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Lego Institutes Bulk Ordering
mattdm
wrote in to tell us that Lego has instituted
bulk ordering of parts. The selection is somewhat limited, but they have most of the parts you would want to build your fullsize Lego house. And with five colors to choose from, you should be all set! Now the question is, with this quantity of Legos available, what do people think the coolest thing to build would be?
If you had been following the months of anticipation at www.lugnet.com, you would know that this is the first step in many that should culminate in a large selection of shapes and colors. There's going to be a few core pieces that are always available, then, about monthly, there will be special runs of specific pieces. We were told that there would be 40 or so core pieces always available, and 100 or so different pieces every month. Orders for the special pieces would be filled only if some minimum agregate quanitity were reached. They're also going to do international and online ordering. I suspect this thing won't be in full swing until october or november. They havn't said if they would do technic pieces, but I don't see why not. Some technic pieces wouldn't make sense in large quanitites though. Of course, if you're disappointed or impatient, you can always go to one of the private lego brick auction sites like www.auczilla.com or others. Search lugnet for more info. brian
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Well, there's always the Lego Tux. I've always wanted a couple of lifesize standups from various science fiction shows adorning my room.
What's with the US/Canada limitation? Does your crazy government class them as munitions? :-)
Been done.
Repeatedly.
Do you have a
I'm 22 and for the past two summers have lived the dream life of actually getting paid to play with legos. There is better work somewhere, maybe... but I doubt it.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/m indstorms/gallery/k025e.html
IAAL,BIANLY
But... but... it's the real pieces that they are selling. There's been discussion about this at lugnet for some time, and my guess would be that Lego knows that the people who would buy giant bags of legos are also the ones who hate the new stuff with a passion. We won't be seeing glowing pieces in bulk for quite a while, I don't think...
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
I'm glad they're doing bulk orders of the 2x2 smooth panels, cause that's what I needed to complete the keycaps of the LEGO keyboard I'm making (each key is being replaced by 2x2 LEGO bricks)
ToiletDuk (58% Slashdot Pure)
Heh... no more COLOUR problem! :)
:)
All we need is Red, Green, Blue and maybe Black.
Then compose mixed pixels to give your giant
Lego block the colour you wish. Colours can be
changed at any time, even shading and effects
are possible.
http://minduploading.org
Correction... since the green blocks are so rare,
lets use yellow instead.
http://minduploading.org
Tux has been built, at least on a small scale. I don't think Eric's planning on putting it anywhere other than on his desk tho.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Eric Harshbarger who got credited with buil,ding a 2 foot high tux several months ago, is working on building a desk for a .com up in Seattle. One of their executives was hired, with the proviso that in addition to payroll, and whatnot, he wanted a fully functioning desk for the office made of Lego. So Eric wound up with the contract to build it. When it's done, he said he's gonna have pictures up on his site showing the process.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Lego's good! Metallica Bad...
Nononono, you put the smooth pieces over it.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"...what do people think the coolest thing to build would be?"
First, we order about 10,000 Lego men. Next, we order sufficient pieces to equip them all with Lego Machine Guns.
Now we invade Legoland. I think we'll start with the Lego Kingdom, those primitive little knights and archers don't stand a chance against our overwhelming firepower. Next on the list are the happy citizens of Lego Town, all they can field are a few policemen.
The Space guys are going to be a problem, as they posses highly advanced technology, like Galaxy Commanders and StarFleet Voyagers -- but by that time, we'll have captured and assimilated the pieces from the medival and town sets.
I've always wanted to see commercially available third party sets using genuine Lego parts. For instance, right now we have Star Wars Lego sets available, but I'd like to see Lego replicas of some of the more obscure ships in Science Fiction (Like maybe a Space Battleship Yamato, or a Narn Heavy Cruiser). Unlike mass-market X-wings sets, there isn't enough demand for Lego itself to produce these, but smaller companies might be willing to do it.
When I first heard "Bulk Lego pieces", I was hoping that they would be cheap and varied enough to allow third parties to economically buy and repackage bricks to make such kits available. Alas, the actual selection available is far too small. So, as for the present, right now all we can do is to guess what parts we'll need, and then go out and buy a heap of sets.
Look at Alan Turing's plans, and modify them to make a mechanical SETI machine.
And then we could give it to the Dolphins...
a pair of lego pants so someone could pour hot grits in them
thank you
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
This isn't THAT new. All the old-school LEGO enthusiasts know that if you bought a big set, like the old space monorail or something like it, that you would get a nice big catalog of just about darn near everything LEGO. In the back, there was a section where you could buy, in bulk, bags of pieces exactly like the ones here. In fact, you could order even more than what you see there, like LEGO men, shrub variety packs, and bulk LEGO man accessories.
The only *new* thing going on here is that you can now buy them via LEGO's Shop At Home service. Whoopdie do. What would be a big deal is if they offered EVERY piece they made available in bulk, online ordering or not.
Cool! A few years ago a friend and myself called lego to inquire about buying 50000 4x2 bricks to do some large projects with, but they said they did'nt do that anymore, but would be happy to sell us 1000 little assortment packs at an very unreasonable price.
Now it looks as if it may be possible... and I'll find out if this is true, or if it is just another unchecked and untrue Slashdot story as soon as their server recovers from being slashdotted.
Failed to connect
The host 171.20.249.10 could not be contacted. If this persists, you should contact the administrator of the remote site.
[ I've always wondered how you are supposed to contact the administrator of a site that cannot be contacted]
...a full size replica of Richard Stallman? ;)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
A self replicating lego factory!
It's just wrong for those arrogant capitalists to get rich selling their plastic blocks. Interlocking plastic blocks are a commodity. Everyone should have equal access to free plastic blocks.
Down with closed source LEGO. Plastic wants to be free.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
... a giant Lego brick, so big it could be seen from space. Take that, Great Wall of China! My personal preference is for a red one.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
A door for my cubicle.
--tangram
"...what do people think the coolest thing to build would be?"
I want to build a to-scale model of Earth.
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
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When it was being built, I wanted to build a copy of the new Cleveland Browns Stadium. I thought that would have been pretty cool. The only problem was getting enough Lego. That problem has been solved. Now I only have to find 70,000 minifigs and the space to build the stadium.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
I sure hope not. :) I think there will be something wrong with you if you stop enjoying Lego.
