Aliencat

Agreed. This has SNOT techniques only in the right places. Excellent job Ralph!

B-OM-5E to B-OM-6B I have to say I really love the modular buildings Lego has released, Café Corner, Green Grocer and Market street. Not only are they great sets, they also present another step in the direction of making a whole theme targeted at AFOLs. The modular system is great, finally a system everyone can follow to join together and make huge busy street layouts. And if you want to rearrange your houses, no problem, just put them in a different order. If you want to rebuild one, you can just take it out without affecting the rest. I love the system so I gave it a try and built some MOCs following what the AFOL world calls the Café Corner modular standard: Jobasha's Odd Books Brickshelf folder Jobasha's Odd Books is a bookstore specialised in ancient scripts and accounts on the occult and anything science cannot explain. In recent years it has turned from just a bookstore into a place of discussion where many people meet to conjure up explanations for strange events. If you have something you can't explain, Jobasha's Odd Books is a good place to go for advice, not only does Jobasha the Cat know a lot, most of his frequent customers can explain a thing or two as well. Bistro Le Pont Brickshelf folder Or the Bistro next door, as Jobasha calls it. His little apartment above the bookstore lacks a kitchen so this is where he eats, but if there's anything he can't stand it's a rude waiter! Harry's Hardware Brickshelf folder Harry sells anything you need to build, repair, fix, or demolish. And if he doesn't have it, he'll find it for you! I took this one with me to the Classic Castle meet in Billund last may, where we found an inventive new use for the roof: a battle arena! Town Hall Brickshelf folder This is an old gothic town hall as seen in many old cities. It's 48 studs wide so quite a bit bigger than Café Corner and Green Grocer and them to make it stand out as an important building in a street scene. I'll be making many more of these, because I really love this modular system!

I'm not too sure, Klaus-Dieter, we've all seen the maiden figure in the advent calendar which might be a clue towards an upcoming civilian set. But the whole reason Lego is making the Fantasy Era line is that kids want action, and kids are still Lego's main audience. I am also strongly under the impression the new Castle line has been selling much better than the previous Vikings and Knights Kingdom line, so Lego would be foolish to not continue it a bit further, the hint of a possible upcoming Elf faction confirms this more. So it can go both ways really, maybe both at the same time: some civilian stuff and more fantasy stuff.

Here's my one: You can find him somewhere in most of my MOCs.

Awesome review! One little thing though: This is the old 4.5V track, which was like the 12V track but without the beam openings :)

I might be, but let me get back to you on this ;) would like to see this castle finished there.

Very cool stuff, it's starting to look great are you bringing this to Legoworld as well? (will it be finished in time?)

There actually isn't a single set in there. There's half a Café Corner with a motorized piston mechanism on the inside for the dumpster guy, but that's as close as it gets. The rest is 100% MOC.

Hehe, they also can't calculate. The article is dated 23 sept. 2008, yet says "Lego's Danish founder Ole Kirk Christansen secured the patent for the modern day brick design 30 years ago in January 1958." I think they meant 50 years? I don't think the Brickish Association was around 25 years ago (in the article he joined it 5 years ago) ;)

Welcome Richard! Always good to see a familiar face... er... name sign up on the forum :) Glad to see you could join us here as well!

Awesome article. I enjoyed reading that and I agree with it completely. I loved these old combinations of town and castle in various classic sets, and I did try it with Café Corner and some more modern stuff: link One small thing I have to address though, the picture of 10182 has "10182 Market Street" under it, the name of this set is "Café Corner", Market Street is set 10190 and is the blue one.

Awesome stuff, I saw this on Classic-Castle a while ago and was really impressed. You've got some clever building techniques in there, with a clean style. I love the atmosphere that gives off. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for the heads up Ralph, I'll have to look into Charles Stross, I haven't heard of him before.

Hello Musikfreak! I'm right there with ya, I couldn't agree more! I feel Technic went downhill a bit after '95, but they've definitely hauled themselves back up these past few years. And I can say the same for many other themes. Yep, 8275 is a great example of what can be done with Power Functions, the same unfortunately can't be said about the Cherry Picker and the new Off-Roader, I agree. I'm hoping for another Power Functions construction machine using the system to its fullest potential: remote controlled raw power! I love the new Linear Actuators, and I really think they were used very well in the red Excavator, I would like to see Lego come up with some more models using the system, like the Telescopic Handler and the upcoming dumptruck. Since they're longer than pneumatic cylinders, and have a greater range, I think a forklift using a chain over the Linear Actuator would be cool, to demonstrate the workings of a real forklift. I think combining Power Funcions with the Linear Actuators would make for a great model. A new Super Car would be great as well, I don't think the Off-Roader really meets that criterium there.

Happy birthday guys, have a good one!

Haha I think Freddie made a little copy/paste mistake. Here's the link to the MLCad website ;)

I'm sure this was very useful information for Panda9001100 :)

Welcome from a fellow newbie! I've been browsing around here a lot now and this looks like a cool place, I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself exploring the dark depths of Eurobricks as well ;)

As can be seen in this picture, Café Corner uses a similar technique, but with the mudguard higher above the window, so that the window can actually open. and an ornamental gargoyle (well... frog really) in between. After checking out this picture that Norrington posted however, I put the mudguard right on the window, and I would maybe add another windowframe under that to make it tall like in the picture.

That would be this piece: And that was exactly the piece I was thinking about when I saw this picture. I'm not sure what colours it's available in in LDD, but let me find this out. I don't think it's available in brown but I think dark red would be the best colour in this case. Let me tinker around a bit and get right back to you. Edit: here's how I would do it (done in LDD to make sure these parts are available in these colours) Of course you can alter that any way, use two windowframes on top of eachother instead of one, to make a higher window, or simply put the mudguard higher over the window to be able to add some ornaments in between, like Café Corner has.

Nice garage Guss, I like this little scene :) That's the one!

The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton, the second part of a 3750 pages trilogy that started with The Reality Dysfunction. This really is the most awesome Sci-Fi Epic I've ever read, even though these three books (called the Night's Dawn Trilogy, by the way) are the thickest I have, I recommend them to everyone, they're really worth your time! The way Hamilton thought out every detail of his intricate future fantasy universe is amazing and all three of these books are absolutely action packed.

this one without a doubt. Compare to the real me here.

Larry crawls away from this mound of smoking plastic. "My cool toys in ruin!" our protagonist shouts out, as an uncanny notion of pain struck his brain.