Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is perhaps one of the most amazing scientific tools humans have ever built. I maybe strongly biased in that statement as I am a giant space geek, and have had connections to both the HST and ISS. What we’ve learned about our universe form Hubble over the last 29 years (launched on STS-31 on April 24, 1990) is mind blowing. We’ve better defined the Hubble constant (measure of the rate of the universes’ expansion), learned more about black holes, closer to home it watched the comment Shoemaker-Levy 9 crash into Jupiter, and looked father then we have before.  15,000+ peer reviewed scientific published scientific papers have been based on the HST’s over 150 terabytes of data. And this is a very high level pull from NASA.gov and Wikipedia . It was serviced five times by Space Shuttle crews, a very difficult task as Hubble orbits at the upper end of where the Space Shuttle could reach in orbit and it was not originally designed to be serviced! Luis Peña build a beautiful 1:42 scale model for ChileLUG’s upcoming display at the Planetarium of Santiago de Chile. The HST isn’t a very complex as far as scaled models go, couple stacked cylinders, add the solar arrays, antennas and the forward cover, and most people will recognize it. LEGO has included the HST in several sets even. However at this scale you really get to appreciate the size of the telescope and it is large enough to include some of the finer details, like the yellow trunnion supports that held it in to the shuttle’s payload bay, and some of the tubes and cables.  My one tiny nit pic as a space geek is the aft trunnion supports are missing.  Overall a fantastic model, and the use of one of Hubble’s amazing images as a back drop is a superb choice. 

Happy FebRovery!

We are nearly three quarters of the way through the fine LEGO month of FebRovery. For those unaware the month of FebRovery was added to the LEGO calendar in 2012, and is a month long celebration of the humble space rover. Real life rovers helped us explore the Moon and Mars, I miss the long lived Opportunity Mars rover already. LEGO rovers have helped us explore the wide realms of imagination since the early days of Classic Space. Rovers built for the FebRovery event, fall roughly into three categories, homages to classic LEGO sets, hard sci-fi delights, and my favorite the wonderfully weird, wacky, and whimsical. Instead of a single focus like most BrickNerd post I’m going to share several of these unique build.

First up is Tim Henderson’s 0031TY.  This one is a bit of a tongue in cheek alt build from a rather famous light freighter. The tallness of the model makes me smile, likely because it reminds me of something that would be on the cover of a 50’s or 60’s era sci-fi short story collection

Next is David Roberts’ rather interesting take on a 4 wheeled vehicle. A unicycle with a revolving three wheeled stabilizing set up. Check out his flickr feed he’s taken FebRovery as a daily challenge. 

Space Sharks need a way to get around too. The Fishtron ATR the Watertower is a swank tripod style rover, that would definitely five some Wells’ style Martians a run for their money.  Built by Frost’s who is also attempting a daily rover build approach.

The final rover is massive, Benny's Monorail Manufacturing Modular Mobile Moonbase or Benny’s Mmmmm .  While not posted to the FebRovery group this build by Blair Archer definitely shares the weird and wacky rover feel I like.  It’s tall and gangly, with a great crane arm and bins for monorail parts.

So often we take our subjects too seriously and forget that sometimes a little whimsy can go a long way. Whimsy plus a well-executed build can bring a lot of joy to this world and one of the reasons I love our hobby.

Gargoyles!

I have many a fond memories of Gargoyles both in its original run in the mid-nineties and then catching reruns on the Disney Channel in college. The characters were fun, the voice acting was enjoyable and includes many Star Trek actors (TNG and Voyager), and had a great urban fantasy / Sci-Fi combo going. The third season did lose its way a bit, (that is covered in-depth elsewhere), but overall a very fun show. Daniel Jackson re-watched the series a few years back and built Goliath as he awakes in 2017 and is just now sharing it with us.  He’s captured the charter well, Goliath is instantly recognizable, and the 1x1 stone flecks are a nice touch. He also built Goliath’s once love interest and often foil Demona. The choice of skyscraper backdrop for these pictures really sells the picture. They are just cartoony enough and match the series aesthetic nicely.

