Slashdot Mirror
Han Solo in Lego Carbonite
metalion writes "Nathan Sawaya built a life size replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite. It is composed of approximately 10,000 bricks and was built in approximately three months. Some sample photos are here and here. Sawaya's work also includes a mosaic of a stormtrooper and a small scale replica of the Death Star II."
I'd like to see a large scale Death Star II.
Anyway, I'm glad people still use the traditional Lego components for stuff like this. Don't get me wrong, Mindstorms is a great thing, and I'm glad Lego isn't totally giving up on it. But there's something about the more traditional Lego pieces.
put episodes 1 & 2 in frozen carbonite...boy they were horrid!
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
I'm guessing he doesn't have a girlfriend.
No kidding... Too much time + genius + star wars geek= art
"If they existed, they would be here already." - Enrico Fermi
I think this guy's work is awesome. But I can't help but be reminded of a quote from a movie I saw recently, Pirates of the Carribean:
Jack Sparrow: [looking at all the swords] Who makes all these?
Will Turner: I do! And I practice with them three hours a day!
Jack Sparrow: You need to find yourself a girl mate. Or perhaps the reason you practice three hours a day is that you already found one, and are otherwise incapable of wooing said strumpet. You're not a eunuch are you?
(thanks imdb)
..and no comments. ;)
;)
:-D
I pity the poor webhost.
Article is: here.
Slashdottable large jpg files are: here and here.
There's another large file for you to sap the life out of this server: here.
I have to say, though, it does look rather good
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
That is easily the coolest waste of time I have ever seen
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
hmmm...
and the site is toast.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Apparently his server is made out of Lego too...
Reminds me of the good ol days back when I was frozen in carbonite...
Han Solo. What is it all about... is it good, or is it whack?
Off hand remark, but soon his web server will be frozen in carbonite. :-( Nice work too.
Here is a mirror for those 2 images:
o .fibersnet.net/solo11.jpg
http://colo.fibersnet.net/solo6.jpg
http://col
.... and apparently his webserver is, too. Apparently the MindStorm bricks were discontinued 'cuz they can't handle a good slashdotting.
Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
I feel a great disturbance in the force ... almost as if a whole webserver cried out in agony as it was engulfed in flames.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
links are also frozen in carbonite
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For some "Har har, his web server must be made of LEGOs ! ROFL!" jokes...
Dammit, I'm tired of all the same Star-Wars-related slashdotting jokes that get posted all the time. Mod this jackass down to serve as an example to all those who are planning on posting similiar lame jokes.
Come on slashdot, where's the Opportunity story(news for nerds, remember?)
-AC
Just when Opportunity is on Mars....very good news service here...jackass
Maybe its related. Maybe Opportunity will find Carbonite on Mars. Is there such a thing? Anyhow, good job, NASA!
Table-ized A.I.
We just need an article about a "Commemorative Mac Classic Lego Built Case Mod Landing On Mars" and the topics will have completely overlapped themselves.
... get *all* the babes. Nothin' like Legos to reel in the hotties.
How do we know those are really legos... Maybe he pushed a giant one of these pin art things on some poor guy at Chuck E Cheese and then took a picture of his pain....
Well, that is all we do know, that it landed. It will be sometime before we know if it is ok. And a /. discussion about the landing would be rather boring with nothing to talk about.
hmmm...
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
I once went to the mall and saw a lego show where they had all these cool things made. A statue of liberty model about 4-5 ft high stands out in my mind. 'Twas a wee little boy of about ten or eleven. It made my own lego creations back home seem like nothing. I was soo proud of my own lego creations until that day. I was thinking, maybe if I make some cooler stuff, these guys would let me work for them making this stuff. Yes, at one point in my childhood I wanted to build with legos as a career. Didn't every young boy at one point or another?
