Lego - gotta love it?

Awesome history mixed with branding and ad. Animated almost on par with a Pixar short...?

Been ramping it up for junior during the late summer - at 3.5 he mostly has Duplo, but we've built one Technic crane (8+) and now two small Cars cars (5+) that he gets to play with and put back together as they break a bit.


- ...and the sun shines for a sort of indian summer - guess that makes for blogging weather as well...

How to build Falling Water? With bricks.

Another dual header - but this one is from all the back in WIRED issues 17.11 and 17.12 (there were several other links, but they've mainly been surfed and tweeted, whilst these two need a bit more of a writeup)

I'm sure I'll be docked some geek points for admitting it, but I have yet to actually see Avatar, but it is on my list of likely short term BluRay purchases. The Wired piece mentioned that in order to boost the world of Pandora into the geekdom status it needs, James Cameron and the crew was putting out a lot of background information into the "pandorapedia". It has a bit to go in terms of matching Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki in terms of user involvement, or the official Lucasfilm Vault in terms of depth of content - but as a brand new property wanting to be taken seriously, I find it refreshing and inspirational.


The other tidbit for now (as the self  imposed deadline flies even further away, at least the post will be out by EOD US time?!) relates to the Lego Architecture series. So far they have put out three sets in the "architecture" branch, and seven in the "landmark" branch (with a new set for July "unveiling")

Frank Gehry is the man behind two of the three sets - both his Bilbao Guggenheim, and Falling Water (image on right/above from Lego.com) - it is only available online for $99 inside the US (the much smaller and simpler landmark sets go for $19 each). I must admit that it is almost tempting enough to go for something like JetCarrier to ship it over here, or trying out some friendly connections across the pond... if you've seen Twilight (movie) you've seen something like it with Hoke House

One more for the road

Still the same issue, but the last post for now - fitting as the battery is running down, hp 2530p with Win7 - generally good battery life, but a bit worse for wear on wifi now...

And the overall topic of the issue was atoms as the new bits - how DIY is moving back out from the digital realm and into the "real" world. One company that was mentioned was SparkFun - offering a wide selection of products, like the 'get started' SparkFun Inventor's Kit along with blogs like Another Maker Faire? Don't Mind If I Do and 126 tutorials to get you going (and going and going... Duracell joke)

At times I'm both very glad and really sad that I don't live in the US, but in a country "guarded" by a $30 import barrier (ie taxes and fees above and beyond) and a lack of local alternatives as would be expected with a base population approaching 5 million (less than NYC, on par with LA) spread across a stretched out piece of land from 58' to 78' [well, technically 71' for the mainland, Svalbard is a bit further]

There are to many fun things to read, do, write, code

- even with just a few packages inbound 

Anderson Drones

Lego Autopilot first flight: "We tested stabilization, autonomous navigation (only using compass headings this time, although GPS is in the works), and the real-time video downlink"

Chris Anderson (Long Tail, Wired editor) has a new site up for his latest fun project -DIY Drones: - detailing the building and now flying of a Lego NXT based drone or self-controlled plane.

Too cool - goes to show how far you can get with the willingness to push the boundaries (and some spare cash, sub $1000 is still a bit for playing around)

Real toys and virtual playhouses

With the internet it is so easy to find information - and so hard to find the time to use it.

How many sites can you spend time on? How many YouTube videos and Facebook friends can you fit into a reasonable time online? Currently Norway is swept into a social networking frenzy, first by "Nettby" - from the largest paper (and the largest online site) VG. In a short span it grew from nothing into 150 000 users and high profile coverage during the captial markets day for Schibsted. And now Facebook has apparently passed 170 000 Norwegian users, up from 3000 in January.

I'm reading "Linked" (or for the full explanatory tagline title; "How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means") It is a book from late 2002 and at one point Barabási talks about the "six degrees" phenomenon and how "we don't have a social search engine so we may never know the real number". And now just a few years down the line we are pretty close. At least if it was easy (or feasible) to map the online part of the world by mixing MySpace, WOW, LinkedIn, blogs and comments (Technorati) into one large cloud of interconnected "metaverses". Something for Yahoo Pipes to do as their next proof of concept?

Second Life has also been in the news quite a bit, but it seems to have more value as a marketing buzz word than as a destination (send out a release about doing something in SL and get coverage, rather than getting the attention in SL itself). Like this post from 3point on Bunnies in bits... more than a month before the (possible/plausible) event or entrance kicking off.

too cute

Moving over too pure toys - and buzz machines - the Pleo robot dino just looks way to nice! It was covered in Wired and PC Mag has a interesting hands-on. The choice of dino species was adapted based on the need for all his new high tech innards - so stubby legs and a thick neck is a perfect match. Not to mention that it makes for a cute little critter. (Image from Ugobe, creators of Pleo)

Also in the cute category is the story of robot chicklets from NXTbot - coming from Sega (who needs to make a game console when you can get this kind of attention?)

NXT is the new version of the Mindstorms "make your own robot" kit from Lego - which at $250 is best suited for the slightly older geek. With the more "regular" pieces there is no problem making fanciful mech style creations - like this APU from the Matrix movies, or the Lego IP mecha setting called Exo Force. And here the power of the net as both a source for off line activities and for stealing time is quite visible; building instructions or browsing 30,790 creations?

As for NXT- it would be fun to pick up a set and make a small robot, but I just don’t see the time for delving into it properly on the horizon - too many other options and ideas. Like building that Exo Force combination model ;D

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...and the sun is a postcard from tomorrow...

Usefull Lego

Early last summer I came across an weird and wonderful article online, written by Andrew Lipson, called "Mathematical LEGO Sculptures". Then some months later the same Lipson was covered in Wired in a short article . So now seems a good time to bring it to your attention - Lego can be used for highly technical illustration, not to mention as the foundation of some fascinating discussions.

"I'm not quite sure how it first occurred to me to build a Möbius band out of LEGO bricks, but the thought was irresistible"

(his personal site has moved since the first article was published, and can now be found at ASL - which also features a wide variety of other Lego works)