheat Sheet
Simple Guide To VI / VIM

Linux:
The .ssh/known_hosts file
Linux / Unix grep command help
Regular Expressions in grep
Show all running processes

Bash:
How to Write a Shell Script
Bash Self-Extracting Script

Cacti:
Cacti Manual - CLI Scripts
Cacti Documentation

Robot Rumble 2010 Recap

2010-03-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

A brief recap from yesterday's show:

Robot Rumble 2010 was a great show. As a LEGO-only person (this time out, anyway) with Triangle Amateur Robotics, I ended up being a bit of a point person for various AFOL-related topics. Although there was a group from IBM calling itself "Lego and Dancing Robotics" (long story short: they build generic 'bots from the NXT Education edition booklet and make them "dance" around. It's an outgrowth of an older educational program that they started a few years back), and there were several FIRST LEGO League teams on hand, I ended up fielding questions about LEGO, NCLUG, LEGOPalooza, and BrickMagic, alongside the more expected TAR, Maker Faire NC, TechShop, pneumatics, programming, and robotics questions. Some of it was influenced by the fact that we were so close to the front of the museum, but overall I feel like it was a good idea to have a dedicated LEGO robotics adult there (no offense - but there's a decided shortage of active LEGO hobbyists in this area who are into the robotics side of things).

The other groups displaying (listed at the official event link above) were alright, although a few were a little anticlimactic - Carolina Combat Robotics spent the day playing robot hockey instead of battle bots (maybe I got the wrong impression from their name...) and iRobot brought out almost the exact same display that they had at the NCSU career fair last year. The IBM group was helpful, since I could refer requests to see my NXT kit in action to their group. One of the IBMers also clued me in to OpenCV, which looks like something I can use with all those Logitech cameras I've been stashing around the house (back when LEGO had a branded version of the Logitech QuickCam and Logitech was still supporting the programming API for the QuickCam, I got excited about the idea of building a serious robot with them and started buying up every one I could find cheap).

My pneumatic walker spent most of the day between a completely homebrew line-follower and a Zhu-zhu pet, which is actually a pretty good metaphor for the range of robots you'll see at TAR. It was fun blowing people's minds with an entirely pneumatic robot - although pneumatic logic is old-hat by the standards of the LEGO fan community (in the late '90's/early '00's, it was something of a classic project and a fad), most people still have never seen a pneumatic walker or heard of a pneumatic logic control circuit. The idea of a system that doesn't need any software is apparently pretty far out of the mainstream of robotics now. Parents and kids, on the other hand, were pretty thrilled with this - here's something you can build and design yourself, with a little thought and less than $60 down into the hobby. A simple $60 walking robot (with almost 500 spare parts afterward) is understandably more appealing than spending ~$250 for an NXT kit and then not knowing quite how to use it and program it (which, of course, is why I intend to post instructions and encourage today's kids and parents to take this project up). Another fun thing I noticed was that kids really loved the pneumatic hand pump. Sure, it was annoying spending ~4 hours of my Saturday pumping up air pressure for my walker, but it was kind of fun to hand it over when kids asked "Can I try?", and then watch as every kid near the booth had a chance to "control" it for a minute or two. During the few times when the walker was unattended, kids were able to figure out how to use the pump and run the 'bot on their own. Next few LEGO shows, I'll have to make a point to have an interactive element controlled by a pump.

I will, as promised, deliver instructions for my pneumatic walker shortly. I've been making some revisions to allow it to run more smoothly, and I'm not entirely sure at the moment when/where I'll be putting photos and instructions online. I may test further - I had taken all the photos I needed to post instructions in the style of nxtprograms.com before, but then I realized I needed to work on reliability so that this would be ready for hours of use. I'll probably put off doing another round of instruction photos until I've worked out those kinks.

Expect event photos to show up online around the same time.

Behind the Scenes Work

2010-03-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

Not too much is happening here - last week's show was a bit of a bust for me but went surprisingly well overall in spite of some drama within NCLUG (in spite of months of work, the project I wanted to display at this event was not yet presentable). While I'm not used to having a supporting role at a LEGO show, things seem to have gone off well. The extra time came in handy - I ended up having some "work work" to do over the weekend, and I managed to squeeze in a concert on Saturday night. I've barely started attempting to clean up or post photos yet. I am now prepping for Robot Rumble this upcoming weekend. The next few weeks will involve more tidying up (my build area is currently absolutely unsafe) and preparing various things I'm planning on bringing to Maker Faire.

It looks like I'll be on my own for Maker Faire this year. Speaking of NCLUG drama...everyone wants to do more shows, but when we have one that's ours for the taking, nobody else wants to participate. There are some issues involved with coordinating a large group for a one day show, but I'd definitely say it's worth it to engage the larger hobbyist/DIY community and not just the families that tend to go to LEGO-only shows. Their loss - I'll be there and we'll have a great time. My only concern is that I might not have enough time to see the various other exhibits at the Faire.

Speaking of not having time, I'm stalling my wheels on pretty much all of my projects lately. In the interest of making it look like there is some progress on the fix-the-blog front, I've played around with the new Blogger Template Designer for a few minutes today (personally, I'm not happy with this tool but it's a slight improvement on their previous WYSIWYG GUI). I'm still not happy with the layout here, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I'm still interested in wasting much less space on the sides of the screen - and I'll probably switch to a 3-column set-up with a proper profile and contact info at some point - but this will have to do until I have more time available.

With any luck, my little pneumatic walker built entirely from the current LEGO Pneumatic Log Loader set will be working well enough for me to work out instructions soon - the current goal is to have that project finished and on display by Saturday. It seems like I can get simple walking mechanisms working, and I can get the binary adder control circuit working (don't worry, I'll explain this when I post instructions), but I can't seem to get everything working well together. As of this writing, the legs slip to the side more than they actually walk forward.

Rubik's Cubes

2010-03-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

If you know me, you probably know I'm a big fan of Rubik's cubes. That's my excuse for featuring two awesome cube solving robots on LMOTD just two weeks apart.

While finding links to round out those posts, I found out that my collection is incomplete. First of all, this section of Wikipedia actually exists - which is exciting in more ways than I should think about. I apparently need to get my hands on 5x5x5, 6x6x6, and 7x7x7 cubes ASAP!

More Upcoming Events

2010-02-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

While I'm still hesitant to share most of the details, I should let my readers know that I'm planning on being at a few other events that are coming up. Here's the full list of possible "tour dates" coming up in 2010 (list was updated March first to reflect events that have been confirmed):

March 13th-14th, Chapel Hill, NC: LEGOPalooza 2010 (look for my ~~GBC factory~~sets and other buildings in the town display)
March 20th, Durham, NC: Robot Rumble (I'll be the guy with the LEGO)
April 25th, Durham, NC: Maker Faire NC (previously blogged as well - my exhibit has been approved. I'm told that similar exhibits will be lumped together - look for me near the LEGO)

May 6th-9th, Raleigh, NC: BrickMagic
August 5th-8th, Chantilly, VA (just outside Washington DC): BrickFair

The LEGO conventions included in the above list have public hours that do not run for the full length of the event. Make sure that the dates you plan to attend are really available - full info is at the links above. What I bring to show will vary fairly widely between events. I will post more information about these as we get closer to the events - I'm hoping to get to the point where I can point people to this blog when they ask for more details about how things were done.

There was also some chatter about a possible LEGO-related children's class to be offered at a local library here in NC, but at the moment that idea is on the back burner.

Early Robots

2010-02-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

It feels wrong to share something from Cracked on here as inspiration, but this article includes several interesting items that are worth reading about (and warrant further research on my part). I find it disturbing how often I actually learn something while reading satirical "time waster" sites.

Upcoming Event: Maker Faire NC

2010-02-18T09:33:00.000-08:00

EDIT 4/23: While the motorized compressor and some of the car bits I was planning on bringing aren't currently ready to go, we do have enough other exciting things to fill the space packed already. I'm compiling a list of the projects that are packed for Maker Faire NC at the Maker Faire NC post on the NCLUG blog. Please refer to that list if you are looking for more information about anything included at the LEGO DIY display.

The date and location for Maker Faire NC have finally been announced. Generally speaking, I'm not posting too much in advance about events (I'm trying to keep some things as surprises, and I don't want to hype something up if I'm not sure I can finish it in time). However, the application page asks for information about projects we will be bringing, and I thought airing a list publicly would be a good way of summing things up. I have a few creations I've shown off before that I thought would appeal to the more DIY crowd of a Maker Faire. Regrettably, I haven't documented most of them on here yet, but I intend to share more about each of these online eventually and those additional details will appear on this blog.

I intend to bring the following projects (all LEGO-based) to this event:
Lamp - my lamp made primarily out of LEGO, with a socket cord inside. In the spirit of the event, I'll have an extra socket cord out so people can more easily see how to do it themselves.

Magnets - I have a set of LEGO magnets I have built using old DUPLO letter tiles on LEGO magnets. They're a big hit at the office.

Coasters - Yes, you can build coasters out of LEGO.

CD Holder - I have built a few CD holders out of LEGO. I will be showing off the one that is 10" wide.

Robot Band - I have been working on building a LEGO Mindstorms based robotic band. Although I am planning on having enough material programmed to do a show by the end of the year, at this event I intend to demonstrate some of the smaller mechanisms I use for making robots play instruments.

Model car parts - I will bring my modified 8880 kit and some additional model car bits (including manual and automatic transmissions and a gas/electric engine model).

Pneumatics - My electric pneumatic compressor is ready to go. I will bring something (either logic gates / walkers or an arm) to show off with it.

I might try to squeeze in some other goodies. I'm mainly interested in showing off some of the more DIY side of the LEGO hobby. I'm also hoping to arrange an NCLUG group layout of more traditional LEGO creations (assuming there are enough people in that group who can make it and that we can agree on a theme - as of this writing no one else from that group has expressed interest in Maker Faire NC, but I'm trying to change that).

Interesting Links

2010-02-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to get out of the habit of keeping links open for long periods of time and not really reading them. So I'm posting these here for my own later reference and for the benefit of anyone else who is intrigued by them as I am.

Isogawa Studio Model Gallery - original LEGO creations by the author of Tora no Maki. Tora no Maki is the fantastic book on mechanisms that everyone who thinks they don't know enough techniques to build with LEGO Technic and Mindstorms parts has been looking for. It's largely pictorial, so the language barrier is a non-issue.

Crowkillers is the website of the famed LEGO builder who designs original super cars that are at, near, or in some cases even beyond the level of quality of set 8880. I had previously only known about his Brickshelf page and sparsely-updated MOCpages account. Now that I've put in the time to provide more background for you, I've also discovered that he's on YouTube. Those of you who aren't supercar geeks can see an overview of his work at TechnicBricks. I fully intend to soak a few more months into the field of building fantastic functional cars at a scale of roughly 1:20. I'm modding my 8880 ever so slowly, trying to improve the suspension and add extra features...

I've been meaning to take some photos and post about the magnet set I made for my office recently. It's been surprisingly popular, and we wish we had a magnetic whiteboard to put them on. I found this how-to on making magnetic whiteboards to be a bit much to try at the office, but it's definitely an exciting idea. If I ever have kids, I'll definitely have to try to get that going in their play room. For now, I'm just sticking my magnets to the frame of the cubicle wall.

This last one I'm a bit less sure about, and frankly the "Featured sites" category looks a bit questionable to me. Supposedly Video Download Helper can work some magic with Flash-based streaming media to make files downloadable. I have no idea if this checks out, but if you try it let me know how it works for you.

Google AI Challenge

2010-02-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

I know that I shouldn't have started this with all of the other things I have on my plate, but it's fun and not too difficult to get started on. The Google AI Challenge contest going on now (February 4th 2010 - February 26, 2010) is a simple contest to create the best AI that plays Tron. It's a fun, lightweight little bit of ASCII-art action that you can watch right at the command line. No word on prizes for winners yet. Full details at the link above.

You could probably beat the relatively simple approach I've used so far (after I finished my first two real entries, I realized both had been suggested on the strategy page). It's pretty exciting watching scores jump - each entry is graded and ranked against the other entries (the server hosting the challenge is set up to automatically play the bots against each other).

Another Option For Used Floppy Disks

2010-02-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

What you're looking at in this picture is a painting by British artist Nick Gentry. He's a pretty skilled painter, and he shares my interest in reusing potentially discarded items instead of letting them rot in landfills. Nick Gentry paints directly on floppy disks (some bought, some donated) and creates surprisingly evocative work, frequently with parts of the disks forming or distorting parts of the image. More pictures of his work can be found on his website (where you can also buy some of his pieces).

It looks like we do have to pay shipping (to the UK at that) if we pass along our extra floppy disks by donating them to Nick Gentry, but this is definitely an exciting alternative use for old floppies that I had not thought of before.

XKCD Comic (Stand Back - I Know Regular Expressions!)

2010-02-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why I didn't blog this earlier - it' s a bit overdue. Several months back, my boss started encouraging me to change up my office LEGO display a bit. I had brought in a set (a dump truck) and filled the back of it with a series of tubes (an obvious Ted Stevens joke that works that much better at a network company). Around Thanksgiving, I built a LEGO version of a favorite XKCD comic strip that mentioned some programming skills I'd learned on the job and enjoy using at work. The photos have been up on flickr for a bit, but I changed out my display again around Christmas break (yep, I'm still using college lingo for vacation days) and I've since brought in even more LEGO (a set of magnets that spell out a slogan). My coworkers are fairly split between people who like LEGO and people who aren't familiar with it, but nobody else is as crazy as I am. I mean, seriously, how devoted do you have to be to have this sort of working collection of sand blue bricks, Technic sets, and DUPLO parts on hand?

So anyway, here are the photos that I apparently uploaded in December but have neglected to post until now. For those of you unfamiliar with XKCD, the comic I used is Regular Expressions.

First, some link action (flickr tags are fun!) - you might find it easier to just browse these photos on flickr :
All photos from that office display
Just the XKCD photos

Or you can click on these photos below for more info (I wrote a description for each photo when I uploaded them):

It's a series of tubes!

The truck, inside the DUPLO "table" I built to let me show the truck and the comic at the same time (the Perl books in the background here and in the other photos just happens to enhance the theme - they're really in the office all the time):

Stand Back - I Know Regular Expressions!

The sufficiently panicked minifigures:

Here's how the whip and Indiana Jones' position works:

Here's a close-up of some LEGO trickery - levers positioned just right to make a sign stay in place. Oh, and I used Technic pins with studs on the end to flip the studs upside-down under the letter bricks.

Look! Coincidences!

Here's an overview shot of the entire thing (Truck, table, comic, and some office miscellanea):

This final shot of the comic seems like a good one to zoom in on to look at the details (OK, so it's a fairly simple scene, but you can have another look):

Sadly, my perl/regex related day-saving does not involve a whip...yet.

For more on this topic, check out my LMOTD round-up of XKCD comic strips built in LEGO to minifig scale.

Gas Update

2010-02-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

EDIT: Whew - I didn't realize this would be posting near the top. Leaving it here for now anyway even though it's already old and I thought it'd be buried in other posts. I probably won't post on the topic again until I've gotten a spreadsheet going.

