lostcarpark

Having just reviewed Olivia's laboratory, I find myself quite wanting this set too. Great review. James

Thanks. I didn't think "Friends" should be part of "Town" since it's a non-minifig theme, but whatever you think appropriate. James

With Lego Friends apparently the most controversial things Lego have produced in recent years, I thought I would have a look at one of the sets, and post a short review, along with my thoughts on the theme. The set I chose was 3933, which is a small laboratory/workshop. I picked this set because it promotes women in science/engineering, which I feel is a positive thing, and because it was relatively inexpensive, being one of the smaller sets in the series (price in Ireland, €

I just got official word of the pricing... everybody sitting comfortably? 10214 – Tower Bridge: US= 239.99 UK=204.99 DE=219.99 CA=314.99 James

That's cool, but does anyone find it slightly spooky that they all have exactly the same facial expression? :-)

I'd like to announce that a dedicated site for the Great Western LEGO Show (also known as STEAM for the museum where it takes place)is now live: http://www.greatwesternlegoshow.com This is the biggest LEGO event in the UK, with over 10,000 visitors over the weekend last year, and over 60 AFOLs exhibiting. We'll be posting news to the site a couple of times a week, and have set up a newsletter and Twitter feed that you can join. We hope you enjoy the site, and we welcome any feedback on it. There are some awesome things planned for the show, so if you're in the UK, or fancy visiting for a weekend, it should be well worth your while. More will be revealed on the website over the coming weeks.

I think the title says it all. Irish Lego fans have banded together to form brick.IE, and new LUG aimed at bringing other like minded people together. We've already had our first couple of meetings, and we hope to have a public display event this year. Membership is currently free to anyone who asks - just register on our website and post a message to the "Introductions" forum and we'll make you a member. If you're a Lego fan in Ireland, or feel a connection to Ireland, please check us out. http://www.brick.ie

It looks to me like old stock. The scorpion set went out of stock before I got to check out. I got a RC car for £20 and a few other bargains. Could be worth keeping an eye on it in case there's more to come.

Excellent review! Lots of lovely dark chocolaty brown. Yum! Is the dragon's helmet separate from its head, or is it all a single moulded piece?

Hmmm, I've taken 9V track up inclines, and as long as the climb rate is gentle enough, it isn't a problem. If you want to bring your train up a short ramp, I agree you'll have problems - not least in stopping the train slipping back down the tracks. I don't have a problem with this, as most real trains have difficulty with anything over a 1:50 climb. I'm reminded of the big blue ramp pieces of Tomy Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and I don't think they're needed. Just my opinion. Feel free to convince me otherwise. Now what I would love to see is curved points. Assuming we have at least two track radii, a set of points with the the smaller radius on the inner curve, and the larger radii on the outer curve would be really beautiful. They could be paired to allow a crossover to be placed on a curve, saving space for stations and other elements on the straights. Model railways have these, and they look so elegant. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

Well on the surface it sounds good, so long as they're not just picking "yes men" who'll agree to anything for fear of getting left out of the next round of workshops. New track geometries are the one thing that could sell this to AFOLs. It may take a while to convince fans with a big track collection, but if there are lots of new and interesting curves available, eventually you've got to sit up and take notice. Rechargeable battery packs also sound good. I can imagine future train shows with a bank of battery packs charging away to swap over as trains start to die. Hopefully they won't be glued to a particular train base size, as that would kill it for many AFOLs. Hopefully they will also be able to power our multimotored behemoths! Personally I'd like to see the end of the motor bogie, and a small new motor that can fit into a brick built bogie. That would free us from the slightly awkward wheel spacings of the traditional Lego train motors, and allow us to make our own arrangements that fit properly with our trains, and escape the tricks we've had to do to make C0-C0 bogied locomotives, or steam trains. From Lego's point of view this has the advantage that the resulting motor could be used for lots of non-train purposes. All that's needed is a small motor, 4-studs wide that a technic axle will fit through. The last two paragraphs are slightly worrying, though. On the one hand, I think it's realistic that the system has to be usable by children, and no one with a bit of realism expects to get everything we want. I don't see this as a problem if you consider the current power functions dinosaur and bulldozer usable by children. On the other hand it could be saying that all our requests have been ignored and we're getting another round of <insert that tiresome argument> trains with Jack Stone minifigs. :-)

Another interesting idea, but I think it would struggle to gain acceptance. If the client has to be downloaded and installed, that will put many people off, especially if that client is closed source. At least if people can inspect the source they can check that it hasn't any form of malware hidden inside. Also it precludes people using platforms you haven't chosen to support from porting to their platform. I also think the client will have to do a lot of the work that a web browser gives you for free, like formatting the thumbnails, and would make it a lot more difficult to add the commenting and profile features a lot of people are asking for. The other advantage of open source is that if other communities also have photo sharing needs they could participate in the development, making expertise available that we might not otherwise be able to draw on. I feel that spreading the load over many servers is one way to mitigate that load so that no single server or person has to bear those costs.

