ShaydDeGrai

At this price point, I kinda feel like I shouldn't have to 'fix' anything. Don't get me wrong, I have spent more than my fair share on pricy Lego sets in the past so the sticker price alone isn't really something I'm going to complain about, but the price per piece seems way off. I'll reserve judgement until we get an official weight on this thing to see if the price per weight is more in line with a licensed set with no lights or motors and just a few figures. I already have the first one from 17 years ago, that one had plenty of long technic beams and large plates and still stayed _under_ the 10 cents a part threshold (and the old one had over two dozen black magnet cylinders (about $2 each on Bricklink these days), so I'd like to see some real value added for 50% more parts and nearly 3x the price. From what I've seen so far this set is nice, maybe $500 (USD) nice, compared to its predecessor, but for me the jury is still out on "$700 nice"

I'm really curious to see how they hold this one together. The last one was loosely coupled with magnets (a part they don't even make anymore) and after about a decade on display it started sagging under its own weight in odd places. Of course today they've got a nice assortment of ball and socket connecters to deal with funky angles that didn't exist back then so that might be part of the solution. As I recall, the last one also was a bit tedious (lots of 10x sub assemblies and the like). I hope this one mixes things up a bit more. So I guess on the one hand, it's "been there done that" but part of me is really looking forward to this update.

On the original question, I'm afraid I can only offer a single data point. My four year old really likes my old classic space stuff, as well as Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! from the first Lego movie. She's also recently been quite taken with the new City-space kits. Interestingly, she has shown zero interest in the Star Wars stuff. She says a lot of those models look "mean" and doesn't like that the mini-figures are fleshies rather than yellow (which is interesting because she's been playing with Duplo since about 16 months and -those- figures have skin tones). She's transitioning to Creator and City sets of her own and constantly raids my collection pulling kits I'd forgotten I own off the shelf (like a 40 year old Classic Space ship), shoving more modern and detailed SW stuff out of the way to get at it. For the record, she hasn't seen Star Wars (or the Lego Movies for that matter) and I've done my best not to push her one way or the other, she just likes what she likes and classic space is fine with her but Star Wars is right out.

Yeah, there's been a lot of propaganda about how "great" the US economy is doing (and for a small sliver of the population who control 50% of the wealth it is) but large chunks of the population aren't seeing it. They brag about low unemployment while glossing over the fact that some people are working three jobs just to pay the rent. They talk about how the _average_ household income has grown and hope that no one realizes that the _typical_ person has more than the _average_ number of legs for a human being. Meanwhile debt (personal, corporate and national) grows at a ridiculous rate. Oh well, how does that saying go - Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics... I just hope the current president doesn't realize that TLG has factories in Mexico and China - he'd probably slap a 200% tariff on all Lego products until Denmark agrees to sell him Greenland.

Oy. I've been to LA. Three days is exciting. Seven weeks is _long_ time. I suppose it wouldn't be bad if I were playing with LEGO everyday but still... It's not a bad place to visit, but I really can't say I've ever been sorry to leave at the end of any of my trips either (no offense to anyone from LA, I just find the shine wears off pretty quickly, just not my scene I guess).