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then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
The best way to stay in Lego is to have kids. Train them from an early age to enjoy Lego, and you're set. My son was two days old when he got his first Duplo. We ramped up to normal Lego when he was 3. He loves to get Lego and we have a great time building the sets together.
:)
:)
When I left home, I made sure my Lego came with me. My parents never had a chance to get rid of it.
My kids also tend to buy me Lego for my birthday, Christmas, and other holidays. Father's day is coming, and can you say "Destroyer Droid"?
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then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
In an amazing lack of foresight, my sister and I mixed our Lego as children. I haven't asked her about unmixing them, or buying her out. So they stay at my parents.
My siblings are at least 4 years older than I am, and didn't have much interest in Lego. I have one or two sets that were hand me downs from them, but that's it. They haven't asked, and I'm not telling.
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then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Haah! Not a problem... I just always feel the need to point out these silly little typing errors. Must stem from the damage my wicked English teacher inflicted on me as a child...
I think one statue of Beowulf is all that I need, or maybe two so I can replace the ugly laundry posts. Feel free to make a cluster if you have enough space, time, and bricks.
Well, put one in front of both headquarters...MS OS and MS Office...
... you take lots of Lego, and then build some mad invention out of it. Not even Technic. Just Lego. End up with some mad dimensional flux agitator or something.
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or is that a human type reply ? :-)
Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a03e9'
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Actually, the MT in Japan and the NT in Hong Kong doun't count on the real list because they are towers not commercializable space.
For that matter, the Petronas actually has only a mast taller than the Sears Tower and only a few feet at that. The top floor of the Sears would look down on the top floor of the Petronas.
If we wanted to do something about this, we should build a three foot tall mast on top of the Sears Tower, call it significant and reclaim the world's tallest building title from those Malyasian upstarts.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Given enough legos, I would build a factory for making legos. These could then be used to build a factory for making legos. These could . . .
However, this would require some sort of recursion shut off switch because the process could become viral.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Yes, build large bricks and then build a life size house from them.
:)
A word of caution is that you cant build anything ordenary larger than 20-30 meters high or else it will be crushed by its own weigth. But you could use an finite amount of legos to build an infinitely high lego tower if you can manage to find those realy tiny pieces for the top.
das Ix
ahh, why does netscape shut down when i try to justify my coments
This is my sig, show me yours
Of course, we can now build computer cases, phones, mouses, speakers, and whatever else. But what we're truly missing here is the designer possibilites! I'm talking DKNY Lego blouses, Gap Blego (Black Lego) jeans, the whole setup! Just wait until Tommy H. hears about this!
Are there any conductive legos? I think it would be pretty sweet to build a rudimentary computer (8-bit? 16-bit?...) processor, I/O (lego keys of course), and a "screen" made up of moving legos (the 1x1 blocks or something) of different colors for a display.
You know, if you could get any off-the-shelf O/S to boot to a shell, you'd probably make it into the history books as the first person to make a plastic computer!
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
They sell bulk orders of lego trees. I could
recreate the tunguska event in my living room.
Bob.
Does anyone know of a program that would be good for modeling lego structures?
Perhaps there is a market (albeit small) for a program that let you model structures using lego bricks and then calculated how many you should buy of each color and size used.
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
[Mr. Burns Voice] Excellent! [/Mr. Burns Voice]
I bookmarked the page and I will defnitely check out the program when I have time.
Thank you very much.
-a
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
A giant Tux or...
Eric Harshbarger has already beaten you to it.
George
The best way to stay in Lego is to have kids. Train them from an early age to enjoy Lego, and you're set. My son was two days old when he got his first Duplo. We ramped up to normal Lego when he was 3. He loves to get Lego and we have a great time building the sets together.
:)
Yeap, nearly 4 year old daughter, we play together, though not enough.
When I left home, I made sure my Lego came with me. My parents never had a chance to get rid of it.
In an amazing lack of foresight, my sister and I mixed our Lego as children. I haven't asked her about unmixing them, or buying her out. So they stay at my parents.
George
It seems like it would be trivial to create Lego-compatible plastic bricks. It's not like there's a whole lot to reverse-engineer there. And at the prices Lego sells at, I'm sure another company could undercut them.
It is trvial, MegaBlocks is one of Lego's biggest competitors. Tyco made very good clones at one point, and BestLock has some intriguing themes.
But none of them approach the quality of Lego, Lego pours a lot of money into making high quality molds and using high quality ABS.
If you put Lego in a sealed box, and a clone in another sealed box, a Lego fan can tell the difference by the sound they make clinking together. You can usually feel the difference between Lego and clones, and the clones don't interlock nearly as well.
No substitute yet.
George
I say build a computer case! Do they have any metalic legos for rf shielding?
I think building a computer case out of these things is on a lot of people's minds. However, what material can we line the inside with to provide RF shielding? The material should be something very lightweight and undistracting.
Hmmm...would sheets of the material that anti-static bags are made of provide adequate shielding? We could, of course, put holes in certain places for the ventillation ass....the implication being that instead of "tearing a new one," you'd be "tearing the first one." *uneasy chuckle* Joking aside, what do you think?
The cure for 1984 is 1917.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Nonono not at all. I'm 24 and I still play with Lego(boy that Destroyer Droid's a bitch to transform).
m l. I just don't get it. No outstanding referrers or anything. Hmm.
This is strange. I am checking my web logs, and normally my most popular page is my webcam(for obvious reasons).
Now for the whole month I have over twice as many hits to my Lego Technic transmission page at http://british.nerp.net/lego/auto/tranny/index.ht
Great, now with bulk ordering I can finally build that life-size android I've been sketching. heh.
i remember seeing some pre-production photos for a Dark Side Lego mindstorms kit. One of the featured items was, you guessed it, an AT-AT. Wonder how hard an AT-ST would be.
No yellow available in bulk, but lots of black and white (see the catalog of bulk parts here and here), which is most of the surface area anyway.
The yellow you can get from regular Lego sets.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
a giant lego brick? no, i mean a really big one
I think it would be great if you get lego bricks the size of a real brick. Then it would much easier to build a real house with them.
If you made them out of recycled plastics and filled them with a polyurethane foam, then they should be be pretty energy efficient.
I know I could Duplos for some size advantage, but these don't have the same relative strength as ordinary legos and are still too small.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Actually, I'd go get a daemon outfit, but that's just my own preference.
