Orlando LIC & LEGO Universe

My wife and I met our friends at the LEGO Imagination Center (LIC) today, I was expecting to be disappointed in their selection.  After we walked in the door, I noticed that one of the LEGO games (#3847 Magma Monster) actually has a orange 16x16 baseplate in it!  I picked one up.  Then I noticed over by the castle section, that the store had the #7952 Kingdoms Advent Calendar in-stock -- score!  Then as we looked across the store & spotted our friends, we notice they had the #8684 Collectable Minifigs, Series 2 in hand... The store upped the limit to 16 per customer, because families were complaining that they weren't able to collect a whole set with 5 per customer.  Hurray for the customer!

So it's been a good (now I'm much poorer) LEGO day.

In other news, I've been playing LEGO Universe as a Beta tester on my Mac laptop.  I'm very happy with the game play so far -- I've unlocked a few worlds, I've completed a few quests... so far, I'm very happy with how beautiful the artwork is and the story line.  However, it is very quirky... with enough quirks, that I hope they can iron them out before the general release in October.  I would hate for NetDevil to release something that crashes often, your character pauses for no reason without a way to resume movement, you're prevent from equipping a faction torso to complete a quest, all character names in a world are replaced with strange graphics (happened once so far, the world started out fine, then gradually degraded over time), and switching from chat to game play causes quirky in-game behavior as well... As a consumer, I would NOT be very happy with the product... But then again, it's still in Beta.

I plan to fill out a bunch of bug reports tomorrow for the developers... *sigh*

LEGO + Carl's Jr.

Rocky + Philly = Cheese (Steak Burger)

Star Wars Celebration V

But I have the Higher Ground!,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

So managed to get my Mustfar display lighted... ended up finding 12' strip lighting at Walmart on clearance for $4 -- it disburses the light just enough to made it glow. George Lucas walked around the exhibitor's area for a quick tour early this morning... managed to get a quick snap shot of him walking pass our LEGO display. So on the way into work this morning, completed my display before the VIP tour, picked up a CubeDude for my self and a friend, and snapped a few photos before having to head out. I'll be at the show all weekend, so stop by and check us out.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

100_2003,
originally uploaded by thumat2002.

With Star Wars Celebration V just around the corner, All of us at GFLUG have been hard at work. Based upon Todd's work (to the right), I realize that I need to step it up a notch this weekend.

So far, I hope you've seen Todd's 501st mosaic logo. There's been my Endor trees... I'll try to have pictures up of my Jabba Hutt's palace (in micro), and a lightsaber duel scene on Mustafar. There's pictures of Robin's AT-AT and of his mosaic for the event... There's KK's Hoth trench... There's Simon's Han in Carbonite costume -- we'll actually be showcasing a lot of his ship MOCs scattered throughout the display. There's a small video of the Kappeler's droid conveyor belt. And Barrett has been working on a pod race scene.

While other AFOLs will be enjoying themselves in Washington, DC this weekend at BrickFair, we'll be building furiously. :)

BrickFair

BrickFair,
originally uploaded by ((Primus)).

So BrickFair is this weekend in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, we can't make it -- no vacation time and GFLUG has a little event of our own soon called Star Wars Celebration V, here in Orlando, the following weekend.

If you happen to be going to Celebration V, drop me a line or swing by our display and introduce yourself.

Playing Around with Curves

Playing Around with Curves,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

I don't know about you'll, but when I get bored, I play with geometric shapes when I'm faced with a pile of LEGO. Some people build amazing creations just from tablescraps, but I ended up playing with curvature & geometric structure. Instead of doing the math, I try to go about it organically, hoping to stumble upon something... every once in awhile, I find something interesting to look at (like these curves), maybe a detail to add later onto a structure, but not practical...

My wife said, oh, nice chocker necklace... *sigh*

Attention Flickr.

Attention Flickr.,
originally uploaded by daveexmachina.

"Srsly, I agree! Now return you to your normal Flickr stream, there's nothing to see here."

Sorry, this made me laugh this morning, because it's so true.