It's been waaay too long since I've done this, but that's true of far too many things (including many things that ought to be blogged here - I believe my readers are familiar with the big transitions in my life that are slowing my to-do lists). My recent situation has changed the gas matter a bit - as one would expect, I'm now paying these expenses myself out-of-pocket (thus increasing my incentive to worry about mileage). Further, I'm now driving nearly twice as far for work as I did for school - requiring a fill-up roughly once a week instead of roughly once every two weeks. As crazy as it may sound, my employer is open to moving the job closer to where I live - apparently the tax situation for operating an office with x amount of employees in various towns (together with the rent for where the office is) has encouraged the company to pursue options for moving us in the near future (which has obvious implications: possible changes in the distance between work and where I live, and changes in convenience to going various places after work (including that LEGO store I've been visiting fairly regularly)).

This set of data is a bit scatterbrained, a reflection of how difficult it's been to stay organized these past few months.

March 31st: (invalid data, had not reset odometer - when the previous receipt is found, I should subtract it) 536.8 mi ($1.979)
May 19th: 495.4 ($2.249)
June 12th: 364.4 ($2.559)
June 26th: 235.1 ($2.589)
July 8th: 312.9 ($2.519)
July 17th: 318.7 ($2.429)
July 31st: 347.5 mi, 15.462 gallons at $2.399 each
August 9th: 219.3 mi, 10.698 gallons at $2.549 each

I'm leaning towards switching to some proper spreadsheet setup in the future to allow me to use the data in more meaningful ways (and also make it easier to read a wider variety of it at once, graph it, etc).

A Clever "Page Not Found" Message

2010-01-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

Saw this this morning and thought it was clever. Definitely a classy way to deal with an issue that drives people away from a site (personally, I went back once I realized it wasn't a more generic 404 message).

Speaking of websites - how long has the sidebar on LMOTD been pushed past the side of the page? It looks pretty awful right now and I'm worried about what caused it. I have, once before, been disappointed to see a Blogger code issue mess with my HTML on the site, but I've never seen them break a layout in this manner before. I'm also a little suspicious of my less code-savvy co-blogger, who had added a few features on the sidebar (some of which I'm removing now for the sake of keeping the site looking clean, others I intend to keep - sidenote, I've now gone back to only allowing LMOTD co-bloggers to have author privileges and not admin privileges. You can't be too careful). I'm hoping to fix the bug tonight. EDIT 7:19 PM EST: Turns out that this bug does not cause anything unusual in Firefox. Users of Chrome, IE8, and Opera aren't seeing it correctly. RSS feed is unaffected.
Nevermind about the apparent LMOTD issue, turns out that it was caused by a large graphic that caused issues on some sizes of monitor. I'm generally pretty good at leaving things open so that they can wrap wherever they will (CSS obsessions and Google's Browser Size need not apply), but a graphic left with dimensions larger than a 15" monitor will always be a graphic larger than a 15" monitor. It's fixed now and I guess I'll have to be more careful next time (that post was one of several recently that was clearly a bit rushed). The surprising thing is that no angry comments or e-mails came in about this one - usually if I do something wrong, I get called on it pretty quickly. I like to joke that that's how I know I'm famous - you know people are reading if there's enough people out there that someone will jump on you within a few hours if you get something wrong.

Well, I Guess We're Here Now

2010-01-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

Following up yesterday's note about SparkFun's free day - the meeting was a non-issue. The SparkFun site was down for pretty much the entire time, and we had some 'net connectivity issues on our end as well (ensuring that even when the website was up, I still had a hard time getting any page to load). I guess I won't be making the jump to Arduino just yet (don't worry - I still love my NXT's and I'll keep using them - I just wanted to try out something new without the risk of being out $100+ if I couldn't get much done with it). A good recap of how free day went can be found at http://www.ubasics.com/sparkfun_freeday

I had a similar experience trying to get a Linux thumbdrive working on my Toshiba recently. Who the hell, in the '00's, thinks it's more appropriate to have a Floppy Disk Drive option on a BIOS than a USB thumbdrive option? Any sane person would assume (as I did) that that would be a good option for trying a new operating system, but apparently Toshiba thought otherwise (but thought the BIOS should account for FDD's, even though there ISN'T a floppy drive on the computer). I'm still putting off buying a new PC, but no one's making that easy for me.

In more exciting news, an 8880 Super Car (more descriptive links and photos can wait for another post) arrived at the house yesterday. I feel a great need to drop everything and build it (I was up until about 2 AM last night getting it started...)

On a more depressing LEGO-related note: the manager of the local LEGO store has apparently decided to start enforcing somewhat arbitrary rules of "family friendly" content on WITC displays. He's begun turning away spectacular models (and no, the one he turned down after it arrived for January was not unkosher in any way) and asking for photographs for pre-approval before anyone brings anything in. Way to turn what used to be a fun privilege into more of an obnoxious chore. Yes, it's the store manager's decision to make, but he clearly made the wrong decision here and I've never seen the company commit such an atrocious affront to the community before (and yes, I remember the grey/bley debacle). I had signed up to do a July display with fireworks in the background, but I'm not entirely sure that I'll follow through anymore - I have enough things I'm more excited about building for myself, and the last thing I want to do is work out a fantastic mosaic using tiny translucent parts only to be turned away for "endorsing explosives", or whatever other whim the manager has that day.

By the way, we were already getting the shaft on the WITC front. Most groups are allowed to use non-LEGO shelves to add height (say, a clear shelf to hold up a spaceship or display planes above a town) - but that's long been declared contraband at this location. I've also been told that minor discounts and payment have even been offered in some places to people contributing window displays. We, on the other hand, put in ridiculous amounts of effort to achieve heights on our models without using any non-LEGO parts, and are then "thanked" for it by these sorts of comments. Is it any wonder that there's trouble getting the fan community here excited about participating in events at the store? Heck, we can't even get our own group displays together 95% of the time. I'm becoming disillusioned with the whole process of group displays (just in time to plan LEGOPalooza next month!).

Enough of that, and the rest of the AFOL-community politics. I'm building myself an 8880, because I'm awesome (although not awesome enough to actually drive a car that nice...).

EDIT: The higher ups and LEGO Brand Retail have since done away with the Window Into The Community displays entirely. Which, given the mixed experiences with it and issues that have arisen in some stores, isn't entirely surprising.

Resolution Updates

2010-01-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

Most of this falls under the category of "housekeeping", but here's what's new:

Blog layout: a "Stalk Me!" section has been added, featuring a few links on places you can, well, stalk me. Current locations include Last.fm (interactive radio and music chart social network), Twitter (overblown RSS-enabled status engine/social network), and flickr (image hosting site that's also - you guessed it - a social network). In case you haven't noticed the trend, I'm a sucker for open platforms that are RSS enabled and I'm not terribly perturbed by the social network fad.
Email catch-up: my main account is down to 50 e-mails, my spamblock account (which is practically a second regular account for me now) is fluctuating around 100 e-mails. My NCSU account was shut down suddenly during the Christmas break, and I never did finish back-up efforts started for it last summer. I wonder if they can still send me alumni e-mails.

Another issue here is the high growth of social network spam. I'm now automatically dumping all variety of friend/contact/etc requests on networks I use in favor of evaluating them next time I'm logged in (the doubling - between in-service "inboxes" and my e-mail inboxes - did nothing more than create more work and problems with synching things up). Facebook remains unresolved, and Facebook requests that I don't intend to follow up on are now a full 20% of my main e-mail account's unresolved mail. I may have to bite the bullet and log in a second time yet, but I still have no intention of using that obnoxious closed service.
Interesting sidenote: Retr0bright. Retr0bright apparently can un-yellow ABS. If you've tried it, let me know your results. I'll just deal with the yellowing in the meantime.
Floppy Disks: My parents got wind of this resolution and took it up as well. They're now leaving me with their old disks (Dad can't be bothered to reuse/recycle them properly himself). I've begun research in the field of what to do with them next. Here are my findings thus far:
- GreenDisk IT recycling can apparently recycle all sorts of things, for a fee. I'm not ruling it out, but I always feel silly paying money to give somebody something that's technically still useful (the lack of need for that size, decrease of drives available, and difficulty searching disks are my motivations for getting out of there). Interesting source for this suggestion: a webpage entitled Recycling More Obscure Materials.
- ACT looks like it may be a charitable place to donate disks. Sadly, my experience with similar places requires me to do research to make sure this is fully legit and non-abusive, but I'm optimistic enough to list it here anyway. If you pursue it, let me know what you find out / how it goes.
- Associated Content has an article on Uses for Old Floppy Disks. It has some interesting ideas, but none particularly inspire me.
- Interested readers of this blog can let me know if they'd like some clean floppy disks. I have no idea what quantities are available, but I'm willing to hand some over in person or (if the quantity is great enough to justify the expense) mail some out.
- "Key"s? I've become surprised recently by the popularity of "USB Keys", which are idiotically small contents for a USB thumbdrive. Sometimes they're nothing more than a graphic, and autorun tool, and a link to a website. Why do I mention this here? I could start using old floppies as business cards, using that same "key" concept. You can get a decent amount of pictures and web pages in 1.44 MB after all - why not give out a small portfolio of low-res .gif images and web pages, with links to get to things like this blog? Traditional contact information also fits easily on the label section of a 3.5" floppy disk, and the extra size makes them less likely to get lost. Yes, I know it's not a printed LEGO minifig with my phone number on it (some people really do use those), but it's something both clever and affordable. It'd be a fun in-joke for the other people maintaining floppy disk drives as well (or really anyone with a working older computer), and an interesting piece of kitsch for people who don't (hey look! A floppy disk business card! Can you believe it?). Of course, if they get thrown away by the people who receive them, then this whole exercise in not wasting anything has been moot.

More news later, perhaps. I'm looking to get more scheduled posts in at LMOTD soon, I haven't located my gift for my sister's birthday tomorrow yet, and I also still need to pick out what I want for the Sparkfun free day tomorrow as well (naturally, I have to be in a meeting at the time that starts - I may end up trying to get someone else to order some arduino goodies for me).

About That Water Damage....

2009-12-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

To follow up on this post from earlier this year (in which I said that dealing with repair people related to our water damage problem was a project in it's own right), here's what's going on with that now.

I have moved back into my regular bedroom. We ended up changing out the carpet, hanging up some new shelves, but leaving other things unresolved (the closet door doesn't shut anymore and we still haven't fixed the doorstop). The kitchen has taken longer than anyone has expected - there are some patches of floor that need to be redone (the whole floor has been done once now, but some spots didn't take the way they should have), most of the cabinet doors still need work, and there were some delays caused by our decision to modernize the kitchen a bit while we had the room torn up (we have a new stove/oven, an additional sink, an additional dishwasher, and a few embarrassingly expensive features my parents thought would add to the house's resale value down the road). The extra expense of handling the kitchen wasn't budgeted for, but we were able to take the hit (and the insurance company seems to be properly paying for their share - replacement costs of furniture/flooring/appliances ruined by the original flooding and the various repairmen's actions).

There were some issues with moving my stuff around that are yet to be resolved. It can be a bit hard to communicate my neurotic sorting habits to people who don't share my hobbies - for example, there were several stacks of CD's arranged in various spots in my room. One stack was all items I had listed for sale on Amazon, another was put on a shelf somewhat decoratively to show off a complete discography of my favorite band (Over the Rhine, thanks for asking), another was a stack of CD's I haven't listened to yet (OK, so I actually had 3 separate stacks like this on various shelves - I've caught myself buying collections in bulk a few times when the price has been dirt cheap), and yet another was a set of bootlegs and mixtapes I had received from friends. I'm sure you can see where this is going - Mom decides to "help" and put them all in the same box, requiring sorting again later. Multiply that scenario times quite a few sorting-intensive hobbies and the size of "stockpile" I keep around, and I'm sure you can imagine how obnoxious this got to be. The initial insanity seems to be over but small surprises continue to pop up, leaving me feeling like I still need to spend most of my weekends tidying up (which, to be fair, is also worthwhile towards the goal of moving out if/when I get final word about if/where the office may be moving).

Besides not documenting a few smaller projects of mine (primarily of the more light-hearted LEGO variety - my boss has asked me to periodically swap out my "ironic" display at work), that about wraps up 2009. Any reader questions out there? I like to think that I've covered it, but I'm open to feedback here. Was there anything you wanted to hear more about?

New Years' Resolutions

2009-12-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

I've decided to make some New Years' Resolutions for 2010. There are some things I want to do fairly soon that are generic wishes or goals, and then there are things I know I can accomplish if I just sit down and really focus on them. Once they are done, they will stay done and be useful in the "lifehack" sense. Most of these are items to get back on-track after letting myself develop some bad habits during college. Only these items - those that can be quickly tackled if I focus on them, and don't require excessive planning or new resources - are being listed here as resolutions. Here's the list (which I will continue making changes to over the next week - I'm hoping to make this fairly comprehensive and then be able to use it as a checklist):

Get the e-mail backlog under control. I suspect that most people reading this are familiar with this phenomenon - once upon a time (probably in 2002 or 2003), I used to promptly reply to all e-mails. Now it's not unusual for things to sit for months or even years. I suspect that if there wasn't an ocean to get lost in, I'd be able to get things moving more quickly when they come in. Part of this will likely be accomplished by condensing mailing lists (I'm told that more than a few contacts of mine have quit mailing lists outright recently, but I'm hoping to avoid that jump). I have several e-mail accounts to tame, and I'm also looking to completely break ties with the NC State webmail system (and back-up the old e-mails).
Get my Projects blog looking respectable. While I don't intend to change older content on here (for the sake of my own sanity, I need to learn to trust my younger self to have not done anything too embarrassing - and to be honest, even the potentially scandalous things I've posted here and elsewhere are nothing I'd mind owning up to, even in cases where the tone is a bit more hysteric than I'd like), I do need to finally get the layout under control. I'd like this to look a bit like a portfolio, and to not use a generic Blogger template. I'm well aware of all the "The cobbler's children have no shoes" problems here, and I want this to be my home on the web. As I continue to loosen my chains to other "social" platforms (and hold out against joining Bebo/MySpace/Friendster/Facebook/any other trendy closed site), I feel a need for this blog to be a bit more functional.
Determine a real photo hosting solution. I may decide that the best approach here is the popular flickr pro approach, but I'm yet to make my final decision. I want to be able to get LEGO photos out faster, upload some photos done just for the sake of learning to take better photos, and even push out decent event coverage (concerts, LEGO conventions, etc).
Determine a semi-permanent music collection solution. I'm not sure what exactly I'd like in terms of a repository for music that I don't need on my laptop regularly, but I'd like to have a clue (OK, this may be a longer-term goal). At a minimum, I need some new database/spreadsheet/cloud whatever solution for keeping track of what I own and what I think of things. I also need to repair some holes in my digital collection caused by various hard drive crashes (doing back-ups on the cheap using my parent's older computers seemed like a good idea at the time...)
Determine a new process for adding music to my collection. When should I rip CD's? How many listens should I give something before deciding to add it to my library? How many new (current to the year) CD's should I be purchasing? What's a healthy dollar amount to limit this hobby to? As a sidenote, I'm weary to ask for advice here because I'm told few people are as anti-illegal downloading as I am (the legal sort, especially of the "free promotion" variety, is awesome if you ask me though). It's time to get some sort of process in order here, though.
Get off of floppy disks and Zip disks. Yes, I still have floppy disks around the house. I still have data on them I want preserved. I really need to get those moved to at least my external hard drive (again, a longer-term, safer storage solution would be wise, but I'm trying to think in terms of what I have already bought and can use instead of in terms of additional resources).
Get out of the MiniDisc format. It was never a great idea to get into a proprietary format designed by Sony, but hey, YOU didn't get several hundred dollars worth of professional-grade, easily mobile recording equipment for $30 when you were in high school. I have many exciting stories and concerts captured on minidiscs, and some of those concert bootlegs have been promised to various people over the years. It's time to liberate this stuff and get the taper-friendly stuff shared. I have since bought a newer recording device that makes transferring recordings to a PC (and then to the format of my choice) much easier.
Cover political issues better on this blog or a separate channel. I'm not sure yet if I want to do this right here, but it should be done. On the previous bullet point, I mentioned owning a recording device that can easily record things and make it easy for me to archive those recordings. However, using it for casual conversations or without the consent of everyone who appears on the recording is illegal in some states. I'd like to do a better job of covering that (and other legal and political issues related to me and what I've written about) in the future. I also see the occasional opening for further political commentary, but sometimes I suspect it's for the better that I don't get too into the pathetic day-to-day battles.
Begin uploading more content of my own. Even as I've shied away from using the computer as much in my non-work times (I'm on the PC all day - as much as I love coding, it's healthy to step back a bit when I can), I've noticed that I've been creating many more things worth sharing online. I'm hoping to share way more photos, LEGO ideas and creations, legal music from taper-friendly bands, and original music by me (with and without robots) in the future.
Finish writing those articles I keep saying I'll write. Writing about RSS, simple web design, Google reader, yubnub, and other technologies I consider daily necessities really needs to be done soon. I'd like to be able to share the resources I love so much! It would be great if I could actually direct people to my website when I want to explain how I use things.