Over the years I've become a fan of mortise and tenon joints (I used to do a lot of woodworking), but this assumes a fairly sturdy interior. Basically, I use regular lego brick to make a square shaft or cup (the mortise) to go on one part and technic bricks to build a snug fitting tenon. Having learned my lesson the hard way at various shows, I've learned not to trust the clutch power of regular brick for the tenon, but instead used technic beams (placed vertically in the interior of the tenon) and pins to hold the stack together. This technique also works to cantilever long, seemingly unsupported subassemblies. For example: My Titan of Braavos statue is made up of eight major elements that all slot together: the head; two pauldrons (or shoulder cops if you want to get technical); the sword arm; the shield arm; the torso; the legs and kilt assembly; and, the base. The two legs form an A frame with a tenon at the waist and a tenon on each foot. The foot tenons slip vertically into the pedestals on the baseplates. These are 'locked' down with a couple of long technic axles that go all the way through the pedestals and the tenons horizontally. The chest piece starts with a mortise at the waistline that sits atop the tenon atop the A frame (the break point is just above the studs out facing kilt and the internal joint extends about a third of the way up the torso). The upper part of the torso is a through mortise that goes from one shoulder to the other with additional holes in the top for the head's tenon and the two cops. The two arms each have long tenons that extend from shoulder to shoulder. The tenon for the shield arm pokes out of the armpit for the sword arm; the sword arm's tenon slots in on top of it and extends to the point of the shield arm's shoulder. Both tenons have holes in them that align with the head and cop hole mortises in the torso. The head has a tenon extending downward that locks everything together - though the top of the torso, through both arm tenons and back into the mass of the torso. Similarly, smaller tenons on the cops tighten things up where the ends of the collar bone would be. This creates an internal structure that comes apart easily, self aligns, relies on multiple technic pins and beams for strength rather than clutch power of studs. The technique works best with a straight vertical slotting, but I've also used mortise and tenons at odd angles I hope my explanation was clear enough for you to imagine what the internals look like. Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment and can't really make a diagram or post non-stock photos.

I'll bite, hold on while I get my grumpy old man hat... * Great sets don't rely stickers, prints or figures. If leaving off the stickers and ditching the mini-figures/mini-dolls diminishes the rest of the build, it wasn't that great a design in the first place. * Collectable minifigures and the whole blind grab-bag scheme does nothing for me. * The only use I've found for Brickheadz is as a source for SNOT bricks and bows * I really liked Exo-force * I never really cared for Bionicle - story, movies, comics or product line (but I'll give it credit for keeping the company afloat) * (With a few exceptions) Lego Star Wars stopped being fun about five movies and 20,000 kits ago, now it just seems repetitive and tedious.

You probably don't have to pay 10 bucks (~9 Euros) plus tip (the equivalent of about 50 minutes work at minimum hourly wage) for a pint of Guinness either Still, Dublin's a pricy city to live in, you'd think it could sustain at least one store. Maybe it's just a function of population density, Metro-Boston has a population of about 4.7 Million, isn't that about the equivalent of all of Ireland? Getting back to the OP and sources of cheap brick: Does free Lego ever wash up on the shore there? Wasn't there a container ship in a storm incident somewhere near Britain a few years back?

