gylman

I'm finding that as I look at some of people's picks for great folders to download I am discovering or rediscovering great creations that I have never seen or forgotten about. It's really getting me excited again about building, in a way I haven't been for a couple of years. This has been a terrible year for me with regard to Lego due to work and family contraints, but as I look at all these amazing thigns I am getting an uncontrollable urge to build something. Sadly, except for my keychain related stuff I almost never photograph anything I build because I always think it's crap compared to what the really good builders make, so I have basically no record of all the stuff I built in the past 7 years since I came out of my dark ages. Anyone else feeling the same way? Feeling the urge to go build something worthy of putting up?

Jeez, how old are you guys? Does the name Margaret Thatcher sound familiar? The longest serving British PM in the last 150 years?? And some of the other stuff that's being said here is inappropriate.

I used to use bleach, but now use hydrogen peroxide. It takes a bit longer (1-2 weeks in 10% solution) but bleach DEFINITELY makes your bricks brittle and H2O2 does not seem to.

July 17: Gas station finally available in North America. I believe it has been in Europe for some time now. http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=7993 Skeleton Ship available at S@H North America. Also in Europe, but that may be old news. http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=7029&cn=473

City vehicles (pnorm) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=256 Kitchen (bccook) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=127882 Incredible Japanese garden (JoanB) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=79287 Ulnaris (SavatheAggie, shows construction details) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=138586 Falconkeep ( chadzicz - shows how it was built) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=187173 I'll add more as I have time...

Thank you, Kevin. It means a lot.

Yep. My Lego bookmark folder looks just the same. It's enough to make you want to cry.

It's not that these sets are useless (like say, the recent firetruck, or the Ferrari racecars, which truly are). It's that the ratio of parts and cost to functionality is so high. The redeeming feature of 8421 to me was the colour - it did look good. 8285: it was a riot of colours, and heavily stickered. The number of fairing panels was greater than the number of technic bricks and pneumatic elements combined. Also, it felt... dunno.. flimsy, hollow, hard to describe. This is the natural consequences of using panels or vertically placed plates to make the walls/sides. 8421 was very heavy and solid feeling at least. The remote functionality of the upcoming bulldozer is what has me excited. I tried to remotely control some of the older models, but it wasn't really doable - they were all built so compactly that there was no way to get the remote setup in there without totally changing the model. Looking at the pics was very promising -lots of technic bricks, and only a few fairings. But, I recall that when they showed some videos of the thing in FRELUG I was vaguely disappointed. Hope springs eternal....

Largest technic set ever, and all it did was extend and retract a boom and drop a hook. Pneumatics worse than useless. 1 nonstandard motor that is not easily used anywhere else. VERY repetitive build on the chassis, which was 60% of the model. Cherry picker alt model used the same chassis. no new techniques, no new ideas, just a big yellow beast that sat on my shelf for about a year and then went back into the box. The best thing about it was the colour: pure yellow (which I LOVED!), and it did use a good number of good old fashioned technic bricks, along with the liftarms. And NO farings! yay! Compare it to the sets from 10 years ago, which did so much more, with 1/4 the parts.

Well, having endured one moderate disappointment (8421 giatn crane) and one utter disappointment (8285 the Tow Truck), I find myself having a hard time getting excited about anything Technic related for 2008. I think that NXT (which I really don't like) also kinda dampened my interested in the entire Technic field. When I came to EB I was all Technic and Castle, but for me these days the action is clearly in City with the incredible Cafe Corner and almost as good Market Street. Even the smaller 6-wide sets are great - the Garbage truck is my fav set of the year so far after CC. I agree the bulldozer looks promising - maybe it will restore my enthusiasm. The small and medium sized sets annouced for Jan 2008 certainly won't.

http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=7784 50% off on the UCS batmobile. I think that's new, although I might have missed it. Backordered though... North Ameria only.

http://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=209378 This message from Troy at Bricklink should provide further reassurance.... no details, but Troy is a pretty level headed guy from past experience and extremely well connected in the AFOL world. So, let's all (myself included) take a big breath....

