Tag: legos

I wanna play with Legooooooooooos

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek3 Comments

The Treehouse set, which has since been retired, has been sitting in my office waiting patiently for me to get to it since my 48th birthday. I finally started putting it together a week or so ago, doing a couple of bags at a time because the instruction manual was terrible and I was going blind every time I looked at it. One way or another today I finally tackled all those leaves and finished it off. There were also green leaves in the box, but I like the autumn look a lot more.

Also, my fingers are not quite bleeding, but damn, putting all those vertical pieces into the leaves hurt.

The leafy portions can be lifted directly off, and all of the roofs come off of the three “house” portions of the set, so you can explore inside if you want to. Everything is detailed and furnished according to Lego’s traditional “details where no one will see them” system (and there’s a yellow gemstone hidden underneath the grass for some reason, too) and it all looks really nice.

In its final resting place, giving the A-Frame cabin some extra shade:

I may end up putting it on a little riser to make it more visible. That picture’s not from eye level in my desk chair but it’s still a little more covered up than I’d like.

A quick Lego Easter egg

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

I’m putting the Taj Mahal set together, finally, and I decided to do the first two bags tonight. I was kind of surprised at how colorful some of the bricks were since the Taj Mahal is almost entirely white, but Lego loves to use random colors for bricks that are going to get hidden anyway. I’ve wondered before what made them decide that some specific part ought to be some specific color and I’ve usually assumed it was because a certain color of plastic is cheaper or something like that.

It took me a few minutes to realize why they’d chosen these colors for the inside structure of this build. Are you smarter than me? Do you see it?

I actually thought the wheel in the middle was black and it appears to be blue, so I’m a little surprised the black pieces aren’t a dark blue, but yeah: for no better reason other than to do it, they’re echoing the colors of the Indian flag here, just to make the build a little bit more fun while you’re putting the base together. It’s a minor thing, I know, but every time I put a set together I find another reason to think their engineers really ought to be working on, like, global warming or something. These people are geniuses.

Last teaching day of the year today, and after three straight periods of teaching the whole day plus two days with optional after-school study sessions, I’m beat to hell. The final is tomorrow, and it took forty minutes to photocopy everything after the study session so I didn’t leave work after five. That time included one (1) copier jam that ate fifteen minutes, because, Christ, when modern photocopiers jam, they jam everywhere.

Five days left.

On my inner child

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

I know I talk about this every single time I put a Lego set together, but holy shit, the people who design these things are the smartest motherfuckers on Earth. I’m building the TIE Interceptor right now, which has been sitting on the floor in my office waiting for the right mood to strike me for probably several months now, and the cockpit and interior structure of this thing is just nuts. You can’t really see how detailed the cockpit is at this angle, and I couldn’t get any good pictures of it one way or another, but there are multiple screens in there for the minifigure to look at, along with two control sticks and a little radar screen with a picture of an X-Wing on it. My favorite little detail– see the two tiny gray dots at the top of the cockpit, underneath the two pale yellow studs? They wanted those two triangle pieces attached to them to be at an angle, and the pieces holding them at that angle are clearly guns. They took gun pieces from some other minifigure and reused them to hold the “screens” at the right angle.

It’s so creative it makes me sick. I could never be smart enough to design one of these damn things, and I’m in awe the whole time I’m building them. The model you get at the end isn’t even the point anymore. It’s all about marveling at the ingenuity it took to create these damn things, and wondering what these motherfuckers could do if they applied their skills to curing cancer instead of making toys.

(Oh, shit, I think I have the red pegs backwards on one of the wings. I’m gonna have to check that, before it’s too late to fix.)

(Actually the top row of pegs was backwards on both wings. Fixed!)

Anyway, I spent the day in Michigan visiting my wife’s family, and continuing to be vaguely weirded out by the fact that while her cousins are all perfectly nice people, I have never particularly clicked with all of them, but every time I see them lately one of their kids suddenly becomes interesting. I swear I have talked about this before, although I can’t find the post now; my favorite member of her extended family is her closest cousin’s younger daughter, which is weird, and I’m at the point where when we go to these things I just assume I’m going to spend most of my time talking to the generation underneath us more than I’m actually going to talk to her cousins.(*) It’s less weird than it could be; everybody’s in or out of college now and my son is the youngest person at these things by a mile, which is too bad for him. We were at this particular cousin’s house for the first time today, and one of her daughters, who I have known since she was ten and is now 26, finally actually started talking today? And she combines being a horse girl and an emo kid somehow, and I find that combination kind of hilariously endearing.

Jesus. I’ve known these people for sixteen years? I really should learn everyone’s names.

(*) Her uncle Bill is super cool too, for what it’s worth. So I spend my time talking to the youngest and the oldest people there.

Okay FINE I won’t

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy6 Comments

Dan Ford may have slightly too much influence over my life decisions for someone I’ve never met, but those five words more or less talked me out of Adventures with Bitcoin, and realizing that this weekend is a Lego Insiders weekend and that they have a model of the HMS Endurance coming at the end of the month sealed the deal; I’m not destroying the environment and I get (sorta) free Legos? Yeah, fuck money get Legos.

I think that’s the phrase, at least.

MEANWHILE! Kendrick Lamar has a new album out! He didn’t tell anyone it was coming before he released it. I’m listening to it right now and it might be his best album yet. I never really vibed with Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, so it’s good to see a return to form.

Let’s see. What else? I feel like something happened at work today that I really want to talk about, but hell if I can remember what it is. I decided today that I have what I’m calling a Shitty White Boy problem with my sixth hour, but that’s not the story.

… Goddammit, it’s gone. I’m gonna go play Veilguard and if I remember what the hell I wanted to talk about I’ll come back.

Saturday

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I’ve been playing video games all day and am about to build a Lego set. How’re you?

I build a toy, pt. 2: The Finishening

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek3 Comments

SO the boy got home, and saw the Falcon, and immediately any thought of me not finishing it tonight went out the window.  And therefore:

IMG_4276This is the end of bag five.  IMG_4277Bag Six, mostly concerned with building out the middle section of the Falcon.IMG_4278Bag seven.  Most of this was actually underneath the ship, putting in the belly gun and landing gear.  IMG_4279Bag Eight, AKA “Build this exact same thing a whole bunch of times.”IMG_4280

And the completed Falcon.IMG_4281You can fit two minifigures in the cockpit, at least barely.  Rey and Han are piloting.IMG_4282And the top blooms out to reveal the inside.  Hi, BB-8!IMG_4283Cooool.IMG_4284

Random bits that were left, and the Lego Separator, which I’ve never used.  I took a bunch of them and just sprinkled them around the outside of the ship, especially the bright red circle bits.  I don’t know why these were extra, as I didn’t miss anything.  I swear.  The extra missile is good, as the two missiles fire unexpectedly far and they’re going to get lost soon.  The rest?  Whatever, I’ll throw them in with the rest of the Legos.