Slashdot Mirror
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!"
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
How many hours did this guy put in? Scope out those diagrams! Most archetects don't use that much detail when designing a building. Just goes to say that dorks have too much time on their hands.
when there are lots of kits and plans to choose from http://www.starshipmodeler.com/trek/trekship.htm
"The model features accidental saucer-separation capability, as I've found out more than once."
Translation: I dropped it. It broke.
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
OK, so I wasn't the 3rd person to make that joke at the time of submitting.. guess I took too long.
To bold lego where no one has gone before!
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
I was admiring it until I saw at the bottom of the page: "created using a mac"
Now I just sit back and wonder: Wow...Macs are good! I'm gonna get myself a duallie G4 and see if it can make me a Borg Cube!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Before any rabid Trekkers reading this story decide to email him, let me point out that he's already been informed of this: "Within hours of posting, someone named Medic e-mailed me with the dimensions: 'Enterprise-D is a Galaxy Class Starship, which are supposed to be 2,103 feet long by 1,542 wide by 476 tall.' Which means, ratio-wise, my model is a little taller than it should be. I think I can live with that."
Bet it's the tallest one in four counties, though!
He has every life pod on the thing, but i do beleive he missed the damn captains yacht! Thats the ovoid thing in the center of the underside of every saucer. More than a shuttle, not quite a runabout. I dont think its ever been used in an episode though.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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?
One would think that CleverNickName has seen enough Star Trek items like this. Kind of surprising he'd be out looking for this stuff.
On a related note, the orginal models - are there any still around (that haven't been blown up). IIRC the models used for TNG were 6 feet long (I could be way off).
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.
A self-proclaimed "dork"...
I also proclaim that you're a dork..
And that makes all the difference in the world. Dorkle, the popular dork engine, is not affected by self-references of dorkdom. Only dorklinks from other dorks count toward a higher DorkRank, and the more the better.
Your post was hilarious, by the way. I laughed so hard that my pocket-protector fell out. I tried to come up with a joke about the existence of "dork matter" or maybe going over to the "dork side," but I'll have to leave that to cleverer dorks than me.
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?
See, the thing is, if you made it out of those parabolic dish-thingies, it'd be really, really tough to modify the deflector dish to interface with the sensor array, and emit a neutrino pulse into the heart of the anomaly.
Inspired by this i just created a lego Borg Cube. Even simpler than these.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
As recently as 50 years ago, most humans on this planet were mainly concerned with finding enough food on a daily basis to stay alive.
In today's society, it's only slightly unusual to report on an individual who apparently has enough free time to obsessivbely recreate a fictional spacecraft in exacting detail with intentionally poor tools.
The screwed up thing is, the majority of people in the world are STILL mainly concerned with finding enough food on a daily basis to stay alive.
I'm not trying to pull a guilt/ego/trippy trip on anyone; it's just odd to think that some of us are lucky enough to have to go out of our way to waste time.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
(Data, On the Bridge)
Captain, I believe if we fire a controlled burst of tachyon radiation at the bridge of the 'Slashdot', Cmdr Taco will forget that he has attacked us. That should give us enough time to reroute the power from the impulse engines to the warp core containment field. If I can run a holodeck carrier beam with the tachyon radiation, I believe I can create a 'virtual wormhole', and give us an hour before Cmdr Taco will repost this story. I mean, uh, attack us again.
(Captain)
Make it so. (To engineering) Jordi, you have an hour. Number One, in my ready room.
(Number One)
Someone turn off that damn alarm!
Poor guy. His site withstood a farking, but now it's going to suffer through a slashdotting. Talk about double jeopardy.
Really, now, does this model truly qualify as an authentic Lego creation? Sure, his deviations seem minor, but it's a slippery slope friends.
Where does it end. Is it acceptable to glue Lego bricks alongside one another to achieve the desired effect? Is it acceptable to airbrush cool color schemes on a model when the colored brick motif just isn't cutting it? What about incorporating non-lego pieces like balsa wood or erector set parts?