Important Dates (Future Blogging Calendar)

2009-12-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

I just came across this post from last May and realized I should just post the darn thing and stop worrying about how embarrassing some omissions may be. Feel free to add your own input in the comments...(and yes, I know that there currently is no Boxing Day post on LMOTD)

Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that I have no good way of noticing blog-worthy dates in advance. I can generally spot major holidays (Christmas, Halloween, American Independence day...) but I regularly miss minor occasions that I could totally be having bloggy fun with. For example, this week I've failed to note a Star Trek premiere (yesterday), Cinco De Mayo, Coca-Cola's anniversary (123 years today), and Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you!)

So here's a pathetic attempt at listing some days I should cover, off the top of my head. Comments are wide open, so fill in anything you can. Although I try to avoid covering religious topics (I prefer not to offend anyone and religious satire can be hard to spot on the internet - note how many people think The Brick Testament is actually a Christian site even though it's a humorous satire. Although I do have one awesome Old Testament model to blog soon, I plan on leaving that sort of thing to GodBricks in the future), I'd say religious holidays are fair game for this:

Jan 1: New Year's Day
Jan 2:
Jan 3:
...
Feb 14: Valentine's Day
Feb 15:
...
March 17: St Patrick's Day
...
...
May 4th: Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you...)
May 5th: Cinco de Mayo (Mexico)
May 6th:
May 7th:
May 8th: Coca-Cola anniversary
May 9th:
...
April 1st: April Fool's Day
...
April 22nd: Earth Day
...
June 14th: Flag Day (US)
...
July 4th: Independence Day (US)
...
October 31st: Halloween / All Souls Day
...
December 24th: Christmas Eve
December 25th: Christmas Day
December 26th: Boxing Day (Canada)
December 27th:
December 28th:
December 29th:
December 30th:
December 31st: New Year's Eve

Occasions that move each year:

Hanukkah
Thanksgiving
Easter
Passover
Chinese New Year
Mother's Day
Father's Day

Automatic Transmission Ideas

2009-12-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

Recently, I built a variation on this design. It works pretty well, but is never truly at a 1:1 or 5:1 ratio. It's still not a true CVT, but so far it's the best LEGO attempt I've seen. The designs that pop up in a YouTube search are increasingly impressive, but it looks like we still don't have a reasonable solution to this problem.

On the bright side, I've now finally bought enough traditional transmission parts to build a really nice manual transmission. With any luck I'll post some sort of hybrid approach (which isn't that dissimilar from the 1/2/D/N/R set-up most cars I've been in actually have) one of these days.

AdWords "Offer"

2009-12-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

This Google Adwords support thread accurately describes (give or take a few typos) the situation I just found myself in. You know, I don't even feel a great need to use search-based advertising. It was something I was willing to try because I was given this "free" promo offer. It's not "free" if it costs $10, sorry ($10 is the "minimum" amount that it's asking me to pay before I can try this "free" offer).

I'm generally a happy subscriber to the cult of Google (you'll notice I'm writing this in Blogger, and that I also make heavy use of Reader, GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, Google Alerts, Search, etc...) - but I have to draw the line here. This is a pretty scammy promotion, and frankly, I think it violates their motto of "Don't Be Evil".

Why am I posting this here? I think I may be persuaded into spending the $10 to use advertising yet, and I'm still holding out hope that this coupon may be salvageable some other way. Until either of those possibilities happen, I'm going to ignore AdWords. Of course, the really bad thing about this is that they went through all that effort to try to get people to try this service, and all they've done is turn me against AdWords (it was a difficult and time-consuming experience to find out that they weren't going to give me the "Free", "No Risk. No Obligation" offer without me spending money).

November 2009 Raleigh, NC Window Into the Community Display

2009-11-09T18:16:00.000-08:00

I recently built and installed a display for the Raleigh, NC LEGO store. My display, titled "LEGO Castle Through the Years", will be visible in the Window Into the Community (a special store window at LEGO stores that features creations by local builders - in this case it's in the back of the store, to your left as you look at the Pick-A-Brick wall) through the end of the month. For those of you who haven't been into LEGO Castle sets from the 1970's to today, the layout uses a variety of popular sets and minifigs from over the years - the landscaping and overall layout is an original design (as is the mill building styled similarly to the 10193 Medieval Market Village set), but most of the layout closely follows popular LEGO sets from over the years. Notable sets here include 375 Yellow Castle, 6066 Camouflaged Outpost, and 6038 Wolfpack Renegades. A few classic minifigs from various LEGO Castle lines show up as well - see if you can spot Majisto. The tree from 10193 Medieval Market Villagemakes an appearance too, but I decided to use an original mill building (which, of course, has a working water wheel and grindstone) to represent peasants instead of using a building from the current set (as a current high-ticket item, 10193 is already displayed in the store for sales purposes).

Matthew (Brickapolis) was at the swap-out and got some set-up photos. These are mostly for seeing me set up my display, but you can also get a glimpse of my tree technique. You can see the rest of Matthew's photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brickapolis/tags/nov/

My photos can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/tags/november/ . I may add more photos later - I've been surprised to see how some details have come out in the end. A cave that I was afraid would be hidden turned out to actually be perfectly visible from a child's eye level, but appears to be covered by the large tree in the front when looking at it from an adult eye level. That's the only highlight that the brightly-lit display area has brought to my attention so far, but there may be others. I'd also like to try getting some photos with less glare - we'll have to see if I can get my camera back in there soon.

"Instantly Recognizable"

2009-10-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

If you've ever discussed LEGO blogging with me for any serious amount of time, you've probably heard me mention how difficult it is to find interesting things to say about other people's models. There are only so many complimentary words in the English language, and inevitably we end up repeating common phrases, descriptions, techniques, etc.

Over at The Living Brick, they've taken on one cliche I use regularly - "instantly recognizable". I would have linked to this over at LMOTD, but since that's supposed to be all kid-friendly and the link above used the word "testicle", it's off-limits there - so it shows up here instead.

Don't worry too much about this blog becoming an addendum to LMOTD - I'm working on some slightly longer-term projects lately, but I will post about some of them soon (most notably: Castle Window In the Community display and some updates on the still-unnamed robotic LEGO band).

BrickFair

2009-08-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

I may get around to writing a "journal" of sorts about BrickFair (I attended quite a few seminars and games there that won't get too much attention elsewhere), but for now I'm just posting general commentary over at LMOTD.

Lamp

2009-08-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

At long last, I'm finally writing about the lamp. My lamp has been around for nearly a decade now, but since the largest event it's ever appeared at is LEGOPalooza at UNC Chapel Hill, not many people know about it. Everyone who has seen it expresses interest, though, and I keep saying one of these days, I'll write about it. That day is today. Sure, I wish I had better photos (these were taken before I bought myself a proper duster), but at least we're here now...

This is a ~~sculpture with a socket cord in it~~ lamp made out of LEGO. Back when electronics casing hadn't become such a popular thing to build out of LEGO, I came across a socket cord at a hardware store and thought this would be a good opportunity to try my hand at building non-LEGO electrical matter into some sort of LEGO sculpture. Surprisingly, I'm yet to hear about anyone else building one of these, even though it is relatively simple to do.

I have built and re-built this a few times now, and I hope to post reasonably good instructions at some point in the future (sadly, the twisty red part isn't easy to toss into a CAD program to make instructions). You can get the gist of how this is constructed from the photos below. Sadly, none of these were taken with the intended clip-on shade, but I don't think it looks that bad with this lampshade either.

Personally, I don't think this should count as "cheating" - the cord, bulb, and shade are the only non-LEGO parts. This is otherwise completely purist - something that you can't do if you just build around a commercially available build-your-own-lamp kit. Socket cords are available at most hardware stores should you want to try this yourself.

On to the "detail" shots!

Here is the base of the lamp. Note how DUPLO bricks were used to create a sturdy base without using that many parts. A gap the size of one 1x1 LEGO brick was appropriate to get the cord out safely.

This is the top of the lamp. The cord was snaked through the entire construction, but the socket itself requires some extra support - which this little ledge you can see provides.

Here's the top section. When I built this, I was into showing off techniques. I don't think the design suffered for it. This is another fairly straightforward trick - just angle the bricks a little bit. You do have to make sure you get the right height in there - believe it or not, you can often get parts to "stick" in there when the connection is not really sturdy enough to stay. I put 8 bricks in between the two red 2x4s, but if I wanted to squeeze 9 or 10 in there and let things twist, I could have gotten away with it.

Look! It's my ball! Complete building instructions are available to download. This, by the way, is one of the reasons I decided to make my ball in sections that allow the "core" to be popped out.

That about sums it up. Any questions?

Things to Build out of LEGO Parts

2009-08-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this post that I started writing last March, and I thought I would go ahead and share it today. I should probably make a longer and more complete list, but this is interesting enough on its own.

It's been a while since I've made one of these lists and I'm finding that inspiration has struck me repeatedly and violently tonight. I've toyed around with the idea of doing some sort of CAD-related contest for some of these to gather up ideas on how I want mine to look (but never actually figured out how I'd make that work).

Oil rig (the tall tower kind - I never did get to it)

Large hospital (possibly based on the 1987 Emergency Treatment Center kit, but with more realistic scale)

Aquarium (1x4x3 trans-light-blue panels to separate visitors from underwater vignettes)

Soda Shoppe (already started even though I really don't have time - never mind the tiles for a proper checked floor, or the correct minifigs for soda jerks...)

suburban restaurant (buffet?) with enclosed patio (or two)

suburban American houses in colors that a homeowner's association would actually allow (for inspiration, use Street View for this subdivision in Apex, NC) - bought specially-colored parts from Cary for this, but will probably have to be clever for roofing

suburban American landscaping (there is no such thing as a cul-de-sac roadplate piece)

Parking lot or parking garage (where the heck do people park when they go to the Cafe Corner?) - side thought - parking spaces on road plates?

Large urban bank

Town Plan buildings upsized to Cafe Corner scale (restyled?)

Great Ball Contraption town - factory buildings dump balls onto motorized cars/trucks/train, train/cars unload balls themselves back into other factory buildings, chutes and machinery maneuver balls withing factory buildings.

Jewelry store (to use the "Diamonds" brick from a Spiderman set)

Girly clothing store (for realistic variety and cool sideways use of DUPLO roof piece)

A few buildings that minifigs walk around (done using hockey sports pieces)

Cathedral (in bley)

I've been a bit inspired by the thought of building some Americana lately. All these plans are for naught, though, because my big bag 'o' minifigs is MIA. Perhaps it's time for me to build miniland-scale instead (but where to start?)

Quick Update

2009-08-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I've posted jack here lately. We're still recovering from the water damage, and I'm still working on wrapping up some long-term projects (I suspect that most people who care enough about me personally to read this know of a few things that I haven't finished to put up here yet).

I can now follow up on this post from last year and two posts from this past weekend with the announcement that I will be attending BrickFair this year.

This blog remains a bit ignored - note the hideous default layout - but frankly I've been two busy to prioritize it. We're trying to push for LMOTD being actually updated every day right now. Keep watching that site for now (especially if you're here as a LEGO fan) - I don't anticipate posting much more here for the immediate time being. I'm also continuing to work on the NCLUG website, which also has some pretty substantial work to be done ASAP (we now have TWO Window-In-The-Community displays, but no proper webpage discussing them) and I've had to make some pretty sudden changes there. This blog, while reasonably good for a things-I'm-working-on update, isn't too exciting for LEGO content and I was really surprised when I saw some posts from here syndicated on there. After learning more about the WordPress software, I wound up changing it to grab BrickJournal posts (Joe Meno's also in that group) and not include posts from here or LMOTD.

While I have registered for BrickFair, I have not yet registered any MOCs for BrickFair. I'm open to suggestions if anyone would like to request a MOC of mine that they have seen in the past (I can't fulfill all requests due to the amount packed away right now, but some can be done).

Additionally, Matthew and I are working on some surprises for BrickFair. Nothing too crazy, since we didn't start preparing soon enough to sponsor a LMOTD-backed doorprize or goodie-bag giveaway, but there may be something put together. I won't announce what we've looked into, but I am really hoping we'll have something ready to announce in the next few days.

Finally, I can provide free delivery to the convention of any order placed in my BrickLink store before Wednesday, August 19th.

...so, there's the update. Bland, behind-the-scenes, and not too exciting. At least it puts something slightly less personal and dramatic up here for the people reading this blog for the first time.

LMOTD Update / Personal Update

2009-05-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Just to follow-up appropriately to the previous post, I have made an announcement over at LMOTD. We'll be becoming a community-oriented site with contests in the near future.

I didn't think it appropriate to mention over there, but we've also been dealing with some water damage in the house. Our water heater is in the attic, and when it burst the weekend before all the big school projects were due, it apparently left far more damage than we had previously believed. Note how I made that post on Sunday and didn't even mention how the heater had burst early Saturday morning.

Not to give away too much personal info, but my bedroom is the room directly below the heater. I slept terribly and took a bit too long to realize that the "thunderstorm" wasn't the predicted sunny weather for the day, and was actually happening entirely in my wall. While we originally thought that the damage in my room was minor and that the kitchen below that had been dried out fairly well by us on Saturday morning, the various people we've dealt with from the insurance company felt otherwise. Of course, they started making my life a living hell the Wednesday of Posters and Pies - I got back that evening not knowing where I'd be sleeping, and eventually wound up in a makeshift bed in the room down the hall. We'd been preparing that room for a planned visit from Grandma in June, so the space was available. We've since had to cancel that visit now that we know that I'll be moving into there so that the insurance company people can redo my ceiling and floor.

The various things the insurance company has been doing to try to dry out the insides of walls have been very hard on us - we don't have access to a few major kitchen appliances, and we've been trying as hard as we can to find ways to cook various things in the fridge before they go bad (figures that we stocked up on eggs, bacon, and hash browns JUST before they took out the stovetop - I was able to save Mother's Day by using George Foreman grills to prepare mum's breakfast in bed, though).

