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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:
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 factorysets 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.
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?
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"...)
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!
 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.
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.comA 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.
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!
EDIT 4/13/2008: Why didn't anyone tell me that I had the wrong month on here? This was the FEBRUARY meeting. There was no "real" meeting in January, just the previously-blogged-about dinner. I have posted a Brickshelf gallery of photos from the January NCLUG Meeting. They're of varying quality, but I tried to get all the models I could and I let a few other people take photos with it too. More photos of everything mentioned below can be seen in that gallery, but I'm really hoping that more of the models shown will get their own pages online eventually. Highlights: - The DGXPO show I mentioned previously was announced by Carin Proctor. She's also booking the tables (apparently a specific layout of tables is already set-in-stone)
- Team Joe brought back goodies from the NYC Toy Fair, which they covered for BrickJournal Magazine. They had a number of pamphlets directed towards retailers, as well as a limited edition promo collector's item featuring Han Solo and Indiana Jones (and no, they don't want to know how much it sells for on eBay).
- The walker mechanism that showed up at the NCLUG Christmas party was revealed to be part of a very surprising model - a large steampunk airship with wings that flap in several places. There were a ton of great details here, but I tried to get most of them in photos - and missed quite a bit. If only I rememberd that there's a video feature on my camera...
- Matthew brought an apartment building built out of three Beach House sets, and also brought a train maintenance building that had been robbed.
- Sandy brought a few exciting creations - I forget what the big black one's going to end up being (but it has some great details that I didn't get any shots of) - a to-scale passenger bus and a large boat.
- I brought the beginnings of a few displays I'm putting together for future shows - a Star Wars droid display, a Bionicle display, and a large robotics/bionicle project that I'm keeping fairly secret for now (I intend to debut it next February at LEGOPalooza). I also brought in a music box mechanism that I wasn't able to run because I forgot to bring a power source.
- Joe Meno brought in the first print issue of BrickJournal - I didn't get past the first few pages, but it looks great so far!
- An interesting temple showed up near the end. It shows off some fancy parts and techniques, but I'm pretty sure that it's not based on any existing temples out there.
- I returned the extra parts I had after LEGOPalooza. Carin's planning on making the sign bigger before the next show (I thought it looked great already, but bigger can't hurt). I also brought my laptop along to show the awful ABC 11 report on LEGOPalooza (seriously, where do they find these local news teams? Are they actually trying to make fools of themselves?)
It was an exciting meeting overall - we were at that library in north Cary for a few hours but it went by rather quickly because there was so much to discuss.
I was a bit slow getting out of the house on Saturday - I didn't actually get to the Planetarium until nearly noon, even though I had been trying to get there for 10. Fortunately, everything worked well with the Aquazone layout, the history layout, and the plates for the town engine shed. There were also a few more people who pitched in to get the town/city set up. Even though the road layout was just about done and most of the houses and such had been set up, the train layout still needed to be worked out. At this point, the train was starting to look a bit scary. There were a ton of loose cars and loose parts on the floor, and it wasn't really clear who brought what or what went with what anymore. With only 45 minutes until we opened to the public, we still had to figure out how many trains we could put on the layout and finalize where the track would be going. I wound up setting up trains until about a half hour after we opened to the public. Having extra parts out with little kids around, though, meant that we kept getting asked to get different trains running. Matthew wound up taking requests to get one train at a time going on the outer track while I tried to finalize the inner tracks and figure out which trains to put out. Matthew wound up swapping trains throughout the day, and it went pretty well overall. I spent a good deal of time manning the Aquazone and history displays. At some point on Friday, a large mosaic of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble went in between the two, so I wound up explaining the PicToBrick software to a few people too. The kids responded pretty well to both displays, but I had to explain what Aquazone was to most people. I guess "failed LEGO themes of the 1990s" isn't taught in schools these days. I did have