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. Better luck next time.
No, the Enterprise "D" was destroyed in 2372 by a Klingon Bird of Prey under the command of the Duras sisters. Don't you know anything? :) (I don't get many chances to out-geek anyone.)
OK, if you want to be hypertechnical, according to William Shatner in that oh-so-tragic SNL episode the whole Star Trek thing is make-believe. Many of us suspect that he is still under the control of the mind-control device in Episode #37.
Enterprise NX-1 - Earth's first ship capable of (relatively) high warp speed.
Enterprise 1701- Main TOS ship.
Enterprise 1701 - Upgrade, refitted Enterprise. New class named: Enterprise class. Seen in ST:TMP
Enterprise 1701- A - Recommisioned Enterprise Class after Kirk destroyed the upgraded original in Star Trek 3 (Originally USS Atlantis before recommisioning)
Enterprise 1701-B - Excelsior II-class, seen in Star Trek: Generations
Enterprise 1701-C - Ambassador-Class, seen in TNG episode 'Yesterday's Enterprise'
Enterprise 1701-D - Galaxy-Class, main TNG ship
Enterprise 1701-E - Sovereign-class, newest ship, seen in every movie past Generations where 1701-D was destroyed.
God I'm sad.
It also is a good learning tool to develop volumetric relationship (in an architectural sense).
What I just don't understand is people trying to make it do something it's not made for: duplicating the volumetry and appearance of arbitrarly-shaped objects.
Why don't you use clay or plaster? They are shapable to a great degree of likeness, far more than what you'll be able to achieve with legos.
Not that they did make something IE-specific (at least in this case), but IE is the browser that ships with MacOS.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
From his webpage
"One at a time, I downloaded the deck plans from the Web, resized them in Photoshop, and printed them out onto graph paper."
With 42 decks, this is no small amount of time. Wonder what I could do if I stopped reading slash dot so much?
...but I'd revise the bump mapping a bit.
Actually, people have been wasting time since prehistory. What purpose was served by the cave paintings at Lascaux? I'd assume that those folk were generally preoccupied with the question of continued survival.
Look at it this way--any time spent creating the spacecraft was not spent in procreation, though that may not have been entirely due to a proactive decision on his part. Consider the long-term resource savings!
This is Definitly news for nerds. Not so sure on the stuff that matters bit though =)
Of course Taco does punctuate each so I guess it can be an either/or deal.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Well I'm glad I didn't post what I was going to and be redundant and all. We picked the exact same quote out of the article.
;-)
Except I can add:
"..more than once."
Translation: I'm a clutz, what do you expect from a dork anyhow?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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
And I'd make a Romulan Warbird, or a Klingon Bird of Prey, but I just can't find enough green lego pieces lying around. I guess I'll just build the "cloaked" models of those ships.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
The coolest movie-to-Lego-model that I've seen is this Millennium Falcon (had to use Internet Wayback Machine as the original site's pictures are down).
I have yet to see something I have wanted for years. I want Legos on my PC. Basically, it needs to be very EASY just like Legos. Second, it has to be full rotational 3d. Third, every peice lego has ever made needs to exist and work right, including the gimick peices as I always called them (Magnets) etc. Also, all the ground peices so I could lay out a city, or base or whatever is needed. I always wanted the big train from the late 80s. If all the sets were loaded in, that would rock my world too! (ie, I could quickly load a prebuilt set model from my childhood and quickly look at it in and out and deconstruct it like I did IRL))
I dont need things like facial animations and plot. Also, fun things to add would be stress testing. Oh, almost forgot. I have to be able to put some peices on in almost strange ways. I did that a lot and I always thought that was part of the sheer genuis that is Lego. Oh, if this has not been done and someone gets the idea to do this then consider it started and GPL'd, but lets try to get official Lego support. I dont want it to be "Supar Bloqs!" or some dumb shit.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
...to find out if he actually gets a date out of this!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Now we get to start another debate over the proper way to say "LEGOs".
