gylman

I'm trying to get the parts together to build some of these city trucks. Not easy. Will post when done. yeah, Anthony Lau's cars are very nice. I need to get me some of those 2005 mudguards.

Well, for the reasons as stated. You build something that takes you months or a year or more. You spend several thousand dollars on the project. It's so big that you can't take anywhere to shows, and can't really move once you have displayed it somewhere in your home. And there, after a few weeks of excitment and pride, oohs and Aahs from family and friends, it sits. And sits. And sits, gathering dust. You look at it now and again, but basically it comes a great big dust collector. You are afraid to let anyone play with it, because it was so much work to do. You are afraid to take it apart and use the pieces for something else, or sell them to raise money for something else, for the same reason. During the same time, instead of doing one thing, you can do a variety of smaller jobs, explore different projects = a forest, a castle, a few vigs, enter a context or two.... And, when they have been done, it's much easier to photograph and disassemble. I don't want to sound so maudlin, and obviously this person is doing something very impressive. No doubt it will be spectacular when done, and we will all look at the pics and go OOH AAHH, and then we will move on to the next amazing MOC, while this guy will have 100 lb of blocks sitting in his living room for the next 3 years until either his dog kills or his wife kills it.

Quite right - the wheels are too far apart. I knew there was something about it that looked odd, but didn't pin it down.

Too big. There is a point when a MOC is so big, impressive though it may be, that it is not worth building. Instead of spending all that money and time on one thing, that can barely be moved, and took so much effort (time and money) that you don't want to touch it ever again, you could build 10 other small cool ones that can be moved, modified, played with. It's an example of your eyes being bigger than your stomach (or your wallet). However, when he finally gives up..... I'll buy 5% of those browns off him.... at a "fair" price. :biggrin:

YUCK! what is that green and orange 8284 monstrosity!? :( But 8285..... WOW! And it will look even better without stickers.

Probably Momo, the lemur, Aang's pet. I struggled to find a good picture of him, wiht little luck. This is a poor picture. Look at the picture, bottom right. http://www.tv.com/avatar-the-last-airbende...&full_summary=1

Instruction here. http://news.lugnet.com/build/arch/?n=1813 http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=145764 Stunning, too beautiful for words, really. But prohibitively expensive to use this tehcnique

Definitely agree SuvieD. Lego product 5 years ago, and now - no comparison. Of course Jake doesn't get all the credit, but he was the face of change. I don't know what he could have done better. He wasn't the one making decision, but one voice among many.

Both amazing, but I think the dark red one is stunningly realistic. Incredible.

What? Listening to hundreds of whining AFOLS complaining that old gray is gone, or that no one makes monorail systems any more? The travel schedule was crazy too, and he recently got married, which I bet is the main reason he had to move on to a new job. You can't have a successful marriage and be travelling 26 weeks a year. Couldn't pay me enough to do that job. But he did it, and did it well. I hope they can replace him with someone who has the same passion for Lego, ability to put up with BS, and accessibility. He will be missed for sure.

OK. Done. Here are links http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/gylman/5571/p2010059.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/gylman/5571/p2010060.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/gylman/5571/p2010061.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/gylman/5571/p2010063.jpg HTH I would have thought the scanned instructions would be helpful too. Cheers. Gyl

Sorry if someone has shown these before, but I hadn't come across them previously and in case others had not.... I just had to share. ' These are amazing. Shows you just how good City could be, but isn't. Wouldn't a collection of these be far superior to collecting 20 different little Racers? http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=256

16 studs wide - and the wheels stick out an extra stud on each side. 19.25 inches long 7.25 inches high off ground to top of back of cab 9.25 inches high to top of chrome exhausts Is there a particular pic you need? I have mine sitting right in front of me.

Welcome to EB - an easygoing community of Lego addicts. Have a good time and don't take anything too seriously. Gyl

Wait! This is more than 6 months before release! LEAK!!!!! : :ph34r: Oh no, EB will be on the TLC megablock list now!