--
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no nor will there ever be...the damn things are upwards and backwards compatable with the DUPLO blocks...try it...the large 2x2 and up bricks will fit on and under duplo blocks...
if you want to build a house i recommend using those and get the legos for the detail.
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
This is why I (at 27) have quite an extensive collection of Lego's, including Mindstorms and other "high tech" variations.
Legos are and always have been, one of the coolest ways to get creative.
Chexk it out:
http://pbs.vicinity.com/pbs/blast.hm?SEC=25pres
I get a warm and fuzzy feeling every time I look at it.
Hmmm... perhaps custom Lego bricks made out of U235?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
That was a great episode, and so true... I mean, aren't free t-shirts what Linux expos are all about?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Somewhere at my parents' house I have stashed away some really early Lego idea books from the 70s -- the European ones, because as every true Lego afficianado knows, the really cool stuff didn't start coming to the US until recently.
The *early* 70's lego, if i remember correctly, already had pneumatic systems (for the technic), air filled pneumatic tires, 2x4 wheel bricks with built in spring-suspension, a huge range of gear sizes, and a lot of other cool stuff that never made it to the US.
BTW, are those Idea Books worth something nowadays?
just my blog and pix
Yeah, but you gotta make sure you get the proportions right...
1::4::9, and don't just stop in 3 dimensions
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Ever notice how one lega floats on water?
With enough of it, you can build a platform to stand on!
So what about us in the rest of the world? For a Danish company, they should at least deliver to Europe, too.
You also have to remember that Lego blocks have to be pretty precise in shape and size for them all to fit with each other. They have to fit so that theyr'e tight enough not to fall apart, but not so tight that it's too hard to take them apart.
The clones that I see often don't stick together very well, and some blocks are even harder to take apart than stubborn Lego blocks. Plus they don't have the sturdy feel of Lego blocks anyway
---
Legos are an interesting species. They nest in
laundry baskets, too. I've found whole colonies of
them living in the bottom of the laundry basket in
the kids' bathroom.
Also, I think that the more mundane legos use the
really special and "important" pieces for food,
because the special pieces disappear as the others
multiply.
You didn't know that legos were cannibals, did you?
---
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My sister says there there is no need to purchase Legos in bulk as they reproduce on their own.
Her son will swear that he only left one or two Legos out at night, but in the morning there are hundreds!
---
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I wish they would bring those back. My brother and I loved those growing up. We could just look at the box and build it--no matter how complex. Then we created our own design. They were a lot better than theres. To bad we never sold them the plans to them. ;)
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
What a pathetic selection. Where are the bulk orders for mindstorms?
Someone you trust is one of us.
I think computer cases would be cool - perhaps with the hostname on the front embedded with differently coloured Legos? And you could have a beowulf cluster *as large as you want* in *only one* big case! ;-) Although we would probably beed some of the bigger plates for the construction of the case bottom and top. You could build them out of the 2x8 tiles, but they wont be that stable as one of the big plates (the one with the thickness of a standard tile, I don't know the exact size)
The next thingie would be a writing desk with an integrated computer, covered with the smooth plates for the surface, with hollow legs to contain the networking cables which subsequently go through a hole in the room wall made out of Legos to the server room with the servers neatly arranged in the wall. You would only need one large fan on top of your House to ventilate all the electronic equipment through the built-in vents in all your furniture...:-)
Cthulhu fhtagn!
It may not be entirely ontopic, but a friend of mine once built a tank with an automatic gun alignment system. You could point the gun somewhere, and it would point in that direction no matter how you moved the tank. He used about two or three Lego technic kits for the gears... quite amazing :-)
Cthulhu fhtagn!
hmm... you know... that does pose an interesting question... if i have enough lego blocks, i could just keep adding onto it, and build an entire island out of lego blocks...start somewhere shallow like in the carribean, rather than deep sea. that would kick ass. wonder if anyone is bored enough to draw up plans and a brick count to do that?
No, put it in front of M$ Headquarters!
I can attest to the high durability of the aforementioned product. As a child with an inclination to chewing on everything, Legos made an excellent choice. Especially with the quantity I had. The unfortunate part was this habit often lead to bloody gums and sore teeth. I was personally never able to destroy a lego, though my dog could. A durable and tasty product! I give it two thumbs up!
Not at all. After a long quarter with way too much work to do I finally pulled out my mindstorms last night. Mind you I'm a mere 20, I'll probably wonder why kids play with the toys they do when legos are so much cooler when I'm 90.
--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
Please don't use "Legos" as the plural of Lego. They are called Lego bricks. Lego is the company; bricks are the product.
Ideas in this comment are smarter than they appear.
In orlando Fl. there's a store something like this called Skycraft. All kinds of stuff, from circuit boards all piled up in a box (no telling what they're from), rack mount instruments (seismic instruments, radio gear etc.) bulk wire and even some NASA surplus'd items. WW doesn't have a web presence, do they? I might have to stop in if I'm ever up there, sounds like a geek's tourist trap if ever there was one...
As for the bulk sales, though, it doesn't look like a very good deal. Assuming the 10% discount I get:
- 100 2x2 bricks for $6.29 = 6.3 cents/brick
- 50 2x4 bricks for $6.29 = 12.6 cents/brick
Plus shipping - $2.50-$10.Compare to Tyco Superblocks, an excellent quality Lego-compatible brick, which were recently on sale at Toys R Us for $10 / 900 bricks = 1.1 cents/brick.
Furthermore eBay usually has plenty of auctions for bulk Lego-brand bricks, in single colors, for less that Lego wants. E.g. 500 assorted black bricks for $10 = 2 cents/brick.
I've ordered parts from Lego when I needed specific rare pieces, but for bulk bricks this is not a good deal.
Actually, decent bulk sets have been available for a couple years now. I just bought a 1200-piece basic brick assortment back in February for about $20 from Wally World. At Lego's bulk pricing, that would cost approximately $84. (1200 bricks * $7 / 100 bricks). The only downside being you can't pick and choose sizes, colors, etc, and that many of the bricks were smaller than the ones listed on the web site (1- and 2-stud blocks, etc.)
I am a man of const int sorrows
This is great news for one of the greatest toys out there. Legos help kids develop basic skills. The idea that you can build _anything_ from small flexible components is an important idea (and one that's very relevent to computers). Lego's set the imagination free. The only problem is that the newer Lego sets have peices that are only usable in one way. This goes against the whole idea. Finally you can buy lots of generic multi-purpose pieces without spending mass dollars on pieces that are rarely able to be used.