...the process of moving [me] out and figuring out if we want to do any repairs while everything is ripped out (about a third of the house's flooring is currently ripped up, in addition to everything related to the kitchen island) is a considerable drain on my time (and the time of the rest of my family), and probably counts as a project in it's own right now.

The rest of my time is now occupied by the happier news I slipped into that LMOTD announcement - I got a job :-D. The job is a good one, but it definitely requires me to push myself a bit to make sure things are getting done, that I'm keeping up with the technology which is new to me, and that I stay focused and not do anything that would get me fired ("start up culture" is nice, but my boss has been pretty upfront about firing anyone who isn't contributing enough - I figure I need to "prove myself" for the first month or two before assuming I'm in for the long run).

That's the current news for me. I'm hoping to write more sooner than later, but if I don't get the chance, I think you understand why.

Status of LMOTD, Raleigh LEGO Store, My Own Situation

2009-04-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've gotten quite a few LEGO-related questions lately, mostly from people wondering if I'm building anything myself lately. The answer is pretty much no. Some trivial WIP ideas are on my flickr photostream - you will notice that none of them appear finished or particularly good. I really don't have time to work on these things lately, and some storage needs on my family's part mean that I can't even get to that much of my LEGO parts. I am still occasionally sorting out some parts and sets purchased from Cary Clark (who recently liquidated his collection), but otherwise I'm trying to avoid doing LEGO-related things until after graduation.

As mentioned in my previous post, I am using the NXT for a school project that concludes this week. The building portion of that took surprisingly little time but is very promising for the future - I have a sturdy construction that works very well for attaching LEGO parts to an electric guitar without damaging the guitar (although I suspect the occasional scratch might be getting on to the surface of the guitar, it looks like very little movement is happening there).

Most people reading this know I run LMOTD, a blog that features one LEGO model each day (more or less). I intend to blog there more regularly after graduation (especially since I don't have employment lined up yet, but I expect that any full-time job I can get won't be as time consuming as the academic loads I've been taking on lately). The LMOTD blog is at a crossroads of sorts now - while Matthew (Brickapolis) and Chris (Duckingham) have helped pick up the slack while I focus on school projects instead, I haven't really made it much of a "community blog" yet. However, I've had two more people (coincidentally both named Matthew) offer to help recently, and I'm considering inviting them both on and turning it into a community blog. Of course, I'm still not sure how to handle both running ads and having other people write a portion of the blog's content (I'm trying to be sensitive to that issue in this post, but bear with me while I "think out loud" a bit about where I might take things). I'll be honest - I've been toying around with the idea of trying to blog full-time and keeping the money made off of it. While money from blogging doesn't pay steadily, it now comes out to about $100 per year and I bet I could turn it into something greater if I truly invested my time into it. On the other hand, I've always thought it would be better to get a real job lined up and start using the money from the site to fund prizes for contests.

One important issue to consider is proper payment of contributing writers. Since LMOTD has a requirement of a paragraph or two of writing for each model, it's a bit more time-consuming to keep up this site than it is for some other LEGO-themed blogs out there (of course, we're also on firmer legal ground should anyone ask if the content is being used commercially or merely in a scholarly way as reference for discussion - our focus on writing about LEGO or building techniques around the models means that we're not at much risk of being accused of making money off of other people's models). If I'm letting other people do most of the writing long term (which will certainly be the case if I have four people helping me out, instead of just two people on something of a "trial basis" right now), then I'll have the following possible outcomes:

Pay the contributors a certain fixed rate per post or proportional rate based on the total amount the blog makes

Keep the money for myself but expect people to contribute anyway (a "dick move", so to speak, but it works for Arianna Huffington, who has achieved fame and fortune for running a site that seems to allow contributors to get away with any crazy thing they try to post - I'm sure there are other such examples out there was well, but HuffPo's extremely poor editing makes it stand out as a site where the founder clearly shouldn't be hogging the profits)

Ask everyone (myself included) to blog for enjoyment, and use the money to fund contests

I consider 3 to be the most noble option, but it remains to be seen whether or not I really want LMOTD to become a community blog. I like the idea of maintaining editorial control, and that also gives me the ability to handle scheduling (I have various arbitrary rules governing when certain things can be blogged - currently all contributors save things as drafts and I make minor changes for consistency and schedule publication for a later date). The issue of whether or not I can afford to put time into the blog or engage in building myself is also still on the table.

In any case, I'll be more focused on blogging in the not-so-distant future, and I hope to have LMOTD in a stable and respectable state before long. Time permitting, I may return to properly blogging my own creations here as well (since I do have a considerable backlog).

Finally, we have a LEGO store opening in Raleigh next month. I've attended one "build party" for assembling the in-store models and I hope to attend another one in the future (again, my schedule opens up considerably after Thursday, and while the job search will be a full-time task for me for a while, I'll likely to get to some other things as well). The opening date has been announced as May 29th and I hope to attend. Of course, I remain hesitant to make any plans after May 9th for the time being - there's still a chance of getting a job, which will drastically change any plans I could try to make at this point. As of right now, I'm not putting anything on my calendar and I'm assuming I will not be attending any LEGO events (beyond NCLUG meetings, and I don't even think we have any scheduled now) this summer.

I believe that covers everything about how things currently stand - of course all of this is liable to change very suddenly in the near future.

Projects Coming to A Close

2009-04-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

As graduation approaches, my four project courses are coming to a close.

One of these (for the DBMS course) isn't really exciting to share - no creative skills are used, it's just a matter of struggling with mediocre documentation and figuring out which methods need to be written (and how they should be written). Sometimes I fear that "the real world" of computer coding is more like that than like most of my more enjoyable computer-based projects, but I really hope it is not.

Speaking of documentation, that's how the majority of the remaining time for my Senior Design Project will be spent. We have an event this upcoming Wednesday (April 22nd, 2009) called "Posters and Pies" - all are invited to attend, but you must RSVP (at http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/rsvp/posters-pies/) by tomorrow if you plan on coming. I will not be delivering our presentation downstairs, but I will be involved with that as the "clicker" and will be available with my team upstairs for questions. That's actually not the culmination of that project - a final presentation will be given to our sponsor at a later date, and we may have some additional work to do regarding finalizing code and documentation.

There is an additional presentation for an "Innovating in Technology" class later that day. I will begin blogging more about that project once a decision has been made on whether or not to continue the project after graduation. This presentation isn't truly open to the public, but I'm allowed to invite anyone I would like - if you would like to attend, send me an e-mail at 316danny@gmail.com

My fourth project concludes on Thursday instead of Wednesday, and also may be continued after graduation. As mentioned previously, I'm using some discoveries from my still-unblogged "Robot Rock Band" project in my computer music course. The assignment for this project requires us to compose a piece of music between 5 and 7 minutes in length, however, my desire to experiment with various structural ideas and compositional algorithms means that my piece will take almost the whole 7 minutes, and would be trivial to expand to a longer period of time (at one point, the NXC program controlling the LEGO components had a 10-minute runtime). The current premise of this piece is based on historical approximations of pi. The NXT-based section is based on mappings of historical approximations, and these determine the current structure of the piece. A "performer" (myself) will be playing an electric guitar part alongside the LEGO electronica, and this will be based on a Markov process I am still tinkering with in Java.

...additional compositional algorithms learned in that class will be used in the future for new variations on my "Robot Rock Band" project, some of which will be bland and accessible pop music that my professor would abhor.

Noting Recent Buys

2009-03-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

I recently bought these 3 LEGO sets for $15 each. Not sure what I'll end up doing with them yet, but the price was fair and it put some newish pieces I wouldn't ordinarily seek out into my hands. The Castle one actually looks pretty interesting - great new minifigs, a modular Technic-based construction (which will be easy to expand - even more so than the "classic-era" Castle sets) and a mountain-y base that's just asking to be part of a taller and more fire/lava-filled construction.

In the interest of not letting the inventories of these sets that I have open on the computer distract me, here's the list of links:

4982 Mrs. Puff's Boating School
7093 Skeleton Tower
7721 Combat Crawler X2

...and for the record, this is my first time buying a Spongebob kit and my first time buying an Exo-Force set. This might also be my first Castle set to technically be part of the "Fantasy Era" as well (but what's the point of noting that? If Medieval Market Village is "fantasy" but the Dragon Masters from 1993 aren't, we're not using the term "fantasy" correctly...)

Palooza Posts coming soon

2009-02-26T19:08:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update for people waiting for LEGOPalooza 2009 posts - I will be cleaning up the stack of boxes still packed from the show this upcoming week. I plan on doing a separate wrap-up post for each display I participated in. I'll try to do each post as I finish going through each bin.

Some brief robot band news in the mean time: I will be preparing an electric guitar for a future robot band piece soon. Surprisingly few people have decided to look into ways to pick up LEGO 9V motor frequencies using electric guitar pickups, and naturally it's the angle I'm pursuing for a project in my computer music course.

By the way - the robot band remains unnamed. My job search also goes on (which is, perhaps, the only thing worth sharing from my Career Fair experience during those "Marathon Weeks"...)

A LinkShare Question

2009-02-26T18:52:00.000-08:00

DisneyShopping.com has offered me a LinkShare affiliate deal (as a "Private Offer" - apparently the commission rate offered to me isn't the one available to just any blogger) very much like the one I have with LEGO for lmotd.blogspot.com - do you think this is a sign of anything? Something to do with the new licenses, perhaps?

The real question, of course, is whether or not I should do it.

Actually, wait: a better question might be why LEGO hasn't paid up in a while now (they haven't paid commissions for the Christmas rush yet).

In any case, I've given up on trying to keep up with LMOTD by myself and brought in a co-blogger. Team member? I don't know if I want it to get too big - realistically, blogging barely pays at all to start with, but once people see ads on your site, they want a cut when they start writing for you (unless your name is Arianna Huffington, and no one knows why or how she gets away with it - then again, I suppose you get what you pay for sometimes...). I decided to go with a percentage of daily AdSense revenue (itself only a few pennies) as a payment arrangement for now - too little to be worth it for anyone but people who buy inexpensive LEGO parts from me locally. Not that AdSense is paying too well, anyway...as usual when I let things fall behind there, my daily views (and thus ad impressions) have gone down by a third over the past few weeks...

So, anyone think I should take that Disney offer? Anyone know of any other programs I should be joining to try to monetize my blogging?

Automatic Gearboxes with LEGO?

2009-02-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

Saved for reference:

http://technicbricks.blogspot.com/2007/12/tbs-techtips-004-automatic-gearboxes.html

There are also CRT attempts on YouTube, but none as functional as this.

All of these look better than mine, which isn't documented at all yet :(

Marathon Weeks, Post 2: FOSS Fair

2009-02-12T14:00:00.000-08:00

Most of these fall under "interesting notes to self", but hey, it's actually getting something written down.

Here's the run-down of Monday, February 2nd:

9:35 AM, first FOSS fair session, decided to attend a section called Predicting Vulnerabilities with Software Metrics. This was a bit dry and awkward - my Software Engineering instructor was overseeing it, and the people running it were her grad students (one of which was "Andy Programmer" of iTrust fame). If you know Dr. Williams at all, you know that she's actually pretty well known in the field for writing research papers on software methodologies, pair programming, and other things that most of us find a bit dull. Trust me, though, it's important and respected. My biggest issue with this section is that it felt too much like an abstract for an academic paper - it covered some findings, information about using metrics, but no actual metrics. I would have preferred to see some code instead of just hearing statistics about what was discovered when open-source software was analyzed (OK, the graphs were a bit intriguing - but again, not really something practical for someone like me coming in with no real knowledge of the subject).

In spite of all the other events during those few weeks, I attended all my courses regularly. So I still went to my "course" which featured my classmates giving updates on our big Senior Design Projects. I was really disappointed that this made me miss some of the more exciting FOSS Fair sessions (at least they sounded exciting to me from the descriptions on the site), and frankly, my classmates aren't that good at presenting and didn't have much to say. Sorry, but c'mon, nobody really wants to hear undergrads go on for 5+ minutes each about how they're just starting to work on something. Let me know when something interesting's already been done. Again, I'm not trying to be rude here, but note how I haven't said anything about my own project for that course yet either - I know nobody wants to hear it.

After lunch, I made it to another FOSS Fair session - this one an overall look at the benefits of open source. This was fairly interesting, with some discussion of major projects and how things fit together, but it was ultimately just a well-presented version of the sort of thing cranky Slashdotters are always saying. I was a bit surprised by a slide near the end that listed ways open source is changing the world - I hadn't really thought OLPC as an open-source project before (another interesting point, about open government policy under the Obama administration, is one I've made myself in an earlier blog post here).

The next FOSS Fair thing I was able to make it to was focused on Cloud Computing. I didn't really know much about Cloud beforehand, and this worked as a good introduction. There was some unforeseen technical issues, though, that kept the "simple" demonstration from working on campus.

The night went a bit long for me - I visited with a potential employer for an info session on a training program I ultimately did not get into, and after that I got a chance to catch up with the local amateur robotics club. This was a bit wonky for my tastes (big emphasis on discussing designs on the white board), but interesting nonetheless. I need to properly join the Yahoo! Group for that still. I briefly discussed my 'bots that I had shown up at UNC the previous weekend, and one person even asked a bit more info about LUG's (needless to say, most of the people there knew a little bit about Mindstorms already). One thing that sounded pretty interesting to me (not for the immediate future but for potential use in months to come) was that the group was talking about moving the meetings off-campus to a place in Durham that would allow people to rent metal-working machines. That has some serious potential for some larger robotics projects (not that I'm ready to give up on Mindstorms, but once you've tried building a musical project, you start to notice the limitations of LEGO parts and the presence of gear lash...)

Overall, an exciting day, and I'm hoping to make it to the next FOSS Fair (whenever that ends up being) and to catch up with the amateur robotics crowd more frequently. I'm also planning on looking into the other robotics groups on campus more - it looks like I'll have a good time to try out the UAV club next week.

BrickLink

2009-02-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

Edits put in February 26th:

Some obnoxious happenings lately regarding my BrickLink store:

1. Too many people have not followed the Terms of my store, forcing me to upgrade to a different type of PayPal account in order to keep receiving payments. I was allowed so many exceptions to the rule each year, but all these people ignoring the terms have used up my exceptions already. This means that all prices have to go up - as of this past Tuesday, everything costs 4% more. It hurts a bit - everything was priced in fairly round numbers before, and now everything has awful fractions of cents involved. I will be upgrading the PayPal account sometime between now and March 12th - I'm trying to put off the upgrade as long as possible so I won't be out another $10 for the orders that haven't been paid yet but were processed before the need to raise prices. I have now upgraded my PayPal account. All because a few people couldn't follow the rules...

2. ~~I will probably work out new promotions soon to bring prices back down for people paying with cash locally or with Revolution Money Exchange.~~I am now offering 4% off for people paying with Revolution Money Exchange. I have not decided what new discount to offer for local buyers paying in cash. It's only fair that I don't punish everybody for the sins of PayPal users.

3. I might be fine with the inevitable decrease in sales related to this. Things are starting to pick up again here and it's doubtful that I'll be spending much time on LEGO things for a bit. I'm not sure when I'll revive LMOTD again (although there is a post scheduled for Valentine's day already), but I'm hoping to get a few posts in. The job search continues, as does my sorting through parts I'm buying locally from someone who graciously is allowing me to determine how much I owe him whenever I can.

