AmperZand

Take lots of photos of your MOCs including close-ups so you can rebuild them if they're destroyed or go missing. Of course, if you already have a record of them in LDD, you may not need pictures.

Excellent MOC overall. Great texturing of the roof and walls. Pretty sure GoT is HBO, not BBC though. In the UK, you can only get it through Sky Atlantic where it is branded as an HBO production. It's definitely not broadcast on any of the Beeb's channels.

Domestic postage for large letters and packets is almost always less than international (there are some reciprocal international arrangements that keep prices down but they're not that common). That's especially true in comparison to the US's low cost of domestic shipping. The French seller may have erred by using an envelope that was bigger than required, but not necessarily. It could be that even if he had used less packaging, it still would have qualified as a packet rather than a large letter and therefore been significantly more expensive. Prices are based on volume, not just weight, and the volume bands are quite broad. When you go up one of the volume categories, prices jump. It may not be that he was trying to overcharge you for postage. I don't know if French and Belgian international postage rates are different, but I doubt distance had anything to do with what you were charged. You're right that Belgium is further from the US than France, but not much. The two countries share a border.

If the seller is claiming to charge postage at cost, you can check on Royal Mail's site: http://www.royalmail.com . Bear in mind that postal prices from the UK (and I believe elsewhere in the EU) now depend on volume as well as weight. Your slopes and bricks (but probably not your plates) may push you from the large letter category into the small packet band. Royal Mail are very strict about the volume of packets and if the packet is borderline between categories, they won't give the sender the benefit of the doubt. They have a template with which to measure the thickness of packets and absolutely won't squeeze packets to make them fit. I'm in the UK and sometimes order from UK BrickLink sellers even though their parts price may be higher than those of international sellers because the total including postage will be less.

Similar to dork in that they're both North American terms of derision, but dweeb emphasises academic studiousness.

I'm a backer!

It encompasses manga and figurines depicting teenage girls provocatively dressed and with exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics. There are entire stores in Japan dedicated to this sub-genre. Probably because of this area of interest and because otaku are stereotyped as loner teenage-to-middle age men, otaku has a sexual deviance connotation in Japanese society.

Dry board marker comes off most easily with wet wipes, the kind sold for hand sanitation. So-called permanent board marker sometimes comes off with a Kleenex dipped in isopropyl alcohol. Neither wet wipes nor isopropyl alcohol will damage LEGO parts or their printing.

I can't. The last time was more than a year ago and the thread has been purged.

OK, what about this thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=110743 and this one: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=111167 ? Why is it that when others post about minifigs only, they get to do so in the theme-related forum, but when I did that my thread would get moved by the mods to the Customisation forum? Has the rule changed? I think, and have always thought, that threads about a particular theme such as history or space should go in the theme-specific regardless of whether it was a single minifigure or huge diorama. If the rule has changed, I'm all for it. But it would be nice to know.

To me, a nerd is someone with technical expertise usually in a scientific or engineering subject, e.g. a computer nerd. A geek is someone with a passion for a non-mainstream, usually avocational, activity that doesn't require physical effort such as LEGO. The two aren't mutually exclusive: you can be a nerd and a geek, e.g. someone who builds computers for fun. Often, the label is applied by those who don't share the nerd's/geek's interest and is actually a classification of the person on the basis of their appearance, e.g. IT nerds having thick-rimmed glasses with a broken but repaired bridge. Dork is simply a catch-all derogatory term for any nerd or geek, again, often based on appearance. In the same family of terms is otaku. In the west, this is broadly equivalent to geek but often with a particular interest in manga or anime. In Japan where the term originates, it also equates with the western geek concept but for some otaku, it includes a sexual dimension as well. There are no doubt dictionary and anthropological definitions. I'm not pretending mine are in any way definitive. For the record, I consider myself a geek and I suspect other people who know me would agree.

There's an existing thread for help with identifying parts: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67887

Brilliantly conceived and executed! Fantastic work in every sense. It's how I imagine mind flayers, a monster in Dungeons & Dragons, wound up in D&D's realms of fantasy.

Very nicely sculpted. Clever use of parts. Nice one!

When does a MOD become a MOC? That's a very hard question to answer and similar to one that philosophers have been wrestling with for thousands of years known as the ship of Theseus problem. It's not just an academic concern though: legal experts have struggled with it in relation to intellectual property rights. I don't think there is a line that neatly defines what is a MOD or a MOC. Rather, there are poles with creations that are entirely original at one end and exact duplications of the works of others (including TLG-designed sets) at the other. What lies between these two extremes is a fuzzy set.

<yodavoice>Once you go down the non-purist path, forever will it dominate your destiny!</yodavoice>

Thanks for letting us know. I would have missed it, but will definitely catch it. One good thing about Channel 4 is that they keep programmes on 4OD for ages, so anybody not seeing this thread in time may still be able to catch the documentary on demand.

You're very welcome. I forgot to mention Brick Warriors. They do a mohawk in colours that LEGO don't do.

They really exist. At the risk of breaking forum rules by making a political statement, I'd like to point out that in the recent general election they received three times more votes than the utterly loathsome ultra-nationalist BNP. I love the fact that the totally nutty Monster Raving Loony Party did three times better than the BNP. Makes one proud to be British!

Arealight does some interesting hair as does Kre-O. Apologies if mentioning the latter here is verboten.

I went to a couple of ClickBricks last year, one in Inagi and one in Yokohama. They were both nice stores but, apart from key rings, they didn't have any exclusives - unless you mean exclusives within Japan, i.e. not available from other retailers in the country.

I picked up 70734 Sensei Wu Dragon at the LEGO store in Shepherds Bush yesterday. I wasn't really paying attention, but I think they had the other summer releases too. If you go to a LEGO store and you don't see the latest releases you're after, it's worth asking the staff if they have it in the stockroom. I was considering an Elves summer 2015 set. They didn't have it on the shelves but did have it in stock and were willing to sell it to me.

A BL order once took 25 days to reach me by air from the Netherlands - and I'm in the UK! I use BL quite extensively and will order from many - but not all - countries. Of the countries I do order from, the Netherlands seems to have the least reliable postal system. Surprisingly, I haven't had problems ordering from the US. I used to live there and mail went missing all the time.

At London Comic Con this weekend, I picked up a yellow spaceman from the mid- to late '80s for £3 (about $4.60). It was a bit dirty and had a stress fracture in its upper arm, but the dirt washed off and I had spare yellow arms from that period anyway. Apart from the grime and crack, it was in mint condition. The gold of the moon, the helmet's chin strap and the oxygen tank are all perfect, and those are usually the first casualties of playwear for classic space minifigs. I suspect it wasn't played with much or at all. Not the greatest find in LEGO collecting history, I know, but enough to make me do this:

When I was a KFOL, there weren't numbered bags, but I wouldn't have wanted them pre-sorted even if there had been. I enjoyed hunting for parts. As an AFOL, I'm a numbered bag devotee. I go so far as to pick parts out of their bag rather than dump them on the table. Hunting for parts doesn't have the appeal it once did.