Toastie

Errr - so "I" (as in me) do see a 2x2 tile with "LEGO" pattern on it - for me - a 100% match. When not knowing the part, I take my magnifying glass, look at the number type that into Google with "LEGO" and "part" as additional search items - and - almost 100% match. I am just saying that when hard/software can do it, homo sapiens can do it, right? I simply don't get the idea. Are there too many bricks out there that "we" can't recognize? On the other hand, how does the software do that? I am lost ... it may also be time - maybe time is an issue here. Is that it? Best Thorsten

Oh, that is true. However - you know, many things in the real world surrounding us can be turned into somethings nasty upon bad usage. Fire places in wooden homes operated with natural gas - using DIY sets from HomeDepot are one example (Well, I had great fun in setting it up! No explosions ...) For the battery explosion, you need to use LiPo's or LiIon's or the like. Plain vanilla 9V Alkalines will get hot - that's it. Leaking wise I don't know ... maybe when they overheat and build up pressure but again you'll need some nifty battery types to generate internal gas - as far as I know. Electrical shorts are always bad. Put a wire into any of the 110 V AC outlets on your home and it makes boom as well, depending on your safety measures. >Just don't do it<. In other words I would not be so concerned - pay attention, look twice, measure the resistance and - when nothing happens when you turn on the power: TURN it off. And have a good look. That way there will be no explosions. For sure. Just play around and learn how to wire-up correctly. It really is great fun. All the best, Thorsten

Yes. As always, I like to add. This is fantastic. With very best regards, Thorsten

This. That is the best way to enjoy your sets - every day, whenever you want. If I were you I'd just let them age, as time and conditions go by. I do the same thing. There is ample of sunlight during summer in "my" attic, there is a sh*tload of dust accumulating during summer as I open the roof windows when it goes above 22 deg C - and since global warming is kicking butt, it does so at ever-increasing rate. As far as I am concerned, it gives a touch to the bricks. Nothing in this world other than overpriced cars in corresponding joints look like brand new, shiny, never touched LEGO bricks. All the best, Thorsten

Same here, as @Grover said. I am using BrickSet as source and online repository - they make nice statistics as well. Then c/p their specific info into an Excel sheet with my personal additions (#instructions, date purchased etc., etc.). Bet this will work even better on other platforms, but so far nothing is better than my Excel spread sheet. For me that is Best Thorsten

Oh that is true ... but with the mental possibilities of an average person like me, paper stored in an average humidified, average room atmosphere, e.g., an average living room, easily survives > 100 years, particularly the high quality type paper TLG uses. There are a good number of books twice as old dumped in the campus university archives. With > 100 years and taking into consideration that the oldest instruction I have as a whole is from 1980, the probability that I will rot away before the paper instructions I have do, is 1. The last SSD in my laptop made it through 7 years. I was told that was foreseeable - and that I was lucky. I also own a CD from 1998 with photos (degrading visibly on the surface though, this is a long term test). Well before 1998 it is getting ... interesting. I have a floppy drive with a cool cable on the back that fits nowhere anymore, I also have an 8 inch floppy but no drive (which would not fit anywhere anymore either - I simply drove a nail through it - it looks good on the wall). DELL decided to remove the cool socket for the docking stations on my 7530 laptop - whatever that socket is called (you should have seen me trying to let the laptop pop onto the dock because I didn't even look - it "always" worked ... one of my students saw that and asked: What - are - you - doing? And you could clearly see in his face "... old man") "Always" - that is a very interesting adverb. As the phrase "for ever" is. But I believe that "paper lasts for ever" is closer to the truth as "8 inch floppies provide nearly unlimited storage space". Have a nice weekend, folks! Best Thorsten

On another thought: When you need the 4 XL's to really kick in, what are your power delivery plans? Whatever brick is doing the speed control is fine, but these need to be fed. For how long do you want to operate your train? And will it be all LEGO? In that case you'll need to stack up some battery boxes somewhere, I believe. Regards, Thorsten

I believe @Cosmik42 is rather busy at the moment or maybe for long. You know, I also believe @Bartosz has voiced it very nicely, about 2 and 1/2 months ago - which is a long time span in the software developing "market": Gone MIA - it really happens, often. Plus, when I look at my truly dirty VB6 code I wrote for my own PuP device operation - just thinking about making it public or handing it over ... makes me blush. Best wishes, Thorsten

Really cool. But you know what? I find it much more appealing when just one single line of text (or text fragment) is somehow pointing to what you are going to show with "a link". But then - that is just me. All the best! Thorsten

