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That noise even has a German word for it! It is Gruschteling which when pronounced sounds like Lego blocks tumbling over each other.

The problem wasn't precisely the "themed" sets, it was the "one-use only" pieces. Some of the *old* Space-themed sets were seriously cool-- my favorite being the #487 Space Cruiser that I got for Xmas in 1979. Almost all of its parts can easily be used to build other things, and most are not unique to this set. This has the two advantages of (a) encouraging the child's imagination and (b) requiring fewer injection molds-- and thus being cheaper to make! With the new stuff, it seems like half the mass is custom, one-use-only parts.

And most importantly, if you like Lego, do your part to support it. Buy the 8455 Technic Backhoe [$80 USD]. It's the coolest set I've ever seen come out of the company (and I can use all of the parts on MindStorms projects too).

If you can't afford that, check out the new 8453 Front-end Loader [$20 USD].

Either are suitable for display on top of your monitor.

And most importantly, if you like Lego, do your part to support it. Buy the 8455 Technic Backhoe [$80 USD]. It's the coolest set I've ever seen come out of the company (and I can use all of the parts on MindStorms projects too).

If you can't afford that, check out the new 8453 Front-end Loader [$20 USD].

Either are suitable for display on top of your monitor.

1. Price - wow. Am I stunned when I see legos in the store now. Multiple hundreds of dollars. The most expensive kit I owned as a kid was 60 bucks for the lastest and bestest. Which leads me to...

Hate to break it to you, but Legos were always expensive. $60 was a huge chunk of change when you were younger. Hell $60 is still a lot to spend on a toy. While I personally don't remember thinking they were expensive (afterall I was 6 when I got my first set, the Beta I Command Base), but my mom sure does. She reminded me that legos were always expensive this past Chirstmas after I mentioned that I almost bought myself the $90 Mars Exploration Rover I received but I thought it was too much money.

1. Price - wow. Am I stunned when I see legos in the store now. Multiple hundreds of dollars. The most expensive kit I owned as a kid was 60 bucks for the lastest and bestest

Hold on though - I remember lusting after the 'Main Street' set in the early 80's: http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6390 and at the time it was the ungodly price of $54. Lego reissued the set last year and their selling it for $65. That's less than the original price, adjusted for inflation it would be $96.63 in 2002 dollars. I think the problem is we are just too used to China prices these days...

OK, I found the LugNet article talking about 3.0:
http://news.lugnet.com/events/legoworld/?n=30

Here's another longer post about the same subject:

http://news.lugnet.com/robotics/?n=21957&t=i&v =a

OK, I found the LugNet article talking about 3.0:
http://news.lugnet.com/events/legoworld/?n=30

Here's another longer post about the same subject:

http://news.lugnet.com/robotics/?n=21957&t=i&v =a

I agree with this. My most pleasant Linux experience so far has been gentoo. Although - the fact that it is CLI will scare off Joe Sixpack - or even mildly techy users. I know there are projects underway to make a GUI - mostly for things like etc-update (which can be a bit nasty). Adding a small(OPTIONAL!) gui front end to emerge,etcat and those essential tools could pull many more users.

Once agains hats off - I have not had to play wack-a-mole rpm style for a long time now.
Gentoo forums really are the friendliest linux forums. They are on par with Lugnet.

I mean, hell, you want friends, it helps to have something in common with them. Personally, I was a military brat, and the military folks tend to be much more welcoming of any new person, as they're used to being the new person themselves, but most people aren't so used to getting thrown in a new place every few years.

If you're in any professional/hobbyist/whatever organizations, look to see if there are any chapters where you're going...for those geeks, maybe a linux users group, perl mongers, whatever. There might be a lego users group, or something else where you can meet people, if that's what you're trying to do. Of course, there's also the chance that these people are obsessive freaks.

Do some research before you go... for all you know, you have relatives living in that same town, or friends from high school or college who are only an hour or two away from where you're going. Ask your friends if any of them have been there, any maybe they have recommendations on things to do, places to go, whatever. Check online ... look for a local newspaper, and see what sort of things there are going on in the town. If it's a big city, look for an independant newspaper, like the Baltimore or Washington City Papers. You might also check colleges in the area, and see what sort of events their student papers have listed.

You can also check out DMOZ by region, and you might be able to find something of interest. You might check the local phone book for independant bookstores, comic book / game shops, whatever sparks your interest.

Without knowing what sort of people you're trying to meet, it's hard to give any useful suggestions as to where to find them.

Yeah S is a nod to 487 The 'S' was for Space. But I'm actually working on a 'real' S-Wing now: Crappy Sketch. -jon

You're on the right track, but the S-Wing nose, wing, body structure, double main engine and double height cockpit configuration are actually an exact replica of the 487 Space Cruiser which was the bigger brother of the 918 in the same classic series.