There are assorted laws on the books in the US and recognized by international treaty to protect the creators of intellectual property (IP) from, what amounts to, theft. Which laws pertain and how strictly they get enforced depend on what the IP in question is. There are Patents which are the hardest to get but offer the most protection - but these are really for original, non-obvious, engineering inventions (as opposed to scientific discoveries or mathematical proofs - though the past couple decades has seen a lot of abuse of patent law by software and bio-tech companies...). There are Trademarks, which are really more for branding. And, there are copyrights which focus on more artistic endeavors. You can't copyright an idea, concept or fragment of a larger work, but you can copyright an expression of such an idea or concept provided that it is sufficiently different from prior art. Separate expressions of related art are also eligible for copyright, for example a composer can copyright a song (or technically the sheet music for a song) and a musician can (with the composer's permission) make a recording of herself playing that song and the recording is also eligible for a copyright because, in the latter case, it is the artists specific interpretation and performance that is being protected, not the lyrics or sequence of notes described in the sheet music. Original works in the US have two layers of copyright protection. A de facto copyright and a registered copyright. By and of themselves, they don't really do much, but establishing a copyright _before_ a piece of intellectual property hits the public domain gives you standing to take (or at least threaten to take) legal action later. A de facto copyright is the easiest to establish (but also the weakest from a legal standpoint. All it takes is for the author of an eligible work to openly declare who owns the IP, when it was created, and what right they choose to cede to the public. Writers do this all the time when they start a manuscript with a simple by-line along the lines of: (c) 2019, ShaydDeGrai, All rights reserved. Photographers will often do likewise photoshopping this in the corner or adding it to the metaData of the photo (if the format allows) Once the work has been clearly labeled with such a brand it is, technically, copyrighted. Some authors, for extra protection will mail a copy to themselves and when it comes back leave it unopened in the envelop so the postage mark acts as a government certification of WHEN the work was complete - but recent case law has brought into question if this is really necessary. A de facto copyright always precedes a registered one (and protects draft copies, etc.). When the author deems the work to be complete/finalized, s/he has the option of filling out some paperwork (readily downloadable on-line) and sending a copy to the US Copyright Office an a processing fee (last time I checked it was $55 USD) and they enter you into a database and send you a certificate of ownership for your IP. With copyright in hand, you now have standing to take (or at least threaten) legal action against people (and abettors - hosting web sites, eBay, etc) who violate the terms of use (which you pretty much define since it's your IP) An actual lawsuit would probably cost you more than its worth, but the threat of legal action (with proper proof of legal standing) would likely be enough to get in-house counsels at places like eBay, WordPress and GoDaddy to advise their people to crack down on specific abusers and possible get some users banned (not that they won't be back under some other name in a month) - its a copyright writ, not a magic wand. So for future documents, you might want to consider adding de facto copyright statements to your instructions (depending on how you generate the instructions this can be easy or hard. Acrobat makes it easy for PDFs. Photoshop (or tools like GIMP) can also watermark individual photos and diagrams to make it harder for people to strip off such markings. I don't know if tools like LDD or Stud.io have provisions to inject copyright info (but I would have included that feature if I'd designed them, so who knows). If you think it's worth it to you, you can formally register your document for the price of a midrange Lego kit - again this step is not technically necessary, but strengthens your legal position in the long run. Once you've done that, you are entitled to sell or give away copies to whomever you like but any recipients can not, legally, duplicate and redistribute your work without your permission. They _can_ pass on or loan their copy to someone else (just like I can buy a physical book and, when I'm done with it, give it to someone else) but the original recipient has to forfeit his/her ownership (so I I mailed a PDF to a friend, I'm legally obliged to delete my copy once I know my friend got the attachment.) Of course enforcement is the big issue, but that's what lawyers are for and we never seem to run out of those. There is a thing called fair-use copyright (and this goes back to what I mentioned above about fragments of a larger work. Under fair-use any legal recipient of the IP _can_ copy _parts_ of your work for personal use (like photocopying part of a textbook for a study session, or quoting a passage in a term paper) so long as publicly acknowledge the source. You, as the copyright owner don't own every word and picture that you used in your document, you own the specific expression of the ideas that those words and pictures ad up to and that ownership needs to be expressly acknowledged as soon as an excerpt is large enough to be uniquely identified as part of _your_ work. So, let's say you used a really clever building technique in steps 34-37, someone could legally share just those steps while giving you credit (but they couldn't sell that information without giving you a cut). Now the bad news, once something hits the public domain, it's very difficult to take back (legally speaking). If your original instructions didn't identify you as the author (copyright notice, watermark in photos, etc.) or didn't require someone to acknowledge your rights prior to download, then you're on much weaker legal grounds. Hosting companies and places like eBay are far less likely to take sides if they catch even the slightest whiff that they are going to get mired down in "he said/she said" style with no hard, irrefutable (or in a digital world, un-fake-able) proof on either side. I know people who insist that they independently invented the plate-based sphere technique (often called a Lowell Sphere, or a Bram's Sphere after the guy who posted a program to generate instructions for them ) years before Bruce Lowell posed one on his website. Maybe they did, maybe it _should_ be called an Eaton Sphere or a Smyth Sphere but that boat sailed twenty years ago, history is unlikely to correct itself now (at least nobody's charging for copies of instructions they downloaded from the (free) sphere generator site).