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
I know exactly what you mean. When I was a kid I liked playing with Lego bricks, and when the "formed" legos came out in the shapes of trees and people and such (pre mindstorms), I never could get into playing with them. They weren't something I "made" myself. It seemed like cheating...or something. Like they didn't belong.
:-)
Of course, I was a crazy kid. I made lego furniture and houses for my dolls instead of asking for the pre-made ones. One time, I built a motorized car for Barbi out of my brothers metal erector set. (anyone remember _those_ ?)
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
I you look closely, you will see it is actually Mr. Bill in carbonite.
Well, now you need to wait an extra 30 minutes for it to appear - unless you are a subscriber.
We just landed on Mars again and Slashdot is discussing Legos?
For anyone who doubted that any unpaid creative work or thinking is constantly belittled and laughed at, there you go.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It is amazing what a man can do when he can't get a date
... that we now have two functioning probes on Mars for the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s isn't quite as interesting to the Slashdot editors as some chucklehead with too many Legos and too much time on his hands. :(
-- SYS 64738 --
this is this guys JOB, he builds stuff out of lego an sells em, i wouldnt call earning a living a waste of time. HTH.
He makes a good point.
A lot of Mindstorms stuff is built with standard, albeit Technics, bricks (and gears, axles, etc). I'd still consider those traditional components, Technics has been around since 1977.
The ability to build Han Solo in carbonite out of legos is insignificant compared with the power of the Force.
It's not Lego(R), but check out this Death Star that some guy made.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
That's just fucking cool. Crazy, but cool.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
heh, heh, you played with your brother's erection...
Hello...Michael...Mars
nah, just kidding.
Actually, the "no fault" tone was sent shortly after landing indicating that the post landing checkouts were successful and the vehicle was in proper working order.
That thing probably weighs about as much as a slab of carbonate, too.
Exactly... imagine getting a mondo box of Lincoln Logs and having several of them fused into prefab cabins and... er, other cabins.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
I predate the American availability of Lego. So for me it was first Lincoln Logs and then Erector Sets (in fact Gilbert made up a good deal of my childhood. You could go into a regular dept. store and buy jars of chemicals and frogs and scalpels to cut 'em open and stuff. All without parental permission or anything. People didn't worry about their kid swallowing a bolt or pickled frog back then).
So the Erector set is my real love. You learn real engineering principles. I first met Lego when I had younger cousins.
I agree with the "cheating" though. I mean, what's the point? Lego is for building things, not just to have a lousy model.
KFG
They were all mismatched, every color and shape, but they were all just blocks (1s, 2s, 4s, etc.) along with a few of those angled roof blocks and some wheels, the old kind you pushed into the special blocks with holes on the side. I built EVERYTHING with them (except doll furniture).
Later on, I got a police station for Christmas and I was all WTF! (or the analogous six year old phrase). I just couldn't understand what all those little special pieces were for. I built the station once, took out all the basic blocks and threw them in the trunk, then put the kit away and haven't touched it since.
I still have them. My kids love them. And I have no doubt their kids will too!
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
Funny you should mention that. While writing my post below I had a look at the Lincoln Log website, just to see if you could still get real wooden ones (yeah, they call them "classic" now, but they're not the same. They look varnished or something to keep little Johnny from getting a sliver).
And lo and behold, they' got all sorts of premolded plastic parts, like doors, windows and castle tower tops and stuff.
In "Classic."
They may not quite be prefab cabins but they're pushing it to the limit.
KFG
As opposed to a han solo in carbonite lego recreation?
Will you marry me?
Personnally, I think that Lego should make a tubgirl set for nerd kids in order to help them get ready for slashdot. You can never start too young.
http://silicon.wack.us/sdmirror/solosw/
Natural-Selection Be
What if it doesn't survive? It's worth alot to me.
After all, when a Lego Star Destroyer retails in Aus for AU$299 (discounted) building Han Solo must have cost a fortune.
One dude with definitely no girl (he has plenty of spare time AND money).