one kid who had obviously read up on the topic come up to me and ask me where my bad guys were. That was embarrassing - I had been hoping that the little kids didn't know my sets well enough to spot the missing parts (although I had wound up not putting out the Crystal Scavenger set for similar reasons, which are a bit embarrassing to put in writing). Even though most people didn't "get" the theme (quite a few people didn't even get the "Finding Nemo" bit or the "Octopus' Garden" either), everybody seemed to like the light up cave, lit-up base, and lit up ships. There was even one kid taking video of my motorized sub. The strangest part of manning Aquazone and history came when some kids got out of one the Planetarium's paid courses and saw Aquazone first. I explained that the Aquazone sets were from the 90's, and since these kids didn't realize yet that my other display was mostly based on stuff from the 60's, the kids were saying "so that's OLD!". Their parents found this as funny as I did. Quite a few people were surprised by my lamp in the history display. Apparently most of them hadn't seen the Sopwith Camel set before, either (to be fair though, it is a rather-impressive looking set). I wasn't sure how many people would really stick around to read the poster, but quite a few actually did - maybe a third of the people who came by. I had to take a few parts out of my LEGO logo mosaic at one point to convince people that it was really built and not printed on. Several parents recognized some of the older sets and parts on display, and quite a few kids seemed really interested in it. The people who stuck around the longest were people who didn't really have any clue about this stuff though - we had quite a few people come in who were obviously just curious UNC students. I got the impression that they didn't realize that it had been 50 years since the LEGO brick had been patented. Now that i think about it, though, I'm not sure that anybody commented on my "50" sign or the slice of birthday cake. I was surprised by how excited the kids got about some of the newer sets. Once I realized how much attention the three Bionicle sets I brought were getting, I decided to grab some more for Sunday (naturally, I have two or three whole collections of Bionicle that I've bought at yard sales, so grabbing an impressive-looking pile of sets is pretty trivial). A few people complained about the lack of non-Star Wars space sets this year (I get the impression that people thought I'd be a safe guy to complain to since the sign and poster looked a bit "official" - and besides, what fan of LEGO history doesn't love Classic Space?). I decided to bring in a small spaceship for Sunday too. I did have a few people who were wondering about whether or not their kid could join NCLUG too (I tried to dodge the question, mostly - I didn't really know what the rules were on kids joining NCLUG until we sorted it out online the week after Palooza). The coach of the Apex FIRST LEGO League team gave me his business card too - apparently they're interested in doing a display too (I need to get back to him and let him know what he needs to about joining the group, though). I was going back-and-forth between town and history/Aquazone for most of the day. I did get some pictures in, but Joe insisted I use his camera instead once he saw me having a hard time getting good shots. I only got in a few dozen shots, though, before I was needed to keep an eye on some displays again. We were pretty busy for most of the day, and every time paid courses got out, we had another wave of people come in (I probably noticed this more than most because I had the wall directly outside the part of the ballroom where the "challenge courses" were going on). After closing on Saturday, most of us went to a pub in Durham. I didn't particularly care for the place, to be honest. It was a bit hard to follow the conversation, too, and we had a large enough group that it made sense to switch ends of the table a few times to try to catch everything that was going on. After dinner, everybody raced to Target and Toys'R'Us to browse the LEGO selection. I didn't buy anything (and I even got lost on the way to TRU!), but that was fun. That was a bit of a long night though, and I was planning on being there as early as I could on Sunday to set up a Bionicle display (and believe it or not, we still had a few town things we wanted to fix).
When Friday, February 1st rolled around, I still wasn't entirely ready for LEGOPalooza. Most of the poster still had to be done. Carin stepped in to build the NCLUG sign (I know I should have made a little sign to credit her as the builder for that - sorry. That's her sign in all of the photos of my display), which freed me up from a rather large project that I wouldn't have been able to have ready in time. I had been hoping to start heading out towards Chapel Hill fairly early in the day, but that wound up not happening because of how long the poster took to finish. I wound up eating lunch before I left in the afternoon. Oh, and did I mention that I had to get gas on the way out? Mom's car had been in the shop (so I had to pick that up on Thursday) and because mum had been out-of-commission since falling in the garage the previous weekend, I had to pick the car up and get fresh gas in it to take it to Palooza. Of