I'm so sorry for you. I have the luxury (and I realize it is a luxury) of living within a half hour drive of four Lego Stores and a Discovery center gift shop (so Pick-a-Brick walls are always a fertile, target rich environment for my MOC fodder). I'm not sure why we have so many so tightly packed together when some places (like northern New England) have none, but I think its probably because everything else is so darned expensive (my wife and I went out to lunch yesterday at an "average" restaurant, not fast food but nothing fancy - two beverages, a sandwich and a taco - no dessert, $63 (USD) plus tip) that Lego isn't perceived to be as pricey as it is in other parts of the country. Back to the topic of the OP: I've been amassing parts for more than half a century, so I'd have to say the _breadth_ of my collection comes from kits. I almost always build the box-model at least once and it usually stays assembled for years until I either need something from it, get bored with it, or the cats decide that it is occupying too much of their shelf space. Sometimes in the course of building a model I'll notice that a given set is a good source for a particular set of bricks in a particular color and I'll add the kit to my watchlist of kits to stock up on when the price is right (Amazon sales, target red tags, end of production life clearance at the Lego Store and local toy shops, etc.) If the price is right ( less than 7 cents a brick or so ) I buy up a copy or two and scrape them for parts. Sometimes, in a pinch, where time is off the essence and I can't find (or, more, likely run out of ) a particular part in a particular color and I don't have time to redesign around it, I'll head to brickset to see is any kits in current release have what I'm looking for. If they do, I'll head to a Lego store and grab one or two copies of a set just for the part. As I mentioned above I'm also a big fan of Pick-a-Brick cups. If the "right parts" are available, I can spend hours packing a cup so tightly that you'd be hard pressed to squeeze in a shot glassful of water by the time I'm done. Economically speaking, a well packed short cup has given me the best return on my dollar (by weight of ABS), followed by a tall cup. Of course even with multiple walls to pick from, it's still pot-luck and if you're looking for certain parts to realize a particular MOC design, getting lots of parts quickly doesn't really help if they are the wrong parts. Some items you just know you're going to need in bulk (maybe not for this MOC, but for the five that come after it). That's where knowing store managers comes in handy and buying things by the case. K Boxes are supplies they use to stock the Pick-a-Brick wall and if you're on good terms with the store, sometimes they'll let you buy whole unopened cases. A lot depends on what they have in the back room, what they need for upcoming store event models and how brisk Pick-a-Brick sales have been recently. As you can guess, some bricks are more useful to buy in bulk than others as well, a case of, say, 1x4 block in a neutral color (say, light gray) will probably come in more useful than case of steering wheels. Price-wise (by weight) I've found it about on par with a well packed PAB tall cup. I don't bother with lots on eBay, partly because I don't trust eBay sellers to know what they are selling (too many stories of clone brands mixed in with Lego, damaged bricks, etc.), partly because Pierre Omidyar was a former classmate of mine and I don't want to throw business his way (but Pam is lovely, BTW), but mostly because I don't want to compete against someone who might actually be trying to buy Lego for their kids. It's the same reason I usually won't buy Lego when it shows up in our local Thrift store or at yard sales (unless it's something particularly rare or of sentimental value to me) - I know Lego is pricy and I grew up poor with Lego envy, now I can afford to pay a little more for my toys, I don't need to be scooping up bargain basement sales that might have allowed some other poor kid to get some Lego without breaking the family bank. I do accept donations. I'm of an age where friends are cleaning out houses as their kids go off to college and, knowing I'm an AFOL, they ask if I'd like their kids' old Lego. I always ask if the kids have blessed the purge and ask about potential nieces, nephews and the like who might better donees, but if it comes down to me or the landfill, I do my part for the environment. Again, it's pot-luck, but the price is right. Anyway... For specific parts in specific colors that I don't already own but need for a specific project, I head to Bricklink. I'm not one to buy a part or two from each of a dozen different vendors, there a handful of larger shops that I frequent regularly and tend to place orders far bigger than I actually need for my current project. I do this to amortize the postage. If I'm paying a fixed price for a Priority Mail box, I want that box packed as densely as possible. I just don't understand some of my fellow AFOLs that spend as much on postage as they do on parts, barely hitting minimum order thresholds from scores of different vendors. If all else fails, I order parts directly from Lego (or Lego Education - in the case of bulk Technic parts). Economically (and time-wise) this is usually the worst option but they have the best inventory. With very rare exceptions, any given part is cheaper on Bricklink (assuming you can find it and they ship to your location) and, from my experience, Bricklink orders are often shipped within 24 hours and show up at my doorstep within a couple of days. Lego parts orders are shipped DHL from Europe and sometimes take weeks to arrive. But you can't argue with the quality of the parts and they don't seem to have an issue with large orders (whereas I've been known to clean out some vendors of specific parts).

