There’s a fundamental law to building with LEGO, especially if you’re making something original, not building to blueprints. A LEGO creation isn’t right until it’s right. It may take some tinkering at the edges. It may require a teardown and rebuild. It may have to sit six weeks or six months. But it’s not right … Continue reading Rethinking the LEGO Tower
Category: LEGO
A few months ago at work, I built a LEGO stand for my webcam. I’d bought the camera at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. It was supposed to clip onto the monitor, but I have a curved superwide monitor at the office and the clip, while well-intentioned, wouldn’t attach to that. I had to come up with … Continue reading LEGOing Up a Webcam Tower
Wednesday afternoon, domestic insurrectionists, incited by the president in a false belief that the 2020 election was illegitimate, seized the Capitol building in an act of terror and an attempted coup. I am not ready to write about that yet. I had deadlines to get through this week — especially on Wednesday — and I … Continue reading A Camera Tower
Working from home these last three months, I’ve had to participate in a new thing for me — video conferences! Unfortunately, I don’t own a webcam. I did, at one time, have a PlayStation 2 camera, and I had the drivers for Window XP for it, but I’ve no idea what happened to the PS2 … Continue reading Getting Productive with LEGO
Earlier this year, the Washington National Cathedral announced plans to build a replica of the cathedral in LEGO in order to raise funds for the repair of the cathedral due to damage from the 2011 earthquake. I bought some bricks online early on, which went into construction of the Bethlehem Chapel, but I wanted to … Continue reading Building the LEGO National Cathedral
Last year, to coincide with Star Trek‘s fiftieth anniversary, Mattel released a line of Star Trek Mega Bloks sets. A few years previous, Hasbro had a line of LEGO-compatible Star Trek KRE-O sets, based on the Chris Pine/Zach Quinto films, and I thought those were well done, even if I did rebuild the miniature Enterprise … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: Star Trek’s The Guardian of Forever
Yesterday evening, after attending the Maryland Renaissance Festival, I found something I knew immediately I had to have — The Peanuts Movie: Olaf's Biplane construction set from Lite Brix. Lite Brix is a LEGO-compatible building block made by Cra-Z-Art, a New Jersey company. To tie in with The Peanuts Movie, they produced a number of … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: Olaf’s Biplane
Six weeks ago, when I went to the Mid-Maryland Celtic Festival in Mt. Airy, Maryland, I made a stop at Dollar General on my way home. I had bought a Celtic art print at the festival, I needed a frame for it, and Dollar General seemed like a good (and inexpensive) place to get a … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: Fortress Tower
On occasion, I’ve bought non-LEGO building sets. Hasbro’s line, KRE-O, has produced some interesting — and very nice — Transformers and Star Trek sets that I’ve enjoyed building. Character Options’ Doctor Who sets were very nice and felt very LEGO-like. MegaBloks has made World of WarCraft and Halo sets that, while conceptually nice, weren’t fun … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: Castle Clash
In my closet there’s an ammunition crate, painted red. It’s where I keep my LEGO bricks. There are LEGO bricks in that crate that are older than some of my coworkers. No, I’m not kidding. There are some LEGO boat pieces (that float on water) that I know date from the late 1970s, and I … Continue reading The Itch to Build
Last summer, to tie in with Star Trek Into Darkness, Hasbro released several Star Trek-themed KRE-O sets. KRE-O is Hasbro’s LEGO-compatible building set series, and they’ve released Transformers, Battleship, and zombie-themed sets in addition to Star Trek. I’ve built some of the Transformers sets, and I’ve liked them. The bricks may be a little slicker … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: The Mini KRE-O Enterprise
Yesterday I went to Big Lots. It wasn’t the reason I went out — I needed to go to Kohl’s to buy a new pair of shoes for work, as the pair of shoes I had was utterly blown out — and since Big Lots is in the same area as Kohl’s I made a … Continue reading Adventures in Off-Brand LEGO: Stargate SG-1 Deathglider Attack