...as if a webserver cried out in terror, and was suddenly silenced.
I fear something terrible has happened.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Given that most people don't RTFA anyway, do the details really matter all that much? The discussions always degenerate into which country is the best, why NASA needs to do more, and why everything is Bush's fault.
Saturday night ... 1:32am ... ... I'll go back to looking at porn.
You guys go look at LEGOs
A *working* model of the Death Star. Now it doesn't have to be to scale, nor does it need to blow up an entire planet. I'll be sufficiently impressed if it's good enough to blow up a small city the size of, say, Redmond.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
After having seen the very meticulous and detailed work of this site and the lego of the Nebuchadnezzer (http://www.brickfrenzy.com/space_neb.html) I would live to see a Lego animation movie ALA thunderbirds style, or something like that.
Anyone know if there are any works in this vein or WIP?
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I didn't realize the world stopped revolving.
Maybe you would like to discuss Mars 24 hours a day but I don't. Other things do happen you know that are interesting to talk about as well.
MOLA->BT Everything you need to know to get MOLA data converted over to the BT format to be loaded into a terrain engine.
It's quite facinating when you realize the entire city of Phoenix could fit into one of those larger craters. Many people find it hard to fathom just how bad it would be if Earth got hit by a decent sized asteroid.
But, this is a topic about Legos. I don't know of any forums dedicated to talking about Mars, but I bet Google does.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
At least have the balls to post non-anonymously when you make these suggestions. Why should people listen to an Anonymous Coward?
Yeah, we shouldn't listen to anything that an AC says. God forbid we judge someone's comments on their merit alone.
Hey pal, be happy that you're already up to "+4 Funny" in spite of the fact that you didn't get the Star Wars quote right and everyone's heard those stupid slashdotting jokes a billion times. What's a matter? You upset that you can't add someone to your Foes list for calling you out as a karma-whoring copycat?
The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant, next to the power of the Lego.
Learn something new.
First natalie portman reference. About being on mars, that is.
Who says RevRa is a girl =P
(and on that note who says you're a guy?)
i'm a male and my parents got me all sorts of barbies to play with when i was young...hmm...on another note i wonder if that contributed to my homosexuality..
This might be one of the last few truly creative Lego projects.
At what point did the introduction of increasingly sophisticated and purpose-built Lego pieces diminish the creative aspects of Lego construction?
1961: First lego wheels
1964: First Lego sets to include specific building instructions
1974: Large-scale "maxi-figs" (solid bodies, poseable arms, heads w/ faces)
1978: Town sets with mini-figures, trees, signage (gas, fire station, etc)
1984: Knights, armor, swords, horses, wagon wheels, banners
1988: Pirates, cannons, tree trunks and leaves, pirate flags, alligators
1995: Aquazone, scuba gear, squids, painted canopies w/ sea-monster faces
2000-present: Bionicles, Star Wars, Spider Man, and Harry Potter sets
Another point in time? Actually, I'm not as interested in the date itself as much as the sequence of brick releases.
....was spending a saturday night talking about how you just landed on mars.
For all of you that will rate this post (-1 Offtopic) -- what would you give this site with respect to the rest of the world?
Every other website on the planet is talking about the mars mission, except this one. Yeah Legos....thats good.
Nathan Sawaya built a life size replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite.
Does it contain Harrison Ford?
Could it be modified to contain Harrison Ford?
And this is redundant, but it is slashdotted already.
Here is google cache
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
Star Wars sucks. Use FreeBSD instead.
With a Star Wars geek like that, he's probably holding out for Natalie Portman (hence the free time and lack of girlfriend).
True story.
Now THAT was good!
True story.
Why should people listen to an Anonymous Coward?
