davee123

Here's one thing that helped me out a bit: Try build it on some wacky raised baseplates. I once took two of these at right angles to each other and built a castle that was both on and off of them: It basically forced me to make lots of little oddities in the walls because the underlying landscape was irregular, just like in real life! Anyway, I found that building my structure on top of an asymmetrical surface really forced me to adjust the building in certain places to accommodate. In the end, though, it's a matter of adjusting how you think about design. Keep at it, and do a bunch of designs and see what you like and don't like. Copy what you like in other peoples' designs, and integrate the techniques into your own creations. With experience, you can learn how to make some really nice MOCs. DaveE

My guess would be that MegaBloks is actively trying to promote themselves any way they can. They had a deal with some other ad campaign a couple years ago (I forget what it was for), and MB actually had them put up a disclaimer on the commercial to the effect of "BLOCKS SHOWN ARE MEGABLOKS!" in later versions of the ad. Probably because everyone who saw the commercial assumed that they were LEGO, of course! There was recently some discussion about this regarding whether or not MB was simply riding off of LEGO's marketing efforts-- but here it's the other way around, I would think. Anyone who watches the ad is almost assuredly going to assume it's LEGO, and LEGO's probably going to get more PR out of it than MB will. Anyway, my money isn't on Honda actively seeking out MegaBloks to do a campaign with them. Chances are, either MB approached Honda, or Honda approached LEGO and was denied (or LEGO was too expensive). Also possible (probably unlikely?) that LEGO might have some sort of exclusive rights for TV advertising with, say, Volvo or something, and that LEGO can't legally allow their trademark to be used in conjunction with another car brand. DaveE

From someone who learned this the hard way, WRONG. Regular Christmas lights WILL melt your bricks if they're in close proximity, and used for extended periods of time. How much time, I don't know-- I had them on for a few hours right up close to my bricks and it was enough to deform and melt some of them :( DaveE

Cool! I tried out MonkeyJam, and it seems to work OK-- although when I play back a movie in Windows Media Player, it has a hard time with the default frame rate. QuickTime plays it alright, but Media Player doesn't seem to give equal time to individual frames, interesting. Works fine if I double-up the frames (which is MonkeyJam's default, seemingly for importing images), although it's obviously a bit slow since it effectively reduces the frame rate. Anyway, I'll have to play around with it more! Thanks muchly! DaveE

This has been been addressed as early as 2001, I believe by Brad Justus, although I don't think there's a written transcript. We've all heard this circulated around quite a bit, so at this point, I think we can say with extreme confidence that yes, this is why the North American boxes show the piece count. What I haven't heard has been an official reason for why they piece counts are NOT on the European or Australian boxes. People have ventured guesses and speculations, but I'm not sure we've ever gotten a reply from LEGO. As stated, I similarly think it's to prevent people from over-thinking a set and concluding that one is a better deal than another. A LEGO buyer might see the 6199 Hydro Crystalation Station, which was $90 with 472 pieces, and see 5988 Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins which was $80 for 710 pieces, and conclude that 6199 was a terrible deal, and 5988 was an amazing deal. And in reality, 6199 might have a different price/piece ratio because of its large transparent elements, its raised baseplate, 12 chrome elements, or simply because it IS a worse deal. Anyway, it's a good guess that LEGO doesn't want you using piece count to evaluate the quality of a set. DaveE

So, I've found a few free bits of software that do video capturing, but I really need one that allows individual frame replacement from other sources-- IE from already existing GIF/PNG/BMP/JPG files. Specifically, I've done some renders using LDView, and I'd like to string them together into an animation. I did find a few a demo program that rather annoyed me, too-- it effectively wrote "DEMO" on the final output (since it was a demo program), but let me go through all the motions of putting together the frames before making it clear that it was going to overwrite text onto all my frames :( Any suggestions? DaveE

The lightest was tested back in 2001 by Chris Tracey on a chemistry scale: http://news.lugnet.com/market/shipping/?n=362 He found that the lightest element (of the candidates listed at the time) was a minifig coin, although he didn't test the small plume or dragon plumes, which are possible contenders (I think I'd still bet on the coin, though). As for volume, that's tough. The hardest part about measuring the volume would be: 1) air bubbles sticking to the parts 2) the elements floating The accuracy in terms of telling how far the water level progresses up a cylinder can be aided by using the right equipment for the job (skinny cylinders or flasks) and using high quantity. If you tested (say) 100 coins and 100 plumes, the difference is magnified by a factor of 100, so is easier to see. Plastic density is iffy in these small amounts, though. The ABS mixture has changed over the years, so it may be lighter or heavier from one year to another. It also varies with the type of part, as seen in, say, the broadswords that used to be a higher concentration of ABS, and now use a different mixture so they're less brittle and more flexible. I honestly don't know how much of a difference it makes-- it might be significant enough to change an element's mass so that it's heavier than one with more volume, hard to say. DaveE

