Mithrandir

I'd definitely consider it dodgy. Lego may not be able to copyright the individual bricks themselves, but I know damn for sure that copyrights apply to lego set designs, and since this is a carbon copy, it's definitely illegal. It's also illegal to import into the US or any country that acknowledges their Copyright laws. (Not that anyone will actually enforce this though). Problem is, China doesn't give a crap about anyone elses' copyright laws. The problem with places like China is piracy (not THAT kind of piracy, mateys :-P); the factories that press your DVD's and CD's are the very same ones that print out thousands of pirated versions when the US execs aren't watching over it. In fact I'm willing to even bet that some of the MegaBloks factories may even be used to create these fake lego sets.

Just one more sign that Lego should bring back System Pirates *sweet*

Amazon has a Buy One Get One 50% off sale for the $10 and $20 price points. Since I already have all the $20 sets that I wanted, I decided to grab two $10 sets: Highway Haulers and another mini-tractor I already have a mini tractor (I even rebuilt it into blue and red versions), but I have a disappointing lack of green pieces, so another set won't hurt :) Also I'm now a huge fan of the designer series, and intend to get every single set from now on; hopefully Highway Haulers is as good as Gear Grinders.

Well the local TRU has started its stock liquidization. I haven't been there in two weeks, so I went by it this weekend and saw a huge "70% OFF EVERYTHING!!!" banner outside, so I ran inside... And all the Lego was already gone. D'oh. Sonofa... Oh well. So now I'm down to Wal*Mart, Target, K-Mart, and KBToys. All four carry 50% Bionicle, 30% Star Wars, and the rest is a mixture of the smaller Batman and Exo-Force sets. NONE of them carry any technic, ever. This is sad.

Yeah, I've noticed some major problems with instructions lately: 1) The difference between black and grey. Sometimes I'm 50% through a model, run out of grey pieces, and wonder "what the heck?", and then realise that I should have been using Black. For some odd reason, a lot of instructions show grey to be DARKER than black! Argh!!! 2) Transparent orange vs transparent red. This is a major "ARGH!". 3) The new chrome pieces comming out are wonderful. Except when you're trying to figure out if they're telling you to use a chrome piece or a white piece or a clear piece. ARGH!! 4) I guess they tried fixing the black problem in the new Batman sets, but that ended up bad, because you can't even see the individual pieces in the instructions unless you're using a 900-watt bulb :-P Just so this post doesn't appear to be 100% complaining, I'd like to congratulate Lego on putting part inventories in all the instructions lately. Bravo! :-)

Absolutely!!! I have done this. It didn't look so great, but it worked well. With the Claw Rig (8868 - I have this number tatooed on my chest - the best technic set of all time IMHO) there is no problem with delivery of pressure constantly - the compressor mechanism does that for you. This is only pneumatic set with this mechanism as a designed part of the set. However, the opening/closing, elevation/lowering, and rotation of the "claw" are jerky without the tank, presumably because the air pressure the compressor provides is not even (more pressure on the instroke, less presure on the outstroke). all the movements are FAR smoother with the tank. I have an uncontrollable urge to hoard air tanks. MUST...... CONTROL..... SPENDING....... You could also solve this by using a 2-or-4 (or even 8 X-D) cylinder pump. For a 2-cylinder pump: Use a 3- or 4-axle (depending on how wide you want your pump mechanism), put two pump tops on the axle, and close it off using either 2 2-stud liftarms (3-wide version) or 4 2-stud liftarms (4-wide version), attach axles to the open holes on the liftarms, and make sure that one pump is facing one way while the other is about 180 degrees away; so that when one is on the upstroke, the other is on the downstroke. Alternatively, you can make it even smoother by using 4: use an axle connector (the three-long one, two axle holes on the ends, one pin hole in the center); put one 4-axle in each axle-hole, put in 4 pumps (2 on each axle), and close it off like the 2-cylinder pump, using 2-stud liftarms (I actually made one using a 36-t gear instead of the liftarms; more compact for what I was doing). So you'll end up with solething that looks like: .............| -------------+--------------- ............++ ....pump1...| ............|.....pump2 ............+-+ ....pump3.....| ..............|...pump4 .............++ -------------+--------------- .............| Using this configuration, you'll end up with a pump where each cylinder is ALMOST 90 degrees in phase with the next one (it's not exact if your pumps are at an angle to the bracing beam, but close enough so that you can't tell when it's running). I have an 8-cylinder version of this, where there's a second row of pumps directly on top of these, 45 degrees out of phase so that none of the cylinders hit each other. It's really cool to see it in action. I have that hooked up to 4 airtanks tanks in parallel. Anyways, there's an additional benefit to using airtanks that almost no one recognizes: Since you're dealing with more air volume, it takes a lot less torque to increase the pressure, meaning that you don't need a super-powerful motor in order to get up to high air pressures. I hooked up my 8-cylinder, 4-tank pump up to the clear "Motor Movers" motor, geared down using a screw gear to get a ton of torque; after a minute it always causes a tube to pop off somewhere in the network, heh.