It is possible that I will work LEGO into some academic projects, though. Frankly, expect this blog to get much drier and more school-oriented for the next few months - the only LEGO projects I'll be doing are BrickLink orders, sorting/cleaning/storing, and whatever I can work into my schoolwork. No less than 4 of the 5 courses I'm taking now involve large, open-ended projects, and I'm looking forward to blogging about them at some point in the future. Only one of them currently looks like it'll be of interest to the LEGO fans that make up most of my readers here, though (hint: it involves AI and some robot band ideas).

LEGO logo mosaic

2009-02-07T12:08:00.000-08:00

Found this photo while skimming through LEGOPalooza photos and thought I should blog it. This was built in the late 1990's, when I was still "little". No software was used - this was just a freehand build on a 32x32 baseplate. I occasionally compared with various LEGO logos I had handy to figure out where parts looked like they should go.

This has never been fully taken apart, but the odd part has come loose over the years because I don't glue my models together. You may have seen this at LEGOPalooza 2008, DGXPO 2008, or LEGOPalooza 2009.

The picture's not quite the whole thing, but you know where the other red and black bricks go. No need for building instructions here!

Marathon Weeks, Post 1

2009-02-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

This picture was taken by another NCLUG member, I forget who at the moment. You can see me tweaking the code for guitar-playing robot, though. You can also click on that picture to go to flickr, where there are more photos from LEGOPalooza. Mike Walsh has rounded up some photos and videos from LEGOPalooza over at the NCLUG site. Normally I'd be doing that sort of thing, but I've been very busy these past few weeks - the three days of LEGOPalooza have been surrounded by coursework, homework, a FOSS Fair, a two-day career fair, and a variety of smaller events and BrickLink orders.

I had a pretty interesting set-up at Palooza for my robot band (one of several displays I was "running" essentially by myself, and the only one I was able to actually keep an eye on) - a dual monitor set-up much like I got used to working on iTrust last semester (Oops, haven't blogged that yet either). I had originally planned on doing some things with LEGO Vision Command, as the previous post suggests, but I ultimately wound up putting the camera away (after a kid said "he's recording us" I realized that it's actually quite creepy to leave a camera out if you're not doing something with it) and showing off IDE's and code on the monitor facing outward.

This lead to an interesting situation - during LEGOPalooza, I spent much of my weekend talking about code, open-source, LEJOS, Bricx CC, NXC, various pbricks, etc, and not much time focusing on LEGO. During Monday (which I had written off as booked due to the FOSS Fair I attended), I wound up going to an amateur robotics meeting and talking LEGO. Not that I mind, but it's certainly unusual.

That's not even the worst of the whiplash of the past two weeks. On Saturday at LEGOPalooza, I had kids coming up to me that recognized my robotic band from my most recent appearance on the LAML Radio podcast and was asked some questions by numerous newspaper reporters (only article I've successfully dug up featuring me so far is in the Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student paper). People I'd never met before were acting like I was someone famous, and I guess in the online LEGO community, I sort of am (in spite of how few of my own models I've actually posted). On Thursday, I was at a career fair being asked if anything sets me apart from my classmates (the list of things I can actually put on a resume is surprisingly short). On the bright side, at least I had something to say when people asked if I had any embedded C experience (everybody forgets that NXT programming is technically a form of cross-compiling for an embedded device)...

I intend to post a bit more recapping this past week (LEGOPalooza in particular, since I know most people who read this are LEGO people and not software people or graduating Computer Science majors) soon, but that's probably about it for today.

One last thing, though: My family has moved suddenly twice now because of work shortly before a LEGO store has opened in our area (we lived in southern New Hampshire shortly before the first store in northern Massachusetts opened, and we moved out of Sammamish, WA, just as the Bellevue store opened minutes away from where I was attending college at the time). I've been joking for a while that Raleigh, NC will get a LEGO store as soon as I have to move away. Although I don't have any serious job offers yet, it's hard not to take the news that we're getting a LEGO store in mid-May as a sign that I'll be working elsewhere shortly after graduation (in early May). We'll see, I guess, and if I don't get something lined up by May, perhaps I'll just apply there - I certainly don't have any issue proving credentials as a LEGO nut. I'm not making any long-term plans, though, just in case I do end up moving out of the Triangle area.

Vision Command XP Install

2009-01-29T18:20:00.001-08:00

Mostly noting this for personal reference (I'm still rushing to set software up for this weekend's show):

I originally tried the approach prescribed at this site: http://www.abs-robotics.com/tips/install/winxp/download.asp to get Vision Command running. All 5 files were ran, but when it came time for the registry update, I ran into a bug because apparently I didn't have RIS 2.0 in the default install directory (RIS 2.0 is on there, of course, and thanks to Cary selling me a new USB IR tower on the cheap, I got it to work again shortly before I started again in trying to install Vision Command).

After that failed, I tried following the advice seen on this website (the second result for "vision command xp" on Google): http://www.ntcompatible.com/Vision_Command_Updater_LEGO_t23827.html - so far, so good, but it's rebooting now. We'll all see soon enough if I'm able to successfully launch an air-guitar system before Saturday morning...it's really the last big goal left.

Oh, and before anyone starts wondering: Yes, I tried doing the properly nerdy thing and interfacing an NXT with the Logitech SDK. I didn't get very far, and I figured this program could be simple enough just to try in a kid-oriented graphical language. Sure, I don't get to do anything to show off my fancy Computer Science college-learning, but at some level just the novelty of having a working LEGO guitar player controlled by air-guitar playing children is already exciting.

Welcome LAML Listeners

2009-01-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

EDIT: This was originally posted on January 11th, the night the show was taped. I am moving this forward a bit so that it will still be current when the show is aired (I suspect that sound problems on my end are a big part of the delay anyway, so I'm sorry if the below now reads as overkill).

Welcome LAML Listeners! This is my project blog. Not all of my projects are LEGO-related, but there are many LEGO-related projects blogged about here (and plenty more that I need to get around to covering here in the near future).

As noted on the podcast, I write about other people's models over at LMOTD and at Brick Town Talk. I also have a flickr account where I occasionally post some ideas and finds. The two models I have on flickr that I mentioned are Futuron Labs and the stool.

The robotic band does not have a name yet, and needs one. Feel free to send your ideas for robot band names to 316danny@gmail.com

A blog for the robotic band will be made once a name has been chosen. I hope that that blog will also grow into a place for showcasing other musical models and bands (there are other musical Mindstorms ideas out there, just not many people who try to do everything to flesh out a band that way).

Of course, the stuff on LAML about this is something of a leak - I suspect we'll see video crop up from a few sources once LEGOPalooza happens.

LMOTD Behind-the-Scenes notes

2009-01-18T20:52:00.000-08:00

While I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be back up-to-regular-speed on LMOTD for a few weeks yet (this is a very busy time for me for a number of reasons), I am thrilled to report that my laptop is now back in working shape. The miraculous recovery is just as strange as how it suddenly became nearly unusable - I accidentally bumped it with my toe before we brought it into the shop, and after the toe-hit, everything worked again.

I now have an idea for a future project - testing the ability of my toes to fix electronics. Something similar seems to work with kicking things for some people, so maybe there's actually something to this. (Kidding.)

In the interest of making sure I don't mess up any tax stuff, I was asked again earlier about the "money" I've "made" blogging on LMOTD. While I was there, I found a report option for the top ten items, and I thought it looked interesting. Perhaps even interesting enough to fill in for a proper top-sets-voted-on-by-you-my-readers top 10 list. I decided to just take a screenshot and post it to flickr. I might regret posting this - it's something of an "inside" view into the world of LEGO blogging. You can actually see how much money I made blogging last year if you add it up (hint: not much, but enough for me to consider running a contest at some point in the future). You can also see how some of the data is pretty useless - UNKNOWN is listed by many sets in these reports, and you have to know the items numbers to figure out what you're seeing.

So far for this year, I've had a few people buy Star Wars sets and one person buy a Taj Mahal through the site. Not a bad start to a "slow" season.

I never used to believe that nearly half of all sales happen during the Christmas rush, but even when I was trying to blog about music and barely getting any traffic (and using Amazon's affiliate service primarily instead of focusing on LinkShare), I started to see that trend come out. Most of the items on the "top 10" list are there because of December purchases.

It's also worth noting that there's a bit of delay before they actually credit a "publisher"'s account. The Black Friday deals in particular were noticeable, because several of the popular sets were backordered and the commissions were not put in until the orders had shipped. Mid January is really the EARLIEST a list like this can be done.

Funny sidenote: anyone else notice that some of the other LEGO-related blogs started to run more event announcements for events the authors weren't involved in shortly after TCBX got hefty coverage on LMOTD? I suspect that even though we don't all read each other, there's a bit of copy-catting going on. Of course, mentioning that seems silly now that we all use the BrickJournal calendar, but it's still hard to miss. I'd be interested in seeing - for comparison's sake - similar top-10-items reports from some of the other bloggers in the community. The most popular item on mine was only bought 4 times - how many of the same item do you think The Brothers Brick sold?

Just to reiterate, since I was questioned about earlier comments on sponsored links: I don't really need to see anything, and it's none of my business how you run your site, where the money goes, etc. I read/use most of these sites anyway, even if I don't link to them directly much. I've also been known offline to encourage people to use sponsored links from whatever site they'd like to support, as a way of helping out the AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO) community. I know my place as someone hosted by Google/Blogger and not someone who is paying to keep a private server hosting the site. I really have no harsh feelings on any of this stuff - the only thing I see in LEGO-related blogging that bugs me is when people who don't follow the hobby post things that are outrageously off-base and/or forget to credit the builders whose work they're featuring.

I don't expect to make Behind-the-Scenes a regular feature, but I'm happy to field questions if anyone has them (beyond the usual ones about what RSS is and what affiliate services I use - I'll get around to writing about those properly eventually, and then treat whatever I write about that as a FAQ for blogging in general. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things like that that people who "don't get it" will use as a starting point).

Neurodiversity Article Spotted in LEGO's Internal Magazine

2009-01-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

I know that I shouldn't have been able to get my hands on this, but it's thrilling nonetheless. Of course, it's not available online - or to the public (this magazine is only for the company's employees) - at all, and I'm not even sure if I'm technically "allowed" to see it (since I'm not an employee) - but it was still exciting to see.

The article was about video game testing and debugging done for the LEGO company, and they spent a few paragraphs out of the (IIRC) 4 pages focusing on how this one guy has an Asperger's diagnosis, what Asperger's and autism are, and how he's better at the job because of it. Granted, it's nothing I haven't said before, but it still surprises me when I see these things in print - not many people have much interest in these issues, and usually when they are covered, it's aimed towards parents and doesn't give a fair impression of autistic adults. Even though I am, of course, familiar with LEGO UK's work with the NAS last year, and with LEGO's overall excellent record of designing toys that autistic kids love and can learn from, it's still exciting to see the company take the initiative in talking about neurodiversity and employment.

I suspect that LEGO is trying to avoid getting involved with the politics of this, and the backlash tied into that. Those of you who follow politics likely saw the recent dust-up where an antivaccine lunatic on the Huffington Post confused change.org (a "social" site about various causes) with change.gov (the Obama administration's active democracy tool) and then proceeded to launch into a looong rant about how those of us who focus on autistic adults really just hate children (based on Change.org bringing in reputable pro-neurodiversity bloggers). I think it goes without saying that no toy company wants to get involved with that sort of negative PR, regardless of how discredited the quack touting it is.

Of course, the really funny part is that anyone wanting to pick at Obama for supporting initiatives that benefit autistic adults but not research into vaccines or less-than-solid medicine would have had more than enough ammunition on his campaign's website last year (in spite of all the "more affirmative action for black people" rants in the media, his actual policy of aggressive affirmative action for employment of people with all sorts of disabilities went unnoticed). While it's still shocking to see any company take a side on neurodiversity, we totally got the first national politician to take a stand on the issue into the White House. Frankly, the whole thing seems surreal, even as I try to keep my expectations realistic as to how much will actually get done.

On one last LEGO-related note, they've also gone all-out on celebrating the Obama inauguration in LEGOLAND California's Washington DC miniland. I'm probably going to write about that properly for LMOTD sometime tomorrow. To be honest, with any of those huge layouts, there's always a huge issue with not having enough photos. Politically, I'm inclined to be excited about the moment and tell everyone to check out the display. As a LEGO fan, I kind of want to wait until someone else LEGO-obsessed can get a few thousand photos and name most of the "guests" shown in the celebrations. This layout will be out for a few months - surely some of the best photos (and videos) are yet to come. As a reasonable person who recognizes I'm reading too much into things sometimes and then blogging about them, with all the potential for embarrassment that brings, I'm also interested in knowing if past Presidential inaugurations - or other transitions of power in the world - have been documented in miniland form. Sure, Obama's a "rockstar" and all that, but in terms of poll numbers in the election, he actually didn't get that much of a landslide - doing other swearing-in ceremonies in miniland form may have actually made more sense (except, of course, that this is happening now and is still exciting - and frankly, game-changing. People who don't like Obama will take advantage of his open-government ideas to their own ends anyway, and politics will, at least in the short term, have to adjust a bit to work with that). Of course, it's worth pointing out that the last time there was a clear landslide in a US election, there was no LEGOLAND park in the US. For what it's worth, the official spokespeople are saying that the inauguration display is supposed to educate youngsters about government (personally, I'll believe it when they release a minifig-scale senate playset - but then again, the lack of diversity in our political figures would likely not inspire kids the way LEGO likes to...but I suppose the gender balance is much different! Just saying...).

Sorry if you're not into this stuff, but I don't have a proper political blogging outlet and this serves as a bit of follow-up on a poorly-written earlier post. I've decided to go ahead and cover my political "projects" here and I've started tagging (or "labeling", whatever you prefer) the related posts as such. This should work for now, since I don't get into politics too much and I'm actually not very opinionated on most of the "hot button" issues (call me crazy, but I'd rather focus on issues I might be able to do something and stay away from partisan bickering when possible).

Gas update

2009-01-18T19:30:00.000-08:00

1/14/2009
$1.769 a gallon
279.1 miles
13.247 gallons
21.0689 miles per gallon

Trend over 2008 (with laughably few data points - ignore this):
8/21/2008: 20.85
11/16/2008: 23.03 MPG
1/14/2009: 21.07 MPG

With any luck, this year won't see the absurdities that last year brought and I'll be able to gather more data.

Busy Week

2008-12-29T12:01:00.001-08:00

I'm working on a few long-running projects this week. I'm taking a break now from a rather gruesome round of housework. Lots of shelves and bins are being reorganized.

I'm still working on my big LEGO/robotics project for February as well. I might bring a different computer than originally planned - some issues with software are scaring me a bit as far as getting the older machine ready goes. No programming has been done yet (which I'm really disappointed about, but I'm sure I'll get to it soon).

Anyone interested in buying Bionicle parts in bulk? I have way too many of them out right now and I'd be willing to sell half-sorted things of it fairly cheap ($10-15 for a full gallon bag).

E-mail Address

2008-12-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note - if you'd like to send me an e-mail, my spam-ready personal e-mail address is 316danny@gmail.com

Yes, I really don't mind just printing it here and letting the spammers get it too - I'm pretty happy with Gmail's (Google Mail in some countries) anti-spam feature, and pretty darn trusting with it.

