Ralph_S

Well, gee thanks. I'm an old fashioned kind of guy who still prefers to do certain things command-line, so long file names are a big no-no. However, we live in a windows-oriented world and if you use windows to rename multiple files the filenames do end up with a space in them. I currently use firefox as a browser, but in the past have used both netscape and internet explorer. It works in all of them. Cheers, Ralph

Something useful many people don't seem to know is that brickshelf accepts zipped files. Uploading anything more than a few pictures manually gets very tedious. If you have a whole series of files that you want to upload to the same folder and you're a user of Windows XP (presumably it works in Vista as well) you can select the image files (by left clicking them with your mouse whilst keeping either the shift or control key on your keyboard pressed). If you then right-click one of the files that you have selected, you'll see the option "copy files to compressed folder". That'll make a single zip file containing all the images you selected. In step 5 of Hinckley's scheme, you can now select the zip file rather than a single image file. Brickshelf will unpack it for you. Another important thing to know is that brickshelf doesn't accept filenames that are very long or that contain spaces -unlike windows, for instance. Cheers, Ralph

I've been building a few minifig scale cars recently, although I've opted for five wide because I think it is more realistic. Anyway, I know the challenges involved in making cars this small look like a real vehicle- certainly if the real vehicle doesn't have styling that really stands out. To be frank I wouldn't have recognised the Impreza or the Mercedes. I wouldn't have recognised the Toyota either, but that's probably because I don't know the real car. The one that looks the most like the real deal is the Mini Cooper, with the white roof and the white stripes on the bonnet. Cheers, Ralph

The LEGO modular building page mainlt talks about Cafe corner compatible buildings and separately about 'market street modules'. Perhaps that's what you should be looking for. Perhaps ~VBBN~ can post a link to pictures of some of his buildings. Cheers, Ralph

No. That was built by Ed Diment a.k.a. Lego Monster, who is a friend of mine. I've had some MOCs on display in the Brighton LEGO store. I've so far built a curry house and a chip shop, and I expect those will go to Brighton sometime in the future. Cheers, Ralph

Here is the modular building page from LEGO. The main 'modularity' seems to lie in that if everybody follows the guidelines the buildings can be connected to form a street or city layout. We've done this in the Brickish Association for Christmas, and built a rather long and very nice street. The 16x16 standard goes a bit further, but I honestly don't see the point in being able to stack modules in a different configuration unless I were building either an apartment block with a large number of identical modules (but perhaps wth different interiors) or a large residential area, allowing you to build different houses using only a small number of module designs. I guess that's what Eilif is going for. Actually, Eilif, have you tried searching for 'modular' here on eurobricks? Perhaps this thread contains something useful. Cheers, Ralph

Indeed. Mine are cafe-corner compatible. The 16x16 stackable module standard doesn't appeal to me. I think it is much too restrictive -certainly with the centrally mounted staircases that leave virtually no room for an interior. I'm afraid I don't have any designs that would be suitable either. Cheers, Ralph

Since Legoland nowadays isn't completely owned by LEGO anymore, unfortunately their shop doesn't seem to get many exclusive sets. I don't know what direction you're coming from or how your traveling, but a LEGO brand store is probably a more likely place to find it. Cheers, Ralph

To me that doesn't look too different from what they sell at Mucky Ds, actually . Would you eat a pizza that looks like this? Cheers, Ralph

Absolutely. I may not be completely sold on the shape of the roof, but having looked at these instruction it's clear how amazingly detailed it is. If I do buy it, I'll definitely turn it into a convertible. And then there is the parts selection, with lots of plates in dark blue and a lot of parts in medium blue that I have never seen before. I've got to get me one of those. Cheers, Ralph

My favorite has to be 6683, Hamburger stand, with Pizza to go a close second. It's a small set, but with lovely features and it was major inspiration for my own chip shop. When it comes to actual take-away food I'm more in favour of Chinese. Cheers, Ralph

Nice review. Just one little point. Since there is no sound transmission through space, but there is an atmosphere on Mars through which this this thing supposedly flies, hypersonic airplane makes far more sense than hypersonic spacecraft ;)

Very good.