Damn, now I'm going to have to add all the new castle sets to my 2006 wishlist... This year is turning out to be expensive... :\ X-D

I actually had that one when I was little. God knows what happened to it though, heh. <3 Forestmen *wub* Anyway; I looked around on Bricklink yesterday, and noticed that mini-figs are quite expensive; a lot of them go for $5; and some (like Jango Fett) go up to $40 in price!! Yikes! I guess Lego knows that they are in high demand, and that people will buy sets to get the figures.

I made a similar sheet for finding out how to mesh gears together; this should work for you too. If I remember, I'll grab it from my home computer and post it tomorrow morning.

Yes, I had a ton of trouble building the Batmobile; even with a 100-watt lightbulb at my workbench, during daylight hours. The Batwing wasn't as bad, but still worse than a lot of instructions I've seen.

Basically, they're "air batteries"; they're the only things that will store large amounts of air (and therefore energy) so that you can have large-scale pneumatic projects work, without having to re-pump your cylinders after you throw every switch. Personally, I think Lego severely underutilized them in their sets. Most pneumatic sets would be augmented with them, but they don't have them at all!

I've never heard of Galidor before, so I checked it out on peeron... wtf? That's not even remotely Lego. Other failures: Technic from 1996-2004 (especially robo-riders, Speed Slammers, Throwbots/Slizers) Arctic Alpha Team? I'm not so sure about this one, but everywhere I go I still see these sets on shelves, on clearance, not moving. Which is weird, because personally, I thought this was a great line. Brought back memories of my beloved Ice Planet 2002 :)

I don't neccessarily agree with this. While it's true with a lot of things, like action figures and such, most people I know of hold Lego in high regard. My parents always told me that the Lego pieces were very high quality and should last forever, even down to my grandkids (assuming I ever have any kids first :P). I think most people recognize the longevity of Lego; is there any other toy out there that has as large of an adult following as Lego does? I doubt it. OH GOD NO. If Lego ever moved production to China or India I would immediately stop buying them. Stuff made in China is crap; the companies in China have no respect for quality control whatsoever. They have one motivation: create the crappiest piece of crap product possible, and charge as much for it as possible. They abuse their workers to the point where the workers are practically slaves and have no pride in their workmanship whatsoever... ugh.

When I was a kid, I remember all the minifig packs, and I loved them. I can remember castle, pirate, space, and town figure sets, which were great because it seemed like the building sets never came with enough figures. So the other day I was looking at my Batwing and Batmobile, and I realised that each of these sets only came with one henchman, and the rest of the Batman sets don't even come with ANY henchmen! Surely, the Joker and Two-Face had an army of henchmen to do their building, so having only one each is kind of... lame. So now I'm wondering why Lego doesn't make any minifig packs anymore (except the huge town workers collection, but that doesn't really count)? I'm pretty sure that minifig packs of Batman henchmen, and viking warriors would have done pretty well. I know that Lego was sued by Hasbro for the Starwars minifig packs, because it "violated" Hasbro's exclusive licence for "action figures" (lame), but that still doesn't explain the lack of minifig packs for the other themes...

LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA *sheds tear* I think that anyone who complains about juniorization should be pointed towards Megabloks and be told "Hey, when Lego starts to look like that, THEN you can complain!". I saw their "Pyrates" line at TRU the other day, and out of sheer morbid curiosity I decided to look at the boxes in more detail. Man, it's pathetic that they can put out a 95-piece pirate ship (oh wait, sorry, "PYRATE"). 95 pieces?!! Egads! That's it?! In other depressing news, MegaBloks bought RoseArt (The Magnetix people), closed down all the US jobs, and moved them all to China. Guess I won't be buying Magnetix anymore (I was already headed on the way out with them anyways, recently their sets have been falling apart more easily).

This is actually a slightly larger scale. The 1:17 Ferrari's are 14 studs across, and this is 16 studs across with the huge 1:10 racer wheels. I'm a little concerned that the wheels might be too big for this car.

