November 2009 Raleigh, NC Window Into the Community Display

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.

Marathon Weeks, Post 1

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.

Trolley System Build: A Failed Attempt with some Good Ideas

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

Harry Potter sets

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...

Wrap-Up Warm-Up

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

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...

NCLUG January February Meeting

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.

DGXPO

NCLUG has been booked for DGXPO. Here's some quick info (there will be more when official announcements are made):
Wikipedia List of LEGO Computer and Video Games
DGXPO website (with countdown!)

I will be reprising my history display (with changes to make it more on-topic), and I'll also be bringing Creator, LEGO Island, Bionicle, and Star Wars themed models. I'll have some schedule stuff to work out (Saturday mornings in June are prime yard sale time) but I should be able to be there for most of our show (and I'll be in to set up as well).

The great thing about this is that it's specialized, but it's still very much a general display. Between fan-released software and videogame mods, and the sheer amount of official LEGO games, CAD software, and robotics kits available, there really isn't much of anything not relevant to the digital gaming theme. The list of video games linked above doesn't include Mindstorms/Cybermaster/LDraw/MLCAD/rendering/Track Designer/From the Vaults/DACTA/etc, so there's even more space to play around with that hasn't been outlined there.

EDIT: This is news from yesterday's NCLUG meeting. I'll post more about the meeting when I get around to uploading the pictures.

LEGOPalooza - Saturday

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).

LEGOPalooza - Setup on Friday

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.

LEGOPalooza planning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NCLUG Christmas Party photos

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

NCLUG Tree Photos from Dec 31st, 2007

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

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

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

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

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