Because some of us want to make important points without having our Friends and Foes list distract others from what we have to say. There is a lot you can learn about someone here at Slashdot with just a few clicks. In fact, here's some things I have learned about you:
Your recent posting history indicates a wild mix of highly-rated posts and low-rated posts. This tends to suggest that you are someone who karma-whores a lot. Your own thoughts usually bring you down to a score of 0 or even -1 but rehashing tired old jokes (like your grandparent posting) or reprinting the ideas of others as your own usually gets you high scores. Mods, if you dislike people who do this sort of thing, you may want to reconsider giving this guy another +5 Funny for his post.
You seem to have some desparate need to let everyone know about your academic accomlishments, as though we don't have accomplishments of our own. The funny thing is that no one is listening: your journal entries all have zero comments.
Mods and other slashdotters, particularly those who use the AC function occasionally, I emplore you to add Ignorant Aardvark to your Foes list right now. I've made it easy for you by putting the link. It will only take you a second to do this. Please consider showing this guy a lession.
Sincerely,
A Concerned AC
Do you recall those spheres that had 6 hexagonal connectors? You could build robots and space stations out of them ... now thats a toy!
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I honestly don't get it. A simplistic plot, one-dimensional characters, terrible "effects", poor acting, and grainy, flat-color cinematography( we're talking 1970's film technology ).
I'm just as geeky as the next slashdotter, but could someone please explain to me what is so great about this movie? Movies have improved dramatically over the last 30 years, yet most people here act as if this is god's gift to cinema. Please help.
Maybe he wanted to slow down the hordes of Slashdotters but making them cut and paste. We all know that 95% of slashdotters are lazy. :)
Of course now you had to be in the 5% that took some initiative, and now his server will go down, too.
funny shit man
Yeah, Capsula or something like that. Those were awesome. When my parents got us the ones with motors, it was just so cool. It made me want motorized Lego though, which did not exist (that I'm aware of).
Here's a mirror of the referenced images:
http://unbolted.llarian.net/lego/
Damn them.
At the day care provider my parents stuck me in, there were, literally, thousands of lincoln logs. They had tubs of the things and I was the only kid who would touch them. While all the other kids had to share legos, I was build log mansions. It was great. I had one structure about 6 feet high (stood on a chair to place the top parts). The bitch who was in charge of us yelled at me because of my hoarding. I hope she's fat and bald now.
What is carbonite? I have heard of carbonates .
The ability to blow up Microsoft is _insignificant_ next to the power of the Force.
Slashdot: "stuff that matters"??
Hope he can build a web server out of LEGOs... He's going to need it now.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Hey, the joke's on you. He gets the girl at the end of the movie.
Capsela. They still [url=http://www.discoverthis.com/capsela.html]sell this stuff[/url].
-------------------------------------------------
I find the 'fat and bald' bit incredibly entertaining.
Yup, I got as much use out of my Capsela set as my Lego sets as a kid.
...
The really cool capsela bubbles (and the neat thing about Capsela besides being letting you build motorized cars, boats, etc.) was seeing the special gearing bubbles. The most fascinating was the worm-gear. One set would turn the other set very slowly, but man did it increase its torque. It was absolute magic to a kid -- I was amazed that the cheap-looking motors (powered by two AA batteries) could, when used with the worm-gear, turn a wheel so that it was hard to stop it with your hand. The transparent bubbles made it so that you could see how it worked (even if I didn't quite understand it at the time).
Funny too, I remember being puzzled because I couldn't put the motor on the other end of the worm gear, and get a wheel that turned super fast (as I had orignially guessed)! But it did work great the other way around, with a slower, but magically more determined, wheel
Ah, the memories!
We just need an article about a "Commemorative Mac Classic Lego Built Case Mod Landing On Mars" and the topics will have completely overlapped themselves.
What about the current Poll?
Cheapest way to put a man on Mars?
Anyone want to hear my theories on the cost effectiveness in traveling to Mars using Toaster Technology and Legos, Apple computers and Han Solo as Pilot?
I hope not because I really don't have any idea how that could be done.
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
Here's a mirror of the entire site.
