CP5670

I've also been getting this problem for the last week or two. Hopefully they will fix it soon. Bricklink has server glitches too, although they're more short-term. The site randomly stops responding for about a minute at a time, often while I am putting together an order.

The presentation was a good read. EB has certainly come a long way in the last few years. I haven't been here all that long, but the site is far more active and populated today than it was back when I registered, especially in certain categories like Technic. So much for that.

What an epic creation. It's full of unique concepts and clever usage of unusual parts, ranging from the brick-built monorail track to the basketball field pieces. You have even combined a GBC setup inside it. My favorite part is probably the conveyor unloading the trash. That effect looks remarkably convincing in the video. I noticed the lone Kranxx in the corner as well. What's he doing with that scorpion?

I'm pretty sure the text was still gray at the time I made that post, even in new threads, but it looks all good now. There are actually a few other forum sections that have this problem too. The Sci-fi section has the same kind of gray text in posts. In the Town and Train Tech categories, the post text is black and looks fine, but the thread titles in the topic listing are gray. (those don't necessarily need to be black but should be something darker, such as the bluish color used in most of the other sections)

This set never interested me much since I have 8421, but I like that alternate model. A dockside container crane is something we have never had before in Technic.

It looks the same to me as it was yesterday. I don't think your change went through.

Yes, the double bevel gears fix that issue to some extent. The angled teeth allow the gears to mesh gradually instead of abruptly like spur gears do.

If you're referring to the fact that the motor platform moves, it doesn't necessarily have to be built like that. There are many possible variations of that concept. The setup used in 8865, for example, is similar. For manual gearboxes, the red transmission rings work very well and let you have several speeds in a relatively small size. On the other hand, if the gearbox is supposed to be switched by a motor, then the 8082/8865 system of sliding gears is better (unless you only need two speeds/functions). The double bevel gears (which didn't exist back then) work especially well for this.

I'm not a fan of the new layout in its current state, but I think a few tweaks will improve it a lot. Some forum sections like the Space and Technic categories have light gray text on a white background, which is pretty hard on the eyes. The text should be changed to black or dark blue. (although I love the new header you guys made for Technic ) Several types of text panels throughout the forum are also too large. In the thread listing in a forum section, the panels containing the thread names are too tall and have lots of empty space in them. This means you have to scroll down a lot to see all the threads on the page. Within a thread, the panels containing the posters' avatars and information are similarly too wide, which means there is less room for the post text itself. As yellost mentioned, it would also be good have the "new unread post" buttons a bit larger and more prominent.

Nice models, and the chrome wheels look great on them. I don't mind modified or custom Lego parts as long as they look professionally done and not like a hackjob. As long as it has the quality and feel of a genuine Lego part, I'm good wth it. There is a Bricklink store called ChromeBricks that sells many chrome wheels and other parts like this, so that might have been where he got them. It would be nice if TLG at least went back to the metallic silver wheels we had in Technic at one point, around 1998-2002. I always liked those wheels, but TLG has long since reverted to the usual gray wheels.

This is a very creative idea. I especially like how easily it ran over the truck at the end.

I had already decided long ago that I wouldn't be buying any of these minifigs blindly in their original packs. They have been quite reasonably priced on Bricklink, so it's better to just go there for specific minifigs unless you want to amass an army of one kind.

I use Irfanview (free download) to do things like this. I typically downsize the original (big) image with the Lanczos method and then apply a 20% sharpen filter, which produces very good results on Lego pictures. You can do this on a lot of images at once using Irfanview's batch conversion feature.

I agree with the previous poster that the camera handling and interface could use a few tweaks. I've been using SR3D Builder on and off for a while but still find several aspects of the interface awkward, especially the way it handles the grid and how the keyboard controls to move bricks are camera-relative. I have also remapped some keys and mouse buttons through my Logitech drivers to customize the controls to my liking, but it would be nice to have those options in the program itself. I think if the interface is cleaned up and made more intuitive, a lot more people would start using this program. It otherwise puts LDD and MLCad to shame in terms of how powerful and feature-packed it is. You have really done some excellent work with this program, and it deserves to be in more widespread use. Also, is there an option to render the seams/boundaries between bricks? This is especially useful when viewing instructions. LDView has an option like this, for example.