course, we had drizzle outside on Friday too, so suddenly I had to find coverings for all of the open-top containers that I had packed. Things got better once I finally got on the road. I was able to get to the Planetarium without any problems thanks to some new directions from Google Maps (last time I went up to the Planetarium parking lot at UNC was for a Nickel Creek concert in 2006, and I got lost on the way there). Unloading went pretty well. I had a really light load compared to some of the more seasoned NCLUG members, so I was able to get to setting up fairly quickly. There's a bit of a twisty route between the parking lot and the ballroom where LEGOPalooza is held, but everything got in just fine. Joe Meno (editor of BrickJournal magazine, who we're lucky enough to have as an NCLUG member right now) was there setting up the tables and he helped me bring stuff in. Joe Meno had brought a few things for the history display too - and they were all great additions that caught a lot of attention. He had a large wooden box with a variety of vintage pieces from the early 60s. I didn't really have a chance to look through it until Saturday, but there were a ton of easy-to-spot signs in there, as well as parts from the first Esso Station set and the very first lighting elements (which were missing the battery box, so we have no idea if they still work or not). Joe also had an awesome Formula 1 set from 1975 and a helicopter from the early 70s that was apparently very popular back in the day (quite a few parents told me that they had that one when they were little). Joe also had some official history of LEGO literature that he picked up last time he was in Billund, and he brought some print versions of earlier issues of BrickJournal too (BrickJournal was an online-only publication when it was first launched and is only now going into print). There was plenty of other exciting stuff getting set up around the room, too. Joe Meno had gotten us the new Green Grocer set (which comes out in March and is a must-have kit with a ton of great details - I could probably write a small book just about all the neat ideas and parts in that set). The Green Grocer was a mere rumour at the beginning of that week - the first photo of it was leaked on Tuesday, and apparently NCLUG and another group doing a show that weekend in Belgium were the first to display it publicly. I'm a bit behind on the impressive newer town sets (they're great sets but they are a bit expensive, even if they are actually cheaper-per-part than the smaller sets are), so I also had my first chance to get a good look at the Cafe Corner set on Friday too. Set-up at my display was fairly uneventful. It took a while to get the electricity hooked up (I had brought my lamp, and I also needed enough cable set up behind my display to reach the various electric things in the Aquazone layout). Once the electricity stuff was done, I set up my history table. I used one of my Coke trays as a riser, but besides that I was able to squeeze everything onto just one table (Of course, I had moved on to one-and-a-half tables by the time we opened on Saturday, and I took up two full tables by the time we opened on Sunday...) Somewhere along the way, Joe Cool lent me a build-in-a-bag for the history display too. Setting up the Aquazone stuff proved a little bit more complicated. Joe Cool and Joe Meno were both bringing Aquazone stuff too, and everyone built more than they had originally expected too. At one point, I had dry-ran all of my pre-built sets and original models as a separate layout, but shortly after that we settled on putting the Neptune Discovery Lab set on one side of Team Joe's layout and setting up the rest of my sets and models on the other side. This looked great, but it did present a new electrical challenge that wasn't resolved until the next morning - I had added lights to both the Neptune Discovery Lab and the Shark's Crystal Cave (the latter required hollowing out most of the original set so that the lights would show through windows in what were originally separate chambers). I had brought one train speed regulator for all of my electrical needs in the Aquazone layout (which included those two sets and an original Aquashark sub that I rigged with motorized propellers and a fiber optic unit), so I had to bring in some extra cables on Saturday to get the whole thing going. I'll post more later about the lighting process, the motorized sub, and the other original sub I came up with (it could take months for me to get around to writing all that, though, and I doubt that as many people will find it interesting). With the Aquazone stuff ready, I moved on to Harry Potter. Even though I'm not a Harry Potter fan, I actually have a decent-sized collection of it by now because of two HP collections that I bought at yard sales this past summer (which had about 8 sets total in them (including the castle), 5 of which were complete (the rest I'll use for parts)). I had modified a pair of Hogwarts Express cars to look "runnable", and those went towards Jen's displays (Jen builds dioramas of scenes from the books and movies). She only wound up using one, but it still came out pretty well. I put four other sets over in the display that Sabrina's mom (sorry, I didn't catch her name!) was doing, too, but it turned out that we both had