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
The small print "Model not capable of warp drive travel"
But one things for sure, it'd probably survive a dense popcorn armada..
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
U.S.S. Enterprise
Shuttle
Mid-sized
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Most lego doesn't have to stand up to the destructive forces created by extreme acceleration of a disproportionate and brittle design. Just think of this as the lego version of a conveniently available structural integrity field that redefines previously understood boundaries.
BTW, our Uncle Willie should be able to add another geek notch on his phaser rifle butt now - Slashdot submitter/writer/actor that he is. ;-)
Money for nothing, pix for free
This is one of those topics where people who are wrong are not going to change.
Stupid is as stupid does and all that, but for what it matters, the official word from Lego is:
(Quote from: http://www.lego.com/info/pdf/presskituk.pdf )
So there you have it.
"This is my Lego" is wrong.
"These are my Legos" is worse.
"These are my LEGO bricks" is correct.
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 etc.
The ratio between each pair of terms is a progressively better approximation of the golden mean. Really.
If you have way too much time on your hands (as my Linear Algebra teacher once did), you can construct a non-iterative formula for the sequence out of this. Requires diagonalization, messy enough you actually have to do it by hand... but it actually works.
So, the golden ratio is pretty easy to approximate. Nature's done it for millions of years. You just haven't tried hard enough... :)
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
Yup. It's packed with lots more people and destructive goodies than the Enterprise C. And there's and Enterprise E that's going to be ever more larger and deadly than the D class.
Enterprises are like bra sizes; when you go up a letter they get bigger and more impressive.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
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
When modeling or building, there's an accepted 5 to 6 ratio on stud vs height. See my dimensions guide. So a 6 studs by 6 studs by 5 bricks (or 4 bricks, 2 plates, one tile) should do the trick (within accepted Lego tolerances).
You might get a slightly different ratio if you use calipers, but wouldn't that apply to any discrete building material? Think "tolerances".
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
so his next obvious project will be to
LEGO his Eggo...
sorry.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
with big boobs on the home page!
All we got is Bill Gates in Borg drag....
*I feel so small*
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
A self-proclaimed "dork" has built one of the best..
ALERT TO: self-proclaimed "dork"
FROM: The Ghost of Jon Postel
MSG BODY:Your dorkness has gone well past the levels allowed by all RFC standards. You are now in the "nerd" category, please refer to yourself with this label from now on.
Thank you,
postel, watching you from afar..
(NB: no disrespectintended in the least)
Trolling is a art,
Sure you can. This design is pretty damned close to being near perfect.
Those dimensions are a little off. The actual dimensions are listed on Page 20 of the Technical Manual. It is 61110 cm long, 55974 cm in diameter (saucer section only), and 11707 cm from the top of the saucer to the furthermost rear of the primary hull. (I can't find dimensions for the parts lower than that...) 61110 cm is almost 2005 feet in length, not 2103 feet. (but now I'm quibbling.)
Well said fellow star traveler, and with intriguing spelling. ;-)
... I'm as certain the Enterprise D exists as I am that Osama is currently snoozing in the Lincoln bedroom. Do they have room service?
... ah, nose. I was making typos before you could walk.
I am sane
Note to other than the analog kid: If anyone else complains I made one stupid typo last night I'm gonna stick a phaser up their
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".
And for all you mac using scivvy boys n girls i have never had more than 10 minutes uptime on a mac, yet i have windows 2k on 25 days before it crashed and Windows XP on 37 Days (Proof) before an accidental restart.
It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools. When properly set up, Macs are quite stable-- like my home automation server, up for 119 days now and still going strong. The uptime would be even greater, except I shut my systems down and unplug them when particularly strong thunderstorms roll through my area-- and one did just that 119 days ago.
My Win2k box at work is NEVER shut down, and never crashes. It would have pretty spectacular uptime were it not for the restart required after installation of the security patch du jour. My XP Pro box at home likewise never crashes, but there's no uptime records to be had there because I shut it down at night-- it's about 5 feet from my head when I'm in bed, and the fans required to keep the beast cool are so damned noisy they'd keep me awake.
