Lego Otaku

Still haven't won yet. Did I use the wrong pieces in sacrifice to appease LEGO God? I am pretty sure burning JunkyBloks would help.

re: sorting by colors: I wouldn't bother sorting them. I have (for example) many technic 1x4 bricks all in one compartment. No single color stand out, and if I needed a specific color it's fairly easy to find them in mess of 1x4 technic bricks. Just one compartment, about 200 total in 5 or 6 different colors. The only time I'd sort them by color is if I have many hundred or thousands of one type in the same color. I have one compartment for 1x1 tiles that are mixed but you won't find trans-dark-blue in there because I have close to 10,000 of them in a separate compartment. With that many of one color, it can actually hinder my ability to search other colors so overly common color are given separate compartment to make the rest of the mixed color bin easier to look through. I still have 400 pounds of mixed LEGO to deal with, spread across 8 large 10-gal totes. If the internet is mostly accurate and figuring average of 325 mixed random pieces per pound, the mixed lot I have is around 180k total, give or take a few thousand.

LDraw has a rather steep learning curve compared to LDD but you can do a lot more, mostly because LDraw usually has all but the newer pieces. Importing can be done but it rarely works well because some details get lost in translation like angle and orientation of each parts, the position of flexable items, and newer parts that are in LDD but not in LDraw won't carry over. It may be easier to try and recreate from scratch so you don't have to worry about oddly positioned parts hiding out of sight or other problem.

Looking at the beach picture, I remembered something.I still don't know why 1x1 round brick got grooves on the bottom. 1x1 bricks of other type do not have groove, only tiles and jumper plates has the groove. Is there something about 1x1 round brick that needs the groove and breaks otherwise smooth pillar look?

Technic beam and pins if it's going to be load bearing. a long plate or tile plus hinge piece if it's not load bearing support

Nice tall display!!!

What about the space ship itself? I've seen a few reproduction by creative modders but all of them seems to have a glaring problem: cockpit window in trans-yellow doesn't exist. I'm still wondering if LEGO is planning to release the blue minifig with simulated wear on the logo and a printed "crack" mark on the helmet or if it'd look like new minifig like the collectible minifig set a few years back? A real cracked helmet wouldn't sell right to some people, they might call and complain the helmet arrived broken.

Where's the like button???

Looks like it could work like one way valve? Air can flow one way with sufficient pressure but can't flow other way.

Nice!!! Now I need a 2x2 45° double inverted concave. A reverse of this: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3046a. The closest I can get to it is a 2x2 corner brick and hacked pair of cheese slopes.

bots trying to fake post count to get around the forum limitations like link, image, attachment, etc. Just report em if the post is by a new person and looks like a pointless quote or copy & paste with no useful indication it was made by a live person. The moderator can check into it and ban the bot before the bot can spam.

Me too...

Heh PaB wall can have too much of useful things. You will curse your wallet for not having enough to get everything. 42 pages of PaB goodness: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27795

No. LEGO generally sells all at retail price while other stores may undercut a bit. Other stores also can have sales often like BOGO 1/2 off while LEGO store rarely have sales.

1682 Space Shuttle (1990) (Classic Town: Airport) LDD 4.3.8 I started this oh maybe 2 years ago but it stalled because too many legacy parts wasn't available. Today's update with LDD includes a 2x2 to 1x4 angled bracket and I was able to get it mostly completed. ERRORS: no stickers at all green base plate with driveway pattern 4478p01 not in LDD, used regular plate. string (75cm) not in, cannot make alternate string (30cm) work the way I wanted, no string included in model black 4859 3x4 wedge plate without stud notch not in LDD, replaced with 48183 with stud notches 2x minifig torso with pocket pattern 973p26c01 not in LDD, left blank 2x2 slope with computer pattern 3039p34 not in LDD, left blank hinge bar 8L with 3 fingers 4319 not in LDD, no substitution Rocket engines with 1x2 plate on top 4868a not in LDD, used similar engine version b with 2x2 plate. cannot place 1x3 plates on sides of 1x4 technic brick, it is an illegal connection but will fit if assembled with real parts, shuttle engines left aside. Download

Pfft I need one in Michigan that doesn't involve 90 minutes drive or going through demolition derby track called I-75

I'm surprised someone didn't hold the Hulk until Dec. 24 for a shot at Hulk figure Looking at the odds, there's only a small chance of not winning anything at all.

Or hide the screen first so other people won't accidentally see what you have in your pants. otherwise someone may notice you're hiding a key to a Ferrari and try to sweet talk her way into your wallet.

Depending on your graphic hardware, LDD may seems slower and choppier in safe mode. A quick way to get back in normal mode is to go to Edit -> Preferences and look for Compatibility mode level near the bottom, slide it all the way to the left. Click OK and restart LDD.

3mm flex hose? Would help if I had the instruction file to look at

More cores does help. I have a dual XEON with a total of 12 cores, 24 processes with hyperthreading. POV2Ray uses all available resources and I get my render done in average of 1/4 the time a regular desktop would have taken. 32 bit vs 64 bits, the only real difference is memory management. 32 bits OS is limited to max 4GB total RAM, and 32 bits apps are limited to 2GB RAM for their use. 64 bits OS and apps has access to a lot more. POV2Ray doesn't need lot of memory, just lot of time. Multiple CPU solution including XEON and Optrons don't come cheap, and usually won't boost game performance. Those are mainly used for servers, rendering, and video encoding. That is, if you're making CGI movies, doing a lot of 3D rendering, or running a store with 20 cash registers, a dozen hand held price scanner, portable label printer, etc the server quality stuff helps but if you mainly play games stick with single CPU, 4 cores minimum.

I didn't know the original transistor had a rather high power rating. I should have checked the spec before suggesting 2nxxxx transistors.

Be glad LEGO invented 24t gear with clutch. Imagine having to take apart something just to free up the stress and make the jammed gear release the finger. Of course this is assuming you used the said gear somewhere. Otherwise it'd jam and be hard to get it to release. XL motor has enough torque that it can even break gear and axles, forcing you to head to Bricklink for replacement parts. It's hard to order them while having fat bandaged fingers and a small keyboard like a laptop. :D

Drop ship scam: a reseller buys things from LEGO, marks it as gift to be sent to someone else (eBay buyer for example). Often time it goes below retail. Then after a while, maybe a month later the seller (or real owner if seller used stolen credit card) calls CC company and reports it a problem, CC company takes the money away from LEGO while the buyer gets blacklisted unless they pay full retail or return the stuff unopened with original invoice. Seller gets free money, buyer suffers and won't be able to order anything from LEGO, and LEGO has to crack down on any gift stuff to reduce CC fraud. The only way to prevent this is to ship only to billing address but someone's Grandma would have to pay to have LEGO stuff resent to her grandkids. To avoid this, beware of any current LEGO sets that are below retail, and check the box you get. If it has LEGO as from address, call LEGO ASAP and get refund ASAP from the scamming seller.

One of the local Walmart is still trying to sell 2012 Star Wars calendar set. When I first found them, I checked, the tapes were all worn and it was missing a lot. Like someone bought them, opened it for rare parts or minifigs, tried to reseal it, and returned it. They still have them when I checked a few days ago, on clearance sale of $30. I doubt it has any LEGO piece left inside considering how worn the box and seal are.