brought those sets (so next year I should probably leave mine at home). You'd think things would slow down once I had prepared all the displays that I was "really" contributing to, but things actually got busier for the rest of the night. It took me a few minutes to get my Carribean Clipper ready for the Pirates display (I know that I have a ton of other (and later) Pirates sets too, but that was the only one I had ready). After that, I went to put some of my road plates in the town/city, which was already starting to shape up (the Cafe Corner-Market Street-Green Grocer trifecta had already been snapped in and a few other sets and original models were out too). Sabrina's mom had built an awesome fire station from scratch - I'll have to find some more photos of it somewhere, though, because I don't have any good pictures of the interiors (which were extremely detailed). I was just about done putting roads in front of houses and such when Matthew came in with a few city blocks pre-built. The city blocks looked good and worked into the layout easily enough. The next big change was that Matthew had brought in a spectacular train station of his own design. On the Yahoo! group, nobody had expressed interest in doing a train, so I had assumed that all of the train stuff that I was bringing "just in case" wouldn't be used - but once you have a great train station, you kind of have to set up some train track. Once I started taking track out, train sets, buildings, etc. just started coming out of the woodwork. Matthew (who doesn't even own any 9V trains of his own) somehow wound up in charge of setting up several trains in a much larger layout than anyone was expecting. I wound up being a sort of "train guru", and I was over there helping out quite a bit on all three days. By the end of the night, we had two rounds of track set up, completely encompassing the town layout, the Spongebob Squarepants layout, and Sandy's Eastern architecture-themed models (which, by the way, are also really good, but required a hefty amount of special-parts-ordering). I wound up setting up my Train Engine Shed, but we ran into some trouble because I hadn't brought the baseplates for that set (I brought them in on Saturday, though). We actually didn't finish setting up the town layout on Friday - but a big part of that was because we were waiting for Carin to show up (and somehow, none of us knew quite what she was bringing). Carin showed up with a few pre-assembled models for the town and a large pile of unopened sets that needed to be built. She had the new 50th Anniversary Town Plan set assembled too, which was exciting to see (that's also on my list of current-sets-I-have-to-get). We wound up using the table that was set aside for Mindstorms displays to do a group build - I think most of us got to build at least one set there. I got to build one of the newer train stations (which was nice enough, but I still prefer my Metro Station set that's still packed away somewhere) and I also built two of the new fire/rescue sets. The group build lasted well into the night. I didn't actually have a chance to stop and eat - I just started building with one hand and eating pizza with the other. I was surprised at how good I got at opening the boxes and bags with just my left hand. By the time that the end of the night rolled around, I had a small list of little things that needed to be brought in for Saturday. I still had to make the smaller signs for my history display, and there were a few little things (like the wires and baseplates I mentioned earlier) that I needed to add for town and Aquazone. A few people were worried about the way that my history poster was hanging off of the table a bit, so we decided that I'd have to reorganize my table on Saturday morning too. The Planetarium more-or-less kicked us out on Friday night, leaving plenty of work left to do for Saturday morning before the crowds showed up. That's another post, though.
Palooza ended today. I'll probably post pictures and some stuff about how many people were there in the next few days. If I get really ambitious, I might post some instructions and text from the history poster. I doubt I'll be able to squeeze much in before Thursday, though (plenty of "real" work to do). A few important notes: I checked against some photos that I took before leaving for Chapel Hill, and I do have the correct road plates now. Carin's NCLUG sign is living at my house right now. I'll bring it to whatever the next NCLUG thing is. I'm hoping we'll be at a library or somewhere else where I've heard we "normally" are - it's hard to get as much LEGO talk in at a bar or restaurant. I seem to be missing one piece of 9V cable that I borrowed from a Mindstorms kit. I'm hoping it will turn up once we all start unpacking things. The Bionicle display was added on Sunday morning. I'd like to see about making this an "official" collaboration with the little kids - it's much easier to just ask them to stand the Bionicle things up and make the "good guys" fight the "bad guys". Besides, I still have no clue what the story lines are. They're just gearboxes with goofy things to me. The photos I took of the packed boxes came out well, and I have about 60 good shots of the event (some from both days and the set-up on Friday). I'll try to have those up on Brickshelf sometime this week.