Maybe this is a way of getting rid of excess green stock. After all, I can't imagine there being a lot of demand for dark green legos. I figure most kids prefer the bright colors.
Does anyone remember Construx? The seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth..they used to be more fun than Legos, you could build bigger things easier and such...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Recursive acronym: LEGO:
LEGO's Expanding Gigantically Ominously
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
A big monolith made out of black legos...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Uh, you'd be crazy at the age of 22 if you didn't play with legos, or at least fantasize about it. I'm 27 and addicted... Now, back to work on the computer case.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
I could lego brick up my door and windows, and then complete my computer induced isolation.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
I'm speachless
I remember a few years ago Lego sued a company to halt the production of "Lego-compatible" blocks. It is probably feasible to recreate the plastic Lego uses. But, is it worth it? Given the ups and downs of the toy market and the likelihood of lawsuits, I would venture "no". Lego recently posted its first yearly loss in many many years. That loss could be due to poor management but it could also be due to poor market conditions. At this moment I can't recall the reasons which were given for the loss.
Think about it...Lego already has white translucent blocks (or they did when I was a kid), all they need is Bandai Blue blocks and Apple could sue them.
Dracos
"Integer: a number that represents any valid floating-point value"
I'd build a lego boating lake and fill it with little yellow lego fishes. Schools upon schools of them swimming through the blue brick water.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
They used to sell that seperately as one of their little 5-10 peice sets. 2.99 or something, for a Lego Separator or whatever they called it.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
An even gianter giant lego brick.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
A huge giant mobile battlefortress with death lasers. We could mount an attack on Redmond.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
This reminded me of something we can build.
I dunno why, but i thought of this:
We could build a gigantic unpassible field. Everyone knows that lego-covered floors are dangerous ground to tread.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
It may or may not be cheaper to make one out of wood, but hten you couldnt say "Hey, I have a bookcase made out of lego!"
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Tyco, and some other comapnies, do make lego-compatable bricks... but they use a REALLY bad quality plastic and it just sorta.. feeels too.. rubbery to be lego.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Personaly, I'd use all those space lego sets for a case.... hmmm, I got an old Powerbook Duo laying around...
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Two Words, DEATH STAR! Yeah, I'd build a moon sized fully functional Battle Station. Why? So I could make people fear my wraith of course, or at least get a cheap grin from the Starwars fans out there ;]
Megablocks aren't as good in lego size, but make pretty good bulk blocks in the Duplo scale.
While Lego makes a good product, I think they are overpriced. That it is still a private company and doing things like building Legolands says something about the profit margins. The lack of discounting suggests something about their business practices. Has anybody got a regular source for robotics invention systems that is a penny less than $199?
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
In my youth (c ~1975) I can recall lego clones. They fitted regular lego bricks but were made of cheaper flexible plastic. I remember being really annoyed lending out lego models only to have them returned with immitation bricks in them. No idea who made them though. They've probably been sued out of business.
Ummmmm... Ouch. sharp plastic corners
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
I bought a Mindstorms Invention set recently... I wanna juice up the motors, and build myself a big bad-ass robot butler. Or a pool skimmer! I'm going to combine RCX and my X10 stuff to make an intelligent house with automated servants!
Is it just me, or would that make life like one big Tex Avery cartoon?
Anyways, I just wanna finish the big Woodstock and Snoopy I started on a few years ago - I didn't have enough yellow or white...
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
Build a big ol' Lego mech! You could use the technics parts for gears and what not and the robotics controllers to run the thing!
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
You beat me to an obvious Simpsons reference. Except I'd make a blue one instead of a red one. Or maybe a giant one of those flat pieces which I always hated when I was little because I could never find them. Then I'd make it into a giant dance floor and put my life-size lego DJ with 4 lego turntables up in front of it :)
Which crack-head moderator moderated the above "Offtopic"? HTH can a discussion about a LEGO Tux be off topic in a discussion that's based solely around, and I quote:
Come ON, people...I have never ranted about moderation, and I have moderated (once), but give me a break.
To the crack-head moderator:
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
I would build myself a full size yacht and take it for a cruise. If you don't believe me visit my lego site on my homepage. Trust me it can be done given enough lego and time. Of course for safety I would be sure to bring along the inflatable dinghy. You can never be too safe.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I remember a million of those lego related foot injuries back in my childhood, the pain of standing on a rogue 2x4 and being branded with the 8 unmistakeable tiny circles for weeks at a time *sniff*, those were the days...
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've just developed an (only very slightly) more humane replacement for the landmine.
I want to build a lifesize model of planet earth.
Kinda reminds me of the Pinky &Brain episode where Brain makes an exact duplicate of earth out of paper mache.
Free T-Shirt anyone?
where do you work? are they uh hiring. I got expeince in lego building, but don't have any formal education on the subject
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I purpose that everyone here at slashdot throw in $2 bucks or so, and we go to lego and ask for a "SUPPR MEGA BULK ORDER" of 200 Billion lego peices.
I don't know what we could do with all those blocks though... besides built our own city, all blue print would have to be of course open sources and freely avaiable on the web...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
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?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
If you've ever seen www.icehotel.com, you could see how even a bed make out of legos could probably be considered comfortable enough to rent out for the night.
Eh...
As soon as they start bulking Technics bricks, axels, and the jointed plates I can finally start building my Robotech Valkyrie and Optimus Prime!
They =do= have conductive legos. Go to www.lego.com, seek and ye shall find.
This is an ex-parrot!
now we can build real space shuttles :P or a computer case...
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe
Hah! Thanks for the point on green bricks! I was just argueing with my boyfriend about the rarity of green bricks. He says he had many of them, while I still believe I just had them as trees, baseplates and flats. I had a few 1x8 (I think), though.
:)
Well, actually the Lego wasn't mine. I just got lousy stuff like dolls and maybe very female Lego-sets (woman in front of her kitchen etc), while my brothers got all the cool stuff - nice sets and Technic and so. My daughters (if any) will have lots of bulk Lego, technic and mindstorms, I think
this new development means that I might finally be able to build a real working car out of legos and drive it to school. But heres the better idea. have microsoft purchase MILLIONS of TONs of legos, and use them as the case for the Xbox. Belive you me, I would get one in a second, just because of the legos. OK IM GONE!!
Beer.
I'm going to build a giant blue robot called Nabster, he'll go out to recording artists houses and steal their money!!