Your credit card information wants to be free.
his webserver is made of legos too.
/.ed
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
We have found it. The geekiest piece of art in the history of the universe.
I'll have these babies on the market while he's still wrestling with the pickle matrix... mgl'hey...
(BE
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Oh jesus, people, quit your whining! I am so tired of everyone bitching about how special shapes are ruining lego. You know what? I *LOVE* the custom pieces. They add detail that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
Not when there are so many that the entire set is 8 pieces. That's stupid. But on a large set (600+ pieces), I see nothing wrong with having custom parts. Look, I love to build models. But I'm at college, and I don't have a lot of room for that. Instead, I build large lego sets. Sure, they only take a few hours, but they take a lot less space to build and are no less beautiful to me. And if the 2100-piece rebel blockade runner has a custom piece for its radar, BIG FUCKING DEAL.
That gorgeous 3000-piece star destroyer uses those "custom" magnets to hold the outer panels together. If it didn't, it'd be SOLID LEGO and weigh 42 tons. If you want to build everything out of the original shaped blocks, then every model lego sells is going to be the size of a small car.
Apparently, I'm the only one on Slashdot who feels this way. Maybe its not the most creative/inventive thing I could do with those blocks, but its fun for me.
The web site is getting a little slow, so I actually made a torrent of the star wars lego pictures and pages.
:)
Download the torrent here.
This may be overkill, but at least I'll get experience. I'm hosting this shit myself, so send me some input or post back
I remember seeing Han frozen as a kid and it was really kind of traumatizing because you didn't know if he was dead at first and then when you found out he was living you couldn't imagine the pain he was experiencing from the expression the had been frozen upon his face. This is one the things that made this episode (along with Luke having his hand sliced off) very different, graphic, adult AND better than any other.
I finally figured out why I hate custom pieces, and this is as good of a place as any to say why. If you need more of a custom piece, you usually can't just scrounge from other sets. You need to buy that same set again. The magents you refer to aren't custom. They are used in MANY sets. I have probably 30-40 of them, and I used them all the time. It's mostly the smaller sets that contain just one or two of a custom piece that really are the targets of this "backlash" or sorts. Especially when a standard piece or a combination of standard pieces could have done in place of the custom one.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Looks like he won his dream Job on Friday.
www.legomasterbuilder.com/release1.php
this wasnt interesting...it was rather annoying...
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
That's not Karma whoring, that's exactly how it should work. Here's a relevent quote from Slashdot's FAQ:
There is absolutely no reason to penalize someone to the degree you suggest (foes listing) for posting an old rehashed joke. That's what metamoderation is for. Of course, you knew this, otherwise you wouldn't have checked the "Post Anonymously" button. Since discussion about Slashdot's moderation system is ALWAYS offtopic, I have to click the same box... Ironic.
I'm surprised nobody has pointed yet this ASCII art Episode IV animation:
Ep IV
Read the FAQ, getting modded up for a funny post does NOT help your Karma!
whats with you and saying " is it good, or is it whack? " to every god damned thing?
Mod Parent Up
Handy, but a little late. Kudos for doing it though.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
you should see my Lego...oh, nevermind.
Being uncool is liberating
(Warning: The site starts slow even without the /. effect)
Legos are normally played at home, by 12 year olds.
Nerds.
THe inevitable has happened and the poor bastards website has been slashdotted. When doing the articles, couldn't someone think to get the google cache link? At least we wouldn't be trampling over his bandwidth...6-figure lawyer not withstanding...
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
It's like the Soviet Russian guy I guess. Not as funny though.
In Soviet Russia, Han Solo whacks you!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Your bold statement got me thinking. What if the Death Star II from Return of the Jedi was actually the Death Star III. And the one from A New Hope was really Death Star II. That would allow for there to be an original Death Star prototype in Episode III that was not fully armed perhaps.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
-I predate the American availability of Lego.