Tonight I'm going to be at the NCLUG dinner. I'm not preparing to take any models up with me, but the SD card in my camera has photos of a bunch of stuff I'm planning on / thinking about bringing. We'll probably discuss a few other things (parking, town baseplates, train track, etc) and I'll probably have other stuff I'll be planning on bringing by the end of the night. Anyway, for those of you who aren't in NCLUG, a sampling of photos are up at this Brickshelf Gallery. That's just a few highlights - I have some additional photos and ideas that are still only on the chip. I expect to have plenty of good photos of the event itself in a few weeks, which ought to be enough to catch you up. Feel free to let me know what you think of anything in the photos here - comments are enabled and I'm open to suggestions and criticism on everything pictured. EDIT 11:57 PM: Well, that went well. I had a pretty stellar shopping trip at Brier Creek before I showed up - wound up being a little late after that Goodwill run took longer than expected (I did buy this Mars Mission set there, basically new but missing the instructions - anyone have the instructions and willing to scan/lend them to me?). I also picked up a ton of stuff on sale at Hallmark and Barnes and Noble - they're running 75% off of a ton of things. Onto the dinner - we didn't sort out too much. We're apparently now planning a Pirates island. I'm planning on trying to assemble the one ship I've located in time for that (I believe it's this one). Nobody else seems excited for next year (I figure I'll have found most of my other Pirates set by then and will be ready to do a larger layout). I'm also bringing extra blue baseplates for water (but I think Carin said she's bringing a blue tablecloth to use for that purpose too). The town will be fairly small this year - I believe I heard "one table" thrown around for a size. It's not even a sure thing that there will be a train at this point. I'm bringing extra train track and road baseplates no matter what though - just to make sure we have plenty of them regardless of how things end up. My Harry Potter-related plans are now set in stone - I'm going to be adding regular train wheels (and magnets, in one case) to my Hogwarts Express cars and contributing them to the Harry Potter diorama display (IIRC, my complete HP sets and some 9V train track will be added to the HP set display - which I think we settled at the Christmas party). Joe filled me in on how the parking situation works out - apparently we're given some sort of vouchers to use to "pay" for it. Oh, and the picture of a face thing that I think was supposed to be Elvis was given a resounding thumbs-down by everyone who saw it. That's not coming, then. Here's the scorekeeping for tables/what I'm bringing for each: 1 table for my "history" display (I'm contributing some MOCs: small sculptures, over sized bricks, a lamp, a LEGO logo mosaic; sets: the Sopwith Camel, probably a set or two from a few "representative" themes; vintage parts/sets; and a background poster of some sort with NCLUG background, LEGO background, and LEGO info on it) - I don't think we settled who would be making/bringing an NCLUG sign to put here. I forget who, but somebody on the mailing list offered to bring some vintage boxes too. 2 tables an Aquazone layout. I'm contributing "playscape" bases, some sets, and possibly a few MOCs for this. I also have a few extra parts that I'm planning on bringing for this (bushes, sharks, sea creatures and such). I expect to have at least 3 loose subs, I have located two of the playscapes, and I have 3 10"x10" baseplates that I will have filled by then (the Shark's Crystal Cave set and then some sort of Aquanauts base - likely modded to include lights/motors). 1(?) table for a Town layout - I'm bringing the train shed set (unassembled), train tracks, and various street baseplates. I have no idea if any of my stuff will be used or not, though. At the moment, I'm NOT planning on bringing any train cars for this, but I could try to have a few ready (from sets) if we decide for sure on wanting to do a train. I'm also NOT bringing any town buildings, contrary to what I originally told people. 1 round table for a Pirates layout. This is a new plan that was just made tonight, and I don't anticipate being able to get much ready for it with the time we have remaining. I'll probably bring a ship - is there Wi-Fi at the planetarium so I can get instructions off of Peeron there, or do I need to make sure it's assembled beforehand? I'm bringing blue baseplates for this, and I guess my sharks might show up here instead of in Aquazone too. 2 tables (maybe more) for Castle displays. I had forgotten that some people are doing castles until I heard the discussion on this tonight. There's a slight chance that I'll have a set or two ready, but I don't plan on contributing here. 1 table for Harry Potter sets. I'm contributing four small sets here. I'll also have extra train track for the 9V Hogwarts Express. 1 table for Harry Potter dioramas that depict scenes from the books and movies. I'm contributing Hogwarts Express passenger train cars for this (with the modifications mentioned above). Joe's doing some Mindstorms (NXT?) stuff somewhere, but I don't know how many tables that'll take. In any case, I'm not planing on contributing anything there. 4 tables are going to Rick's display. I'm not entirely sure what he's doing or if I should be contributing anything to that. 2 tables for Star Wars near the stage - the stage will have the UCS models (which are big enough to be seen at a distance like that). Unless enough of the black Technic rubber bands magically turn up for me to fix my Battle Droid, I won't be contributing to this (I haven't run this by anyone yet, but you can never have too many Battle Droids, right? It's a cool model and they have tons of them in the film. The only problem with the Battle Droids is that apparently the bands will snap in the heat conditions produced by moving vans...). I keep hearing things about Adventurers/Indiana Jones, but I have no idea what's really going on there. The Brickfilms plans are off - unless we find out that we have more electrical outlets than we expected (in which case, I may be bringing a laptop to show videos on - somebody else will have to provide the DVD / online resource to me though). I might also change my lamp and Aquazone plans depending on power too. I guess I should plan on bringing extension cords just in case (I'm not sure how many I'll find, though).
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