Whoa! Nice find! The fact that there are piece counts indicates that these are probably finished designs, not very preliminary at all. The piece counts look good for hte Spongebob sets. Damn if Spongebob isn't looking better all the time. I am looking at multiple copies of that Krusty Krab set, and at least one Bikini Bottom. Avatar looks a bit.. meh... but I am not sure what I was expecting. I know the show quite well, and it does not really lend itself to great Lego unless they went for a really big temple or a marketplace or something like that. The fire ship will be a great part pack if it is not too expensive, but I never really expected it to be very good. It don't look good in the cartoon, why would the Lego model look any better? The temple... hard to tell... I smell some burps, but not a raised baseplate.... hard to tell. Not blown away. And of course the inevitable catapult. What the heck is it with Lego and catapults these days. NO MORE please!!! We've pretty much seen all of this year's product then. Thinking of the big picture, just think how different TLC product is this year compared to 5 years ago. I think TLC has really come a long way, and in the right direction. Go Lego!

cute! it will look nice on a keychain :biggrin: Looking forward to that.

Killing someone because you don't agree with what another person in that country said..... hmmm.... that's the kind of thing we can understand and rationalize right? NO it isn't! We have no comprehension of such things. But millions of Muslims have no problem with it. It's not up for discussion. That's OK though. Any moment now the Danish prime minister will prostrate himself before the screaming masses and beg forgiveness, and the crisis will blow over for now. Until the next time, unless the world learns to self-censor. Except next time the threshold will be lower. And the screaming masses will know that if they make enough noise, even blow up a place or two, they can make any weak-kneed soft Western country cave in. Wait until the 5% minority in a European country decide they really want Sharia law in that country for themselves.

Absolutely my experience. Intelligent and educated muslims - physicians, scientists, businessmen - I and my family have spoken to and worked with, people whom you woudl think you could have a discussion with, hold the same opinions (9/11 a Jewish conspiracy, Israel should be destroyed, Salman Rushdie should die, non-believers must become believers eventually, etc etc). Scratch the veneer of the education and apparent civility and you find a core of inflexible and intolerant beliefs that have been indocrinated since infancy and that is not likely to be altered by any debate. The "live and let live" school of thought is not strong in Islam these days. There was a time when it was not so bad, but extremists seem to be the only voices heard these days, and all opposition is simply killed. It's h ard to fight against an opponent that is happy to die as long as they think they are doing the right thing. The only people who can fight it are people who have their own absolute beliefs. People like me, who don't really believe in anything except in trying to live their lives in peace without bothering others or being bothered by others, don't stand a chance. Iceland is looking like a nice place to live these days. Europe most certainly will not be. EDIT:Oh, wait. I believe in the power of LEGO!

I have to disagree with that statment. I very much fear what the world is coming to in the next 20 years as a result of intolerant religious fundamentalism. I don't think this is a simple matter of politics. While the West has high minded debates on what is right and what is wrong, Islam, a religion followed by a billion people, has been hijacked by a school of thought and a ruthless minority that do not see the world in the same way as us spoiled morally ambivalent Westerners. They know what is right and what is wrong, and are not interested in a debate. It only takes a committed minority to lead a fearful and timid majority into a course of events that the majority, or any sensible group of people speaking calmly to each other, would not want. This has happened many times in recent world history (WW1, WW2, cultural revolution, Cambodia, etc), and mass media and weapon proliferation have only made the possibility easier and more deadly. There's some bad S**T coming our way - first in the Middle East, then Europe, and finally North America. Ironically, the only Westerners capable of resisting what is going to come are going to be the equally disturbing fundamentalist Judeochristians - less bloodthirsty perhaps, but equally certain of their "rightness". Moderates on any side will not do well. I think that many things we took for granted 10-20 years ago like separation of religion and state, freedom of association, freedom of travel, freedom of idea exchange without fear of retaliation are going to change, and we will look upon those 20-30 years between the end of hte Cold War and the beginning of the Faith Wars as a golden area, now almost over. Like Jinzo said.....