If you remember a particular phrase someone said in the thread, search for that directly. It can be a good idea to search by poster names too. These things narrow it down much more than just using individual keywords. I've often been in situations where the only thing I remembered about a thread was some collection of words in one of my own posts in it, but that is usually good enough. One issue with the EB search is that you have to get the search terms right on the first try, since it makes you wait a while before trying again. The Google search may work as well, but at least on other forums I've seen, Google doesn't index the forum as well as the forum's own search engine and might miss some threads.

Most cameras have a tungsten light setting for the white balance that removes the yellow tint on indoor, unflashed pictures. However, you will probably still have the issue of blurriness. I find that with the small, point-and-shoot cameras, flash is essential to make indoor pictures look sharp. If the colors with flash are looking washed out, try moving the camera away from the model and zoom in to compensate. I find that this distributes the flash lighting more evenly and produces fairly good results. The best solution is to just take the pictures outdoors if possible. I do the same thing, taking 3 or 4 pictures at every angle. Some of them always come out looking sharper than others, and you can compare and delete the bad ones quickly.

That might explain it. I have noticed this trend too, that the flagship Technic sets of the last 6 or 7 years have increased in price faster than the flagship sets from the 90s. It could simply be that the demand for the older sets has peaked out. Most people who wanted those sets would have already gotten them by now, with sites like ebay and BL having been around for many years now. The condition of the sets also needs to be factored in though. Recent sets tend to have a much larger proportion of MISB copies on sale, and the used copies are also likely to be in better condition. MISB 8285s are easy to come by, while there are currently no MISB 8868s on Bricklink and they come up maybe once in 6 months on ebay. Even though a used 8868 is cheaper than a used 8285, a new 8868 will probably cost quite a bit more than a new 8285.

I like this one a lot. It would look great on a sci-fi vehicle, and uses no illegal construction.

I would have mentioned that one too, but 8485 was a Universal-type set and I'm not sure if it really had a main model. The helicopter is shown as the main model on the box and instructions, but the dinosaur was the one they advertised in the S@H catalogs at the time. These Universal sets had more scope for interesting alternate models, as they were designed from the ground up with such models in mind and often included extra parts for the alternates. Normal model sets typically include only the parts for the main model, and the alternate model is then designed from those parts.

This printer is amazingly precise for something built out of Lego. TLG actually made a set like this once, although not nearly as sophisticated as this MOC:

My favorite Technic alternates are the ones for 8480 and 8868, if you don't count the Universal/Multi-model sets. The 8480 submarine is both a unique concept and has several great functions. It has a very polished feel to it and could have easily been a set of its own. The 8868 alternate feels kind of thrown together, but I like it because it brought something totally unique to Technic in terms of functionality, which I don't think you could say about any other set's alternate. In general, it's rare to find genuinely good alternate models in Technic sets. Many sets have alternates that are just a variation of the same general concept as the main model, and often have inferior functionality and/or looks. Among the Model Team sets, 5571 had a very nice one, and I like the 5590 one too for its unusual concept. I think it's supposed to be a pushback, which is something TLG has never done otherwise.

I don't think there is any large site dedicated to mods specifically. You can find lots of set mods on Brickshelf though. I modify almost all of my sets in some way, with the changes ranging from trivial to substantial. I had planned to post some quick pictures of various mods I've done on Brickshelf, but have never really gotten around to it.

I kind of agree with you there. Building Lego is great fun, but I wouldn't like being tied to deadlines and price restrictions with my models, the way the TLG designers would be.

It would actually be cool if we had an AFOL-targeted airport set at a price point like that. Compared to other Lego airports of the past though, this airport building is actually reasonably big and nice. The airport buildings TLG has made before have always been way too small, even by the standards of Lego building scales, so this is a refreshing change. The police stations in the past were much bigger than the airports. The one thing I miss though is the runway baseplates that the 80s and 90s airports had.

This is a nice little set with some good parts. I always found it weird how the guy seems to be breathing out of the decoder though.