Okay, I've only built a couple of the small sets so far, so I expect I'll discover lots of things about them as I build the rest, but overall I really like them. I love the fact that they hark back to the classic Castle, but have the added dimension of skeletons. I think the knights look great, a vast improvement on the Knights Kingdom ones. The silver helmets and weapons brings them nicely into the new century, but the classic helmet shapes remain. I also really like the buildings and accessories. The big castle looks fantastic, and compares very favourably to some of the great castles of the 80s and 90s. In general, I like the skeletons. The arms are a little on the long side, and I would have quite liked a slight bend in the elbow, but I can think of lots of uses for that particular part, which goes a long way to forgiving the complaint. Still, it would have been nice to have a part just for the skeleton arm, with a round bone shape rather than the rectangular robot arm shape. I do rather like the skeleton horses, though they would be even nicer if their necks would bend. I'm not crazy about the dragon, but I can't have everything. I'm very fond of the system/technic/bionicle hybred creatures from the Viking line, and the brick-built creatures from Aqua-Raiders, so the chunky one piece dragon seems a step backwards (it does recycle parts from Dino 2010/Dino Attack). Overall, though, I love new castle.

Ah, thanks. I was wondering where it had gone.

After the Brickshelf fiasco, there was a thread asking people what they'd like from a future picture hosting site, and the general responses tended to focus on features, largely divided between people who wanted it to be as close to Brickshelf as possible and people who wanted neat Flickr-like features. Unfortunately I can't find this thread. Let me say that I think Brickshelf is a great site. I know it takes a fantastic amount of effort (and money) to keep such a vast amount of data and serve all the users wanting to see it all. I would like to see some fancy new features, but I realise that would just make the problems of the main site requirement more difficult. However, my problem with Brickshelf is that I really don't trust the owner any more. I understand he's going to offer a $5 per month premium service, but I'm reluctant to pay for fear of him suddenly deciding not enough people have subscribed and shutting the whole thing down again. I feel he did a lot of damage by shutting the site down without warning. I suspect I'm not the only one with this fear. I also have to say that $5 per month is pretty steep compared to $20 per year for Flickr and comparable sites which offer a much bigger feature set. But my biggest fear is control. The whole thing depends on one person doing everything. As far as I know this is not because there aren't other people willing to help, but simply because that's what the owner has chosen to do. Of course, he has the right to do whatever he wants with his site, but likewise the AFOL community have the right to ask "do we want to put all our eggs in one basket?" So, I've been thinking, how can we create a brick photo hosting site that is not dependant on any one person? The idea I've come up with draws inspiration from two main sources: open-source software and peer-to-peer file sharing. The first aspect is that the software for the site should all be released as open-source. This means that any can download the software and if they wish, modify it and launch a rival site. But, of course, just using open source software is not enough. While it's good that if the site should go down tomorrow, someone else could set up a new site running the same software, without the photo files, it wouldn't be much good. So the idea that struck me was to have a number of sites running the same open source software, linked in such a way that photos uploaded to one site would automatically get transferred to the others. The idea would be to have no single central server (otherwise people would always want to go there to get the "newest" photos). Photos could be uploaded to any server in the network, and over the course of a few minutes or hours (depending on how busy things are and how frequently update jobs run), would get transferred to the other servers. I'm hoping that there are a lot of (or at least a few) people who have a webserver available with spare storage and bandwidth. Perhaps there are people working for companies who could persuade their employer to give storage and bandwidth to something like this (perhaps in exchange for getting their logo on pages they serve). There probably would have to be some sort of a central server to keep track of the servers in the network and maintain security (I think it would need some sort of public/private key system for communication between servers, otherwise it would become a hacker's paradise), and probably to look after the "master" URL. But all user requests would get redirected to a random server somewhere in the network (it could probably try to be clever and look for a server geographically closest to the requester). So how would it work? Well, let's say I had a webserver with a couple of hundred GB of spare storage space and I could offer a few GB of bandwidth per month to the project, I could offer to add this server to the network. Assuming it met the criteria, I would download and install the software, which would do a "health check" and report its status to the central server. The master server would add it to the network, but place it into "catch-up" mode, and the new server would start downloading the photo archive (this would probably use web services, though I don't want to get too much into specific technologies at this point). Once things get going and the archive gets big, this could take quite a while. Once it has a complete copy of the archive, it would get put into "live" mode, and user requests for photos would start getting redirected there. The server would monitor the bandwidth usage, and if a monthly limit was reached, it would put itself into a "no requests" mode, so it would only be getting new photos and not serving users. At the end of my billing period it would go back into "live" mode and serve users again. If one of my other sites got "slash-dotted" and my monthly bandwidth was hosed, I could opt to place the picture site in "lock-down" mode, so it would take no requests, and would not get new photos. At the end of the month, I would place it back into "catch-up" mode and it would have to catch up with the archive before taking requests again. From a user point of view, this should all be transparent. I would go to www.something.com, which is the master server. I would immediately be transferred to another URL such as nodex.something.com, but which is located on one of the many donor servers, but as the something.com part stays the same, I don't worry. I can log in and post photos, and use whatever other features the site offers (comments and profiles would be nice). If I were to switch to another server in the network at this point, some of the content I'd seen on the previous server might not have arrived yet, including anything I'd posted. Of course, one aspect that would have to be different is the approval process, since the photos are distributed across many servers, a very different approach would have to be adopted. There are several options, but I don't think it's necessary to decide on one at this point. The beauty of the system would be the high level of fault tolerance. Of course the single point of failure would be the URL and the master server, but I expect a trust of some sort could be set up to control them, and if disaster did strike and the master server and URL were lost, there would still be lots of servers containing a copy of the data, and it would just be a matter of establishing a new master server and rebuilding the network. Of course there would be quite a lot of work to create such a system, and it would probably take quite a while to get even a test system in place. I would like there to be several people involved in the development, partly so the workload is shared, but also so that it's not just one person making all the decisions. Further down the road, I think a project like this could be a very good thing to have on the CV and it could attract interest (and funding) from companies like Google. I would be very keen to have it structured in such a way that it couldn't be taken over by a big company who might not have the best interests of the AFOL community at heart. So what do you think? Is this something that's needed or useful? Is it something you'd be willing to get involved in? Would you (or your company) be willing to donate storage and bandwidth to it? I look forward to your opinions. James