I'd guess in the $100,000 ballpark. My sets according to Peeron are worth $48,519.71 MSRP, but that's not including my wife's collection (which I'm slowly merging into mine, and is probably worth in the ballpark of $20,000-$40,000), and also doesn't include price increases or other raw parts we've acquired. Peeron knows about 472,052 of my parts, and I know I have over 600,000 parts personally. With my wife's collection and other relatively recent acquisitions that are uncounted, we're guessing that our house has about 1 million pieces all told. Of course, this means I should get my insurance re-assessed, too. I got the policy for myself before I was married and our collections were joined, and I think the valuation at the time was enough to hit JUST under the maximum amount of the policy. I think at the moment, we'd lose quite a bit money-wise if (God forbid) something happened to the house and we lost our collection. But that all depends on how you value a collection, too. I reasoned that there were 3 basic ways to evaluate a collection: - How much you could sell it for (very low) - How much you bought it for (medium) - How much it would cost to replace (very high) And of course for a LEGO collection in particular, there are a lot of ways to value it: - As bulk poundage (very low) - As complete sets (medium) - As individual pieces (very high) All told, that's quite a few variables involved with which to value a LEGO collection. By that metric, I figure you could argue that my collection is anywhere between $15,000 and $200,000. But I think $100,000 is probably the fairest assessment. DaveE

Often not really. Many sets (particularly older ones) have a small handful of rare or unique elements that are hard to come by. While you could get 95% of a complete set with the stuff from eBay, that last 5% is missing, and then you can't charge much, since it's an incomplete set. Note also that in order to make top dollar, you should have the instructions in good condition and also the box (or sell it still sealed in the original for extra value!). So it's not all that easy to re-create older sets and sell them. The minifigs are almost always the most expensive part of a set. Hobbyists often LOVE to have vast quantities of minifigs-- often the "soldier" minifigs (space, pirates, castle, stormtroopers, etc) are very valuable because people want to have dozens or hundreds or even thousands of them. Also, a lot of the more modern figures are quite distinctive and similarly sought after for being collectible. Some of the more valuable ones can be $20 or more per figure! DaveE

Collector's market! Certain sets don't fluctuate much in value; others are TREMENDOUSLY sought after. For example, the original Millenium Falcon sold for $90, but after it was out of stock in toy stores, the BrickLink and eBay prices skyrocketed to the $200-$400 range. Part of that was due to the fact that it was the only set to have a minifig version of Princess Leia, and the figure alone was selling for $30-$90. Chances are, if you like a particular set, so does everyone else. And then the price goes WAY up. If you're looking to buy a 6433 Coastwatch set (retailed for $30 10 years ago in 1999), it's still about the same price on BrickLink, average being about $48 now. But 4553 Train Wash (which also was $30 in 1999) is selling for about $100 now. DaveE

Agree. If you're looking to grow your collection, BrickLink is NOT the way to do it. BrickLink prices are maybe $0.05 - $0.25 per piece USD, with some basic stuff being less, and fancier stuff being more (or way more!). If you buy big swaths of it from eBay, however, you'll be paying roughly $5/pound (as I recall that's the going rate?), which translates to about $0.014 per piece. I'd guess about 1/10th the cost of buying from BrickLink or LEGO's online Pick-A-Brick. The same thing goes for buying from yard sales and flea markets. Some parents or teens or what-have-you are just looking to get rid of their old brick, and aren't really out to make top dollar from it, so they just sell boxes chock-full of pieces for relatively small amounts of money. As stated, the downside is that it's a grab bag of stuff. Some of it's new, some is old, some is clean, some is dirty, and yes, some of it is Megabloks and Matchbox cars and K'Nex that parents don't realize is mixed in with the LEGO. You'll have to do some work to weed out the undesirables. Sometimes you'll get a lot that's amazing, sometimes you'll get junk. But that's why the going rate is so low-- as I recall, BrickLink sellers found that $5/pound was roughly the price to buy at such that they could all but guarantee that they'd make their money back when re-selling it. Once you've got a big collection, and you start needing very particular things, then BrickLink or Pick-A-Brick is the way to go. They can let you avoid getting the pieces you don't really want, and let you focus on the stuff you really DO want. You've just got to pay the premium. DaveE