How Seagate Ruined Christmas

2008-12-25T17:01:00.000-08:00

Ever thought it was about time to invest in a good external hard drive and start trying to back everything up? My family started trying to earlier this year. Another big project we did last year was digitizing all the Christmas music we owned and putting together a several-days-long playlist of just the recordings we like (which could be played in random order and enjoyed while decorating and on Christmas day).

...the seasonal material was put on the same fancy expensive drive that we were planning on using to back everything up.

Thanks a lot Seagate - thanks to your unusually short warranty and incredibly shoddy product, we now have no backups of any data, no chance of getting stuff backed up now that we finally have time off to try backing files up, no Christmas music (at all) and we're out more money than we want to think about. We'll never buy one of your crummy products again.

A whole terabyte drive, shiny and new, less than a year old. We had barely started actually backing things up on there. The most expensive external drive we ever bought. It was all a waste - and for extra fun, it's colossal failure was the first thing we woke up to on Christmas morning.

Seagate, don't you care about your employees safety? When you sell such an obscenely bad product, you risk the lives of your employees. I'd certainly like to strangle anyone I could hold responsible for this - and this was a relatively minor failure, with most of the data existing in another location (of course, it's extremely unfortunate that we lost all of the Christmas music on Christmas day - and yes, we had the drive working just last night).

I hope all my readers are having a happier and much less quiet Christmas.

Of course, it's still not much of a silent night around here - we're still panicking about losing the drive and arguing about just how much money was wasted buying the huge drive that we thought would last many years instead of just a few months. Also, every few minutes I shout something else about wanting to kill any Seagate employee I meet from here on out, just to hold someone responsible (alternatively, a few thousand dollars for our time, trouble, and expenses might calm me down a bit, but I can't promise anything).

Figures - I spend so much time worrying about losing data and thinking I should back more files up, and it's the EXPENSIVE BRAND-NEW drive that turns out to be garbage. I repeat - DON'T buy a Seagate product. Also, if you're a deranged madman in a Santa suit, try to find somebody who's responsible for putting Seagate products on the shelves. I'm sure at least some of their employees don't have bodyguards.

If you need me, I'll be here trying to verify that we didn't lose even more data than we think and trying to put together some sort of Christmas playlist for the family to enjoy tonight - and tomorrow. Yes, Seagate, because of you, all gifts had to be delayed and Santa was told to come a different day. You really ruined the year for us - and 30 years from now, the next generation in our family will be hearing about the year that the expensive new Seagate drive died and postponed Christmas.

Reference Photos

2008-12-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

Found myself searching a bit for some local landmarks that would provide good subject matter for LEGO displays. What's the point of having LUGs be regional if we're not going to show some local color?

Here are a few photos I liked and thought should be saved somewhere, perhaps somewhere public where other people in the group could see them.

J.S. Dorton Arena (no idea where to start here, but we discussed a few potential things to try at a dinner meeting a while back):

The NC State Wolfline buses look like a fun thing to try:

I need a good photo of the other side, but I count 5 windows on this side:

Will need to buy black train windows - probably about a dozen of them for each bus - to do this. Anyone have extra locally? I'm pretty sure that "smoke"/"trans-black" glass should be easy to find for that as well. Red and white, of course, are pretty darn common LEGO colors. I doubt any other University bus would be this easy to attempt (getting the details right is where building skill comes in, of course).

I love how these look, but I don't know if it could reasonably be done in LEGO form:

Now that this is posted publicly, I can also point to it should anyone ever arrest me for suspiciously taking photos of buses. See! It really is just a LEGO thing.

If you want to talk stalkerish, though, anyone else been to Scotts Ridge Trail (or really, any road in the Scott's Mill subdivision) in Apex, NC? Cool houses, mostly in "sand" colors and quite buildable in LEGO form. Last time I was there, I even spotted a house in medium blue with Fabuland-y accents. If I were to try building one of these, though, there'd always be the off-chance that somebody there might see my version of their house - now that would be creepy.

On an interesting sidenote, I bought a stack of LEGO catalogs and magazines off a kid in that neighborhood once. We actually talked a little about the unusually bold colors in that neighborhood, and about how we just can't build beige buildings. His parents joked that we could try using their house color, but clearly they don't know how rare sand red is!

Gas update?

2008-11-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

Once again, I didn't end up getting my own gas. I wound up driving for a yard sale route this past weekend (best find: $12 for most of both Toby at Wellsworth Station and James and Percy Tunnel Set - got all of Toby and James, all but one part for Percy, the tunnel, and a ton of DUPLO track), but I never wound up heading back out later in the day (and dad - perennial misplacer of receipts - volunteered to get gas).

Here's a rough data point, based on how much gas he thought he pumped and what the odometer said when I got back in this morning (traffic was AWFUL, and I was late even without having to stop for gas).

13.5 gallons?
311 miles ?

23.03 MPG

Input Wanted On Upcoming LEGO Shopping Guide

2008-11-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

I know most people here are interested in LEGO (since most projects I've blogged are about that hobby of mine), so I have some questions for my fellow LEGO fans: What are you picking up this year? Where are you finding good deals? What are you buying/hoping for for Christmas?

I will be developing a multiple vendor Christmas value guide for the LMOTD blog at some point in the near future. Some stuff's a given (Beach House, Cool Convertibles, Green Grocer, Cafe Corner, Market Street, VW Beetle, etc), but I'm looking to find the best prices I can (Amazon and LEGO are already available to me for sponsored links, and I believe TRU and Target are also in the LinkShare network) and help readers find some cool kits that aren't really LMOTD worthy (like the current town gas station kit and the Agents Mobile Command Center). I'm sure there are tons of great bargains and sets out there that I just don't know about as well (some themes excite me more than others, and I'm yet to start taking the newer Bionicle or Belville sets, or anything "Power Functions" seriously). Feel free to recommend unofficial items (storage units, books, software, gear, whatever else) as well.

So, have any thoughts to share? Leave them in the comments here (open to everyone, no registration required) or e-mail them to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com

Post-Election Thoughts

2008-11-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I do have some good project ideas related to this recent election that I'd like to share. I doubt I'll get to doing much with them myself, but I'd like to encourage all other web development/policy nerds to look into them whenever they get the chance.

The long-and-short of it is that both Presidential candidates were instrumental, as Senators and elsewhere in their careers, in bringing forth government transparency initiatives that are useful to bloggers and journalists. Surprisingly, neither campaign was up front about this (I was very disappointed in both campaigns this election for not discussing the candidates' records enough). Somewhere along the way, however, both initiatives picked up API's of use to us web programming nerds.

I'm not new to the world of trying to link to policy data online. I've been frustrated by the THOMAS Library of Congress website on several occasions.

I only recently found out that one of the website ideas Obama has been championing is already available at http://www.usaspending.gov/ - this is particularly noteworthy as a certain nutcase on the Republican ticket claimed that she would start this idea, in spite of the fact that the law mandating this passed in 2006. Bloggers and web developers, take a look at that API - we could seriously inform people about up-to-the-minute facts on US spending directly on our websites (with server-side code, of course - cross-site scripting is now blocked by most modern browsers). The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act was passed in 2006 and deployment quickly sped along, thanks to subcontracting with OMB Watch, details at the Wikipedia link above.

McCain smartly co-sponsored that as a Senator as well (it's just a great bill, and I like to think everyone can back legislation like that, even if not everyone can write it). More noteworthy, though, is his involvement as one of the 40 national leaders co-founding Project Vote Smart back in 1992. The non-partisan, non-profit group is dedicated to getting out the facts about candidates' stances on a variety of major issues. There is now an API in open beta and a start at providing RSS support as well.

I'd like to see bloggers everywhere take the initiative and work these resources into their sites. I suspect that both sites (and many other similar sites) will expand the resources available as the demand for them is shown. Again, I'm a bit too busy to take this up as a hobby right now, but I think other web developers should have at it for their political blogs and websites (and of course, I could probably find time if appropriately compensated :) ).

...and on a more personal note, I hope I enjoy my "win" on the general Presidential election more than I enjoyed my "win" during the Republican primary. I'm still feeling a bit disillusioned about how things played out these past few months, and I really hope that the next few years of an Obama administration are much more serious than anything I saw during this election. I also find this bittersweet - as this post shows, I really respected both of these guys as Senators, and I think that there isn't a way to truly replace Obama as a Senator - it's the Senate's loss, in a way. I do still hope to get more involved as a blogger, but it still doesn't look likely that I will. Still, the transparency initiatives are very promising for letting everybody get more involved, and Change.gov looks like a decent start on making the office of the President more transparent as well (although it looks like his stance on community service has changed since the election - is that an error from a lower-level staffer, or is that intentional?)

EDIT: Either that "mandatory community service" bit was a mistake or we have a cover-up conspiracy here (choose depending on your political persuasion): http://change.gov/americaserves/ has been updated to remove the bizarre policy I asked about at the end of that last paragraph. I'd like to think that it was removed BECAUSE of people like me (but with more clout) pointing out that it was a bad idea...but somehow I doubt that that error is an issue we'll ever hear revisited. In any case, the stance I liked during the campaign is now what's listed on the Change.gov website.

LMOTD This Week

2008-11-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

LMOTD will be having a themed week this upcoming week - yes, a theme that meets all of my "variety" requirements! You're welcome to guess it in the comments of this post - I don't plan on announcing it there.

Track Designer

2008-11-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not really working on this project (I need to try out Visual C++, but as of yet, I have not started using it) - but this is awesome. After years of being unable to update one of the most popular LEGO CAD programs for collaborative layouts - as well as a few competing software packages, including one where someone tried to reverse engineer TD - the Track Designer source code has finally been found. This LUGNET thread has the details. If you're new to all this, you're better off reading RailBricks issue 2 than anything else I have to say on the topic.

???

2008-10-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

NCLUGers - is this model by anyone we know? Are there photos online of my 4504-based convention center?

I find it very bizarre that we'd see somebody else build something this way so soon after I brought my WIP model to an NCLUG meeting. As far as I know, no photos from that meeting are "in the wild" yet - am I mistaken there?

In any case, I bought another partial 4504 on the cheap last weekend (the person selling it had already cherry-picked the rare bits for the SW collectors, and wanted to pass along a bargain on the other parts). I'm thinking I'll try to grow the WIP version into more of a behemoth.

Sorry I'm falling behind on the other blog too - I'm thinking of doing some shorter-than-usual cheap catch-up posts to make up the difference.

Brief, Scattershot Update

2008-10-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

My laptop finally came back today - with a new motherboard. With any luck, this means that I'll get back to life as we know it.

A few more unfulfilling follow-ups:

Regarding flickr - I'm now planning on rotating photos to BrickShelf periodically. This way people can take advantage of the notes and commenting features for a limited time, and then the photos will be archived in a less useable but still accessible format. OK, I'll use flickr more often if someone offers to buy a "pro account" there for me.

Regarding gas - We continue to have shortages here, although it's relatively easy to find petrol in Raleigh. It's still the most expensive gas in the continental United States, but it'll do for now. My Dad volunteered to be the family gas scout shortly after my hysteric post here (and I would like to follow up on the politics of that properly soon, but I don't have time to do so properly at the moment). Since we had to settle for getting gas whenever we could, Dad rushed to places with limited supplies a few times this past month, and no useful MPG data could be recorded. I was able to fill my tank this past Thursday in Raleigh, and that will be the new starting point for MPG data. From now on, I'll be trying to protect myself from disastrous shortages by trying to refuel at the half-way point (instead of near empty), and I'll be finding the MPG based on the displacement instead of based on the mileage for a full tank. I don't know if this has been suggested elsewhere, but it seems to me like a more accurate and safe way to go.

Regarding the last NCLUG meeting - a proper wrap-up should be done sometime this month, if I can. My little printout (a short list of what I brought and a copy of an e-mail I sent about Collector's Guides) went missing at some point - anyone know where that is?

I have a few half-written posts here and elsewhere that I plan on cleaning up and posting soon, but I also still have quite a bit of "real work" to do - I'm afraid that that still has to be the priority.

Futuron Labs - A Town / Space Model

2008-09-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

I just rushed up a flickr set ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157607275256729/ ) of my Futuron Labs model. It has been substantially expanded since a work-in-progress (WIP) version of it was shown at DGXPO - it's also possible that this is the last time I'll open it up to show the things inside.

Normally, I know better than to goof around with Town or Space ideas while I have so many other things to do, but this really only needed some tiles and a few more clever vignettes to brush it up for the Brick Science contest at Reasonably Clever.

This is my first "real" MOC to be presented thoroughly online. I really thought I'd do that here, but I like the idea of making things available to fellow LEGO fans who might like to try the "note" feature. I don't know if I'll ever go pro (I'm out of sets already) but I'm thinking flickr's interface has some definite advantages. I also tried out their new flash uploader here and was satisfied with it.

I might put up some other photos this weekend if I get the chance as well, although the extra time I found myself with in the previous post has since been used up.

Attacked by Corrupt Politicians - For A Different Reason Now

2008-09-12T18:03:00.001-07:00

So if you're here in the states, you've probably been hearing BS for weeks about how safe off-shore drilling is and how we've supposedly never lost a drop of oil. Now I can't leave the house because of a gas scare...and we're not even sure if it's real or manufactured. Apparently the gas companies are saying right now that they're losing oil and shutting down operations because of a hurricane. Now there are 45-minute lines to get petrol - blocking off highways in parts of the state.

...and people really keep electing these morons, and continuing to enable this garbage? This is not a political blog, but when your idiotic political ideas ruin my ability to pursue my projects, I'm not going to let you off the hook.

SUPPORT GAS MILEAGE REQUIREMENTS WITHOUT GIVING OIL COMPANIES CORPORATE WELFARE. FORCE ACCOUNTABILITY INSTEAD OF VOTING FOR PEOPLE BASED ON PROMISES TO OIL COMPANIES. ACTUAL terrorist attacks do less to screw up the economy and people's lives - if we don't tolerate those, why should we tolerate this?

Seriously, how can anyone consider voting for McCain / Palin when they're openly lying to us and forcing us into situations like this? Their policies and lies are now DIRECTLY ruining the lives of ordinary people, and we're still seeing nearly half of the country take them seriously. I have other gripes with these fools, but now it's become even more personal. What the hell is wrong with this country?

Just a quick edit: I will allow sensible discussion in the comments here, but not trolls. The McCain campaign has infamously encouraged supporters to engage in internet trolling, and I will tolerate none of that. Any despicable or dishonest comments left here will never be shown on this site, so don't bother trying. You're welcome to try to defend the McCain campaign or the oil companies involved in this snafu, but I suspect it'd be too difficult to be worth your time.

A second edit: Don't insult me by pretending Bush hasn't done any damage. I have no interest in maintaining contact with anyone that morally bankrupt. It's unlikely that the damage done to our country's reputation and budget or our citizens' rights, beliefs, and property will be fixed in my lifetime, and it's fundamentally dishonest for anyone to pretend that we don't need to reverse the disgusting damage done these past few years. I will certainly not post any comments featuring a distorted view of Iraq here either, and I will never take seriously any complaints about verbal gaffes made by someone who has trouble with spelling and grammar (computers have spelling and grammar checkers - at least be decent enough to use such a check before being unfairly harsh on others).

Busy Day

2008-09-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

Nothing tops off a busy day of studying, working, mailing, driving, and otherwise ignoring your blog duties quite like getting back at the end of the day and realizing you've just been plugged by the Brothers Brick (and not just a "via" link, I mean a real link where they mention you by name). Should I get a screen cap and frame it? Some people get really excited about these things.