Yes, this is nitpicking. Bite me Slashdot crowd. I care is because I used to have one of those :)

In a word, YES.

Set 8480 was available several years ago.

Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks!
(these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue)
Ellen Feiss
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Gates
and, of course...
the goatse.cx guy

Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks!
(these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue)
Ellen Feiss
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Gates
and, of course...
the goatse.cx guy

Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks!
(these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue)
Ellen Feiss
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Gates
and, of course...
the goatse.cx guy

Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks!
(these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue)
Ellen Feiss
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Gates
and, of course...
the goatse.cx guy

Quote the website:
"I'm quite pleased with the dome - and I finally found a use for the blue ball that appears in LEGO set 8269!

I,,,, but,,,, aaarrrghhhh... damn!

Hmm. LEGO bricks cost MUCH more than 2x4s. I want this company! (Lego goes for $10 a pound used, $25 a pound or more new: $7.99 for a quarter pound at LEGOLAND.)

www.LUGNet.com

Some interesting LEGO links:
The LEGO User's Group Network - started as an offshoot of the rec.toys.lego newsgroup, now the definitive source for info and discussion.

The Brickshelf has a gallery of all sorts of stuff people have done, as well as scans of old catalogs and building instructions (you threw those away, didn't you).

I sorta miss my LEGO sometimes, until I see new LEGO in the store - yech. For the most part, they've really gone downhill (the Sante Fe train engine excepted). Plus, I've got other expensive hobbies - 1/32 slot cars, bicycles, 'puters....

That harpsicord is pretty wack, tho.

Later,
DoC

These are two different versions of the same crane - by two different people. Dennis did his in much larger scale than mine. You can find more info about mine here.

Lego, like TSR and Microsoft, has a rather nasty history of suing anyone who goes 'boo'. All you have to do is whisper 'Lego' and they're all over your ass. Most old-family owned places are like this, must be something.

Tell that the members of Lugnet.

Amy Hughes doesn't seem too upset about it: a message from her regarding the slashdotting. Now she's looking for a new host though. Anyone here able to help her out?

Amy Hughes doesn't seem too upset about it: a message from her regarding the slashdotting. Now she's looking for a new host though. Anyone here able to help her out?

...Create something incredibly cool and lose your site. Thanks to thesolo for mirroring a couple of pix - this thing is AMAZING. Two weeks ago I sold my collection of 60,000+ LEGO bricks (re-entering my "dark ages"), but I never managed to do anything that cool with them. I did get around to a 100 square foot train layout with pneumatically powered switches, compressor, and regulator (all LEGO) but this puts my stuff to shame.

For those who have been out of LEGO for a while (15+ years), there is some pretty amazing stuff out there now. Mindstorms is quite cool, some of the larger Technic sets are amazing, and LEGO seems to be catering toward its growing Train fans by releasing neat sets like the Sante Fe Super Chief. On the other hand, unfortunately, they are also licensing Harry Potter and Star Wars. Feh.

Some other links to Slas^H^H^H^Hview are:
Lego Castles
The Pacific Northwest LEGO Train Club
the Brickshelf Gallery
The LEGO Users Group Network

Hopefully the traffic'll die down soon so I can see the rest of Amy's site. Nice work, Ms. Hughes, and may your cat rest in peace.

DoC

This news is cool, but the cost of outfitting your server farm may be going up a bit if eBay has their way.

They are trying to put the hurt on the best fan run brick source. See: Legal Notice (on BrickBay(tm) ) for details, as well as this story on LUGNET(tm)

I'm 23, have a 172 IQ, and simply love LEGOs. Modeling complex structures with those wonderful ABS bricks is one of my very favorite pastimes.

If you don't like toys, I pity you. Perhaps you're just in that 14-18 year old or so range where you think toys are stupid... Don't worry, if you've got enough brain power, you'll grow out of it. :) (We Adult Fans Of LEGO -AFOLs- call it the "dark ages" - when you sell all your LEGO, or other toys for that matter, then regret it years later.)

P.S. For those interested in LEGO building products and the simply amazing things you can to with them, check out www.Lugnet.com and www.BrickShelf.com.

1) This exact article was done by Forbes 2 years ago. At that time, Lego was very happy to have Markus and other folks hacking on legOS. If anyone can find a 'free' link to that article, I'd appreciate it, but the Forbes archives are not open so I can't link to it. Sources of amusement: that Business 2.0 feels that this is original or interesting writing.
2) The article (and Lego, apparently) act as if Markus still maintains legOS. He hasn't committed to legOS CVS or spoken to the mailing lists in over 18 months (last post to lugnet was in March 2000.) He also doesn't maintain the 'official' website anymore- the one on noga.de hasn't been updated in a similar length of time and has been supplanted as the canonical reference for legOS by legOS.sourceforge.net.
3) Lego has known about legOS since at least Feb. of 1999, when their PR people told Wired that "'People have also done stuff [created programming tools and components like LegOS] on their own as well, and that's fine,' Dion said." For them to change their minds now, more than 30 months later, is pretty low. I can't afford to fight it (I'm the defacto maintainer of legOS and coordinated the last release) but I'm fairly certain that a decent copyright lawyer could demonstrate that 30 months of knowledge and lack of action over a supposed violation makes the violation non-actionable.
Anyway... I'm not Markus, so I can't really answer questions about this. But I can say that this whole episode is pretty disgusting. I hope Lego will come forward and clear the air, and soon.