Holy cow. I had just assumed that Legos were part of the childhood toybox forever, like Crayons, toy guns, and fire. Thanks for the dose of reality.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Watching to images... I miss my space Legos so much.
I had something called "Ramagon" which was made out of white plastic. It had 26-sided connectors and full and half-length bars. You could make very cool futuristic structures, Russian-looking "onion domes," etc. There were bright yellow and orange plates that you could snap on to form walls, rubber doughnuts you could put on the connectors to form wheels, etc. I had tremendous fun with it.
The only problem with it was that the structures it made were amazingly sturdy structurally but the plastic they used was too brittle (styrene, I think), so it was very hard to take the finished structures apart without breaking the components. I think they use a different type of plastic now that has solved that problem. Looks like they have more & different colored parts as well.
Talking of Lego, have you heard of this bloke ?
I so want a job where you can demand a desk made from lego, and have it written in the contract !
http://www.ericharshbarger.com/lego/desk.html
I don't mind the custom pieces in small numbers... And if the intent is to build a specific model then they are very necessary. What I mind is the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find/buy just the regular blocks. Sure...building a blockade runner is fun, but what about when you just want to assemble pieces and see what you can come up with? Last time I was in a toy store 95% of the lego kits they had were "models" of various kinds. Airplanes, star wars stuff, space shuttles, police stations, cars, those bionicle things...it took me quite some time to locate the regular building blocks. This is what annoys me, and what I complain about. It is becoming nigh-impossible to get the basic lego sets.
Imagine going to the store to buy some modeling clay...and all they have are kits in which most of the clay has already been shaped, dried, and painted...and all you do is stick them together into some pre-determined model. Imagine searching from store to store to find a simple tub of modeling clay, and only finding those kits. That's how I feel sometimes.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Where is the Lego slave Leia?
ohHHH those look cool to. I think I'm going to ebay some and build a stand for my speak-n-spell :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
This has to be one of the only places in the world where geeks with no girlfriends are the primary mockers of other geeks with no girlfriends. the way i see it anyone making fun of that guy is either trying to mask their own lonliness or has a girlfriend and forgets how much of a dork he really is and how lucky he is that that chick puts up with him...
It seems his account has been frozen in carbonite as well.
Isn't it amazing the things adults will accuse children of that aren't true. And as kids we never got any justice.
I try not to jump to conclusions with my daughter, but unfortunately I'm not a school teacher and I don't work with children which makes me basically powerless to change anything.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I'm just waiting for George Lucas to have Alderaan shoot first in the next special edition.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
And neither does he.
I wasted 2 years playing EQ ROTFL...... I
:)
know folks that are still playing and had played from
the beginning (I got in during year 2).
Talk about a waste of time 18-24hrs a day for
over 2 years. Sure, I had fun, but then I woke
up and smelled my room ROTFL
Get a fucking life folks
You could just buy them bulk bulk and if you don't see what you want they do special orders
The story was kick-ass, the acting was, well :)
believable if not exactly the best
The fact that it was done on almost no budget
makes it all the better.
Have you ever actually WATCHED the dang movie??
I bought a planer, a bench sander and a table saw. I'm producing enough blocks to make a large fort. It works out to about 1/3 the cost of buying wooden blocks. They don't really come into their own until you have a 1 year old walking around like godzilla, smashing buildings.
Oh, and the trebuchet is operational. I just need to make a smaller one or lob something much heavier because it's throwing things about 80 feet right now. This is not good for indoor use.
I've basically given up on prepackaged sets for blocks, legos, whatever and I'm making my own stuff now. It's so much more satisfying to see a little one playing with something you made. Oh, and if you do need some special pieces, you can always get exactly what you want.
t
Emperor Dubya, Grand Moff Cheney and Darth Rumsfeld
Bwahahahaha!!!
Man, anybody here draw? That I gotta see as a cartoon!
Hmm, lemme fire-up the gimp and hit images.google.com for some pics.....