To me the worst aspect is I can't browse other people's work any more. All those beautiful creations, great ideas... It was so easy to browse them. I had tons of bookmarks for many really nice sites. The furniture!! egads I'll miss all the Lego furniture MOCs. I LOVED those little creations - I used to relax for an hour or two by just making similar stuff for my own entertainment.

We don't know why the system went down. But if it was just because the person running it got tired of maintaining the site, or paying for the bandwidth, it would be less tham trivial to take care of that. The software was quite primitive, and hadn't changed over many years, yet was very stable. Even if TLC revived it for 6 months so that everyone could migrate somewhere else in an organized way.

I just can't believe it would end like this. Unless the server has exploded, the data is still there somewhere. Thousands of AFOLs, some with very deep pockets and very resourceful and capable, are going to be devasted by this. I think that at the very least brickshelf will come online for a short period to permit people to backup their pictures, or an image of the server will be tranferred to a place from which it can be accessed. URLs etc may be screwed but the data will be recovered. I don't know anything special or more than anyone else... it just seems reasonable. This is also an opportunity for TLC to do something that the AFOL community will remember FOREVER!!

Count me on the Nay side (not that this is a democracy or anything..... :-) )

Well, w/e. At one point two years ago, when there were much less than half the members we have now, EB had about a half dozen Canadians, although I think some have since faded (Willy, Sting notably) and others not as active as they used to be (Chewie, Wolf04). Still, there are at least 7 or 8 members from Canada that are on the boards pretty regularly.

I don't get it. No Canada? Last time we did this poll Canada has more entries than most European countries. Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, but not Canada? WTF? Am I missing something?

Can't resist. "Those are long films with a whole lot of stuff i dont recall seeing from lego before such as wwII era tanks and planes as well as train sets and zepelins." Zepelins? WWII era planes? http://guide.lugnet.com/set/2879 or http://guide.lugnet.com/set/5925 or http://guide.lugnet.com/set/5928 or http://guide.lugnet.com/set/7420 OK. That really was my last post. PS. They ain't gonna do tanks. Now I'm done. Really. Promise.

Truer words were never spoken. While I like the fig, it is a fleshie, and hence will never see the light of day in my constructions (some of the parts and accessories will, of course, but the face and hands go into the "fleshie bin"). Other than that, I have a hard time getting excited about any of this. Yet more cruddy vehicles, yet more snakes, spiders and scorpions, but I don't smell anything that looks like a fun build, or anything original. Hell, they are just going to recycle a bunch of Egypt, Orient, etc parts anyway. It doesn't seem to me that recreating movie scene dioramas is the way to go with Lego. And while obviously Lego has extensively test marketed this idea (I hope...), I am not sure what the crossover is from old Indie fans (who will now be 30-40 years old) to the current Lego buyers. I think they are just fishing to a Star Wars replacement and have a good relationship with Lucas, so it was easy to do this. But you can't compare this to Star Wars in terms of the potential for interesting constructions. If they kept JT and crew sets would be less expensive or better for the same money (no licensing fee). And what's the future of this theme? In contrast to the Adventurers, who have great history, backup merchandising, web site games, and lots of loyal fans (well, at least 3 I know of including myself :-) ). I've shut my mouth about this so far, and I promise I will shut up about it after this post, but seriously I think this entire theme is a waste.

Happy 4th of July, America. *y* From your northern neighbour.

Dumb question: what does "parts may overlap" mean?

Judging by the quality of some of the work, this is a serious person and a good builder. Not gonna get banned - probably he/she will either fill the folders or remove the empty ones. Probably a technical issue.

Well, it's not all crap, but what isn't crap is wildly overpriced. I'd look at those stacking bins if they cost 75% less... I wonder who buy that sort of stuff at those prices. Agreed that the ice-cube tray is a crap reward for buying lots of Lego. Any 5-7$ set would be better.

Welcome. I love the video, and the camera solution was very ingenious. Lots of nice touches in your town, you should be proud of it.