I know Huw. I talked to him last Saturday. He is aware that there are problems and is working hard to rectify them. Perhaps that's why you haven't received a reply yet. He may very well be too busy fixing things. I'm not going to give anybody his private e-mail address. If you want to contact him, I'd recommend doing it via the comments form on the actual site. http://www.brickset.com/misc/contact.aspx Cheers, Ralph

NTNU. I was there a few years ago for a conference. Trondheim is a fantastic city and I really enjoyed my stay there. It was around this time of year though, when the sun hardly goes down. I'm not the kind of pub-crawler who used to going home when the sun is already up, but in Trondheim that's hard to avoid. Fortunately my hotel room had decent curtains. Cheers, Ralph

Not sure how long ago you left, but I reckon that the biggest change that you would notice is that they're replacing the rather nice dolphin logo with the name of the university written in some expensive-looking font as part of a new 'branding' operation. Considering how many of the Dolphins you see around campus and in town, it'll probably be a while before they'll all be gone though. Other than that, there's been a lot building work on the Highfield campus. ECS is getting a new building to replace the two damaged and destroyed an a massive fire about two years ago, biomedical is moving from Boldrewood to Highfield, so they're getting a new building and ISVR have a new building as well. Cheers, Ralph

I agree. I'm a member of the Brickish association and most people in that either do something technical (engineering and such) or in IT. Cheers, Ralph

I suspect it has to do with clearance. If you want wheels that are as wide as these to steer, you'll need quite a bit of room inside the fender and you'll also need a bigger gap between the wheel and the edge of the fender. That would interfere with the look of the model. Cheers, Ralph

I studied applied physics and after that did a PhD in physics in The Netherlands. I still haven't quite left the university, because I currently work for the university that 'Wile Manc' attended in the UK -although not in the department where he studied obviously. I reckon there aren't too many physicists working in the sociology department. Cheers, Ralph

I'm rather fond of helicopters and have built many different types. This doesn't really remind me of any particular model, other than perhaps an EH. 101 Merlin and even that resemblance is very superficial. Just for the record: this is a Sikorsky Sea King and this is a Sikorsky MH-53 (a derivation of the CH-53). The only resemblance I see with the former is the colour scheme and with the latter the fact that it's got a fat rear-end, sponsons and six blades. It doesn't matter though, because I really like it. The colour scheme is great, the shape is nice, it's got quite a bit of detail and I just have to get my hands on the cockpit window and those new rotor blades. When I first saw the large aircraft pieces a few years ago I figured they were very much single-use parts, but the tail end doesn't look too bad. Pretty clever. I like the raft too. It really does look like the real deal. That the helicopter can't lift it really isn't an issue, because in real life they wouldn't lift the raft either. They'd use the rescue hoist to lift the occupants of the raft into the helicopter one by one (or perhaps in pairs). Imagine a storm with a helicopter hovering over tall waves with a big fat raft strung from a cable underneath it. The raft would catch a lot of wind and flop around quite a bit, causing it to loose all its occupants and also yanking the helicopter around, possibly causing the pilot to loose control and crash. Bad idea! Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. It's nice to know they are appreciated. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not so sure about the roof, but otherwise it's great and you can always turn it into a convertible Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I'm quite fond of my classic taxi and the pumper truck turned out okay, but I think I have learned a few new tricks since I built them. The bus is obviously popular, but I myself like the new fire engine best. Cheers, Ralph

V-LV-13C & V-LV-13D, Pumper Truck V-LF-1F Those small cars are really tricky. The van and the fire engine were relatively easy to build, as was the bus apart from the front window. I didn't include the other cars because they're a lot older (and the farm truck is already dismantled). Still, here goes. Here's the Ferrari (loosely based on a 348TB) And a London taxi (not a Rolls Royce) Finally, an American 'fifties pumper truck Cheers, Ralph

V-LV-16C to V-LV-16E, Fire Truck V-LF-3A, Bus V-LB-1E, Courier V-LC-3F In the last week or so I have been having a lot of fun building minifig scale vehicles. I really like the cars in the current LEGO city line, with regular cars being four studs wide (five including the fenders) and trucks six (seven including the fenders). It's a nice scale -roughly 1/45- that allows plenty of details and room to fit a driver without the cars becoming so big that figures look ridiculously small next to them. So, I've gone for 5-wide cars, a 6-wide van and a 7-wide bus and fire engine. BTW, after I built most of the cars, I found that these are the same widths as used in the LEGO Discovery centre in Berlin. There are quite a few people on Eurobricks who do mainly minifig scale things, so I reckoned you may be interested. Some of you have probably seen my city bus. Since I first posted it it, it's received a 'nose-job' of sorts, with a new front window designed by Tim Gould. A courier van, with opening sliding door: A series of regular cars (an MPV, a sedan and a hatchback): Last but not least, my fire engine, based on Mercedes trucks used by the London Fire Brigade (photos are links to their pages on flickr) All my minifig scale stuff can be found in my minifig scale folder on flickr. Cheers, Ralph