For what its worth, I share your frustration. I waited for years for an inside corner 3x3x1 slope and finally got it in dark red with the Robie House and in Sand Green two years later with the Imperial Hotel, but then had to wait another 4 years to get the darned thing in Black (to match the case of 22.5 degree slope parts I massed) and it only came in one set with a $350 price tag - you get four in the Disney Castle BTW ;-> Now don't get me wrong, I really appreciate kits with detailed instructions for reproducing the model on the box, but I also miss the type of kits I remember growing up that were just a collection of bricks for say, building houses. You got a range of roof tiles parts (in red of course) some doors and windows (also in red) an assortment of block for walls (mostly white) and some foliage parts (green). Those weren't sophisticated sets, but, more in line with a tube of Lincoln Logs, it gave you generic parts that were earmarked to work together an a variety of forms with color continuity (slope 45 at various lengths, inside corner slope, outside corner slope, etc. - all in the same color). I remember lusting after another set that was 90% blue, all different shapes, but blue so things could be color coordinated and not look like a blast shield at a paintball tournament. To be fair, they had a lot fewer colors and a lot fewer mold options back then, but that sense of completeness with respect to part families was really nice and I wish they'd make it easier to achieve these days. The Creator buckets they have today just aren't the same (if anything, the push you in exactly the opposite direction, a dozen assorted bricks each in a dozen colors). I liked it when the Architecture line offered a generic box (21050) of basically white and clear parts. If they'd ditched the book (which was a nice enough book but I don't need five copies and I see sacrificing it as one way to get the cost down) and offered similar monochrome boxes of tan, black, light gray, etc. with "complete" families of bricks, I'd be all over it in a shot - but I suspect it would be a tough sell to the non-AFOL crowd.

That's actually a running complaint about the new Power Up system, unlike the (soon to be) old Power Functions, LEGO has yet to release a "dumb" battery box for Power Up. Under the old (IR) and hardwired systems, you could simply turn things on and walk away. Under the Bluetooth design, if the controller loses connectivity for any reason, the motor stops. I've heard rumors that a simple on/off battery box is coming and it would make sense, but, rumors are just rumors until the product is on the shelves. The good news is that older Power Functions train motors and controllers are still widely available and (form factor wise) its an easy replacement if you want to retrofit an older motor into the model to have a turn it on and forget it until the batteries die capability. PS: Congrats on being a new parent, I hope you and your child have many happy years (re)discovering Lego trains together!

For adults, a smartphone is probably as good as a physical controller, but for young children there's a growing body of child development literature that finds there is a world of difference between them. Multiple studies have found that using "touch controls" on a flat surface as opposed to actual knobs, buttons and levers retards find motor skill development. The haptic feedback of grabbing, turing or pressing something that actually moves is fundamentally different from simply encountering resistance when pressing on a solid surface and that richer feedback is essential for toddlers and young children. In addition, focusing on a physical, reflected light 3-D object stimulates different areas of a developing child's brain compared with a light emitting 2-D surface. Screen time, regardless of what it's displaying or whether one is passively watching or actively interacting, reduces the "blink rate" of the viewer's eyes, screws with normal serotonin production and disrupts circadian cycles (or in terms that parents of young children can better relate to: it screws up nap time and makes tantrums more abrupt and intense). The color bars that you lay on the tracks in Duplo trains are a far better control solution than the Bluetooth-Phone App solution used here as far as Pre-schoolers (and even up to 3rd grade (9-10 year olds) when it comes to Serotonin and circadian effects) are concerned.