Yes those old sets were amazing, but I have to say their latest offerings are definitely heading in the right direction. New Castle rocks. And their new ads are pretty good too... Must have that MTT! James

Here's another variation on the Jason Railton/Richard James Tardis and Dalek: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1604623 (catch it before Brickshelf disappears) And the rest of the diorama is also quite amazing!

Wish I could be going, but I will be in England two other weekends in July, so something had to give. Lego will be there, and their stand will feature the UCS Millennium Falcon in a specially constructed Bocking Bay 94 built by members of the Brickish Association from their "Mos Lego" display. The Brickish Association will be in the fan area, with a selection of other models from Mos Lego. Here are some photos from the full Mos Lego display in Leicester. It really is rather stunning.

With all due respect, I really, really think this is something we want to steer clear of. There's a whole can of worms we really don't want opened. While I'm sure the vast majority of posters would mean no disrespect to anyone, someone would inevitably post something that someone would interpret as being of great offence to their particular beliefs. There mightn't even be any members of the offended group on the forum, but that wouldn't matter, because sooner or later someone would find it on Google. They would then get very offended and tell all their friends, and they would all sign up to post about how offended they were, and how all Lego fans have set out to attack their religion. I've seen it happen before, and you'd be amazed at some of the things people can find offence. I respect the right of each individual to believe anything they want. However, if you want to discuss it online, there are plenty of suitable forums to do so. I think you will find the discussion of such topics much more enlightening on forums that specialise in those topics. Unfortunately most of us are too busy constructing an alter to display our golden C-3POs!

Well, given our typical Irish summer, I bet they are cold. Irish skin typically starts somewhere around pale blue, and after about half an hour's exposure to sunlight turns lobster red. Not too much of a problem at home, and makes it easy to spot a group of fellow counryfolk when abroad!

Gosh - I'm sure it's early yet, but Portugal and Ireland seem to be where all the European AFOLs are. Who would have thought that?

They're not printed it's an electrostatic process that covers them in the silver coating. The coating is bonded to the plastic in a more permanent way than paint would be. The current process is supposed to be pretty durable, and actually less prone to chipping than the chrome ones. However, I don't think it possible to make it so it won't scrape off with heavy wear. To the best of my knowledge there's no way to make plastic have a bright metallic finish all the way through. The closest you can achieve is the "pearl" silver and gold seen on quite a few bionicle sets as well as the golden batmobile wheels (I can't think of an example of pearl silver in a non-bionicle set).

I got the email too. I found it in my Spam folder, so it's worth checking carefully. There must have been a good few, as I know at least four other winners. By the way, if you're sending out emails, starting them "Congratulations!" is probably not such a good idea.

I like the new ones. I think they look great for monsterous hordes. The longer arms give them a primevil, ape-like quality. I also like the old ones, but I think they make better corpses than warriors. It might have been nice if we could have had new arms designed specially for skeletons, with a round bone profile rather than a rectangular droid profile, abnd the right length too. On the other hand, I'm delighted to have new droid arms.

I shall ask the creator if it's okay to pass them on. PM me your email address and I'll see what I can do. Here's another rather good Tardis, by the way: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/brickish/WitC/bw-04-01.jpg