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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 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."
It's not Lego(R), but check out this Death Star that some guy made.
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.
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
Actually, from reading on his site, he does have a girlfriend, plus a six-figure salary as a lawyer. But he might give it all up, move from New York to California, and take a sixth of the pay to be a Lego Master Builder.
That's dedication.
Here is the article that he talks of his dreams of Lego.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
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!
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 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
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