What 3 LEGO Projects Do You Find Innovative? (Part 2 of 3)

So to continue on, my 2nd choice for my "3 LEGO Project Do I find Innovative" is a website that's recently come to my attention called Pinterest.com.  A few weeks ago, I overheard a few of my co-workers talking about a web-site where they've been collecting idea for a few craft projects for around the house -- one is a mother with small child, the other is an expectant mother.  They talk at lunch about collecting inspiration material and sharing ideas piqued my interest.  On the web-site, you bookmark images or web-pages that give you source of inspiration; you pin those images to a virtual pinboard to organize and share ideas.  You have to be invited to the web-site (it's still in beta), it took me about a week to get an invite via the web-site, but send me an e-mail if you want me to send you a more immediate invite.

I've book marked a few MOCs that inspire me.  I have a big castle project floating around in my head, so I've been collecting works that inspire me to keep building.  :)

What 3 LEGO Projects Do You Find Innovative? (Part 1 of 3)

I posted a question to a friend of mine: "What 3 LEGO projects do you find innovative?" And recorded his response. But failed to think on the question myself (work ended up getting in the way) and failed to come up with my own answers. I'm hoping to post his answers as a podcast soon, but in the mean time, I've had a little time to think on the question and will try to post my response here.

To be honest it's a tough question to answer, considering it'a a hobby based on being innovative and there are so many aspects of the LEGO fan community to choose from... Not to mention, we both have been in the LEGO fan community a long time, so being a little jaded, it was hard to come up with some answers. And it's meant to be a tough question to answer, because we both agreed we shouldn't give the 'because it's cool' answer.

So here's the first of my 3 choices:

 The NXT Blimp Project

Our LUG has been working on LEGO boat racing for the past few years, with an annual boat race.  There's been some fun races & interesting solutions to the proposed problem -- to build a boat from LEGO and using only LEGO power, design something that is fast and maneuverable on water. But in the back of my head, I been thinking about the next evolution in LEGO racing... We could do submarines, but that's too obvious.  So I had this thought of, "Wouldn't it be fun to do a LEGO blimp race?"

See at Brickworld (where I first had this thought), there are these long hallway in between ballrooms; the perfect platform for this type of race.  I'd like to see a LEGO blimp zip down the hallway.  I was envisioning stationed hula-hoops to fly thru and fans that would blow air up, causing "wind hazards" to navigate around.  The problem was (a) how much helium would you need to keep something floating about 5-10 feet off the ground, (b) how could you control it, (c) would it be small enough to fit through a hula-hoop, (d) how much of it would have to be non-LEGO.

Then I saw the above NXT Blimp Project, I realized we're one step closer to seeing a LEGO blimp race to be actualized.  :)  The design is simple.  It's NXT controlled.  Might be too big to fit through a hoop, but I'm good with that.  And it looks like most of the components are LEGO.

Honestly, I'd like to see this project become affordable and maybe slimmed down for a hobbyist... Maybe as a LEGO Cuusoo project.

UPDATE: Oh, and post your 3 choices as well in the comments or send me an e-mail.

GFLUG's "Art from A Toy" Art show

Here's a short video from GFLUG's "Art from A Toy" art show at Polk State College in Winter Haven. Not exactly our largest display, but it's drawing great attention for the college's art gallery.

Watch this at Tampa Bay Online

"Something not on top" heh.

Festival of the Masters 2011

Fish in a Bowl,
originally uploaded by jmenomeno.

Festival of the Masters is happening this weekend at Downtown Disney in Orlando, FL. GFLUG has a LEGO display right outside the LEGO Imagination Center -- the side nearest to where McDonalds use to be.

This year our theme is "Water, water everywhere!" This year, my wife built "Fish in a Bowl" as seen in the picture & I built something related to Middle Earth. Because of the way Veterans' Day fell, Friday was abnormally crowded.

Pictures will be posted to Flickr soon. I'll do a follow up post in a few days with links to photo sets from this year's show.

Ford Legoredo built in Minecraft

[Build] Fort Legoredo (6762) built using LEGO instructions, 1 block is 1x1 brick



By KenneyWings

So this is the 2nd LEGO model I've seen built in Minecraft... It's pretty neat. Looses something in translation, but nevertheless, it looks cool.

The Wizard of Oz Children’s Educational Exhibition

The Wizard of Oz Children’s Educational Exhibition,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

I was asked by the Henry Ford Museum if I wanted to display my Wizard of Oz MOC at the The Wizard of Oz Children’s Educational Exhibition going on now, til Jan 9th, 2012-- I was more than happy to loan it to them... assuming it was still intact and I hadn't already used the parts in another creation.

I'd like to thank Steve R. from MichLUG for putting it together for me, since I couldn't be there to do it myself.

How Full is Your PaB?

One of the suggestions that have come up for iPaB has been some type of indicator of how full a wall container is... I think way back when I started this project, I had a similar idea -- not only would I like to know what parts are on the PaB wall, but how plentiful are they.  So I looked for a 'progress bar' example in CSS, found it simple enough to implement on a web page; added a field to the database, updated the form, did a little testing and voilà!  By indicating 'near full', you see the a bar like (6,1); 'near empty' will be like (5,1); 'quarter full' will be like '(6,2); 'half full' the bar will be like (6,3); and 'three quarters full' will be like (6,4).  I might work on touch up the graphic a little, but let me know what you think.  Hopefully you'll find is useful.

In the mean time, I've added two new stores, Brighton, UK and Milton Keynes, UK.