I think at first, my family thought it was a little odd-- but now my parents actually seem oddly proud of the fact. I think it was a matter of putting it in perspective. I've worked with the LEGO company on a few major projects, which immediately seems to garner some respect right there. But in addition, doing things like expositions at train shows and other "professional" venues also makes people seem to realize that "Oh-- this is actually serious!". And suddenly, it goes from being an oddity to being some sort of more legitimate activity. Showing people actual models that I've made meets with mixed results. Some people are simply impressed no matter what you show them. You can show them a UCS Star Wars model that you built by following instructions and they'll be impressed. Or you can show them an amazingly detailed model the size of a 16x16 baseplate and they might not really appreciate it. Or they might be blown away. Seems to be a mixed bag-- but I can't be sure of the reaction I'll get based on showing off models. It's the same thing at train shows-- some people are impressed with things just because they're a LARGE amount of LEGO. And some will be unimpressed no matter how large or well built things are. Generally, however, most people I've talked to are fascinated with the hobby. It's not always their cup of tea, but they're typically interested in what we do. And maybe that has to do with the typical demographic that I talk to as well. I talk to my co-workers at a financial data company, people at train shows, or other LEGO events. And most of those people are generally from a similar cross-section of middle-class/upper-middle-class areas of the USA. Perhaps I'd get a different reaction from other groups, but I can't really say... DaveE

We heard from LEGO back at BrickFest in the early 2000's that this was largely due to Australian customs laws. I believe it was Brad Justus at the time, which would mean it was probably one of the BrickFests between 2001 and 2003? His reply was something along the lines of "tell your government representatives!" I don't recall the details, but I think it had something to do with Australian customs requiring some degree of manual effort for every single shipment received. So, it's only natural to assume that prices in AU would be slightly higher due to the extra shipping costs, but there may be other tax laws and so forth in place that are affecting the LEGO prices. DaveE

Personally, as a developer, I can't stand this sort of survey. You get to enter your own ideas and rank them, along with "a select few" things that other people have entered. So you're likely to get a zillion people saying the same thing in slightly different language, which is terribly difficult to compile, and (I expect) very error prone. I'd much prefer to see something where the Ambassadors compile a list of (say) 10 things that AFOLs are likely to be concerned about, and you can rate those things, in addition to supplying additional suggestions. That way, the subjects that are more likely to be a concern are LESS likely to be distributed across 50 discrete suggestions. I dunno-- it just seems like the survey was sort of hastily put together. I'd be much more likely to construct a survey something like this: A. Information about you 1. Age 2. Location 3. Number of children you have B. What you do with LEGO 3. How much did you spend in the last year? 4. How many public events featuring LEGO have you participated in in the last year? (Train shows, LEGO conventions, etc) 5. Do you participate in any online LEGO communities? (list of communities) 6. Do you belong to any local hobbyist clubs? (if so, name them) C. How you feel about LEGO products 7. Rank the list from 1 - 10 on how important each issue is to you: - Lower the cost of sets - Increase variety of online PAB - Improve quality of boxes - Improve quality of printed instructions - Improve quality of color control - Improve quality of element tolerances - Increase the variety of LEGO themes - Ship to more countries on LEGO.com - Add more LEGO stores in my area - Increase number of printed versus stickered elements 8. Other - List other improvements you'd like to suggest 9. Rate these LEGO themes on a scale of 1-10: (insert mildly comprehensive list of themes) D. How you interact with LEGO 10. Which departments at LEGO have you had contact with? (list of departments at LEGO) 11. How would you rate your experience with LEGO departments you've been in contact with? (list of departments at LEGO) DaveE

So, generalized a bit more: Shooting Stuff - Flick-firing bolts - Catapults - Shooting cannons - Bionicle shooting dealies - Cyberslam spring-loaded cannons - Throwbots flinging discs - Etc. Trap doors - Collapsing bridges - Trap doors - Revolving walls Fall-on-people Traps - Dropping bricks - Swinging axes Exploding things - Exploding stands (a la 7749 Echo Base) - Exploding buildings (like 1352 Explosion Studio or 8038 The Battle of Endor) Transports - Monorail dealy (like 6970 Beta I Command base or 8637 Volcano Base) - Tube system (7317 Aero Tube Hangar) Configurable Vehicles - 6952 Solar Power Transporter - 6954 Renegade Cranes, Liftarms, Claws - Snakey liftarms (6880 Surface Explorer, etc) - Magnetized cranes (M-Tron) - Advanced Cranes (7632 Crawler Crane, etc) Wacky Rolling Motion Doodads - 6493 Flying Time Vessel - 4533 Train Track Snow Remover - 7626 Jungle Cutter Dump Beds - Dump Trucks - Hopper Cars (10017 Hopper Wagon) Simple (but fun) Motion - Garage doors - Crossing gates - Hinged Buildings - Spinning radar dishes and antenna - Drawbridges - Portcullises Fancy Lever Systems - 6953 Cosmic Laser Launcher - 6983 Ice Station Odyssey Conveyor Belts - 580 Brick Yard - 6195 Neptune Discovery Lab Controllable Figures - Soccer - Basketball - Hockey - Lightsaber Duel DaveE