I was born in 77, so I got the plastic/aluminum Erector set, but I STILL loved that more than any Legos/Roboticx/Capsella set of the time. Does anyone else share this sentiment? Erector was just cool as hell, you were playing with nuts and bolts and metal. I loved it. Built many a robots (well... what I thought were robots ;) )
I've actually made a couple custom parts, one of them made it possible to build a flatbed tow-truck (the ones that tilt and slide back to pick up a car). The tilt part is pretty easy but to get the slide I had to use a 4x1 plate with the middle two bumps cut off so it could slide long the underside of another plate without taking up way too much space to implement and looking horribly unporportional. If anyone wants to know more about it contact me and I'll find stuff to put on my website.
But of course, my models are clearly very inferior to the huge ones that take multi-Ks of pieces since I only go for looking realistic, functionality and do it to the scale of a normal LEGO guy. Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of respect for the people who can make stuff like Han Solo, but I like the challenge of doing as much as I possibly can, making it believable, and make it work (decently realistically) with the best pieces possible. I built a decent Mack dump truck yesterday, cab offset and all. I guess I value ingenuity and elegance more than what the heck you use for pieces. As long as it looks like I want it to I don't care. But then again, if your pieces are so special they aren't useful most of the time, um, verstility is good for a piece's use, too, I guess.
JTM
"Ad infinitem et ultra!" - Buzz Lightyear
is the Han Solo TV dinner.
Well, he looks like one...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
You're not the only one, although when I mentioned once that I liked custom pieces, I got modded down.
I grew up with Lego in the mid-80s, where it was a mix of basic blocks and custom blocks. So, you'd have big 4x4 bricks to make the police station, and then custom little motorcycles and a slope piece with a phone painted on it.
I never found a problem with it, and the pieces were quite usable with anything else I needed. I used those custom pieces everywhere--and so did Lego, actually. I used to examine their model sets and note the interesting ways they used the same radar dish or antenna piece for so many different things.
I don't get the big deal. Wait, yes I do--it's people being nostalgic. Anything that happened during your childhood is somehow better than the way it is happening now. I see that mental fallacy all the time. Meanwhile, kids now will say the same things in 20 years.
I think Lego started releasing the Technics kits around the same time as Capsela got popular, or a little afterwards. I never got to play with Capsela but a friend of mine got Technics kits for every holiday. Christmas, birthdays, you name it. I was so jealous of his dune buggy kit.
:)). The faster the cars went the faster the motor spun. Oh and did I mention a gigantic erector set windmill blade was mounted to the motor? The drivers were always headed for disaster on that track.
Later I ended up getting some Lego kit with the battery pack and a motor. It took massive D sized batteries (does anything use these anymore?) and was too heavy to engineer something small because the motor it drove was weak. Eventually I made a balsa wood boat and used the motor/battery on this but it wasn't practical without being remote controlled.
My favorite combo was my slot car racing set and my erector set tower with the electric motor mounted to the top of the tower. The motor was powered by the slot car track (all it takes is two wires straight to the slots
Now that I think about it, it's a miracle nobody got hurt by Erector sets. Either that or back then people weren't insanely litigious like they are now. Erector sets were hella dangerous by nature; sharp metal edges on everything, real nuts and bolts (but to be fair they did include some paper and metal washers).
I've been hoping for a long time now that they might come up with a smaller lego form factor, sort of the inverse size of Duplo.
This would allow us to make detailed models without having them be the "size of a small car" and still use mostly basic pieces.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
When I was 5 or so it was still possible to walk through a well to do household and not see any plastic other than some knobs on appliances. Any rubber goods would be natural rubber mixed with carbon.
Unless you looked in the toy box. There you would find the familiar green plastic army men and plastic dolls. I still have the truck and cannon that came with the army men I received for my first birthday (sentimental value. They're the only birthday present I ever received from my father).