You can still buy plain old bricks in large quantities, they're just not easy to find. I've found that the best deal for my money is set #3033. The contents of this set can be found here. Sure, there's a somewhat large number of the stupid 1x1s, but it still comes with a lot of useful bricks. My personal collection is up to 11 or 12 tubs now.

For general LEGOs, I've found that Lugnet is quite a good reference for shopping for LEGO as well as just plain fun LEGO pages and info.

You can still buy plain old bricks in large quantities, they're just not easy to find. I've found that the best deal for my money is set #3033. The contents of this set can be found here. Sure, there's a somewhat large number of the stupid 1x1s, but it still comes with a lot of useful bricks. My personal collection is up to 11 or 12 tubs now.

For general LEGOs, I've found that Lugnet is quite a good reference for shopping for LEGO as well as just plain fun LEGO pages and info.

You can still buy plain old bricks in large quantities, they're just not easy to find. I've found that the best deal for my money is set #3033. The contents of this set can be found here. Sure, there's a somewhat large number of the stupid 1x1s, but it still comes with a lot of useful bricks. My personal collection is up to 11 or 12 tubs now.

For general LEGOs, I've found that Lugnet is quite a good reference for shopping for LEGO as well as just plain fun LEGO pages and info.

• As I - and apparently also many other people - see it, the biggest problem with paying for content (besides stinginess) is how to do it.
• A second point is that people like to see the goods before they buy them. This is generally solved with various kinds of "preview" editions of the content.
• And finally there is the problem that people may be able to get equivalent content for free elsewhere.

LEGO Users Group Network (Lugnet) seems to have solved these three problems. Lugnet is basically just a NNTP server focused on LEGO, but the added HTTP and SMTP interfaces makes it more flexible to use. At the same time you have to follow the rules of the site to maintain your posting privileges, which supports a higher content quality than on the "competing" Usenet group, rec.toys.lego.

Finally you only have to pay if you want to become a "member" of Lugnet with access to various additional features, such as a database for keeping track of your LEGO collection. And you decide for yourself how much you want to pay for your lifetime membership (with a minimum of 10 USD). This means that the micro payment problem is avoided completely by having people paying up front. The stingy users can of course still use the basic services without paying, but as long as the users as a whole find Lugnet more valuable than the cost of running it, this model can continue.

Jacob

Who says Lego (Technic or otherwise) doesn't encourage invention? Check out some of the sites on LUGnet's Cool LEGO Site of the Week.

For the point of view of the Lego advocates, see this post which contains a letter written to the New Civil Engineer journal in the UK, by Simon Bennett.

This article also contains links to a longer thread preceeding the letter itself.

'm still waiting for Lego to make non-Windows (oh, wait, I think around here that's Windoze - though that really is more accurate....) Mindstorm. Really, how hard can it be to make a *nix version...

Umm, have you looked at lugnet? There are a lot of people using Linux and Mindstorms, mind you the RCX works best, as you can download the firmware and software.

You don't use the Lego software though, you use pbForth or NQC, I believe.

I found a link to this site at http://www.lugnet.com. It's called the "Woo Lego Project" and although there are no plans, these guys did make a case completely out of legos. It looks kind of weird but is supposedly rock solid.
--------------------------------------

If you've got deep pockets, get the Mindstorms base kit and add 'Vision Command' ('http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9731') to it. Vision Command comes with a small USB video camera which can be programmed to watch for movement in various 'zones' of its field of vision; what it sees is sent to your computer via USB, and then your computer can send that information back to the Mindstorms RCX unit via infrared. The result is that you can make a robot which turns its head to watch you as you walk in front of it (as in, make it turn its head to the right if it sees motion to the right of center), or which can orient its gaze on anything it sees of a specific color. Very cool!

If you're interested in LEGO at all, check out the Lego Users Group Network at 'http://www.lugnet.com/'. They have discussion groups for everything from robotics to train sets, they link to set instructions and CAD programs and information on programming the Mindstorms RCX in Java. Also, there have been two books published (one by O'Reilly) about building robotics with Mindstorms.