~Philly
The plural is Lego. NOT Legos, Lego's, LEGOS...
-psy
LEGO themselves sell a Star Destroyer set. It's got over 3000 pieces, is 3' long when completed, and costs damn near $300.
~Philly
Does anyone really need to know the dimensions of a fictional starship, in a fictional universe..?
Get the "Statue of Liberty" model, or the similarly sized Yoda. Then you're flush with light green parts.
[
This is one of those topics where people who are wrong are not going to change.
LeGoS, iNc. can go kiss my arse. They make good (very durable but expensive) blocks, their legal department, among other things, leave a lot to be desired.
People that nitpick the finer points of grammar and spelling on a public forum are in the same sinking cruise liner, IMO.
1) In 1995, Blizzard released Warcraft II. The Goblin Zeppelin unit, when repeatedly clicked, had a set of silly phrases it would say. "I can see my house from here!" was born.
2) For a long time, nothing.
3) September, 2001. The series premiere of Star Trek: Enterprise, a few Klingons are invited to view a Holodeck for the first time. Presented with a recreation of the Klingon homeworld, one of them utters the phrase, "I can see my house from here!" in a guttural Klingon accent. Fans of the phrase are delighted.
4) July, 2002. The incredible Mr. Krol takes over the voice of the Goblin Zeppelin for the new Warcraft III. Although the phrase "I can see my house from here!" is absent from the game, early reviews of "What what what?!?" are positive.
5) November, 2002. Wil Wheaton uses the phrase in a Slashdot Posting, although we do not have an audio file of him saying it. Fans of the phrase are delighted and hopeful.
... the fact that this guy spent all this time putting this model together from detailed designs or the fact that the first thought that entered my head when I saw it was "Hey, I think I have enough LEGO pieces in the right colors to build that"
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
You're absolutely right. It's horrible how brand names creep into our day-to-day lexicon. I'm with you, I'll have nothing to do with it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to run some errands. I have to go xerox a few copies of some documents and buy some more tabasco sauce at the supermarket.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
damnit.
keep the spoilers to yourself.
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
Actually, I'd bet that "most" (i.e. >half) of the people on this planet are STILL mainly concerned with finding enough food on a daily basis to stay alive. 3 billion live on less than $2/day, and 3 billion without proper sanitation - that's about half.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I would like formally to apply for the role of "low level drone" in the Cult of Wheaton. I struggled against it, but to no avail. You epitomise all that is great and good in geekness. Please, let me join your Army of Dorkness, that I may contribute in a small way to your elevation to Spod Emperor. What is thy bidding, my master?
And the scary bit is... I'm not joking. Wil is one seriously self aware guy, and I'm prepared to do a bit of chanting and genuflecting in his cause.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
in cm!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Someone mentioned the Traveler in one of their replies and that made me think of a question.
For the footage of STX that you shot and was then cut, how did they tie in the fact that Wesley was a Traveler to him showing up? Did they even mention it or just let things slide by with Wes suddenly being there.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Here I sit with 5 moderator points, but alas your post already has a score of 5. Would that I could moderate you up further, but I cannot. So instead, I post to this thread to salute you by forfeiting my ability to moderate any other posts.
Hahahah. I love this guy. I know it seems like the Soviet Russia shit isn't funny anymore, but it is.
Too bad we haven't heard much from the Tiger Penis Soup troll in several months. I wonder where his jawa hating ass is.
BT
You neglected to mention that the original 1701 from TOS was Constitution class. Also, the upgraded 1701-D with the third warp nacelle from the future that never happened in "All Good Things".
I heard a rumor that Gene Roddenberry had insisted that warp nacelles should always be in pairs, so you could have two or four of them but never three. He had recently passed away, so a third nacelle was used in that episode just because they knew it would have pissed him off - they also did as many other things in that episode as they could for the same reason. Can anyone comment?
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Did anybody else find it funny that Wil Wheaton Submitted this story, or is it just me...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.