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.
"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.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
To bold lego where no one has gone before!
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
The only possible answer is that if you have to ask, you couldn't possibly understand.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
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!
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."
(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.
...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!
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).
"when there are lots of kits and plans to choose from http://www.starshipmodeler.com/trek/trekship.htm [starshipmodeler.com]"
Yeah I don't understand Lego people either. Why they build anything besides what's already planned out for them is beyond me.
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!
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.
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. :)
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.
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)
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.
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".
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.
[
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)
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)
Boll, and further, ocks.
The majority of humans on earth can find enough food quite easily. The exceptions are visible and pitiful, but they are exceptions.
The problem (depending on your point of view) is that for many of them there's little point in doing more work than is necessary to eat, because they don't have access to markets that provide the juicy consumer goods or expensive treat-the-symptoms pharmaceticals that we're lucky enough to have access to.
In other words, if you take a Yanomami and her 4 hour work / 20 hour leisure day in the rainforest, and transplant her to the city then she has to work 10 or 12 hours a day to pay for her apartment and refridgerator and save up for a TV. I'm not saying that's inherently bad, just that you shouldn't confuse lack of possessions with being on the verge of starvation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.