--And sektor spoke and said unto the people. Hey, buttwipe hand me the cheezeos.
Unfortunately, I had only seven or eight u-joints, and they've all broken. I have a daughter that loves Lego blocks, and I'd love to recreate some of my "contraptions" for her. But I have no u-joints, and I can't find them anywhere.
I can't find them on Lego's site. Any help would be appreciated.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
What, a beowul... Hum, too easy.
What would be cool though would be to do a dinosaur out of these. Talk about huge (ok, a whale would be bigger, but it would begin to be quite astronomical).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I was considering a "roof" for my cubicle. I guess I will have to settle for a nighttime sky. While I am at it, perhaps a dutch door .. better than that Les Nessman tape.
TechNoir
I'd make a lego politician... I'm sure it'd get at least 14% in New Hampshire.
managers...why god invented purgatory
It's time to build a full-scale lego pirate ship, and sail the seven seas.
The real trick will be to get the cannons to fire without exploding.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do a giant-scale reproduction of the Penguin Computing poster of Tux stompping the Redmond Campus; then have it delivered to the front lawn of Bill Gates estate!
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
A: a lego bulk store
B: the internet
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A rich couple found their ideal pet in a dog that makes e-mail programs.
A life-sized version of Cowboy Neal.
I'm not sure if static bags provide RF sheilding to the necessary degree, however, I am sure something similar exists. I know for a fact it's going to be much more difficult to find a substance that will hold up to the ventillation ass... but with enough NASA research we shouldnt be too far from an adequate ventillation ass solution.
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
I guess that preview button is there for a reason huh? damn it....
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
you could probably sue her based on psychological damage....
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
The Kremlin in LEGO!I can see it now!All I'd need is lotsa red bricks,some yellows(Onion domes),etc. and I'm set!That and Mir done in LEGO would look awesome upstairs.
------------------------
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Thus Spake ComradePenguin
This is what you do with BULK LEGOS. Buy tons of bricks and build a LEGO MACHINE GUN for every GI in the US army. This is THE replacement to aging M16 technology!
what else would a proper Geek build?
A message from our sponsor
Hmmm.... This remindes me of the ol' duffer next door who built a laser style hardwood boat in his basement when I was a little kid. He had trouble getting it out. Legos would've been simpler...
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
That attitude is probably why yer still a virgin huh?
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
Now i can have another case that looks like it was made by fisher price. Those handles are the only problem though.
"Your just jealous because the voices only talk to me"
Why buy legos in bulk and waste them building something immediately? I say, carry around a giant backpack full of them. That way, if an emergency comes up, and you need something right now, you can just construct it.
Haven't you ever misplaced your crack pipe? It can be a hassle when the only construction materials at your disposal are duct tape, a bottle of gatorade, six McDonald's straws, and a jar of peanut butter.
Also, if you were ever in a shipwreck, and you ended up on a desert island, and then a CRT tube and solar panel washed up on shore, you could construct your own television.
See, the possibilities are endless.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
That's my answer. I'd build the ultimate line of computer cases I could sell. Of course, if they made the clear-blue 4x2x1 blocks, I'd use those. Maybe they will. If I could get more specialized parts, maybe I could make them even cooler. It would give people a lot of reason not to whack their computers anymore! Or drop them for that matter... Whoa, that would be cool.
I can't count how many times the issue of building a Lego brick Death Star has appeared on my Internet travels up with "scientific" calculations and size estimates (scale to Lego minifig size). Okay, so why don't all those interested set up www.builddeathstarinlego.org, accept online contributions and start it going. A distributed project with design and manufacture split around the world, joined by the net and UPS.
Look here for a photo.
nal 11
I would build a new Sealand out of Legos!!!
Either way, I think I would rather just go with a lego urinal complete with lego mint scented urinal cake.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
A full size, funtical lego toliet..."
Yeah, that would be funny, but think if you sat on it too long. Ouch. You would have about a thousand little red circles on yout butt.
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
a giant lego brick? no, i mean a really big one.
The biggest thing you can buy is a 2x8 block? They had some thick plates that were positively HUGE as well as 4x8 blocks, too. Building stuff is fun, but we don't really need one MORE excuse to sit inside. And what about DUPLO blocks? Those things were positively HUGE! And much easier to play with when you're fscked up.... :)
Cool!
John
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
'Nuff said. (Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? Or did I just miss it with my threshold of 2?)
Zahlman Q. Namlhaz, esq. {:> "Zahl Incorporated - the Last Word in Everything(TM)"
Build them into a lawn chair (reclining ability optional).
Take to beach and impress babes.
After all, what most of us need are babes, along with some natural light (eeeagh) after spending sixteen hours each day bathed in the glow of a monitor.
they're already available http://www.lego.com/info/images/legoland/legoskole high.jpg
I'm a rockstar, I'm a rockstar!
A Bolo. Course, the armor plating and Hellbore might be a little hard to fashion, but that's all part of the challenge. Now I have to figure out how to distribute 10+ Ktons over lego baseplates.
One of the really great thing about Legos is that you can make modules. So, I'm going to install a lego panel
on the dash of my car. I can make a portable mp3 player module, a flatscreen (or possibly front projection)
module, a camera module (car cam!)...etc. When I want any given item in the car, I can just take it out there and
attatch it to my base! Power is problem, you say? Battery modules! I'll bet I could even rig a recharger from
the cigarette lighter.
(Yeah, I know I could just use Velcro and ducky-tape, but this is so much cooler.)
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
If I had unlimited amounts of Lego, I'd make a myself a new house, because I'm cold and wet and lonely.
That and a big, big, big Lego Brick, so I could make realy big Lego.
From really big bricks.
TOM
It's not what you do, it's why you do it.
A fully functioning Natalie Portman, of course, so all you obsessive geeks could finally get your Legover.
Ow! Lego of me!
Put the blame on meme
o/~ we all live in a yellow lego submarine! o/~
-subtraho
I was all excited about this until I saw the price lists. Petty steep even, with the "10% off of 10 or more" deal. Some components are $7-8 for 25 pieces? That's quite a bit considering it would take many thousands of pieces to make anything considerably large. I wonder if they have a bulk-, bulk-discount... Maybe I could intern with them...
I still prefer concrete: it is WAY cheaper, and you can make really monstrous things that will remain in the middle of your garage for thousands of years because no one realized it would weigh so much when you were pouring like crazy on a boring sunday afternoon (speaking from personal experience, of course...
