Next LEGO Project

So GFLUG got our next group project -- Miami Children's Hospital contacted our group about maybe doing a LEGO replica of their hospital. A few of us are going down to Miami to take pictures of the hospital and the surround campus. (This didn't happen.  KK ended up going on photo safari for us).  From what I see on-line, there's lots of bright colors -- many not in the LEGO color palette. We'll have to make some compromises. There is some teal around the windows... I haven't seen teal LEGO parts in a long time, so we'll have to BrickLink some of the parts we'll need. Overall, I'm excited about the project if the hospital accepts our proposal. Should be a cool thing for the kids. Our group will be posting pictures up on Flickr of our progress on the project.

With our photo-safari of Miami, FL, I'm also hoping to get some good pictures of local architecture and some of the art deco architecture that can be found up and down the strip, along the beach. We'll try working some building built in this style into our GFLTC displays. I'll post some of the nicer photos to my Flickr account later.

I've been working on the BrickWorld web-site in my spare time. It's been revamped for 2008 and looks much slicker, IMO. There's still a little more work to it to be done, but for right now, it should allow for registration... which I think Bryan will be announcing over on LUGNET soon...

There's another LEGO related project that I'm working on, but I can't say much about it yet... mainly because we haven't signed a venue yet. Once we do, I'll announce it here, over on LUGNET and a few other LEGO web-sites. I'm really excited about the idea and I hope other people will be too.

Out of the Dark Ages

Building on yesterday's post, I emerged from my Lego dark ages back in 1998. Shortly after Christmas, I was walking through a Kohl's with my sister and niece. As we happened through the toy section, I noticed pirate Lego sets on clearance and I thought to myself, "hey... wouldn't that be cool to stick up on my desk at work..."

Looking at the Lego pirate sets, I had realized a few things: Lego was no longer just primary colored bricks... there was green, brown, and shades of gray; Lego was no longer about just bricks... there were minifigs (as I later came to know what they were called), cannons, horses, plants of different shapes and sizes, etc.; and Lego was about themes... castle, pirate, space...

I honestly don't remember what the first Lego set that I bought after coming out of my dark ages... I'm thinking it might have been a #6249 Bandit Ambush, but I could be mistaken. Or it might have been some castle set... I can't quite remember... I took to the internet with my new found love of Lego... found rec.toys.lego (RTL) and eBay... worlds opened up to me... found that I missed the 'golden-years' (in my opinion) of Lego (1980~1988) -- most of the sets I found most interesting came out during the '80s. Found out that people had scanned instructions and posted them on-line for others to build from. Found people were hosting part auctions, like AucZILLA. Found people who posted pictures of their own Lego creations called MOCs. It was a whole new strange, wonderful world filled with people like me -- Adult Fans of Lego (AFOLs).

Wiki Brick Links

Received a nice e-mail from Klas Schöldström from Sweden, saying that he added my blog to his wiki, Wiki Brick Links. Thank you very much, Klasbricks! Very nice site... cleanly laid out... I'll have to start blogging about Lego more to make it into the 'More often than weekly' category. ;)