Oh - my - goodness. A PDP 11-24. This refrigerator sized wonder of computing power ...my knees are getting soft ... All I personally owned was an Amstrad PCW (with an Z80 on board) running CP/M - and I managed to run MP/M on that thing. Man, Z80 machine code - I could literally talk to that thing ... NOW BACK ON TOPIC: I just browsed through the books/collections in the shelves in my home office under the roof, where all that LEGO stuff is as well. It is there, all on paper: Z80 machine code by Rodnay Zaks for example. None of the floppies, tape drives, hard drives work anymore. All gone. But the documentation on paper, the books, instructions, manuals are all there. Telling me what to do in what case. This is about 35 years ago. Paper is very, very happy surviving that time span, when you are treating it nicely. It was voiced here before that PDF will last for some time. True. But the data media are virtually all gone - today DVDs are regarded as >so< old school ... yes, we can backup, convert, make compatible etc. etc. Do you do that on a regular schedule? I - don't. I am freaking out every time I need a backup because something bad happened. True, my fault. But I am an average person. Not an incremental backup guru scheduling sophisticated plans ... not when I can print it out ... Yes @ShaydDeGrai, I am also voting for paper, being in that box. What @MAB wrote is to 100% representing what I think as well. All the best Thorsten

What? Isn't that a black = white type of thing? Or did you guys behave badly on polls? Oh my goodness. BASIC. Or FORTAN? ... so beautifully nice. Very structured, very efficient. I love it! Reminds me of the times when looking at three linked PDP-10's through a glass window. And believe me, the CRTs of the DEC terminals were radiating X-rays like crazy, I am pretty sure - whole room was emerged in green light ... wait, before that goes down the wrong way ... It looked exactly like this: All the best Thorsten

I believe @SNIPE meant to make a change in the submodel at some place in the instruction without having it changed elsewhere when it used more than once? But this is sort of contradicting the idea of using submodels, isn't it? Well, maybe not. Have a nice day! Thorsten

Merde. I voted about 150 times - democracy lives off from voting - that the system allowed me to do that made me suspicious though. OK it was twice as nothing showed up when pressing the results button. Best Thorsten

This. Entirely true. This is the only approach leading somewhat into the direction of conclusive analyses. One such model used currently in e.g. the automobile industry with regard to energy consumption (and only that!) is 1) raw material acquisition, 2) parts manufacturing, 3) assembly, 4) use stage, 5) maintenance, 6) recycling, 7) re-delivery ... and there may be many more. Circular economy (some will shake their heads) is one buzz word in this regard. For one: You simply need to find companies/industries willing to take down their pants (and TLG is >not< one of these, as far as I am concerned) to get reliable data, for two: I believe in this case it is not necessary: @nerdsforprez was much more interested in the perception/recognition aspects rather than the environmental impact of paper vs (sorry) digital, and: Paper is simply not the environmental problem of concern. And may I add (stole that range comparison from a colleague at UCI): On a(n environmental impact) logarithmic scale of 1 to 10, paper does not even show up. Wait: - well sort of. Best Thorsten

Yes. Maybe. Sure. Or maybe you are getting more experienced, have seen things from many diverse perspectives, have seen a lot of things come and go. Who knows what it is. I may be age. You know what? There is one (among others) good thing about getting old: Being able to recall. And then - provided you want to at all - project. I am all with you - in every regard. But then - I am old as well. It may very well be just that. (But I doubt it) Best Thorsten

It will very much depend on how you will deliver the torque of the motors to the wheels. With more or less "direct" delivery from the XL motors, friction losses are certainly minimized. With more than 2 wheel stets powered, the overall traction will be better. So the answer to your question is: It depends on your construction. Best Thorsten

Fig 6e here could do it - but you would need to use monorail track - which apparently is a sin Best wishes, Thorsten

Maybe someone somewhere near the atmosphere breathed by high-up TLG representatives should ask that question - fact is, they are desperately looking for less invasive brick material (the point here is: Yes, we keep all the bricks - but so many billions of them are accumulating each year - where do they go? Into our shelves. BTW that is a good, almost permanent, save environmental sink). So they also know about paper. One approach would be: X billion bricks divided by the average brick count of sets = average number of sets/average brick count per set. Then we need to find the average page count per average set. Then we calculate the average area of paper per year. And compare that to e.g. the area per year used by the Sun. Or the Guardian. Or "the" Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Dhaka Tribune, the ... Or the area of Amazon card board packages you can track on the second, worldwide. I truly believe they'll give us the numbers, because they are so small (the numbers that is) ... anyone volunteering? I'd do it ... Best Thorsten

Oh my - this is the second time in a few days in this forum that I don't get it - first there was @I_Igor talking about short intestines (I got a very polite and interesting PM on that issue, and I am very grateful for that!) and now this: HEWGE. Google knows sh*t about that ... man. However, don't worry about quantum mechanics! Chances are high that they are planning for a hyperspace motorway >since long<. Passing through our solar system. Plans may be out for years - and no one here on Earth really cares: We have other things to do and to take care of. Building City-All-Terrain-Vehicles for example. So taking Heisenberg's uncertainty principle into consideration: The probability of being hit by such a lunatic star compared to just being blown apart for that really important highway is next to nothing. Next to nothing as of now! Should TLG go all electronic, we need to re-estimate, I believe. All the best Thorsten