This is a great train and thank you so much for posting the instructions. I've been thinking about building The Flying Scotsman for years (my grandfather was a fireman (engine stoker) on the real one back in the 30's and 40's so I've always had something of a fondness for it) . This should be just the kicker I needed to finally stop thinking and start building. Great job and thanks for sharing.

The New Elementary has a few good shots of the new parts and small discussion of the new set

I appreciate what they seem to shooting for with Powered Up, but between the form factors, the reliance on Bluetooth and the (in my opinion unhealthy) fixation with integrating smart devices, I think they are really opening the door for third parties to come up with more viable alternatives. Certainly, there are things that the PU system can do that PF can't, but I personally don't want to do those things on a regular basis. I don't want to pay for a bigger, more expensive (but less powerful) motor with a shaft encoder if I'm not actually going to use it as a servo. I don't want a high interactivity UI (with a lot of Bluetooth chatter) in order to run my train; if I'm at a show I want to turn the blasted thing on and turn my attention to the other 20 trains I'm trying to set up. And, honestly, do they realize how fickle app development has become? The App Stores don't want to support anything but the latest version of the OS's and every time I "upgrade" half my apps get screwed up. When I think about the problems TLG had keeping things like the RoboLab and Lego Studios Movie Maker (and camera driver) up to date on the the (comparatively) stable Windows PC platform, I'm more than a little paranoid about where their "smart device" integration software is going to be a decade from now. I've got a 9v speed controller from 1991 that's still working today, I can't say that about most software I've owned. The whole system just seems like they were trying to make the fringe cases possible and forgot to make the common use cases simple and practical. Maybe it's time to stock up on PF motors and battery boxes before they are phased out entirely - I think this is going to be a rough transition.

A college friend of mine works for a company that makes special conductive paint with copper and aluminum dust in it, specifically to screw with cell signals (once properly installed and grounded, it creates a weak Faraday Cage). Their biggest customers are Malls and large box stores looking to cut down on customers using their phones to compare prices with Amazon (and other vendors, presumably). It's still a small, regional market, but he says that their business has been growing a lot in the past five years as more and more malls struggle to compete against on-line sales. The malls want to block the cell service and control the wi-fi (where they can use "parental controls" to blacklist competing online vendor sites). I wonder if TLG has considered factors like this, or are they just assuming everyone has 4G or better all the time?

I think it's hard to define a true "golden age" for all of Lego as a brand because it really all depends on what you value, and in some cases the very thing that makes one AFOL overjoyed drives another away (e.g. Licensed Themes - is now a golden age because there are so many, or were the 1980's a golden age because there were cool original themes that pre-dated Lego Star Wars?) I suppose you could debate a "golden age of the mini-figure" Like comic books, those have certainly undergone surges in popularity, complexity and creativity over the years. Personally, I don't really collect them so much as I accumulate them, but I know enough fanatics and vendors to realize there is a sub-culture out there with very strong opinions. I don't know if there's a "golden age of parts" though I'm pretty sure there was a dark age of parts (about 15-20 years ago when there were far too many oversized, dedicated purpose pieces that were harder to repurpose for generic build than the modern orange brick separator). I certainly appreciate a lot of the new molds (especially small generic pieces with lots of SNOT connection possibilities) that have come down the line in recent years. The new parts have opened the door to new building techniques and more sophisticated MOC (and sets, to be fair) but it that really a "golden age" or a natural evolution as the product (and its audience) matures? Colorwise, I think I'd prefer the term "Renaissance," especially with respect to the introduction of a more "mature" palette that began circa the introduction of Sand Green and Tan bricks and lead to things like Earth Blue, Earth Green, Dark Red, etc. I grew up in the days of Black, White, Red, Blue, Yellow and Clear, very garish basic colors that screamed "I am a toy" no mater what you built or how much detail you tried to include. The modern palette is a godsend by comparison. Certainly it can be overdone (last time I checked I had so many shades of blue it was getting hard to tell a bad dye lot or UV damage from intentional shade variation) but when I think back on the old days of opening a box of basically white brick with red roof tiles and windows and anything green was already molded into a plant, breaking the seals on a modern castle and getting blocks that looks like slate, granite, sandstone and wood is just a joy that I think too many people take for granted.