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Indeed, what are they doing? Lego resource exploitation (mining),Lego xenophobia (alien bug things).
No BLUE coloured bricks I see.
My dad gave mine away to the younger child next door. Luckily I protested vehemently enough to get the small child to reurn them when he moved house. Considering the hundreds of pounds my grandparents spent on the stuff over the years, I don't understand why parents want to give it away?
don't you mean penguin outfit? You could go buy a Tux costume for only $200.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
>Feh! Just the house-building junk.
I dunno, I always kind of liked those. There was a lot you could do with them (if you had the imagination). However, I always needed more. I've been dreaming of bulk-ordering these pieces for as long as I can remember.
Anyone who wants LEGO to expand the bulk catalog should buy as many bulk pieces as they can afford. If LEGO sees that they can sell them, they'll add more to the line.
> I still hold a grudge against my mom for giving
> my Legos away to charity when I "grew up"
Have her declared incompetent as soon as possible. That'll teach her.
I'm lucky. My parents knew better than to get rid of my Legos. I was also smart enough to marry someone who would allow me to keep purchasing them.
HINT: If you're married to someone who won't let you buy your own Lego sets, have a kid. Then you can play with your child's Legos. My son is only 2 years old & "his" collection is already almost as big as "mine". That also applies to model trains.
you twit! You took my idea! I bet you're the one monitoring the microsoft computer chip implanted chip inside my brain without my knowladge or consent that transmits everything i think to the secret base where the human clones are made.
This may be a little of subject, but it would be funny (or scary, I'm not sure) if the lego company declares their plans for their lego projects as propritory information, and if I reverse engineer a completed lego project, or photo-copy the lego project plans, and I was given a cease-and-decist notice.
You could add ventelation ass needed
I hope that case comes with an air freshener
Soup is good food.
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
And I hear it's built of giant lego blocks they bulk-ordered for themselves.
Data East: "Leaders in Dot Matrix Technology" - Star Wars pinball
I'm all down with that. My kid's not even 6mo. and "he's" got a hell of a collection going. "His" faves are the '20s stuff, Knights & Samurai, and the underground-buzzsaw-people. They all make awesome figures when you're playing D&D and suddenly realize that a map would be cool.
Data East: "Leaders in Dot Matrix Technology" - Star Wars pinball
out of Legos that could build more legos. Then, just dump in some plastic and you have as many as you need. Then use these to build more factories...
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I think as long as Lego refuses to license its Operating System (LegoOS), the clones will never be that good.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
A few years ago I built an true autonomous robot out of leggo and radio shack parts and it worked pretty good.It was a rudimentary bot with relay switches and no cpu but it would bump into things,back up and then go agian on it's merry way untill it hit the next object.
The reason I stopped and didn't move on to the next gen of leggobots was the extreme price for leggos.
Now with this bulk offer I plan on building my next bot with more sensers and a real computer this time.
The fun was in building the cars, not in pushing them around the table top. Years before I'd heard of a crash test dummy I was building lego cars to survive high speed offset head on collisions. Once a design could stand up to multiple "accidents" with the neighbor kids' cars, I'd start worrying about the down-the-stairs-and-jump-the-family-room test.
I think the poster who called for a functional lego car had the right idea. Now that I know what I'm driving to burningman, I just need to come up with buckets of cash to swap for buckets of legos.
Wait... you mean you still haven't joined the ACLU?
Am I the only one who thought to put a toilet in my lego space shuttles, and made lego soda machines that took lego money and actually dispensed lego beverages? The larger lego pieces bore me. I preferred the smaller pieces which had many more pieces, like phasers, swords, hammers, suit cases, etc.. I think if not for computers, I would still be playing with legos today.
----Thanks for this blood-boiling news--it's made my day.
I know it's a little late to chime in, but I would really like to use legos to make good looking murals. I have a bunch of existing art that would work well, and I imagine it would be easiest if I could convert the artwork to CMYK and use the seps as a map.
It would be best if legos came in a few more specific colors, particularly Magenta and Cyan. They already have the yellow and black. But if necessary, I could use the blue and red bricks.
Maybe one of you coders could whip up a little utility to help me map the conversion. See, simple substitution wouldn't look right, the color sep would have to be recalculated with the new color inks in mind. (Not that I know much about color modelling)
Another strategy I could use is to recalculate these values in a pre-press program that allows you to substitute the inks but still gives a realistically toned set of color seps. Anyone know about anything like that? Maybe all of them do it? I'm familiar with Photoshop, but I've never come across a feature like that.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
it's right here. Pretty cool, actually.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
I would construct a giant Bill Gates. Then I would push him over, and send him crashing into M$, perhaps his arm could fall onto Billy boy's house. I'd probably also want each lego to have "Linux" written on it, just for spite.
--C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
to replace the body panels of my car with legos, just think, if you wanted to be driving a 57 chevy you could just add fins ....
Maybe build a lifesize 15 story building with them.
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
Me and a friend just picked up the Lego Mindstorms kit, and the first thing we thought of building was a 'robot building factory'.
The basic idea is to design a *very* simple robot that wanders (wanderbot) around a space, until it finds something that gets in its way - then it shoves this thing (lego parts) into a hopper.
The hopper feeds a 'factory' made out of the Mindstorm kit that makes more of these little wanderbots...
This has probably been done before, but we figured we'd give it a try our own way, and see what happens. The ultimate would be to have the new wanderbots appear in the same arena, all gathering lego bits together!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Lego is also shaveable and sandable, so if that piece is bent beyond repair, get a sharp knife and some sandpaper and presto: new, custom made pieces :)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Some friends and I (who happen to have access to 6 Mindstorms kits through school) have been dreaming/fantasizing about building a motorized AT/AT for ages. It'd require a huge amount of parts, but we think we roughly have the mechanics worked out (one RCX per foot.) Argh.. now if only I had the time...
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Yeah, but it was a crappy (1/2? 1/4?) scale AT/AT. I mean a "minifig scale" AT/AT, like this one. C'mon... that would be awesome.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
The bulk packs include black, white, green, gray and red.
No yellow, no blue. How are you supposed to build a full-scale Lego replica of an IKEA store without yellow and medium blue?
Fischertechnik is another brick-based system that has been around for decades. It started out much more oriented towards mechanical engineering than Lego. In fact, it is used quite a bit for prototyping, in particular in Germany. You can find more information at the US distributor and the German site.
