{"id":35379,"date":"2026-05-06T10:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35379"},"modified":"2026-05-06T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:20:11","slug":"over-the-legos-and-far-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35379","title":{"rendered":"Over the LEGOs and Far Away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Facebook has done weird on me of late, serving me algorithmic content I have absolutely no need for or interest in. News from places I’ve never been. Ads for restaurants in other states. That sort of thing. Great work, Zuck. Way to spend the ad dollars wisely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes, I get some quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Richard
Richard Sharpe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"One
A “Chosen Man”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Officer of the 95th Regiment” with a long-ass sword? Why, yes! Richard Sharpe, of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe<\/em> novels, as a LEGO minifig!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while that’s not Sergeant Harper, that’s certainly one of Sharpe’s “Chosen Men.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I watched all of Sharpe<\/em> with Sean Bean in early 2018, and it inspired me to eventually write “How the Brigadier Saved the Grand Duke<\/a>,” as Sharpe lead to me read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Girard stories<\/a>, which led me to consider a “Napoleonic Wars metaverse” of sorts, with Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey sharing the same space as Richard Sharpe and Etienne Girard and Andrei Bolkonski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were two other figures I saw on Facebook from the same vendor that were quite cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s the Black Watch Highlanders! And a piper! (I’m basing the identification on the kilt tartan.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I’d like these, too. “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” I’m not getting them, but they’re neat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something else I saw last month…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"LEGO-like<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“England expects every man to do his duty!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the HMS Victory<\/em>, the flagship of the fleet that destroyed the French at Trafalgar. (One of Jean-Luc Picard’s ancestors was there. Picard is very proud of that ancestor in Star Trek Generations<\/em>, so I wonder if the 19th-century Captain Picard was a French royalist opposed to Napoleon who had a command in Britain’s Royal Navy. In other words, a Frenchman fighting the French. It happened.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would actually like this set quite a bit. I love that there’s a minifig of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, and he’s missing an arm!<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ol’ Boney wouldn’t stand a chance against these LEGO sets!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has done weird on me of late, serving me algorithmic content I have absolutely no need for or interest in. News from places I’ve never been. Ads for restaurants in other states. That sort of thing. Great work, Zuck. Way to spend the ad dollars wisely. But sometimes, I get some quality. Case inContinue reading “Over the LEGOs and Far Away”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[288,198,362,245,88,5137,289],"class_list":["post-35379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legos","tag-horatio-nelson","tag-jean-luc-picard","tag-napoleon","tag-richard-sharpe","tag-scotland","tag-star-trek-the-next-generation-2","tag-trafalgar","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}