legomr

It's almost comical, looking at this comic now, eight years later. There's a Lego Death Star, they did pick up the LotR license...

What you are trying to do is a bit more difficult than (and also different from) the original effort since your algorithm to determine legal connections must be much more complex. The original could look at stud occupation to check if two bricks occupied the same space, but you will have to turn to geometry. Also, tree pruning might become more difficult as you have to consider literally indefinite angle choices for different outcomes. You won't find many truly new configurations, to boot. With very few exceptions, you basically change the question from "find the number of all possible connections (at aligned axes)" to "find all possible connections [...] plus the number of all connections made possible through rotating bricks around the single brick they are attached to". Truly new connections are really just the ones where rotation enables configurations that otherwise are illegal because two bricks would share the same space (see your last image). Right?

Impressive. I can't even begin to say what I admire most: The simple, yet effective body/front shield, the extraordinary articulation, the sidearms... a true orgasm in robotics.

The Deep Sea Diver seems stylistically to be from a different era. A wreck of something older might be cool. Maybe customize an Imperial Flagship?

It's a great design. I'd love to see what it looks like in actual Lego. Did anybody fire up a prototype yet?

Funny. Two weeks ago, I saw an opened Alien Defender box in a local ASDA. There was a price reduction sticker on it, GBP 4.00. I peeked inside the box, it seemed complete, and I went to the cash register to buy it. However, the clerk said that it's not the usual sticker for reduced prices. We called a manager, and who confirmed that. Apparently somebody walked into the ASDA, tore up the box, and put the reduction sticker on it, for later collection. In any way, if you have as much CCTV in the US as we have in the UK, it should never be difficult to prove that you didn't put the sticker on there.

Well, I've had Lego toys for as long as I can think. I remember the Red-Indian Midi-figures (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?set=215-1), and a fire engine (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=672-1). I still have remains of those sets. I then was heavily into Lego Space and Technic, but interest started to fade with M-Tron. I missed Blacktron 2 and Space Police 2 completely. Strangely, I did buy two Ice Planet sets, Ice Tunnelator (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6814-1) and Sea Plane (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=1711-1). But that was really it. Next thing I know, I buy the Creator Mini Jet (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6741-1) in 2010. For fun. And in the last two years, I have probably gathered four or five times as much Lego as I had during my whole childhood...

There should be more microfigure classic space! It's probably difficult though, especially when transparent canopies are involved... hmm...

The clean, one-eyed look somehow reminded me of Portal. Great design!

Hilarious. I actually laughed out! Says something about just sticking together random pieces to see what happens. If you knew beforehand, I am even more in awe. :)

The Protoss figures are great. Hits the colour scheme of the original SC very well, I feel. I tried to do a few Protoss figures myself once and experimented a lot with trans-blue elements in place of blue. Maybe I should pick that up again.

Nice ideas. I like the strange "generator" thingy in the midsection. Is that ring-shapey thing one of the Atlantis tokens? Overall, a bit of an unusual colour scheme for steampunk, maybe.

Great review for what was, in my opinion, the best set of 2011. It is indeed unfortunate that this set, and Alien Conquest, had such a short shelf life span. I'm sure this particular set will remain a classic, though.

Brilliant alien pushing the door open. Really innovative!

I found it quite useful to keep the plastic insets from Lego Advent Calendars for sorting and storage. Although they are a bit wobbly, come to think of it.

Interesting question. I weighed the content of every PaB cup I got from the Lego store. The large cup allegedly holds 985 mL = 0.985 L (see http://www.fbtb.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4873). On average, the contents weigh 395g. That gives a density of 401 g per liter. Now, in true Monty Python style: What gallon? Imperial? Liquid? Dry? Conversion to grams per gallons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon): UK Imperial gallon: 1823 g US liquid gallon: 1518 g US dry gallon: 1624 g Having said that, there is quite some variance in the weight-per-volume for Lego. For my own PaB cups, I noticed up to +/- 10% deviations from the average, and I always try to arrange bricks in a strategic fashion when filling cups, fill up empty space with smaller parts, etc. etc., without actually clicking the bricks into each other. So generally, if people just throw Lego into a box, I would expect there to be a lower density, maybe something along the lines of 200 g/L. Generally speaking, giving amounts of Lego in volume is a bit strange in the first place, I'd think.

I once found 7930 Bounty Hunter Gunships in battered, but still sealed boxes at a Tesco for less than 10 pounds each. Bought three.

Not sure if the 9020 Starter Set is a fair comparison as it's not really Lego Bricks in the usual sense and contains less than 100 parts: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=9020-1 7100 seems to be unbeatable at the moment, with a whopping 63946 cubic cm... closely followed by the 10030 Star Destroyer with respectable 62357 cubic cm... and the Millenium Falcon a distant third with 60387 cubic cm. For comparison, the 10188 Death Star still measures 59620 cubic cm, the Super Star Destroyer 52040 cubic cm, and the Taj Mahal a mere 37921 cubic cm. (All measurements except 7100 taken from Bricklink.)

Interesting question. Based on my observations about display model handling at Lego Stores, I would guess that TLG isn't too concerned about the cost of single sets. Basically, whenever a display model isn't needed any more, or space runs out, the display models are dismantled to be sold in grab bags. If they want to display the same model again, they open another box. In fact, when I recently bought grab bags with parts from the Batcave in it, a staff member told me that was in there because the display model had fallen down and disintegrated. Rather than rebuilding it, they put it in grab bags and would rebuild another Batcave from scratch. They told me that they virtually had no space in the warehouse for display models, just for one or two boxes with loose parts (for the grab bags).

My understanding is that chemical softener/plasticizer evaporates over time, which is why older Lego bricks may become a little brittle. Maybe that's it?

More or less the same here. I always imagined that that's the way Lego is supposed to be used (although it's of course down to the individual), too. And it's too expensive and too demanding on domestic space to keep a second, sealed set for any offspring.

Quite amazing MOCs. It's interesting to see the Alienator go from what visually were four legs down to two. I thoroughly love the armour plate/black windscreen/whatever for the command tank's left driver.

The robot has great hands! Now I only wish there was a stop-motion animation of the transformation process somewhere. :)

Not bad at all. Very impressive collections. Makes me feel self-conscious. ;)

The box art is pretty good. Especially the subdued background for the first two comes across as very convincing.