lego
gregladen | November 25, 2016The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide by Pawet "Sariel" Kmiec (Second Edition) tells you how to build machines, models, robots, etc. that will work.
You need to construct these things in a way that ensures they won't easily fall apart, and that requires a certain amount of engineering. There are some fairly expensive and specialized Lego Technic pieces that you may not have on hand, and this book can help you emulate them. How do you matcha motor or servo to a specific task? You need to know some stuff to make that decision sensibly. How do you make a transmission? Or an…
gregladen | September 2, 2016I remember watching, decades ago, a short film with Picasso. There was a glass wall that you could not see, and Picasso was standing behind it, dressed like a French Artist and holding painting equipment. He then proceeded to draw lines on the glass. Each line had a particular orientation and shape. He put just a couple of lines on the glass, and in so doing, created a great work of art. If I recall correctly, he made a few of them. Years later, visiting Picasso's home in Paris, I saw a bicycle handlebar thad had been broken and welded roughly back together again. Two pieces of metal, each…
gregladen | October 17, 2014You know Guy Himber's work. He worked on special effects for Aien 3, Underworld, Independence Day, Edward Scissorhands, I, Robot, lots of other productions. And now, he is playing around with LEGO.
Steampunk Lego by Guy Himber is subtitled "The illustrated researches of various fantastical devices by Dr. Herbert Jabson, with epistles to the Crown, Her Majesty Queen Victoria; A travelogue in 11 chapters." The book itself is all steampunky, in fact heavily steampunky, with brown colors, gears and wheels as background images, and victorian techno-objects decorating a faux photographic album…
milhayser | February 21, 2014The story starts off predictably enough for a grandiose adventure: a wizard, a prophecy, an unwitting hero. Emmet is just a model construction worker, living his city life to the tee by following every rule in the book. He is manically happy just to be doing it right: greeting his alarm clock with a smile, doing some calisthenics, watching his favorite sitcom before heading out for an overpriced coffee and a fulfilling day on the job. He feels like he has friends, that he's part of something. Then a mysterious woman who's obviously not playing by the rules leads him to fall down an…
gregladen | April 8, 2013The Cult of Lego is a thing ... a cult ... a past time, a cultural phenomenon. But it is also a book called, as you might guess, The Cult of LEGO.
The book is written by John Baichtal, of Make Magazine and Wired GeekDad blog and Joe Meno, the founder of Brick Journal. The publishers describe the book thusly: "The Cult of LEGO® takes you on a thrilling illustrated tour of the LEGO community and its creations. You'll meet LEGO fans from all walks of life, like professional artist Nathan Sawaya, brick filmmaker David Pagano, the enigmatic Ego Leonard, and the many devoted AFOLs (adult fans…
gregladen | December 8, 2012The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 1: Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More! by Megan Rothrock is primarily for people who have been messing around with LEG for, say, less than 10 years or so, especially those who are new at it and seek both inspiration and guidance in such daunting tasks as making a scale two engine turboprop airplane or an entire Lego town.
The book guides the reader step by step through 25 exemplar models, each of which is fairly elaborate, and demonstrated with more basic information close to 200 other models to illustrate variation. Despite the name of the book and a fairly…
gregladen | December 6, 2012The other day I reviewed a guide to using the very high end Lego Technic system. Here, I've got a book that addresses the needs of those at the other end of the Lego Spectrum: The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide
By "other end of the spectrum" I do not mean unsophisticated or easy, I simply mean no electrical gizmos and not too many gears and things. For example, you might use this guide to build a very realistic scale model of the Space Shuttle or a cool Train Station with People waiting for the Train model. Or, perhaps, a house with a chimney. But a really cool one.
If you've not…
gregladen | December 4, 2012Lego Technic is a Lego based technology that includes a combination of totally new kinds of Lego pieces and fancy technology that lets you build some amazing things. You can get kits that range in cost and sophistication from the LEGO 8514 Technic Power Roboriders a sort of motorcycle for robots that costs tens of dollars to a Motorized Bulldozer that will set you back nearly $700. Actually, I think there may be Techno kits that cost way over $1000.