Agreed - it's no Samurai X or Evangelion (not that those shows had great animation, but they did have great story). But it's better than just about anything else out there right now for kids' animation. And seems to be very popular. I think TLC wanted some sort of a tie-in that the 7-13 year old crowd could connect with. It made a bet on Avatar. I hope (and I believe) that it is a better guess than Galidor. My kids certainly are obsessed with this show (Avatar). Lego is pursuing a dual approach of license-related products and more classic bricks/technic. Starwars is gone, and Batman I guess will replace it hopefully as their big bet. I think that they are making some side-bets on stuff like Spongebob and Avatar. Good luck to them. Personally, I don't see any great sets coming out of this show unless they want to build a really awesome temple. But it appears that the temple set is going to be the lesser of the two, with the ship larger. I don't care much for ships other than the Classic Pirate big ones (BSB, SES), which are like works of art. The ship in Avatar is not particularly pretty to look at, so I am skeptical about this set. However, all this is hot air.... we need to see what's out there.

All 20 episodes of the show to date can be easily obtained online from file sharing sites (Limewire etc). it really is a surprisingly good show.

This kind of stuff was all inevitable as EB became a world class site. People join who we wish would rather not be here - it's very different from that group of 100 or so people who knew each other well a year ago. I've been online since before the internet. Does anyone here remember bulletin boards (PCboard, TBBS)? They were the locus for this type of community in the 1980's. This kind of stuff always happens - then and now. A community grows, then human nature being what it is people form factions, get "attitude", start to flame or mock (not MOC), and the community fractures. Why do you think the really big boards like FBTB and BZPower have become so strict? They didn't start out that way, but they have to enforce some sort of order when there are so many members. But, it's not a much fun for the members, to be sure. An endless supply of annoying posts will wear out even the most patient Admins and Mods, and the threshold for banning becomes lower and lower, or at least it becomes easier and easier to ban, lock topics, etc. I make a conscious effort to ignore really stupid posts. I think that works best. Responding to a stupid post with a comment or insult actually encourages the poster to do more. Ignore them a few times, and they will leave, or stop. Still, I thought the admins were very reasonable on Dark1. If you display the same patience with the next guys you ban (inevitably) there will be no problem. One choice is to be like that site the Jinzo was on, I forget which it was, which was very exclusive, and you had to show some MOCs to be deemed worthy. That struck me as extreme, but it is an option. We keep all the current members and only allow new people who fulfil some sort of test. I don't favour this, though. Lego is for fun, not for excluding or browbeating. Let things stand as they are, and let's deal with the problems as they come. So far I don't sense any tension among the important members of EB, those who contribute and are on regular, and and there have been a number of people joining in the last 3 months (to pick an arbitrary period) who are real assets to the site. We wouldn't want to lose gaining those kinds of members. Go EB! EDIT: One other thing. I think that there should be no discussion of banning etc by non-admin members, and even the admins should confine it to PMs. It should not be posted as a message in a thread, with all sorts of back and forth. With Dark1 and LegoLover there was all this "help" from the non-admin members, well intended, but inappropriate in my opinion. Please NO more of that. If you have concerns about a member, PM them to a Mod or Admin. If the post is inappropriate, the admin will delete or edit it, and discuss it with the offending member by PM. Do the mods and admins agree??

Hopefully not....

LOL yes it "spun my gears". The construction of the display was a bit of a challenge, like any MOC is. The amount of Technic in there is quite significant (cost and weight), and getting it to move around and up and down reliably without burning out the motors or toppling over was not trivial. So, it's not just about collecting. But certainly, I am also a collector of Lego. For good sets, it would never occur to me take apart a complete set with box and instructions "for parts", although I have no reluctance to do so for Alpha Team, Lego Sports and various other less interesting sets. As to why on earth I would want to collect keychains..... that's a question I ask myself too... dunno. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but got a bit out of control. 8-|