The Disney aspect does nothing for me. I'd be happier if they dropped the Disney branding and the mini-figures entirely and just sold this thing for $30 less (because you know Mickey and friends have to be adding a premium to the overall cost) but I also realize that some people who don't really care about trains are going to buy just because it IS a Disney tie-in. Whatever, if being "Disney" is an excuse to get a new train (especially a steam engine) so be it. We managed to get a nice little train set out of a terrible movie like the Lone Ranger, why not let the House of Mouse bring us a fresh take on Trains. It's no Emerald Night and (at first glance) probably pales by comparison to the Maersk Locomotive or the Horizon Express (some of my favorites), but looks better than the two holiday train offerings, comes with a cool little station and looks like it could be a fun build. I was disappointed to learn that, while this set includes a Power Up motor, it does not include the remote, opting instead for control via an App on a smart device. While I can appreciate the advantages of simply running software on an existing device, I ABSOLUTELY HATE being forced into combining Lego with smart phones or computers. I do Lego to get AWAY from screens and would gladly pay extra to avoid having to open an app to run my trains. Further, we have a strict separation of "church and state" for my young daughter when it comes to "play time" versus "screen time" (video games are right out) so embedding a train controller in a phone would send her mixed messages. I'll probably get this and retrofit a PowerFunctions motor and remote. I suppose I could pick up a separate PU remote, but I live in the city and Bluetooth pairing is in my apartment is already a hassle, too many devices, too many dropped connections and not enough bandwidth. Bluetooth was fine when it was new and we were only using it for a wireless speaker or two, but now its the electronic equivalent of the dust bunny under the bed. We've got dozens of devices (speakers, earphones, fitbits, thermostats, A/C units, lights, nanny cams, etc. - my damn microwave oven even wants to send me a notification when my popcorn is ready) and that's before you even start counting the stray signals from the neighbor's apartments. Honestly, I miss the days of metal track and a speed controller. But hey, NEW TRAIN!

A few years back, my Lego room was a spare bedroom with 9 foot ceilings, which allowed for tall bookcases and plenty of shelf space to display models. When my daughter was born I had to move to the attic where, now, I have a 2ft knee wall and a sloping ceiling that makes it hard to display much of anything except a single row of Modulars and a few dozen trains, cars and spaceships. Sadly, most of my "display" pieces now live in boxes in the basement awaiting their next chance to see daylight at a convention or gallery showing. My wife and I have talked about moving to a bigger house, but I'm not sure how she'd feel about my putting in for "500+ square feet of Lego display and workshop, must have 9' ceilings or higher" as a selection criterion.

Well, I'm not a Facebook person myself so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I think a lot depends on _how_ people find your site more so than what language it's in. The reason I say this is because every now and then I do searches for some of my own MOCs on the web. I have my own sites where I post things (MOCPages, Flickr, etc.) and occasionally get direct feedback at those sites, but I've also discovered that other people blog about finding certain MOCs so I do extra searches just to see if my stuff shows up on sites I have nothing to do with (so I can spy on what people are saying about my work in _those_ comments). These searches have taken me to blogs, websites, and Facebook pages in French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, etc. And in each case, Chrome has kindly offered to translate the page to my native English (granted the quality of the translation is not always great, but still...) Automatically translating the audio track of a video is more challenging, but if you posted a transcript (in Italian) along with the video, browsers could localize (poorly?) that text with a click of a button. So translating (and enjoying content from) foreign pages these days really isn't that hard, particularly when you're talking about a mainstream romance language like Italian. It's getting people's attention in the first place that's probably the limiting factor. Again, I can't speak to the whole "Facebook thing" because I decided years ago that it simply wasn't worth the effort or hassle of dealing with that company; their ever-changing "rules" regarding privacy (or lack thereof), content ownership; and, a search engines that made it easier to find things from the outside looking in than one member trying to find content from another -- but, in general I've found that diversifying where you "advertise" helps. When you post to websites like this one, post photos of MOCs at various hosting sites, or post content on YouTube, be sure to include contact information, preferably a live link back to your page (where the hosting sites allow such references). Regardless of your native language, you can't attract followers if people don't know you exist or can't find you among the other ten million sites that crop up when you search for something generic like "Lego Set Review" or "Lego video"