The modified Lego pieces include the techno "brick" which comes in many forms that have holes in them through which specially shaped parts can…
gregladen | November 30, 2012Huxley's Aunt and Uncle have given him, as Christmas and Birthday presents, various kits to make Imaginarium style train setups. Imaginarium is like Brio and Thomas the Tank Engine, but generally available as a Toys R Us Brand. He has enough cool bits and pieces to make a kind of double figure eight layout, but the ends can't ever be closed into a continuous loop because we don't have enough pieces of track. Or maybe we do. We keep trying different configurations but it never works. It also may be the case that while Huxley, Amanda and I make great Train Engineers once the tracks are set up…
esiegel | November 17, 2012“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” -Niels Bohr
One of the most amazing recent technological innovations is the advent of 3D Printing, where any shaped or textured object can be accurately reproduced with the right software and printing materials. The things that I've seen made so far have been so creative that I thought the right song to take you through what I'm about to show you is Ween's upbeat (and amusing) song,
Voodoo Lady.
Over at the fantastic do-it-yourself website, Instructables, they're currently having a competition called Make it Real,…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Germany, Serbia, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows highlights of Germany's loss to Serbia in the World Cup 2010, recreated in Lego. (I am pleased to report that Frankfurt has remained pleasantly quiet all night long as a result of this loss, haha!)
grrlscientist | June 23, 2010tags: Great Microbiologists, Lego, brickfilm, animation, technology, scientists, history, microbiology, animalcule, streaming video
This is yet another Lego animation. This time, instead of recreating highlights of the World Cup 2010 games, this one shows highlights for the history of the field of microbiology. It's actually good enough to show as an intro to a microbiology course.
More Lego films can be found at Brickfilms.
grrlscientist | June 22, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, France, Mexico, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows highlights of Mexico's shock 2-0 win over France in the world cup 2010, recreated in lego.
grrlscientist | June 18, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Germany, Australia, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This video shows the highlights from Germany's 4-0 thrashing of Australia. Like the others being created in this ongoing series, it's quite accurate, even though all the players are made of Lego!
grrlscientist | June 17, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Niederlande, Dänemark, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows a clip from the Netherlands versus Denmark game.
grrlscientist | June 17, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, USA, England, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows a clip from the USA versus England World Cup game. (This is a great video for those who didn't see the game since this video shows the highlights).
grrlscientist | April 8, 2010tags: Lego Monsters Attack NYC, Lego, art, animation, technology, weird, offbeat, NYC, New York City, streaming video
This is a silly video but the technology that was used to create it is really interesting to watch, especially for this NYCer!
rallain | December 29, 2009This idea comes from my friend Thomas. His son is like mine in that they both think LEGO are awesome, and they are correct. For some reason, Thomas decided to calculate the price per piece of LEGO in each set. To promote repeatability, I decided to do this also. Looking at the catalog at LEGO.com, I can get both the price of each set and how many pieces it has. Just a note, I looked at almost all of the Star Wars LEGO series and some other select themes. I didn't include any sets that had been marked down in price. I will put the first plot on down below, maybe this would be a good…
rallain | December 28, 2009What happens when your kids won't give you a turn on the Wii? Simple. You take their LEGO bricks and their slinky and do some physics. I will keep this simple. Basically, I created a slinky holder out of LEGO pieces and added LEGO bricks to the end to stretch it. Here is the video.
Lego + Slinky = Physics from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
Maybe in an un-Dot Physics fashion, I am not going to analyze this data. I am not going to even describe the physics. Instead, I will leave this as a What Can You Do With This in the style of Dan Meyer.
I will give a couple of hints. First, I put this on…
grrlscientist | December 25, 2009tags: Darth Vader in the Death Star Cafeteria, entertainment, comedy, funny, fucking hilarious, transvestite, Eddie Izzard, streaming video
I have a secret for all you kids out there. When your parents tell you to leave your Christmas gifts in the living room while you sleep in your bedrooms, they are spending Christmas night using their new digital video cameras to create YouTube videos, such as this one, where they re-enact scenes from their favorite movies. Don't believe me? Well, watch this, but don't get mad at me if this turns out to be one of your parents playing with your toys!