When I was around 11 or 12, my Mom made me decide between keeping my Lego or keeping my Micronauts. :)
What kind of sick individual makes a kid decide toys??!
As you can well imagine, I picked Lego!
Irecently put together all my 80's Space sets when I rescued the bags of stuff from my parents' place. What's interesting is that my friend Jim gave me all his Lego when I was 12 and he was 14. He figured he was "too old" to play (or maybe his parents made him give it up), and the stuff he gave me doubled the amount I had!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It's been a long time, and I don't remember the source - Scientific American, maybe - but I recall seeing an article about logic gates built out of Tinkertoys. Somebody put together enough of these to build a Tinkertoy machine the size of a car that could play unbeatable tic-tac-toe (aka noughts and crosses). I'd think if you could build logic gates out of Tinkertoys, you could surely build them out of Legos.
Those are generally called POOPs, or Pieces
that could have been made Out of Other Pieces.
Not at all... Legos have excellent compressive strength, if poor shearing properties. They would be excellent for first stage propellant tanks of rockets. And -- the colors!
The coolest thing would be to build a replica of the Microsoft Campus, then blow it up.
(Actually, I don't think it would be all that cool, I'm just trolling for points.)
Hey for those kind of prices you could hire a real Spaniard to tile your roof.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
You've always been able to order every part, in bulk, from Pitsco. They sell the Lego Dacta parts, Dacta being the "educational" wing of lego.
.com/catalog.cfm
http://www.pitsco-legodacta-store
- cheers
davevr
GPL'ed, full version for Windows, beta for Linux. http://leocad.gerf.org. Quite an extensive parts database, really nice output for creating building instructions for use later.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
2. A lego will obey humans unless it involves taking apart two peices (in these cases it's okay to break rule 1 as well)
*lol*
The best thing Lego has EVER made, IMHO, is this strange-looking piece that comes w/the Lego Mindstorms. It is vaguely reminiscent of a shoehorn (A Lego shoehorn??). I didn't realize WHAT it was until I started trying to pry 2 pieces apart (2x1 flats). Naturally, I resorted to teeth (SOP, right?), but I'm staring at this thing, and notice the two hole in the bottom of the thicker end. They are suggestive of...something...lego bumps, maybe? So if I put them OVER the Lego bumps....
In short, it was a Lego TOOL FOR SEPARATING LEGOS!!!!!! I call it the Lego wrench.
Lego Institutes Bulk Ordering
Whoah. Like, build a Lego Institute. They, like, would never have seen it coming.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Well, we're getting up there. I'm 42 and I still enjoy legos, when I can pry them out of my son's hands. Is there anybody who's dead and still enjoys legos?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Having seen the recent BattleBot competition, we've concluded that what the audience wants is blood and shrapnel. Watching a bunch of wedges slam into eachother is rather boring, unless a bot gets pushed into the arena blades.
If we ever do an entry, it'll have at least 4 layers of Lego armor, so when the saws/flails/mower blades hit it, bits will fly everywhere. Ideally, we'll build it upside down and fill random sets of bricks with some fluid for extra blood effect.
And it'll also have hammers, and blades, and a chainsaw, and sharp sticks, and foul language...
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
I'm not married, but my girlfried does have a younger brother that stays over sometimes. So we're always buying stuff and using him as an excuse. "Boy, wouldn't Paul like some legos to play with when he comes over next?" "I bet Paul would like that board game. We should get it and play test it" "Paul would really think this video game is cool. Let's get it"
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Feh! Just the house-building junk.
We all know all the GOOD pieces were in the original space series of the 80s. Now they have ludicrously stupid garish neon glowing crap, and some stupid Time Traveller's series which apparently was just created because they had no imagination and decided to just throw pieces from all their other series together to make a new series.
God help children today...
I still hold a grudge against my mom for giving my Legos away to charity when I "grew up". I still want my fscking Legos...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Actually, what we really want is a RCX-hardware-compatible brick with some other (better) CPU and *MORE* *OUTPUTS* . This shouldn't be hard - anyone done it?
One thing I found interesting about the plastics used in Legos was the incredible variety of testing performed on the material to determine the appropriate plastics to use. One such test that comes to mind is the 'saliva test', which was used to determine how the plastics would survive repeated 'mouthing' by young toddlers! (While I didn't see these tests first hand, I did some consulting work at their Northeast headquarters in CT, and heard this through some of the developers there).
No, Fischertechnic is the way to go IMHO. In the time where lego only featured cars where the 'block wheels' got under a large plate Fischertechnic allready had geers and such to make cars which could actually steer (and I mean like a car where both wheels really turn). IMO Fischertechnic was and still is way ahead.
In International news today, the Russian space program has announced plans to create MIR II, to replace their failing space station.
In unrelated news, the Russian government has ordered four trillion lego bricks, for an unknown purpose.
Part of the order included four thousand little-edge-elbow peices because, quote, "We don't wan't to be in later stages of the project and then have to scramble looking for a little edge elbow peice"
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Let me put it this way. The roof of your lego house is gonna be in the vicinity of $28 a square foot. You can do real spanish tile for less than that.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these babies!
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
How about a waffle made out of lego.
Now you can say
"My Eggo is Lego" or
"Leggo my Lego Eggo"
A full size, funtical lego toliet...
Furnite would be cool, like tables, desktops, book selves.
The question is, would it say cost more to build a lego book case, or just go buy one at XYZ store with the fake wood. You know the plastic funritre, but they have "wood" stickers you put over it so you freinds don't think you a cheap bastard (which you of course are)
Those things (lego's) are really easy to build computer cases out of, I had an old 386 motherboard and started to build a case out of lego's, but I didn't finish it, I sobered up.
The coolest thing though, would big a 6 foot giant Tux! Get some black boxes, yellow and white, what else do you need?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Amen to that. I've lived in many countries, and bought Lego-alikes in a few of them, and aways been disappointed. The crap I bought in India didn't even fit with itself, much less real Lego.
Real Lego is incredibly durable, and made with amazing precision. Lego my parents bought 25 years ago still fits perfectly with brand-new sets. Find me any other toy that's this cool, this durable, and this backwards-compatible for less money.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
My 14 yo son still plays with them, too. But I have to get past him to get to the minstorms.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Does anyone remember the old Digi-Comps? I always wanted one, but never managed to put the allowance together for one before they were discontinued.