I do not support any sorting mechanism that breaks image links! (2nd image is broken) DaveE

When working with the Master Builders, we learned that the glue they use essentially melts the plastics together. So new chemical bonds between the bricks can form. Hence, prying apart elements will often leave residual parts of the opposing glued element, as well as some of the glue itself. I don't know if they use the same glue when gluing sets, but if so, you'd be hard pressed to remove the elements smoothly. DaveE

I put a lamp over them for a few minutes, then turned everything off and had a 30-second exposure for the camera. Unfortunately, the 1x1 rounds are the old-style glow-in-the-dark color which isn't quite as bright as the newer ones. The new variety is MUCH brighter when seen in prolonged exposure shots, but the shapes of the elements that I have are a little less generic (and far fewer in quantity), so I couldn't use the brighter ones. I've tried the same effect before with a pirate ship crewed by skeletons, floating on a sea of glowing elements, but it didn't turn out very clearly. Now that I've got more, maybe I'll have to retry some other shots... It makes for a nice eerie effect, though. DaveE

I just got a bunch more Glow-In-The-Dark 1x1 round plates, and got inspired to do some prolonged exposure shots with them, appropriately themed for the season! DaveE

I dunno-- seems just as fair as the current program. It's not really a discount, though. It's a rewards program. You're not getting money off of your purchase, you're getting "points" that you can exchange in future purchases as a coupon. By contrast, though, how many items are often cheaper online rather than via retail? Happens all the time, actually, because distribution costs through a website are different than via retail. Typically, online costs are actually cheaper. Hence, it would seem that the precedent has already been established that it's completely legal. Furthermore, it also happens that retailers and online venues offer coupons that are ONLY valid in one buying format or another. You might (say) get a coupon code for use online, but it won't be valid at the store. Or you might get a paper coupon that's redeemable at the store, but not online. That's a little bit closer to what they're doing, and is again totally legal and quite normal. Honestly, I think the question to LEGO ought to be: Why not offer it for online purchases? Obviously, they've now got the system computerized for on-the-fly access from any store, so the data IS available electronically somehow. Previously, you could argue that the data simply didn't exist, so it would be difficult or impossible to tie it in online. But now, it seems like it would be a more trivial matter. However, there may be additional complexities that I'm not accounting for. More likely, they've decided that it's an incentive that helps attract repeat business to their stores, but that it wouldn't be as helpful to encourage repeat business online. It's also important to LEGO to get people INTO their stores. A lot of people can window-shop on a website (LEGO.com) without buying anything, but are more tempted to buy things when they're inside an actual retail venue. Plus, it makes for a more memorable experience when you've got kids having fun at the store, rather than just looking at a screen when buying-- so encouraging in-store presence helps to build the brand. Basically, the potential issue above is that if you DO live near a LEGO store, and you're signed up for the VIP program-- where are you going to do your shopping? Why fight the Christmas rush when you can order online? But the LEGO Company would rather that you DID go to their store, because doing so helps them out more than if you order online. Now, those are only my personal guesses, but it certainly makes sense enough to me. Well... for starters, I'm 99% confident that the community would NOT do such a thing. If they did, LEGO would probably take a harder look at their reasoning for not putting it online, and spend a good 1-hour meeting's worth of their lawyers' times to find out if the case would be immediately thrown out of court (which I expect it would be). The more significant thing would NOT be the fact that there was a class action suit. That's pathetically trivial. The thing that would make them think twice would be that enough fans actually cared sufficiently to get together and do such a thing. Hence, that fact more than anything would probably make them consider offering it online. DaveE

I would think the way to go would be to search for any POV-Ray -> Truespace converters, since there's definitely support to convert LDraw -> POV-Ray. A quick search revealed that there are some to go the opposite direction, but it's quite possible that there are some out there that do the conversion you're after. Just annoying to have to go through the extra step of going to POV. DaveE