Yesterday, I bought (S@H): 4506 - Deep Sea Predators for $14.99 I already have one of these, and it was one of the coolest sets I've ever seen. The shark especially. I decided to get another because it's probably on its way out now, since it's been out for a year, and it's on sale for 25% off. I only buy set duplicates if they are on sale. 8283 - Telehandler for $29.99 I was hoping that TRU would get this set since Christmas, when I unexpectedly found the mini tractor and quad bike there, but it's been 3 months and they still don't have it. S@H got it in about 2 weeks ago so I finally gave up and bought it there instead. 8669 - Fire Spinner 360 for $9.99 I got the semi-truck "side rider" from TRU last week, and found out that it has a really nifty fly-wheel motor in it; I did more searching and found that this set also has one, so I decided to grab it as well. Granted, it's easy enough to build your own flywheel using gears and a somewhat heavy wheel; this motor is much more compact so I can make smaller creations with it; it also has an excess-torque bleeder, which makes the engine click if you apply too much torque to it; You can't do this with regular gears unless you use a clutch, and those things are pretty weak on how much torque causes them to stall.

You used to be able to order them from www.legoeducationstore.com; $10 for 2 airtanks. I'm guessing some smart people ordered a bunch and sat on them until they became valuable. I ordered one pack back at the end of December, and they didn't ship it to me; said it was backordered. I later found out the part was discontinued and gave up all hope of getting them, but just yesterday I got a shipment e-mail, so I guess they finally found some to ship to me. woohoo. I got the telehandler about two weeks ago. Nice set, again I was impressed by how they managed certain functions. Especially the steering was new to me. And it's a set were the alternative model also looks good... IMHO... I ordered that yesterday. I finally gave up waiting for TRU to get it in stock; and besides they'd probably charge $35 for it anyways. Looks like a good set, but honestly I'm getting a little frustrated at the abundance of red sets. LEGO: PLEASE MAKE A BIG GREEN TECHNIC SET (the lime-green dune buggy doesn't count, I want real green)

Hey, you're all discriminating against us SNAA people! (Studs Not At All) Heh; 90% of my stuff is studless technic :P Of course, I don't really build that much "model" stuff. I just like building mechanical machines like elevators and trebuchets and transmissions...

Okay, so I bought 4 of the new tiny turbos over the weekend: 8666-1 TunerX 8661-1 Carbon Star 8664-1 Road Hero 8663-1 Fat Trax On the boxes, they all looked pretty neat; in reality, it's 90% stickers. The only one that really looked good without stickers was the Road Hero; a semi-tractor trailer. I like it so much I'm thinking of building a fleet of them, along with trailers to attach to the backs. But anyway, that's not the point. I have a strict policy of not applying stickers on anything, unless it's a rare case where it's absolutely needed (viking shields, for example), and especially not over multiple pieces. Now, here's the really disappointing thing about these sets: Set 8666 comes with a sticker that you're supposed to put over 8 small black slopes. BUT! Set 8666 is supposed to be able to be combined with set 8661, so I looked at the instructions, and here's the kicker: If you applied the stickers on set 8666, you CANNOT build the combined set, because the pieces are split up. Now this is just sloppy and disappointing. What in the heck were they thinking?!

Yeah they should. I can't find the link at the moment but there was an ambassador discussing how Lego Education made sure there was a converter cable because they realise that there are armies of schools out there that have a ton of old motors and they don't want to piss everyone off by making them throw them away. As far as voltages go, I'm not sure it's that big of a problem. You can change the voltage of a DC motor easily (in fact I do it all the time when I use rechargable batteries; they're usually only 1.2v versus 1.5, so 6x1.2 = 7.2v, instead of 9; just make sure you don't go too far above 9v or you'll fry it :P). Regardless, the new NXT brick uses 6 AA batteries anyways, and is compatible with the old RIS 1.0 AC adapter, so I'm almost certain that it's still 9v. For the signaling, from what I can tell, Lego used a new connector so that they could use more complex digital inputs and outputs, rather than relying on analog electrical impulses, it should be rather trivial to tell the NXT brick to output old analog signals if it detects that a converter plug is connected to a port. I think the only real downside I can see is that the old system allowed electrical chaining, by use of stacking studded connectors on top of each other. I am not aware of any way that this would be possible in the new system. Edit: Here we go

Well, You're sort of in luck. The Lego Education NXT will come with 3 converter cables, which converts the new NXT RJ connector to the old 2x2 plate connector. It also comes with a rechargable battery and an AC plug. I'm not really sure why the retail NXT doesn't come with the AC plug, seems like it would be easier to do, but *shrug*. The downside is that you get 130 less pieces AND you need to buy the software separately. Blah. Personally, I'm just excited about the resource set (without the NXT stuff), because it's basically a cheap technic parts pack :)

I keep wishing/praying/hoping that they'll make a Pirates of the Caribbean line. It would be perfect; they already have most of the needed molds for pirate stuff; it fits in with their liscencing trend, and the movies are marketed towards Lego's core audience anyways! Plus they'll get at least two years out of it, if they start RIGHT THIS MINUTE. There's one movie due this year, and then another next year too. *sigh* I know it'll never happen :( But imagine; a Black Pearl and Interceptor model... *sigh*