And One Brick In Its Time Plays Many Parts

Enter Adult Fan of LEGO

The works of Shakespeare are a huge nerdom, 37 plays and 154 Sonnets that have survived since the early 1600’s. Likely you have come across at least one of his plays in high school if you grew up in the English speaking parts of the world, and his plays have been adapted in to many other works: 10 Things I Hate About You is The Taming of the Shrew; The Lion King strongly parallels Hamlet; Forbidden Planet is The Tempest (my favorite play); West Side Story and a host of others pull from Romeo and Juliet. Karen Metz has captured scenes from 19 of Shakespeare’s plays in her interpretation of the James Christensen painting “Shakespearean Fantasy.” Karen has expertly captured some very famous scenes, but as with the painting, some are a bit more subtle or from some of the less performed works. She incorporates movement and music into some of the scenes. She’s posted a lot of pictures and exploring all of the them are quite rewarding. 
Anon good builder

Exit persued by a LEGO Bear

A Visit from Saint Nicholas

Bert Van Raemdonck captures Saint Nicholas delivering hope at Christmas time. Saint Nicholas was a bishop in what is modern day Turkey he lived from 270-343 AD and much of what we know of him focuses on his generosity.  A brief bio of what we know can be found here. The miter (a bishops pointy hat) is excellent captured using the classic roof piece 3049 , as is the crozier (a bishops staff of office, which often resembles a highly stylized shepherds crook) using the gold plant piece. 

Resistance is Futile

Where Star Trek shines is in how Gene Roddenberry reflected humanity back through the other races: Vulcans and pure logic, the conflict driven Klingons, the military industrial complex of the Romulans, the greed of the Ferengi, the techno hive zombies that are the Borg.  So many good philosophical questions are explored with each race, but I especially enjoy the Borg. Some Borg themes I see are the meaning of individuality, the good of the many vs the few, the cost of war, and the need for hope. Martin Latta captures a Borg vs the Enterprise D encounter in a small vignette. The shape of Federation vessels is challenging to capture at any scale, but he nails the NCC-1701-D and the repetitive use of grille plates, jumpers, and single studs captures the super greebled Borg cube exterior without overdoing it at this scale. Well done, Mr. Latta, set course for Wolf 359 warp 9. Engage.

Hurricane Aftermath in Bricks

Hurricanes and Cyclones are downright scary.  I lived in Florida when Tropical Storm Fay came through, that was pretty minor with lots of flooding.   I moved north to Philadelphia to escape the tropical storms (and for other reasons), and was in the area when Sandy 2012 and Irene 2011 roared through.  While where I was at saw little damage, a few downed trees, power outages and such both those systems did tremendous damage.  Despite being fairly low on the Category number.  Also the damage wrought by Florence and Michael recently is quite amazing.  Nathan C MOCS really brings the damage home in brick for with this amazing educational MOC depicting what Hurricane Maria did last year to the Island of Puerto Rico.  He experienced the storm first hand.  In this build he has a number of moving elements that illustrates the forces hitting a house in Puerto Rico, the video of is here.  I encourage you to spend some quiet time watching the video and examining all the notes that Nathan C MOCS has left on the image below in Flickr.  This is a MOC that will challenge you, maybe scare you, definitely not one that gives happy feelings.  The destruction is captured very well, it is a beautiful build in a devastating way.   

Angel Up Above

Andrew Tershanko has been producing some interesting figure builds this October.  His Angel is one of those builds that you have to look at twice.  First you see a very nice angel as you scroll past it in the Flickr feed, then you go wait what is that part.  And you realize that the whole thing is held together by Vitruvius’ ghost

Boo Boo Goes The Trolley

Frost has built a lovely little trolley for those off to Spooky Town. The dark grey, orange, black, and trans-yellow color scheme works well, at first I wanted it to drop the grey in favor of black, but upon reflection I think that would really harm the fun of this build. I believe Halloween needs to strike a balance of Spooky Fun and Spooky Scary and this cheeks those requirements nicely. The angled front windows and sideways built door, really helps to capture that classic trolley look as well.

At Last We Will Have Revenge

Opinions on the Prequels are well known.  I try to take them for what they are and understand you’re constrained in your story telling ability when you have fixed points established that you have to hit.  However Darth Maul was fantastic, just seeing him for the first time was “Oh wow!  This is our new bad guy!”  Then he’s got this weird lightsaber with a really large hilt what’s up with that?  Then in this scene we find out it’s a lightsaber staff.  That’s so cool (and why is the Maul’s Lightstaff so cool but Kylo’s hilt thing gets so much hate I don’t get it)  Ordo in his own words did not create a perfectly faithful rendition of the scene  but no the less captures it well.  The door and wall that makes the backdrop are well and surprisingly simply done.  Mostly just solid, straight forward SNOT technique.  And now I’ll let you enjoy having Duel of the Fates stuck in your head the rest of today.

Torpedo Bombers at 5 O'clock High

I love a good airplane model, especially biplanes. In freshman engineering I built a biplane for a project that I was told no one had built a biplane for, and the professor wasn’t sure it would work. It flew wonderfully. Prolific LEGO aircraft builder John Lamarck has posted a beautiful Blackburn B-6 Shark. Like many aircraft developed in the interwar years it did not have a long service life as developments happened rapidly in aviation in that time period. My only quibble is the inter-wing struts should be on an angle in the front view and not vertical, but that is likely driven more by the scale and medium.