Of course, it's not for anything I built, and it forced me to rush up a few posts so that first-time visitors wouldn't see my "new format" announcement at the top of the page, but it's still exciting.

...since I know people are going to ask, I am planning on properly doing that LAML radio post on the NCLUG site sometime tomorrow - and that's when I'll figure out what's going on with those Collector's Guides as well (not sure how people will feel about me not having time to send an e-mail properly but finding time to talk about it...but oh well - it's all get done soon enough).

I hear we have a hurricane coming up this way - not sure if that means I'll be taking Saturday off of yard saling or not yet. There aren't that many people having sales, anyway. Of course, it looks like I'll be stuck on campus at least part of the weekend, working on a Java server project (then again, I like JSP - they're fun and remind me of those thrilling days working with ASP as a kid).

As for building projects - as of yesterday the final parts for the...rockin' blockin' robot I'm planning on bringing to the September NCLUG meeting are now in the mail. I'm also planning on putting finishing touches on something and entering it in Reasonably Clever's Brick Science contest. I'll probably bring both of those to the next meeting (work permitting), along with my newly-replenished bley tile bin (still 10 cents each, any size). There's also a slight chance that I'll explain that NXT idea I've uploaded to my flickr account sometime in the near future too - I mostly just photographed it to make the parts available again for...that Bionicle thing.

OK, it's after midnight here now and I've just rambled on for several paragraphs about how I don't have time to type up several paragraphs because I have better things to do. Time for some sleep so I can go back at it full-throttle tomorrow.

Trolley System Build: A Failed Attempt with some Good Ideas

2008-09-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I described a bizarre building standard without explaining what it was for. It was for a trolley system. The polarity of the 9V power changes when the train hits the trigger mechanism - on one side that's hooked directly into the switch, on the other end the mechanism is geared in through a long axle lineup. The reason for the standard was to figure out how long a stretch of track this would work for.

I have a fairly limited LEGO workspace these days, so I wasn't able to test a decent-length stretch of track. When we tested it at the big table at the library, we found out that it was able to go about 5 inches further than my previous test had shown - and that the result didn't get any better with a heavier vehicle (I was running my tests with DUPLO Thomas - which I'll blog soon). Additionally, the speeds were higher than optimal for a layout like this, so the stops were a bit abrupt even at the lowest speeds that the mechanism could handle. Thanks to Mike Walsh for letting me use his trolley at the meeting.

Photos and explanations of how to build the various modules of the mechanism are on flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/tags/module/ ), if you are interested in trying this out or improving on it yourself.

I sold a few sets there as well - I have records of that elsewhere so I won't post it here.

I'll do a proper wrap-up of the meeting on the NCLUG website soon. Here are picture links in the meantime.

Matthew's photos: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=337860
Dan's photos: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=337229

Trip Odometer reading 8/21/2008

2008-09-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

When I refilled my empty gas tank on August 21st, my trip odometer read 333.6 miles.

That is all.

Trouble

2008-08-17T18:51:00.001-07:00

It dawned on me today that my slower time when I was hoping to post more here is quickly coming to a close. There's still a ton of stuff to do, and a few nearly essential offline chores that need to be done before things get busy again for the fall.

This will be my busiest semester ever, with 7 courses (5 is considered a full courseload). This blog will probably fall apart.

I will try to get something up here occasionally - after all, this blog was originally intended to be rarely updated and exist more as an idea archive. I don't expect to see frequent updates here anymore, though.

I am contemplating doing weekly yard sale recap entries. Not sure if that'll work out or not.

Matthew - did you get any photos of my trolley track set up? I didn't get any good shots of them, and I'd like to do a follow-up on my "group build" post on the NCLUG blog.

Oh, and in case anyone's wondering, it was a complete failure - went about 5 inches further than I had been able to test previously. It's a good thing I don't embarass easily, and that we didn't have too much effort invested in it.

Older site

2008-08-15T09:16:00.001-07:00

EDIT: This site is no longer available.

Just a quick update to mark something on my to-do list - a while back I did a lousy project with a small website. You can find it at: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~depikora/ - there's info there on an earlier version of my CD holder, as well as on the lamp and a compressor.

Harry Potter sets

2008-08-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

At the last proper NCLUG meeting, I mentioned that I might be willing to part with a few of my smaller Harry Potter sets - and there was a surprising amount of interest. Here's the list of sets, what they're going for on BrickLink, and links to the BrickLink Price Guide page for each set. All sets are as complete parts- and minifig-wise as they were at LEGOPalooza this past February. I'm not interested in going much lower than the lowest prices on BrickLink - I'll just keep them if I can't cash in :).

All of these items are being "auctioned". Send me your offers at 316danny@gmail.com - I will post the current high offers here once they start coming in.

In addition to the list below, I'm also looking to sell two sealed bags from 4709 Hogwart's Castle. I'm not sure what to offer as a price guideline there...they're probably worth at least $10 each - they have quite a few great tan parts, old greys and special bits. You can see the two bags side-by-side here and here.

4735 Slytherin BL:$12-$20 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogPriceGuide.asp?S=4735-1 Box flap only (no instructions)

~~4727 Aragog in the Dark Forest BL:$10-$20 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogPriceGuide.asp?S=4727-1 Both flap and instructions~~

~~4712 Troll on the Loose BL:$9.50-$12 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogPriceGuide.asp?S=4712-1 Both flap and instructions~~

~~4701 Sorting Hat BL:$5-$10 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogPriceGuide.asp?S=4701-1 No box flap or instructions~~

I'll be bringing all of these to Sunday's NCLUG meeting, where I figure a few of them will be wanted. Oh, and my usual BrickLink spiel's good there too...

I want a LEGO part that does this...

2008-08-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

If you've seen my work area in the past 8 years or so, you know that I'm working on an alarm clock casing. I've uploaded photos of one of the knobs in hopes of somebody recommending a part that can replace it and interface with the electronics. Brickshelf: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=335784

New "Author"

2008-08-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

In the interest of getting posts live faster, the LMOTD blog account has now been added as an "author" on this blog. It's still written by the same people it always has been, though.

I'm still hoping to dump a bunch of posts here this week. Stay tuned.

Hello, EuroBricks!

2008-07-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hi - I just noticed that this site has been getting a hefty amount of traffic lately. Apparently my little reflection on mixing my political interests with my hobbies was linked on the classic-castle site. Sadly, I haven't been following Eurobricks and I don't have the time to catch up on four pages of discussion right now, but I'll try to catch up in the next few days.

I've also noticed quite a bit of search traffic coming in. I'll avoid mentioning the upcoming event that I'm not even going to that's apparently has me in its' top 20 search results on Google, but that's definitely not helping me find the info they're looking for.

I kind of like getting web traffic here (after all, I do have ads on this site), but I'm increasingly posting things on the NCLUG website instead. Speaking of which, today's meeting went well - more details will be posted on the NCLUG site later. We're talking about getting some counter tools on that site too - which is what brought me to check back in at my StatCounter account and find out about the other stuff mentioned here.

Anyway, I still have a ton of AI work to do for Wednesday - not to mention BrickLink orders I need to ship - so it's back to net silence for a bit.

How to Write A Memorable Yard Sale Ad

2008-07-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of seeing crazy people with enormous egos write absurdly fraudulent yard sale ads. They all claim to be the biggest in town, to have everything, and to be huge and amazing. It sounds enormously trashy, and read in the right voice, they could be describing porno films instead of yard sales.

THIS is how you write a distinctive yard sale ad. Free cookies and change in rare currency! It's appealing and it's not a blatant lie that any idiot can immediately spot. Further, if I go there, I can get a cookie!

I'll let you know if I end up getting to that one, and how the cookie is.

EDIT: I did not end up going there - my route led me elsewhere and there just weren't many other sales in that part of town (which is beyond the sale holder's control, but still a factor when planning a yard sale route).

I see I'm getting lots of hits for this entry through Google. I'm thrilled that people are trying to look this up and take the effort to write a good ad, so I will make a point to write a proper article on the topic in the near future. In the meantime, the best advice I can give is to be clear and honest - use your space to give useful info (start and end time, address (at least to the street name), some details on what you're selling (especially if you're only selling clothes or baby things, you should note that), and any other relevent info (Are you in a new area that Mapquest and Google Maps can't find? Are there parking concerns? Is this a multi-family sale?)). As mentioned above, nobody takes you seriously if you talk about how huge your sale is or how much stuff you think you have - skip the hyperbole and stick to describing things accurately. If you can, take out an ad on Craigslist (a free classifieds website) and go into detail there - since there's no space limit (newspapers charge by the line), you're free to explain more.

If you do have a specific question about writing good ads, feel free to write me at 316danny@gmail.com - I am a seasoned yard sale shopper, with over 10 years of being out there early nearly every Saturday morning. I'm generally pretty fast at responding to short e-mails, but on Friday nights I'm likely busy planning my yard sale route.

LEGO Furniture - A Stool

2008-07-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

I built a stool a few weeks back. In the spirit of rushing some things up, I've dumped some photos onto FlickR. You can see them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157606142987658/

Quick Ethical Question

2008-07-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

If you receive a BrickLink order that's missing a few parts, but also has extra parts that are more expensive than the missing parts, do you tell the seller? Also, what do you tell the seller?

I'm considering just leaving glowing feedback without mentioning it - in the end, he's out less than a dollar because of the mistake. The missing parts were just parts I wanted to have on hand and not something I needed for a particular project.

Additionally, the guy's already out a couple of bucks because shipping was more expensive than expected. Working out additional shipping in either direction doesn't seem worth the effort (ironically, if not for the last time I moved cross-country, I'd probably have met the seller in person by now).

EDIT: I decided to just leave good feedback and not bring it up.

This Week's Finds

2008-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

A few finds to report:

1. There was a guy on BrickLink with seats for 4 cents each! I placed an order last week and it should be in soon.

2. DUPLO cheap at a yard sale Saturday morning! Got a ton of nice parts including a few complete sets. They need to be cleaned up a bit, but mom's claimed one of the Winnie the Pooh sets to be used as a gift. Of course, I'm keeping the other Winnie the Pooh set so that Winnie and Tigger can roam my LEGO town layouts in the future.

3. Kid2Kid stores buy MegaBloks! I had been just throwing them out, but apparently it's bad for the environment to put off-brand bricks in landfills. They're apparently worth about $6 a bag - enough to get me a "free" Bionicle set every time I go in there (although I think I'll save up my store credit for something more exciting instead). I always like free money.

Anyway, I have building and organizing to do. It's coming along well, actually - and I might just have used the DUPLO to start building a large sculpture and some furniture. What? You didn't think I really had that much DUPLO?

...and that's just the DUPLO I've bought recently. The sets I had when I was little are still packed away separately.

I'll try to have photos up soon of the stool, but I think I'll keep the sculpture a surprise.

Not Going to BrickFair

2008-07-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to clear that up. I was browsing the site earlier, and I see it'll be lots of fun and that many friends of mine are going (hey, even an AFOL I know from Londonderry!), but I just can't make it. I have the Monday afterwards off for Labor Day weekend, not the Friday before, so I'd have to miss the MOC-setup period and the Store special event. Also, this is darn expensive and I don't think I can justify the expense. Between getting up there, expenses, the inevitably large amount of stuff I'd want to buy, and the $200 to register for the two days... this is just more than I can do right now.

...I might try to send something small along with somebody else who's going (and I think I'll try to pass a wishlist along to anyone who's willing to use the Store discount to help me get a good deal), but I'll be sitting this one out.

Hmm. Maybe I Don't Get Blogging After All.

2008-07-01T20:42:00.001-07:00

So I finally re-started the LMOTD blog today. It was kind of strange, though, that a model came up that gave me an excuse to do some political activism. I'm still very excited about that, but I do have to worry a little bit about taking that blog too off-course. If I'm being honest, I have to admit that Klocki and the Brothers Brick have improved drastically since I decided to start LMOTD, and they now do many of the things I hoped to do with LMOTD. They've also been great catalysts for other LEGO fan blogs and for making some of the "big" blogs go legit (it's noticeable that Wired, BoingBoing, Gizmodo, and a few other big obnoxious blog sites have started properly crediting builders since they started reading Klocki and TBB).

I like that I'm going in my own direction, but I'm increasingly finding the content to be torn between my own viewpoint and a more kid-friendly one. I don't mind being the kid-friendly little brother to the big boys at TBB, but I do like being able to use the LMOTD platform to spread the word on events I've been a part of (or will be a part of) too. Of course, the all-too-political times we live in means that accurately praising the LEGO company for building something awesome occasionally means accidentally getting into civil rights issues and endorsing Barack Obama on a blog that's allegedly kid-safe. Autism rights is a part of the LEGO experience for me - just as a result of the way I grew up with LEGO and clung to it over the years. It's great that LEGO UK sees things my way, but I suspect that they're just trying to be good people too - and also only accidentally making a bold political statement. In a time when simply being myself and being out in public counts as discrediting popular political views, it's too hard to try to avoid being political.

...and then there's the I-feel-like-scum element. There's a feeling that I have to properly catch up with my own models here at Dan's Projects, and that I have to properly represent myself and speak up when I feel obligated to. There's a certain sense that I'd just be a (more) irresponsible person if I didn't do some of these things. If I don't do well in school or keep up with the blogging efforts I've started, it's that much harder to be an example of someone who's a "successful" autistic adult. There's just a certain amount of pressure to be a sort of role model in that respect too. Realistically, you can say all you want that people don't think of me as autistic when they see me, but it's hard to spend more than a few hours with me before it becomes obvious. Still, as much as clear as it is after a while, my mom's friends are still surprised when they realize that I can speak (and fairly well at that) - there's still just too much of a stigma and too much misinformation out there, especially here in the states.

With any luck, rushing to speak up about autism issues and applaud LEGO UK for what they're doing will help to raise a little money for the cause. I know I ostensibly blog to make money for myself, but this is important too and if I had a bit more money, I'd certainly donate to most of the groups plugged on that entry, too. Of course, if I were in the UK and had the opportunity to see a LEGO Roadshow AND buy LEGO sets in a way that supports the cause, that would be much cooler, but hey, at least I'm doing something.

I posted a normal post for Wednesday just afterwards to lessen the impact of me being so off-focus for a kid-safe blog, but I still think it will be interesting to see how many e-mails I get along the lines of "My kid asked me, 'Mommy, why did you vote for the bad lady who hates the LMOTD guy'? - what should I say to her??". Of course, it's just my luck that the brilliant and kid-safe model I blogged afterwards is part of a contest where people made models that illustrate the phrase "and monkeys could fly out of my butt".

Anyway - there is some small news over here. The BrickLink store is doing fairly well. I've started doing some DGXPO wrap-up stuff, and while it looks like there might not be a podcast after all (the recording wasn't all that exciting and had a ton of background noise), there'll probably be stuff up here and at the NCLUG site too. I might end up doing some heavier work over at the NCLUG site too - an RSS tutorial and an improved resource list for NC LEGO fans seem like high-priorities. Also, this upcoming Tuesday is the start of my Artificial Intelligence class. That should be exciting.

I hope I'm not causing too much trouble around here and that nobody will sue me soon. No, seriously - Autism Speaks has had a few websites taken down for pointing out that they claim to speak for autistic people but don't allow any autistic people on their staff.

Should advocacy projects count as my projects? I don't know.

