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Building the Enterprise D Out of LEGOs.
CleverNickName writes "A self-proclaimed "dork" has built one of the best models of Enterprise D I have ever seen (and I think I speak with some authority)...entirely out of LEGOs.
I can see my house from here!"
I have friends who are, which probably explains how my perspective is skewed. ;)
But seriously, speaking from experience, geeks have too much time on their hands.
Argh, the gallery slide show does not work in Mozilla.
It's ok; it's not a big deal, but in case anybody is taking a count of the number of things that are non-standard and IE-specific, feel free add this to your list.
dont get me wrong, thats quite the project there.
However, he has a picture labeled 'the troublesome deflector dish' which he just used some brown and white blocks instead of the gray. Its been a while since I played with legos, but weren't there some parabolic dish type things that would have made a reasonable deflector shield?
It's actually impossible to make a perfect cube out of Lego. The ratios of lengths of the sides of the pieces are such that there is no integer multiples which are identical.
I've never found out whether this was deliberate on the part of Lego, or an accident.
Interesting sidebar: After the production of Generations, the 6' model of the Enterprise D was lost.
Archivists all over paramount were running screaming when they couldn't find it anywhere.
more than a year later, it shows up in some back office reception area in horrible condition...all dinged up, holes drilled into it for display hanging, nacelles busted, and several years worth of grease layers.
explanation: 'someone' loaned it out to a local restaurant for display and it never really got returned. It is now safely sequestered in the giant room of boxes you see at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But as you say, the price you pay is not being able to shape so minutely or copy precisely, i.e., you have to live with a square wave approximation of the real thing. It's all about tradeoffs. Artsies use analogue media, techies use digital :).
czth
FYI, almsot all "Grand" lego creations (homegrown and the 'pro' creations at the Legoland parks) use glue in their construction. The blocks themselves just don't provide enough support to hold a large model together.
Painting is a different story - if there were "standards" in lego model building, painting would usually be against the rules. Though in reality, is it really much different than buying 4000 2x3 flat bricks for a project? It's not like you had them laying around.
I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, this should be categorized more as just another plastic model kit of the Enterprise than a true Lego creation.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there - he not only built it, he designed the plans, researched the specs and size, and gathered the parts. As in depth as any boxed model is, all the work (besides putting it together) is already done for you. This Enterprise really is a neat accomplishment.
Why do it?
First off, a little background: I built (played?) with legos well into my teen years. When I moved on to computers I passed all my Legos on to my little brother, who added them to his already large collection. He continues to build today (at age 22), but they are much more complex models involving the Mindstorms robot system. He's really delved into the programming on those, and has 2 mindstorm "brains" that he uses. This last fall, he got an award at the Oregon State Fair for his "Dinner Plate Transporter".
Anyway, the reason that I built was because I wanted to create my own toys. My brother and I would setup environments consisting of Legos, pillows, blankets, chairs, tables, etc etc, then build vehicles and buildings to populate those environments. Then we would play. :) The beauty of it was the flexibility of the Lego blocks. If something wasn't working out or didn't look right, we could tear it down and rebuild it.
Those were the days. :)
For those of us who aren't following along, the submitter of this story was Wil Wheaton, yes, Wesley Crusher himself...
see http://www.wilwheaton.net/ for details.
See if you can find him amongst the trolls and flames.
--
Sam Kennedy
samrolken
I have a collection of science fiction that started with my dad in the 1940's and has been growing ever since. But that's Science Fiction, with capital SF, not sci-fi or space opera. It's the kind of stories that make you think "hey, that had never occurred to me, what if it happens that way?". On the other hand, the only thing that comes into anyone's mind when seeing Star Trek, or any other space opera, is "wow".
Here's an interesting thought: Replace "LEGO blocks" with "open source software" and read the sentence again.
Might be interesting to do a statistical analysis on how many avid LEGO builders/collectors became code hackers and programmers later in life (put me down as one of those)
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)