I'll have to think this one through, on a Lego-based mechanical computer. Not even sure it would take bulk Legos to do it, at least until you got to 32 bit architectures, hardware multiply, FPU, VM, etc.
Imagine, 1e-6 BogoMips. 1e-9 fps on Quake3
Oh, don't forget the 1/4 HP motor to drive it since the rubber-band failure rate would be too high at the number needed for this. And while we're at it, the motor would need a powerbooster so it could be driven by conventional Mindstorms when not driving the mechanical computer.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well, since they have Lego Technic, how about a drivable car/truck/motorcycle etc.... Glen
Glen
Track your fuel economy
I think it would be pretty sweet to have a computer case made of legos! You could add ventelation ass needed and add new hardware at will... My computer would have a drink holder (not just the cd rom tray) an ashtray, and a place to putt all my N.P. pictures... and of course there would be a hot grits container, as it is very inconvienent to walk all the way to the crock-pot in the kitchen...
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
These bulk orders are only on basic blocks, the mainstay of lego engineering. this is a huge boost for the creativity of minds yound and old.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
There once was Miguel San Diego
Who built his whole house out of Lego
Though easy to fix
He needed more bricks
To repair his full-size Winnebago
The exterior of my new home is almost entirely made of large lego-style blocks. I chose red as the color.
This brand didn't snap together like Legos, so we had smear a gray, granular compound between each one to get them to bond.
I don't know who makes these blocks, but I think they company just calls them "bricks"
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
It seems like it would be trivial to create Lego-compatible plastic bricks. It's not like there's a whole lot to reverse-engineer there. And at the prices Lego sells at, I'm sure another company could undercut them.
Is there not enough of a market for this? Is there Intellectual Property preventing this?
Given how IP-aware and pro-reverse-engineering this crowd usually is, I'm surprised that I haven't seen anyone else bring it up, yet.
I have to throw in that, as an engineer (though not mechanical), I always thought it peculiar how much programmers enjoy Legos. I understand why engineers are drawn to them, and it's not like the professions are that far removed, but I would expect programmers to be interested in things less *physical*; like poetry, or classical music. Alright, so we've established that programmers like Haiku's, but still...
--Lenny
What is the minimal number of blocks for
a 1-bit adder. The simpler implementation
would be two 2-bit inputs and the output of 1-bit
sum and 1-bit carry. (A third carry input could
be added later.)
Whats a good way to represent 1 & 0?
e.g. slide left or right right.
How could design the units to cascade them?
You may have to clever about balancing mechanical
forces. The friction of several cascade bit adders could make them unmoveable.
Actually, that's false. The reason LEGO was cool when you were 5 is because it stimulates the creative part of the brain. That's the same reason it's cool at 25, but at 25 it's far more important to do it. In the process of "growing up" (16-24 yrs) most of your imagination and creative energy was methodically destroyed.
Adult use of LEGO is an excellent way to regain those lost abilities. LEGO is not a toy (though parents treat it as such) it's a well thought out and powerful system.
Why, I'd build a miniature scale replica of the Microsoft headquarters. Then I'd don my Godzilla outfit and have a field day.
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http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
Why build an ordinary case? Now you too can have an iMac-looking computer case without being sued. Get one of the light kits to make it really spiffy-looking at night. :-]
slightly OT: am I the only one who finds it disturbing to see so many GREEN Lego bricks available? When I was younger, green bricks were an extreme rarity, usually limited to trees, baseplates, and flats used to connect the baseplates together. Even in Denmark, they're not too common, or at least they didn't use to be. (I was born there, so I have a rather extensive collection, back to the days when Samsonite was a licensee.)
Hmmmm. "Hello, Citibank? I'd like to apply for an raise in my credit limit."
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Well, technically, you're the grammar nazi. But I maintain that proper nouns are supposed to be capitalized.
Yeah! Wacky Willies.
For those that haven't ever been to WW in Portland, Oregon, imagine a military surplus store crossed with Radio Shack and your parts bin.
They've got everything, from industrial chemicals to bulk wire to test tubes to heater elements. Definitely a geeks' dream.
-ted, now in San Diego (1000 miles from WW)
Think! The ultimate expandable system. A rackmount made in Lego could be added to ad nauseum as you expanded your beowulf system in pursuit of SETI@Home glory.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
We had the worlds tallest building for many years, first with the Empire State Building, then with Sears Tower. But now, with Millennium Tower in Japan, Nina Tower in HongKong, and Petronas Tower in Malaysia, we are way behind.
Time to reclaim the title of "worlds biggest" and further the rise of geeks to America's adored elite :)
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Build a "Universal Constructor" out of lego. And then give it a blueprint of itself, the LEGO bulk-ordering department, and Microsoft's bank account. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Back when I was a poor and struggling programmer, I purchaced my first Intel-based system with a tax return check. This was in the middle of a chip embargo so prices were sky high.
Well, I had enough to buy the main system (A 10mhz 8086), but not enough for the monitor.
My solution turned out to be more expensive than the original monitor.
I found a monochrome monitor without an external case at a local electronics store. (Whacky Willies in Portland,OR. They deal in used equiptment and just generally STRANGE stuff.) I tried a couple of solutions for cases (including foil covered cardboard and other tacky looking disasters), but nothing worked.
I then decided to use Legos.
Do you know how many buckets it takes to build a monitor case? I must have spent over $100 in lego over the next few months. And you have to glue them together because the heat causes the whole thing to expand and come apart at inappropreate spots.
I finished it off and used the monitor for a number of months until general fear of radiation burns drove me to buy a real monitor. (This thing was pretty nasty. It was an early green screen that you could practically feel the radiation off the front. Probably why it only cost me $5.)
I still have the monitor in a box in the computer room. It needs some repair after being moved a number of times, but it might even work. Someday I will have to post pictures...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
It'd be cool to build a 20 to 30 foot Tux to put in front of TransMeta's Headquarters.. (For Linus, of course)...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Should we be worried if NASA starts placing large orders?
1. A lego will ever harm a living being unless they step on it in bare feet
2. A lego will obey humans unless it involves taking apart two peices (in these cases it's okay to break rule 1 as well)
3. A lego will attempt for self-preservation, especially when that means trying to hide so that people cant find it.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Build huge lego bricks out of lego bricks. Then make larger lego bricks out of those. Finally argue that at an atomic level, lego bricks are composed of lego shaped atoms.
...then everything can be fractal.
Keeping