Well, I don't even know whether I should do this or not - looking at being tagged as "random Lego fan" (which is to the point, but reads ... well to the point). But then - what do I care - as a troll: Radiation (as in photons) do have to strike the retina of our eyes to be recognized by our brain as "visible input". Call it an attack - the device called eye was designed in that way. The attack may be further dispersed in "bad", "okeyish", and "lame". The okeyish part is visible light - and this is what all devices radiate: CRTs, LEDs, and LCDs. The latter with illumination from the back - it is all the same: They actively radiate at you. Brightness, color distribution, etc. in contrast may all be different though. "Black" on a 20k$/€ LED display is close to black. Black on a CRT (anyone know these at all anymore?) are merely gray/green or whatever. I am color blind and thus don't care. Evolution has provided homo sapiens with rather powerful retina radiation protection devices; we can go out into the sun (and behold, that >is< radiation attack) without taking much damage - well almost no damage at all. So it is not the photons. Refresh rates, i.e. flicker (not to be messed up with flickr), that's a totally different story. Remember the 50/60/100Hz setting on the refresh rate of your desktop? Particularly when living in Europe the 50 Hz refresh rates very nicely interfered with 220/240 V AC driven (50 Hz) fluorescent lamps. The screen was literally "swimming" in front of you - but back then, this was all totally cool ... then came the 60 Hz button - and - the wavy behavior was gone - you'd think. Your brain though was picking up that flicker ... making some people alert or nervous or whatever ... Paper in turn is not radiating with a "refresh rate", as long as you use, let's say a fireplace or modern LED as illumination. Colored paper absorbs photons and shines back the rest to you - colors are registered via subtractive color mixing. Electronic devices can't do that - they need to refresh - otherwise you could not work with them. They do generate colors via additive color mixing - even LCDs do that - but that is not the point. Actually I believe this is all not the point: When a modern electronic device is displaying an instruction it gets bored. And thus it alerts you of email, whatsapp, instragram, ... messages, that need to be answered at light speed, tells you about the best bargains at Wallmart, Target ..., reads to you the latest news about atomic bombs being ignited somewhere on some place on the planet (for test purposes only, of course), marriages and break-ups between the most important people on this world - and the worst thing ever, that is going to >rain<. Tomorrow, in a few days, whenever, but IT IS GOING TO RAIN. Period. You know - a book is too dumb to do that. It is calm. Quiet. And at the same time an extremely exciting thing. The excitement is on a totally different level (I am not saying above or below!!!). I think that is all there is. It simply depends on what level you want to be excited. Just do your thing. So @suffocation now we have quantum mechanics as well on the agenda All the best Thorsten

Well - that is one - very nice - option. I prefer stacking up instructions up in a library kind of way. All dark wood shelves, sharing the fire, some smoking cigars from - make in Cuba - I myself enjoying first a - probably - 10 years old Glenmorangie on the rocks (which is a sin; the ice that is) - simply because Conner did that in that movie - and then turn to a dirty, taste-explosive Lagavulin, regardless of make and mileage. No way an electronic device is there as well. Cheers, Thorsten

Wait - does Win7 provide BLE support? I am not sure. But not that long ago my rather new laptop with Win10 was stolen. I grabbed my old laptop still around with Win7 Professional but no native BLE support. Would a dongle do? I am just asking, because I'd love to take that route as well. Best Thorsten

Hehee - I like the "Pennantia baylisiana" bit the most - never heard of it before. Maybe the trolls just want to pep this thread up with little spicy Monty Python type comments? I personally love this very much, it's fun! Here is another one: When you open a box with lets say a hundred million piece count model, take one of the instruction books, open it somewhere half through, swiftly stick your nose deep into the pages - man that smell - that totally chemical, out of this world, wonderful smell - painting pictures of "new" and "exciting" in my head - ever had that experience? Try that with a greasy cell phone or tablet ... Wait, where is it ... it was here all time ... ah here it is: Best Thorsten

I believe we should discuss this topic with a focus of what @nerdsforprez brought to our attention (learning/comprehension/development of mental skills etc., this is very interesting). The environmental impact is a totally different issue. Of course both are strongly coupled, as you can't build using a paper instruction when you don't have one. I cannot work with instructions on a screen, regardless of the type CRT or LCD or LED: I don't want to have my computer on when building. It does too many other things which will certainly distract me. Paper does not, because it cannot. Along these lines: One of the things I do for a living is reviewing scientific papers. When I travel and did forget to print out the manuscript, I do it on my laptop. It is horrible. In so many regards. I simply can't grasp the full story they are telling. So yes, I also believe there is a big difference in the recognition of something on a "screen" (text, pictures) or on paper. For whatever reason that is. B models as electronic version are also fully OK for me. All the best, Thorsten

I could not agree more - and I am so happy that this attitude, life style, play style - call it what you want - is out there. Thank you @knotian to phrasing this in a perfect way. All the very best, Thorsten