If this type of thing does interest you, though, I do know of some more good news, actually: S. 1810, an anti-abortion bill that promises to counteract anti-autism (and other anti-genetic minority) campaigns with true information about how "difficult" it is to raise "special" children versus normal ones. While Oprah Winfrey's happy to say I'm something awful that should never happen, pro-choice politicians are looking to end wrongful abortions and give the next generation of people like me a chance, and pro-life politicians are supporting policies that keep "choice" from sounding like a farce. If that bill passes (I think Hillary is the person crazy enough to vote against it, but then again, some people actually supported her), it'll be a pretty big victory - it'll mean that Nazi-style eugenics will be prevented regardless of what the corrupt powers that be try to do about it. Realistically, it looks like we're a few years out from pre-natal tests for autism, but there have already been substantial problems with doctors recommending unnecessary abortions because they often lack first-hand experience with Down's syndrome or dwarfism. Yes, apparently there's an equally large and unjustified social stigma against bringing up children who are short too (I honestly didn't know that before I started following this legislation).

As far as I know, nobody's built anything LEGO-related that ties into that. That could be funny, though - I can just imagine someone starting a political LEGO webcomic with minifig senators. They all wear their hair like LEGO men anyway.

So, politics, LEGO, autism, being myself and just trying to be responsible ultimately end up way too close to each other. I've thought about maybe starting another blog for political stuff (with autism issues being something of a focus), but I don't think I have the time/stamina for it. I guess it's going to end up here for now, and I'll just have to deal with ruffling some feathers.

...and, uh, sometimes a LEGO model can be just a LEGO model. I think this oil platform is awesome even though I don't care for expanding offshore drilling (or honestly, even consider it a priority as issues to vote on go). I'd probably feature it this week, but I should probably go easy on stuff that could be taken as too political for a while.

Maybe I'm just being too sensitive here - does anyone know if people complained to Sean Kenney about his red-white-and-blue SUV sculpture? I didn't feature that as a model-of-the-day either. Perhaps more frightening, though, is that the most popular blog entry on LMOTD (as judged by incoming hits from search engines) is a vignette of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. Seriously, it's a good model but it's not that great (neither was my write-up), so why do people keep going back to it? OK, fine, it's better than my flag-colored vignette of it that I built in '01 (I also built a little plane for it, and when you stick the plane into one of the buildings, the top of the tower falls off! It was in terribly bad taste - and no, I'm not planning on posting pictures or instructions).

FREE LEGO

2008-06-30T16:10:00.001-07:00

OK, I thought that title would get some attention. Here's the deal: If you don't have a Revolution MoneyExchange account yet, and you sign up for it through the link below, you get $8 off in my BrickLink store. That's $8 off in general, not if you spend some amount of money. I'm also allowing this to be combined with other offers - so if you're an NCLUG member who wants free-delivery to the next NCLUG meeting (July 20th, Cameron Village Library), you can get $8.90 worth of LEGO absolutely free.

So if you live near the Cary/Raleigh/Apex area and you or your kids could use some parts, sets, minifigs, instructions, etc, this is your chance to get some for FREE. Oh, and you can buy stuff too. My store is called Who Will Guard the Bricks? and is at http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=316danny - I have a fairly wide selection, ranging from vintage 1970s figures to last year's Bionicle sets. I upload new inventory almost daily and I also take requests - e-mail me (316danny@gmail.com) if you want something I don't have listed, and I'll see if I can get it for you. If you're not in the area, I can always ship things too, but you know how that is - it costs money. Oh, what the heck - I'll do 5% for people who aren't in NCLUG but mention in the comments section of their order that they read this blog.

Do get in on this sooner rather than later, though - the deal's off if they cut the affiliate program on me, and stuff sells pretty quickly. Half of the sets I listed yesterday have already sold, for example. I price things fairly low by BrickLink standards (and yes, I know that this is occasionally more than retail for popular discontinued items) so there are some seriously in-demand bargains.

LEGO sales

2008-06-30T16:08:00.001-07:00

OK, I know I owe people some real posts here, but there's just too much going on over at LEGO Shop-at-Home. So what're you still doing here? Find the LEGO bricks you need at The Official LEGO Shop!

RME

2008-06-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Revolution Money Exchange referral program is still running. RME is a free way to pay online. It's preferred over PayPal by many sellers on BrickLink. Sign up with the link above, and I'll give you $8 off in my BrickLink store.

...and even if you don't care for anything in my store, you really ought to sign up anyways. It's just a great service.

Ball Instructions

2008-06-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

My ball design, as seen at DGXPO and LEGOPALOOZA, is now available online. MLCAD format directions are now at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=326048

...the reason for the sides-and-core implementation will be clear when you see the directions for building a lamp (Yes! They are coming!)

EDIT new links:
Ball on flickr
Lamp info

Wrap-Up Warm-Up

2008-06-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

I know I need to actually post all of my half-written stuff I've done for this blog over the past two weeks, but I thought that it was worth posting this e-mail I just wrote for the NCLUG mailing list regarding DGXPO:

I'm working on getting my photos online now. I didn't catch
everything, though, and I know at least four more cameras were going
around getting stuff. Two of them literally were going around, thanks
to Carin having a train car that was perfect for letting cameras get
video of the layouts. Skimming through my photos, it looks like I have
about 100 good ones (including my planning shots, which I'm planning
on using to figure out just how much of Carin's 9V track I stole -
I'll bring whatever I have of hers to the next meeting).

I've also already started editing our podcast. I figure I'll wait to
post a recap on our website until after that's live, and the videos
surface. That should give everybody plenty of time to get their photos
live.

Also, we took advantage of the small turnout to get in some informal
idea-sharing, so we have quite a few ideas for Palooza to share for
the next meeting. Specifically, there was a lot of interest into
making our loose town standard into something fairly official
involving high-rises and sky-scrapers but without some of the fussier
constraints of true modular Cafe Corner style building. It sounds like
post-apoc and planetary space are the other big things to discuss next
meeting.

As for the "big" things we tried: The water part of the town didn't go
so well but already is a funny story to look back on. The proper town
layout came out exceptionally well, thanks to myself, Carin, and
Matthew all bringing several original buildings on the same scale. My
weird Primo sculptures had no problem standing up the whole time and
were surprisingly popular, to the point of several people asking what
the heck Primo is and how I got so much of it. My experiments in using
real glass in buildings turned out to be too unstable in a regular
layout, but my Thomas engine (and Matthew's excellent new RC train
MOC) both were hits. The smaller Star Wars display was also
well-received and all the kids I talked to about the droids really
liked them. The DUPLO stuff I brought in was mostly noted for the Bob
the Builder characters. Thanks to the bad weather, I was able to get
back from yardsaling and hit the show pretty early in the morning, but
I also got a bit rained on while loading up at the end of the day (I
think everybody else's stuff stayed dry though). As Carin mentioned,
we connected with a lot of new people who want to join NCLUG, and the
support from the venue was excellent too.

I know that's not a fair or complete write-up, but I think that covers
all of the surprises and things that could have gone wrong.

Thanks to everyone involved,
Dan

Train Idea Book

2008-06-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the infamous train idea book, cited both in the new issue of RailBricks and at the most recent NCLUG meeting. It's free to see at: http://peeron.com/scans/7777-1/

Did I mention that some of the ideas in there are awesome? Plenty of stuff in there that I'd like to try someday.

Of course, I'm currently stuck in a brutal heatwave with a broken air conditioner - so no building for me right now. It's anyone's guess whether or not I'll actually complete anything else in time for DGXPO now.

It's really starting to bug me that my "big" crazy idea for doing a town differently isn't going anywhere. We're still planning on doing it, but now it seems like a pretty big hassle for a very small payoff. The entire town has to be on stilts for a few of the worst MOCs I've ever built. That just feels wrong. I keep thinking I'll get a chance to build something decent for it, but at this rate...

Follow Up on the Rant

2008-06-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

There's a new service up right now called BlueBrick which I plan on looking into soon, it's at http://bluebrick.lswproject.com/ - I hope it meets my track designing needs, but realistically, I don't have many left. Carin's bringing most of the track to DGXPO, and my train yard is pretty much done.

I'm really interested in a good adjustable-height table or two right now, though, for reasons that will be very clear soon. I got a great DUPLO Alligator this weekend though! That will be fun, and again, you'll know why soon.

So anyway, I'm in the process of getting organized to do LEGO resale stuff for real - you know, with a BrickLink store and such. (I know you're reading this Steven, and I do plan on sending you some stuff soon). I'm not happy with the way my store is set up so far, so it could be a while before parts start showing up there in any real quantity. If you want to visit my store, cleverly entitled "Who Will Guard the Bricks?", it's at http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=316danny - and there's a standing 10% off discount for NCLUG members, just e-mail me with your user info and I'll put the coupon together.

Ranting

2008-06-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

After a few hours spread over the last week of coming up with a rail yard design in Track Designer, I finally sat down and tried to dry-run my little train layout. It turns out, though, that TD isn't quite as precise as I thought, and in several spots, things are off by half of a stud. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but we can't afford that sort of loss of sturdiness since the rail yard is already going to be balanced on DUPLO stilts. With any luck, I'll still be able to work something out, but this is...argggh. If I had realized that this sort of mistake was possible in TD, I probably would have used MLCAD and just dealt with the curves manually (which isn't easy either).

Anyone know if LDD has decent track planning support? I'm hoping to have a layout plan set-in-stone by the end of the week, so any help I can get at this point would be appreciated.

...I get the feeling that Alanis Morrisette would find this ironic. Nothing says you-know-what to you quite like finding out that the digital interface you're using to plan a layout at the Digital Gaming Expo doesn't really work the way you think it does.

I'm off to go try to get the rail yard to work by hand...it's a good thing I decided to dry-run this and find this stuff now instead of after we get to Wake Tech...

LEGO Sets For Sale/Trade

2008-05-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

EDIT: ALL SETS LISTED BELOW HAVE NOW ~~AVAILABLE~~ sold ON BRICKLINK: http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=316danny

I have a few sets I've bought recently that I'm looking to sell. I'm primarily looking to sell these locally, either to NCLUG members or to parents in NC who can pick these up at an NCLUG event (the plane in particular is more of a kid's set than a set I can use). We're hoping to have a meeting sometime in the next two weeks in the Raleigh area, and there will be a show at Wake Tech on June 20th and 21st.

There are three sets, listed below with links to info on them. I'm asking for half price on all three, and to be honest that's roughly what I paid on the two smaller sets, which are both still sealed in the box, never opened. The 7893 Passenger Plane has been previously opened, but the original owner never finished assembling it and all the parts are there (along with the box and instructions). The bag for part 3 of the model is still sealed. I went ahead and assembled part 1 and part 2 to verify that all the parts were there. Those parts are now partially assembled and in the box with the instructions. I did not apply any of the stickers, however, two of the stickers had previously been removed from the sticker sheet and placed properly on the steps leading up to the plane. The rest of the stickers are still on the sticker sheet.

Here's what I'd like for each of the sets:
$20 for 7893 Passenger Plane (lightly used condition, see above)
$5 for 7654 Droids Battle Pack (MINT condition)
~~$4 for 4750 Draco's Encounter with Buckbeak (MINT condition)~~ claimed

I'm also open to trading these for other sets or parts - I'm always looking for basic bricks, useful special parts, and parts in special colors (light/dark greys, light/dark bleys, dark blue/red/orange/green, light blue/yellow/green, tan, orange...)

Although I am willing to ship these if someone really wants them and is willing to pay the shipping costs (this would likely involve buying special shipping boxes), I would really prefer to sell these locally instead.

Cafe-Corner-Styled WIP models

2008-05-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share a sneak peak of some stuff I'll have ready for DGXPO. Most of this stuff is loosely Café Corner style. My 9V Thomas the Tank Engine got in there too (building him means I have now officially done everything that was on my to-do list when I was 6!)

The pictures are worth a few thousand words, and have some great techniques that I expect everyone will copy before I actually get around to using them in "real" models. Yes - all of the second floor details in this photo really are made of LEGO^® parts - the one glass pane on the first floor is the only non-LEGO part there.

Keebler Elf refurbishing (Shoes)

2008-05-22T07:50:00.001-07:00

Several years back (between 2000 and 2002 I think) my mom bought this ridiculous promotional sculpture at the Londonderry, NH Goodwill store. We've found many exciting collectibles there dirt cheap (Chilly the polar bear FTW!) but when she brought the elf back, I had no idea what to do with it. We've been storing him in a ridiculous half-glued unable-to-stand state for years, but with DGXPO coming up, I saw an opportunity to finish the guy off. It also helps that the Belaire Toy/Brick/whatever-they-call-themselves-this-week Museum out in Ohio got their hands on a new-in-the-box copy of this promotional sculpture. Of course, the original has brown shoes, but hey, pre-2003 brown bricks are hard to come by! I was able to use MLCAD to create an exact copy of the shoes from the original sculpture by working off of photos of the model at the Belaire Museum. I took screenshots of the MLCAD version so that I could build the shoes quickly without needing to install all the CAD software on another computer.

Of course, some less-noteworthy parts were added too - mine has partially new hands, partially new legs, and a nose job. The nose is no longer an exact match for this one, but I had to cover up a huge scratch with something that looked passable.

Both the finished product and the screenshots are in the Brickshelf gallery: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=319898

I ought to clean this post up and put more links in sooner or later, but it's anyone's guess if/when I'll get to that.

Cake

2008-05-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

I posted a few photos of the Cake I built for LEGOPalooza. It was the 50th anniversary of the patented design of the LEGO brick, so naturally a birthday cake was needed. I'm aware, by the way, that I was immediately bested by artist Sean Kenney. The main reason to rush this one was to take it apart and put the parts away. I'm not posting any building instructions because the interior construction is I-would-bring-shame-upon-my-family bad. If you do try to build a similar cake to this one, try doing it as a layer cake instead - several people told me that that would be more effective in making it recognizable.

Of course, the real fun was having actually found enough 2x2 round bricks in a Belville set the previous weekend - I had some nice candles there!

WIP Metro Station Mod

2008-05-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

OK, so in a rare move, this has to do with a set that many people I've known for years are familiar with: the 4554 Metro Station. Aunt Debbie (hey - did I ever give her the address for this blog?) gave me this set when I graduated Kindergarten. My friend Steven (who I know is reading this) did a mod of this set with me when he was over some years back. I don't have any photos of that version, but it was built on a grey 15" square baseplate, had yellow walls all the way around and red walls inside - it changed the set from a simple station to a Train line headquarters, with several offices for various train officials. There wasn't a proper roof for that mod, but it worked well for a little while. I don't recall when I took that apart (probably during one of the moves), but I never did reattach the station to the base it originally came with.

I've previously mentioned here and elsewhere that I got my hands on some nice little bits of glass that I thought would make good windows for gigantic minifig-scale models - such as a shopping mall or European train station. I forget where I read it, but I seem to recall some more dedicated train fan explaining that the official set has that sort of European look already, so it wasn't hard to decide that that would be a fun project. Of course, if it were truly built similar to the Brussels station I was thinking of, there would be two trains that would have their lines end in the station - and for a display that won't be pre-programmed or micromanaged, it's better to set it up so that the train can go all the way through instead.

I hope to eventually come up with a solution that will be modular in Cafe-Corner fashion (and thus be easy to adjust to a few different shapes), but for now, it's going to just be this long, rough, open-to-the-rear shape. I hope to give it a real roof soon too.

Brickshelf link: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=319892

Hmm - looks like some other WIP stuff got in in the background.