Open the Podbay Doors

This planetary lander by Neomar Dethron is a great little slice of retro Sci-Fi. It reminds me of some of the personal space craft in art from the early space age, before the EVA suits that we now know were developed. The color blocking makes the Hyperflare Lander look well used, I’m also fond of the overall vertical orientation of the vehicle as well.

A New Challenger Approaches

I have lots of memories of playing F-ZERO X on the Nintendo 64 with my brothers. While I never much cared for Captain Falcon and his Blue Falcon rendered fantastically in micro scale by Angka, I generally went for lighter higher acceleration racers. What I like the most about this is it is built on a pullback racer frame, so Captain Falcon can show you his moves on the straights as this build rockets down the table.

Defend the Home Tree

This delightful microscale castle makes me think of what the Ewoks would be like if they had progressed to a medieval period in development.  The microscale castle and surrounding landscape is well executed, and the sails on the boat using the newish 29119 is an excellent part choice.  The towering tree filled with tree houses adds a uniqueness to the scene that really drew me in wanting to know so much more about the story in John Klapheke's head for the people in this tree. Are they elves? Lilliputians who moved to the trees and need the walls to defend from squirrels?  One thing is sure the archers in the tree are going to have quite some range defending this castle.

Dirty Job

No one likes to clean up poo but someone has to do it.  Dung Beetles are actually quite fascinating little creatures, despite being scatophages (dung eaters) and also dung dwellers.  The Scarab well know from Egyptian mythology is a dung beetle.  The nocturnal North African Scarabaeus satyrus species of dung beetle is the only non human animal that uses the Milky Way to celestially navigate.  Takamichi Irie captures the likeness of nature's janitor at work rolling an excellently modeled ball of dung.  The tennis rackets for the flies wings are excellent parts usage as is the photography of with the reflection on the beetles carapace and the fly just out of focus.   The beetle itself is well executed as well, capturing the shape, and the details of the spiky nature of the dung beetle's legs.

 

This Week on Nova Team

“Paladins 12 and 13 we have a distance unusual sensor contact, could be Blacktron activity.  Set course to 0.16 by 242 and check it out.  The convoy is going to prepare to jump to rendezvous site Foxtrot 6 based on your findings.”
“Roger that Convoy Control, setting course and going in hot”
“I’m on your six Boxcar”
“Roger Lucky”
“Good luck you two hopefully it’s nothing but if not we’ll see you at Foxtrot 6”

Rob Damiano’s Nova Team story telling is fantastic.  I always get excited when seeing a Nova Team thumbnail when browsing through Flickr.  After a long absence he’s back with the LL-824 Paladin Escort Starfighter.  I love the side by side seating that is facilitated by using the large cockpit form Bennie’s SPACESHIP, SPACESHIP, SPACESHIP.  The side by side configuration has been used on a few fighters but the tandem (one in front of the other is much more common), the design choice has led to a delightfully bulky heavy starfighter.  The whole build is covered in NPU but I think my favorite is the flick-fire missiles used as the core of the Photonic Missiles on the underside.  Hopefully this is the signal for the start of a new Nova Team story arc.  For those unfamiliar with Nova Team the recipe for Nova Team Punch is as follows:

2 cups excellent neoclassic space building
1 cup fantastic photography with top notch editing with special effects (both practical and digital)
1 cup of riveting storytelling
½ cup Star Trek Influences
¼ cup of custom uniform decals
1 Tablespoon each of other sci-fi influences including but not limited to Star Wars and Aliens
Serve over Ice and enjoy the tasty beverage

Game On

Listen up kids. In my day video games were hard, and had simple graphics none of this 'you can beat it in 3 hours first play' nonsense. You had to practice and work at it, and we liked it that way!  I have fond memories of playing Pitfall and Combat on my Aunt's Atari 2600 as a child. Builder Jarekwally has expertly captured the venerable classic in bricks. The addition of the distressed photo effects is a very nice touch on this picture. Oh the retro feels.

How do you spell SNOT

The Oxford English Dictionary is looking to add Hobby words to their quest to be "The definitive record of the English language."  Through a crowd sourcing effort at https://public.oed.com/appeals/hobby-words/  hobby words, acronyms, and phrases can be entered, with definitions and other information about the word.  The more that is enterred the better lets get LEGO Terms in the OED!

There's No Place, I Can Be...

A nice peaceful river retreat gives this peasant boy a place to rest and find a little serenity before back to being oppressed by someone who received a sword from a watery tart.  This small vignette by David Zambito has some great rock work using official boulder pieces and upside-down boat tiles, but the stand out is the duck, a simple and elegant 5 piece build, with a stud shooter as the body.