The Future of LEGO Trains

So like most of you, I've watched the YouTube announcement of the Emerald Night. It looks beautiful and the $99 price tag is okay, not great. Now, I just got the new S@H catalog in the mail, listing the price of the train Power Functions... Oh my!

Now there's been a move with cell phone companies to try to standardize on a universal cell phone charger (that Apple hasn't adopted yet) to cut down on phone charger waste & go a little greener. LEGO's (#8887) Transformer 10VDC is $24.99. In all fairness, it's a little high; not to mention that the picture shown in the catalog is the European version. But I guess what really shocks me is the $49.99 for the (#8878) Rechargeable Battery Box... and the two are useless without the other!

So this also brings the price of a starter LEGO train kit from (historically) $120-$150, now up to $219.99; almost double. The (K10194) Emerald Night collection includes the Emerald Night, the 6 Power Function parts -- Light, XL Motor, IR RX (receiver), IR Speed Remote Control, Rechargeable Battery Box, & Transformer -- and a circle of Flex Train Tracks... doesn't even include any strait track.

A loop of Flexible Train Track is $24.99. Excuse me? The track concept is super cool, but $24.99 for a box of Flexible Train Track? Now, 2 boxes of curved 9V track at $13/box is $26, so we're saving $1 per loop. But the bottom line, the money LEGO is saving by not putting metal onto track segments is not being passed on...

I'm thinking about buying the Emerald Night train, but holding off on the Power Functions... either until I'm forced to buy them, the price comes down, or the last of my 9v engines die.

Legoland Time Capsule

Image-33,
originally uploaded by Adrian Egli.

Adrian Egli posted some great pictures of Legoland, Billund from 1994. Looks like great weather, lots of great pictures of miniland & a scans from a park guide. I like the old Legoland logo... and I guess on some level, I didn't realize that the park employees wore the "soldier uniforms". I knew recognize it from the minifigs & from the artwork, but I guess it never clicked that employees would be wearing the uniforms as well.

Wonder if there's some old Legoland uniforms floating around on eBay in Denmark? Hm...

BruickBuildr & Twitter

I've had a personal Twitter account for a few years now.  And in those years, I've micro-blogged about LEGO and my other personal interests, about life, work, and random ideas.  And if you don't mind that, add me as a friend.  But the spirit behind BrickBuildr was to build a web-site, using current social technologies -- Flickr in this case, to be very fan-of-LEGO-centric.

And over the past few years, I've collected personal blogs (like collecting e-mail addresses in the 90's).  There are features that I like/dislike about each & I would talk about things on that new blog until I got bored or frustrated, then move on.  A few months ago, I decided to move all of my fan-of-LEGO-centric blog entries to one location -- this blog.  There, you will see blog entries dating back to 1998 where I announced that I was getting back in to playing with LEGO.  Not that I feel that Blogger is the best blogging solution, but it's been the most convenient.

And everywhere you look, almost every solcial networking site has some type of micro-blog.  And like a creature of habit, I experiement looking for the the best one, but sometimes the best one isn't the most popular one (see Betamax vs. VHS debate) and the most poplular one wins out -- Twitter.  Love it or hate it, it's part of our technology zeitgeist.

So I set up a Twitter account for BrickBuildr and my fan-of-LEGO-centric thoughts.  I also created this Twitter account because of something happening over on Brickworld.  And this got me thinking, like watching an Apple press release/announcements via Twitter, you'll be able to follow BrickBuildr's Twitter account for similar information when my wife and I attend Brickworld.  And I'm sure that my comments will be just as unfiltered & snarky.  :)

But the real reason why I'm setting up the Twitter account is every day LEGO-centric things happen that I find interesting, everywhere.  Some are noteworthy, but I try to keep the chatter down on the blog to an entry every other day at the most.  I figured that on Twitter, I can post daily some of the interesting stories I run across, but for editorial reasons or time, don't want to post it to the blog.  And I promise not to tweet about "I'm off to work" or other stupid chatter that's not LEGO-centric meaningful... and we'll see how long that lasts.  :)

BrickBash 2009, Ann Arbor, Michigan

BrickBash 2009, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
originally uploaded by DecoJim.

I've known about BrickBash for awhile now. A few years back (maybe 2005 or 2006), a few friends from COLTC went up to Michigan to help out Duane Collicott. I couldn't attend that year, but sent along empty LEGO buckets (to make into stanchions) for the event. If you get a chance and live within driving distance of Ann Arbor, add BrickBash to your schedule; it's a annual one-day free LEGO event centered around LEGO & education... and from the pictures, it looks like a nice place to hang out with AFOLs for the day.

And what can I say about this microscale skyscraper, but "WOW!"

... and "Go Bucks! Beat Michigan!" :)

LEGO Handcuffs?

LEGO Handcuffs?,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

Sorry... I thought this was a strange thing to find at the LEGO store --LEGO handcuffs... just wrong on so many levels.

In other news, the LEGO Imagination Center in Orlando now has new name key chains in stock. It has printed printed 1x1 round black bricks. Haven't figure out what I'm going to do with them yet, but they're neat.

My LEGO Network

*rant-on*

Okay... One of the members of GFLUG is big into My LEGO Network (or MLN for short). It's a social network filled with games, quests, building friends & objects, trading objects, etc. aimed at kids (the GFLUG member has a 9 year old son). So I tried it out. It's Flash based. It's cool. But under Safari on my iMac, it runs soo ssslllooowww; almost to the point of being unusable. When you're doing a quest and have to click in several places to build objects, or flip from building objects to trading them with Networkers... It's just painful!

And another thing I find annoying? The LEGO Universe Creation Lab... where people take a building challenge, then show off their creations. Flipping through creations 9 at a time, with so much extra Flash crap on the page just makes it painful to paginate through!

Don't get me wrong, I love Flash and can see some of the potential benefits of it. But LEGO get a fraking UI designer to help out with your web-site pages. Either find a way to optimize your pages or replace some of the Flash with JavaScript. Bottom line, thinking about he people using your web-site & make them want to keep coming back to it, not making them die from a slow page load!

*rant-off*

...I return you to your normal LEGO broadcast & I'm sorry for the interruption...

Lego Impulse Sets at Target

Lego Impulse Sets at Target,
originally uploaded by Captain Solo.

Yeah! Star Wars impulse sets hit Target! I'm excited about this because I've missed the newest Star Wars poly-bags sets 'cause I haven't been keeping up with my BrickMaster subscription.

UPDATE (03/22/2009): From what I gather, the Star Wars sets weren't BrickMaster sets...

LEGO Pirate Battleship

My LEGO Pirate Battleship,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

So a little horn blowing... Over the weekend, my LEGO club, GFLUG, had a display at MegaCon in Orlando, FL. It was crazy fun to say the least. Anyway, for the show, I decided to add something to the LEGO gaming area -- my version of LEGO Pirate Battleship. I wanted it to be table top sized and micro-scaled... so two people could sit down and play it and lots of people could stand around it to watch. The size was right, but the micro-scaled didn't happen -- ran out of time to build between work and life. Anyway, it was functional -- a few kids had fun playing it.