If you've got deep pockets, get the Mindstorms base kit and add 'Vision Command' ('http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9731') to it. Vision Command comes with a small USB video camera which can be programmed to watch for movement in various 'zones' of its field of vision; what it sees is sent to your computer via USB, and then your computer can send that information back to the Mindstorms RCX unit via infrared. The result is that you can make a robot which turns its head to watch you as you walk in front of it (as in, make it turn its head to the right if it sees motion to the right of center), or which can orient its gaze on anything it sees of a specific color. Very cool!

If you're interested in LEGO at all, check out the Lego Users Group Network at 'http://www.lugnet.com/'. They have discussion groups for everything from robotics to train sets, they link to set instructions and CAD programs and information on programming the Mindstorms RCX in Java. Also, there have been two books published (one by O'Reilly) about building robotics with Mindstorms.

If you've got deep pockets, get the Mindstorms base kit and add 'Vision Command' ('http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9731') to it. Vision Command comes with a small USB video camera which can be programmed to watch for movement in various 'zones' of its field of vision; what it sees is sent to your computer via USB, and then your computer can send that information back to the Mindstorms RCX unit via infrared. The result is that you can make a robot which turns its head to watch you as you walk in front of it (as in, make it turn its head to the right if it sees motion to the right of center), or which can orient its gaze on anything it sees of a specific color. Very cool!

If you're interested in LEGO at all, check out the Lego Users Group Network at 'http://www.lugnet.com/'. They have discussion groups for everything from robotics to train sets, they link to set instructions and CAD programs and information on programming the Mindstorms RCX in Java. Also, there have been two books published (one by O'Reilly) about building robotics with Mindstorms.

If you've got deep pockets, get the Mindstorms base kit and add 'Vision Command' ('http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9731') to it. Vision Command comes with a small USB video camera which can be programmed to watch for movement in various 'zones' of its field of vision; what it sees is sent to your computer via USB, and then your computer can send that information back to the Mindstorms RCX unit via infrared. The result is that you can make a robot which turns its head to watch you as you walk in front of it (as in, make it turn its head to the right if it sees motion to the right of center), or which can orient its gaze on anything it sees of a specific color. Very cool!

If you're interested in LEGO at all, check out the Lego Users Group Network at 'http://www.lugnet.com/'. They have discussion groups for everything from robotics to train sets, they link to set instructions and CAD programs and information on programming the Mindstorms RCX in Java. Also, there have been two books published (one by O'Reilly) about building robotics with Mindstorms.

The ultimate site for lego news is probably http://news.lugnet.com. It's where all the cool lego'ers hang out :)
~luge (lugnet member #482)

The ultimate site for lego news is probably http://news.lugnet.com. It's where all the cool lego'ers hang out :)
~luge (lugnet member #482)

• Audrey Hepburn
  
• Someone's wife, along with screenshots of the MosaicMaker app and images.
  
• And finally, the homepage for MosaicMaker.
  

Oh guys, get ready to flame me for this, but can I ask you a question? I am 22 years old and still thoughly enjoy lego's, is there something wrong with me?

Not at all, you are what is known as an AFOL, Adult Fan of Lego.

Check out Lugnet for many more AFOLs.

I'm 34 and am just getting back into it, though it's expensive as I try to replace all the childhood sets of mine that are in joint custody at my parents.

George

If you want computer generated 3D LEGO movies, get yourself a copy of LeoCad or MLCAD. You can find them at Lugnet. They use the LDraw part library. Leocad does animations. I think MLCad only does stills, but it's nicer. You can also use Lego's own LegoCad, but that has a limited part bank.

If I was a school's purchasing agent. Why would I buy this software from Lego directly when I can just go to http://www.lugnet.com/cad/ to find a freeware lego cad program that works very well and has been tested for years? I would not be suprized if this is just another company trying who is now going to try and say well we have a program. Now you can't distro your own code because it infringes on our rights.

I suggest those who are insterested in LegoCAD look at some of the other fine cad programs for free before paying for three diskettes. I bet the DOS Based BlockCAD would even run under dosemu.

Runestar

Firstly, legOS is a really cool project. They've totally re-written the firmware for the RCX and built a fully pre-emptive multitasking environment running programs you can write in C or C++ and compile with a gcc cross-compiler. Very cool stuff, though the networking support (IR) doesn't seem very usable just yet.

NQC uses the standard firmware I believe, and is a bit more solidified. You write programs in a pseudo-C language and compile/upload it using the NQC utility. It also has some good IR message passing abilities.

Information about both of these can be found at LUGNET in the robotics section.

I experimented with LegOS a while back but ended up using NQC and a bunch of server-side Perl to build myself a telerobotic camera mount for my webcam.

There are definitely tools available out there for some extremely flexible Mindstorms programming.

Moderate this down (-1, GOT)
--

Check it!

• lugnet - Lego Users Group, main page. Links to all the user groups.
  palm - palm development for Lego mindstorms
  robotics - talk/problem solving about programming, building and designing robots in lego