I've deliberately left job candidates alone with a bucket of bricks (along with assorted other distractions) just to see who is comfortable tinkering (versus reading over their own resume or picking up a newspaper checking their phone, etc.) and, depending on the situation, ask people if they have a favorite set or theme. A woman from Human Resources once chided me for "asking about toys" as she interpreted the question as a proxy for asking how old the candidate was. In her mind, if I could date their favorite toy and knew the age range for that toy I could guess their age. (Many corporations in the US expressly forbid interviewers from asking candidates their age for fear of age discrimination lawsuits) Despite my best attempts at a poker face, I laughed at her. Then I showed her a few dozen photos on my phone from that years BrickFair and asked her to guess the ages of the creators of the various MOCs. Then I explained that if I wanted to guess their age, I'd just add their years of experience and years of education that they'd claimed on their resume; what I was really after was a sense of their self-confidence, creativity, ingenuity and interests.

Excellent advice. Growing up I was the classic outsider/geek/nerd/what-have-you. I liked Lego, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Comic Books and all sorts of other things that were targets of ridicule by the "in" crowd. Half a century later, movies based on comics are routinely headlined by Oscar winning stars and breaking the billion dollar box office mark; Sci-Fi is a respected genre, shows like Game of Thrones has won more Emmys than the original Star Trek was ever even nominated for; and, respected engineering schools routinely use Technic parts for illustrating concepts and refining prototypes (at one point I was a faculty advisor to a graduate level Lego Robotics Lab). So you never know, one day you're the unfashionable weirdo everyone picks on, maybe a few years later you're the respected expert in some area that everyone can't get enough of. You can't predict it, so just make the best of today and be true to yourself.

The more I think about this voucher system and the poor integration between the VIP site and the shop, the more I feel like this whole thing was designed by an undercover Amazon operative; the more barriers they put between me and redeeming my VIP rewards the less inclined I feel to amass points in the first place. Why should I jump through hoops to generate and redeem vouchers (which, when you think about it really amounts to getting about 5% cash back (based on having paid full price at some point in the past) applied to a future purchase) when I can buy the same product for 5-10% off today (and another one at a similar discount tomorrow) with one click at Amazon? I realize the system is new and any transition is going to be buggy, but for a "VIP Rewards" system, it really hasn't made me feel special, important or rewarded yet. The system should be simple, fair, automatic and transparent, not an obstacle course where the website can't even manage its own cookies properly.

I think the best buy I ever came across was at a toy store chain called KB Toys (long gone out of business now). They routinely sold recently retired and generally unpopular Lego sets at a steep discount (they also jacked up the price on new and popular sets so they'd offset a bargain on a Prince of Persia kit by ripping you off with the latest Star Wars release if you weren't paying attention). One day I noticed they had a dust covered stack of Master Yoda sculptures ( #7194) that someone must have just stumbled over in a back room somewhere. They tagged them for ten bucks a kit, which worked out to just under a penny a piece (USD) with loads of sand green and tan parts (that were kinda hard to come by in quantity in those days) I bought the whole stack, but if I hadn't, I think this would have met your criteria for being a "real" sale as they were tagged items (about a dozen or so) just sitting on a shelf (and from the layer of dust, they'd spent a _lot_ of time on a shelf somewhere before I found them), no special signage or "limited time only" sort of pricing - just a pathetic little whimper of "please take these off our hands so we'll have room for kits people actually want." I part'ed them out years ago which, in hindsight is a bit of a pity; I seem to recall someone on Amazon asking 6 or 7 hundred bucks for this same set not that long ago. Funny how things change with age.