But the familiar Lego building brick had not quite made it to the new world yet and my mother had entered college before they were invented.
My grandparents predate cellophane. Think about that. One of my uncles was taught to fly by Orville Wright. We've come a long, long way within the living memory of some (although not, alas, of my aforementioned relatives).
KFG
Oh good, now we've Slashdot'ed the poor SOB's website. Now maybe he will go out and do something usefull with his life! DO YOU HEAR ME- GET A LIFE U!!! Well we can only hope..
as a military dependent, I grew up in Europe with all the cool toys, including wooden blocks and legos and handmade toys.
do you make the blocks with letters on them and paint them? or do you make plain blocks? you have a website that shows how to make them, including plans and wood recommendations?
as a childrens store owner, I can tell you that people just don't buy their kids these types of toys anymore unless they really care for them. they think all kids have to have electronic stuff. hell, my best friend's kid got the latest Gameboy Advance, from his parents, 6 months ago, WHEN HE TURNED 5 yrs old. and that was to replace an earlier edition of a Gameboy the kid already had.
Americans are breeding a new generation of complacent lazy non-creative type kids. and they wonder why we can't compete any more?
I'm good with numbers -
I used to just pee in the pool in retaliation for stupid things.
I used to just pee in the pool in retaliation for stupid things.
thanks man.
"I DARE you to make less sense!"
Hey look here!
I made a life size replica of "the Invisible Man". Aint it cool?
Yeah, I'm still waiting for that full-size Lego replica of Death Star.
Let us not forget the differential bubble.. That piece really messed with my head, take the 'vehicle' off the ground and the wheels wouldn't turn. Instead, the crown gear would spin like mad - And then my uncle (motor mechanic) exlained how and why such a thing was used in cars. You have to love that kind of thing.
Question: why doesn't /. cache the linked pages in the articles (w/ the url to the original page) so that people aren't bankrupted because some kid got included a link in the post? /. has plenty of sponsored bandwidth, many small sites dont. (and dont bother writing any users-fault-pays flaming plz)
Yea, I did something like that once, I would take the prebuilt starships and whatnot, and "modify" them to be better and cooler looking. Sometimes I'd modify them TOO much and they would look hideous and so then I'd toss em around the room till they broke up a bit and build it back up. ^^
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
I went nuts building toys that the toy companies hadn't made yet. I remember building the Phoenix from "Battle of the Planets" complete with detachable vehicles for each G-Force member. It was big and weighed a bit, but it was great fun.
What/where is your store?
:)
I have no website detailing it.
If you google for Barclay wood blocks, you should find a site that sells some good blocks. Their site is humorous and they clearly know how people (big and small) really use blocks.
They use Soft Maple, so that's what I bought. It has a nice feel to it. Although it is called "soft maple", it is still a hardwood. This is important because soft woods will splinter.
I bought 8/4 soft maple in random widths and lengths.
rip then plane it down to 1 3/8".
Then just cut the remaining board in units of 1 3/8's so that a typical block is 1 3/8" x 2 3/4" x 2 3/4".
Make some longer ones.
Originally I was going to route the edges along the grain but instead I bought a bench grinder and I just hold the edge against it for a second. While a bit more inconsistent, it results in a nice soft edge.
Next time I might go with 6/4 soft maple and use 1.25" as my unit just so there isn't so much wasted wood.
If you have a bit more money, you can get the wood already planed to your exact width.
The planer works wonders. Planed wood doesn't need to be sanded along the faces.
If I were doing it over again, I might buy a mitre saw that could be adjusted to rip instead of a table saw. The mitre would be better at cutting lengths of blocks than the table saw. Then again, a table saw is a real workhorse for other projects.
I don't do the letters or anything too fancy. I'm really not handy with power tools and rectangles are my specialty
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There's always this
Of course, this was better from a technical perspective, IMO. Ken Starr as Vader is quite good, as is the cigar.
-no broken link