BrickMagic: Motorized LEGO Boat Race

BrickMagic: Motorized LEGO Boat Race: "lugnet.events, lugnet.announce, FUT: lugnet.events:

This is a call for participation in a Motorized LEGO Boat Race to be held at BrickMagic - a LEGO Fan event in Raleigh, North Carolina on May 7, 8, and 9, 2010 - Mother’s Day weekend!

I had posted the rules awhile back & they have worked well for us at GFLUG for the past 2 years. I will probably amend the rules a little as it applies to BrickMagic and post the official ones on the BrickMagic web-site.

There will be 2 to 3 different heaps -- simple (from one side of the pool to the other), simple (a lap of the pool; back and forth), and advance (around the pool and around obstacles).

There will be trophies and prizes for winners and sinkers -- possible categories:

Davy Jones Award for Boat that Sank the Fastest
Doofensmirtz Award for Advanced Boat that Sank Itself
Best Boat Float - Best Themed Boat
Floatilla!

Some disclaimers about the boat race:

1. Everyone who participates must be an adult & understands the risks to their LEGO motorized boat; that no one will be responsible for water damaged parts, nor any part replacement.
2. Everyone around the pool, everyone must exercise caution to not slip -- meaning no shoes & maybe wear swim attire, no running.
3. There will be zero tolerance for alcohol during the race... afterwards is a different story.
4. Disclaimer and rules are subject to change.

If you have any questions, need clarification on rules, or just plan to participate, please send me an e-mail.

Some final thoughts:

• Always remember try out your boat in water before the event.
• Don’t over engineer the problem, sometime simpler is faster.
• Water-proof your electronics! Can’t stress this enough.
• There is a limited range to some LEGO electronics, this became painfully obvious as we maneuvered boats around the pool

Mike Huffman
BrickMagic Motorized LEGO Boat Race Coordinator
"

Another Artifact

So I managed to win an auction for another LEGO artifact -- #348-2 Mini-Wheel Model Maker, I'll post pictures on Flickr later of the box, instructions, and parts (once I receive it).  From the on-line pictures, it looks to be in good shape.

A few months ago, I won an auction for a #371 Motorized Truck Set.  The box was in great shape for being over 40+ years old... I don't have a deep seeded need to start collecting LEGO sets from the 70's, but the motorized truck was a little bit of a personal vindication for me.  The Mini-Wheel Car and Truck Set was just going for too cheap, IMO.

The other ancient LEGO set I manage to pick up was the #725 Town-Plan in excellent shape.  Not all the parts were there... I think the trees and cars were missing, but everything else was in great shape -- the bricks were still minty fresh.

One of these days, I'll probably pass them on to fellow collector or the LEGO museum.

The Ninja Curling Team

The Ninja Curling Team,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

For a few years now, I've had this idea about doing a moonbase module with classic spacemen curling, and there's a crowd of aliens in the stands. It was a little ambitious -- as all my projects tend to be -- but it was to be funny on a few levels... (Now that I think about it, I might have gotten the idea from watching the winter Olympics a few years ago).

Decided tonight that I had to find the hockey tiles that I purchased for the project... find some push brooms, a few minifigs, make a stone & just do a quick vignette.

So this is for my Canadian LEGO friends. Hope your team does well in curling!

WB extends partnership with LEGO for "Harry Potter" products

This is exciting news!

WB extends partnership with LEGO for "Harry Potter" products: "Warner Bros. announced today via press release that they have extended their partnership with toy manufacturer, The LEGO Group. Under the agreement, The LEGO Group will develop construction sets and a board game inspired by 'Harry Potter' in time for the release of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I' later this year."

iPaB Update Form

Haven't had time to update the web-site lately... I've added some missing parts to the iPaB database today & with the help from Moctagon Jones, the Orlando LEGO Imagination Center's PaB has been update.  There are now inventory from a total of 21 LEGO stores and their PaB walls on-line... The sad thing is, only a few of them have been updated in the last few months, or even updated at all.


In other news, Moctagon Jones came up with a low-tech device (in the form of a speadsheet) to update the iPaB wall.  So with his permission, download the iPaB update form. Print it out, take it to your local LEGO store, write down the parts description/color, then update iPaB!  


And again, if you don't find your local LEGO store, send me a Flickr mail letting me know the dimensions of your LEGO store's PaB and I'll get it added ASAP!

Email: Merlin plans to build Legoland at Cypress Gardens

So this is interesting news... I'm not holding my breath when there was speculation earlier last year about Merlin planning on building a Legoland in Florida, but now I'm starting to wonder if the rumors are coming true. My wife looked at me and said, "you know this is dangerous to have a Legoland within 30 minutes of our house, right?" I just smiled... real big.

Email: Merlin plans to build Legoland at Cypress Gardens: "
Looks like Cypress Gardens will become a Legoland theme park.
Though Merlin Entertainments Group hasn’t yet publicly revealed its plans for the venerable Polk County attraction, which it purchased earlier this month, an email sent yesterday from a Polk tourism official to local elected officials indicates that the company plans to make Cypress Gardens its second Legoland in the U.S.
“Legoland Florida will be the fifth Legoland attraction worldwide,” Mark Jackson, director with sports marketing Central Florida Tourism & Sports Marketing, writes in the email.
“Merlin’s massive research in the area already indicated that the Legoland brand already has high recognition and a 90 percent intention to visit by families in their target market,” Jackson added.
The existence of the email was first reported by the Lakeland Ledger.
Merlin, which owns Legoland, has scheduled a news conference for tomorrow morning to discuss its plans for Cypress Gardens
See our photo gallery of Legolands around the world
See our photo gallery of Cypress Gardens through the years
Earlier this year when rumors first floated about Legoland owners Merlin buying up Cypress Gardens or some other Orlando-area location, Theme Park Rangers blogger Dewayne Bevil asked his readers how far they would drive for a Legoland. Read the post here."

Unleash Your LEGO

Block party,
originally uploaded by Brett Jordan.

So when I first saw this, I thought it was cool advertising -- Unleash your LEGO. Looks to me like someone overturned a bucket onto the ground and LEGO was unleashed. I clicked to look at 'all sizes', hoping to get a better look at the yellow LEGO parts -- the AFOL in me wanted to know what they were. Then I noticed that the yellow/red parts looked deliberate. Then I thought to myself, let me zoom out, is something there? Then I noticed the red round 2x2 brick 'eye' and the outline of a green dragon, being unleashed from the box... and I though how cool and why didn't I see that sooner!

The photo reminded me of a story. Back in college, some friends and I took a road trip to down the east coast (from Boston to DC). There were four of us that made the road trip -- a business major, a art/architect major, and two computer engineers (me and some other guy). In Boston, we stopped at art museum near MIT-- something the architect wanted to do, but we were all for it. In this one room, there was this huge Jackson Pollock looking painting. I gave it a 10 sec glance and was ready to move on... It didn't interest me that much. But to my architecture friend, he spent maybe 10 minutes looking at it before I asked him what was so interesting about it. He talked about the randomness of the paint smatterings, but the thing that fascinated him were the deliberate brush strokes on the canvas; he wanted to figure out the story there -- he was wondering if there was anything to learn from the angles of the brush strokes or if there was a reason for these deliberate marks on what seems like randomness.

In this advert, however, it only took a few moments to discover the meaning behind these LEGO brush strokes...