I can't see much working with the "docuseries" about the Master Builders. It'd probably have an hour-or-so worth of material before you'd get bored. There's only so much you can watch of Master Builders making models and showing them to kids. AFOLs might find it interesting to see how they approach different building problems, but I don't see it being mainstream enough to really hold people's attention for a whole "series". The game show idea is a little more plausible. I could see kids being into that. You set up some team competitions where a group of (say) 3 kids build a certain thing, and have some time limit. Then, you pit them against each other, tournament style. Obviously, you'd cut significant portions of the show out (since nobody wants to watch 30 minutes of solid building), but would show snippits of the kids building, and show their results and the judging at the end. Sort of like "Project Runway" or "Iron Chef" or something. ... Only, make the judging a little less harsh, since you don't want to insult kids' creations. You could do that with FLL, too, and could make for some great TV. Looking back at Battle Bots or at rtlToronto competitions, it makes for some fun entertainment. The only real interesting part of the show is (of course) watching the robots "do stuff" (like fight!) at the end, but the remainder of the show is easily filled with some lead-ins introducing you to how each team approached the challenge. Also could be reminiscent of Junkyard Wars, too-- again, some good potential. Generally, though, LEGO isn't a good topic otherwise for reality TV. Much of reality TV relies on putting "real people" into situations where they'll react emotionally, and then empathizing with them as they're exposed to whatever the producers think up to throw at them. LEGO is pretty tame on that metric. Most of the time you spend with LEGO is quiet building, or even quieter showcasing. There's not a great deal of interaction between people to fill up the necessary "emotion" that you expect with a typical reality show. You've got to make sure that there's something else (like robots who do stuff) to keep the show interesting. DaveE

I supposedly have 11+ of them, but it's the sort of thing that I can never find when I need it. Since it's more of a tool than a part, its home in my LEGO collection isn't in a nice little proper bin, but rather "wherever I'm building". As a result, they frequently get swept aside, covered up, or put into "to be sorted" piles. Some of the Master Builders in Enfield, CT actually drilled little holes in them, and then attached them to their belts using retractable strings. Very handy. DaveE

I've been annoyed with the overuse of Technic. Things like Exo-Force models are frequently a technic skeleton with some other elements slapped on the top to make it look like a solid construction. They look cool from a few angles, but often I find I'm very disappointed with the lack of brick-built areas of a model. Personally, I think it's marketing. Kids won't buy something that's brick-built because it'll probably look clunkier. And if you make a brick-built model full of SNOT and wacky building techniques, then it's either too complicated, too fragile, or uses techniques that are frowned upon by LEGO. Hence, we get Technic-esque models. What was interesting to me was this: LEGO has what's sometimes known as "play table brick". It's random elements thrown together from overstock, returns, and other sources. And LEGO will frequently use this stuff at events for kids, or use it to donate to charitable causes or other events. Enter some damaged Exo-Force sets. Actually, I don't know if they were deemed "damaged" or "overstock" or both-- but let's just say that LEGO wasn't going to sell them to customers. Their first recourse was to open up the boxes and dump them into the play table brick. However, this action was prevented, because there weren't enough "bricks" in them. Effectively, the sets were too "technicy" to be put into the stuff they typically give to kids! (Note, it's not saying that the elements were too small for younger kids, etc. The play table brick actually does frequently seem to have small technic elements.) Now, my guess is is that this is because kids are easily frustrated and/or bored with piles of technic elements, and that those elements don't present a good creative building environment. Effectively, that kids are comfortable building with normal rectangular bricks, plates, and slopes, but are NOT comfortable building with technic. So, essentially, what it says to me is that not only are these sets not good enough for LEGO play tables, but they're also probably discouraging to build alternate models with for kids at home. Effectively, that creative play is being hindered by this style of building, because it's too advanced. Anyway, LEGO's action says to me that at least some groups at LEGO would agree with the sentiment that technic is overused in many sets. DaveE

The picture from The Ultimate LEGO Book and The LEGO Book do appear to be the same. They're using the black hairpiece, so it's hard to tell, but as has been suggested, it DOES look faintly like it's the pigtail piece with the actual pigtails removed. The one in the Snack Bar makes this a bit more obvious with the small, light-colored blotch where the pigtail would normally protrude, plus the fact that it's in brown, so it's more visible. So, yeah, I'm going to go with the guess that they used pigtail pieces with the tails cut off as the prototype male hair piece, and somehow they got into the actual pictures that were taken for certain sets, catalogs, etc. If it really had been a different element, chances are SOMEONE on BrickLink would've sold it by now. DaveE