Today was a holiday in London, at the Lego BRICK 2014 festival, in the ExCel. (That’s the same huge building as the
SF WorldCon this summer, but in a different huge hall.)
There were some tremendous pieces, like Westminster Abbey.
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| Westminster Abbey |
There was a good display of the latest generation of
Lego Mindstorms, EV3, including a robot scorpion
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| beware! |
and the Cubestormer, the record-breaking Rubik’s cube solver:
Not everything was a massive construction. Some smaller pieces helped demonstrate the versitility.
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| the Platonic solids |
Small bricks are just large pixels, so there were many pictures on display. My favourite was this transition of millennia:
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| Lego Lascaux, complete with Lego prehistoric artists |
It’s easier to do things like this with the large palette of colours available today.
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| a far cry from the old black, white, red, blue, yellow and green... |
Trains were much in evidence, combining two standard passions. Possibly my favourite was the nested train systems:
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| nested train systems |
The upper small oval track system was itself mounted on two trains, one running on the lower large oval track, the other on the central narrow blue oval. That itself was fun and clever, but then we spotted that lower train had a wagon hosting a tiny train running on its own little track, too!
It wasn’t just the Lego itself that was a blast from the past.
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| Thunderbirds Are Go! |
It all started getting a bit self-referential with the merchandising, though:
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| the videogame based on the movie based on the toy |
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| full circle: the toy based on the movie based on the toy |
We had a great time looking at all the displays, and also bought about £10 worth of bits (given the price of the entrance tickets, and the train fares, it was quite an
expensive £10 purchase). Being a Friday, it wasn’t too crowded; I expect the Saturday will be packed.
Also, I can highly recommend the ExCel’s Orange and Chocolate muffins: they are delicious, and go brilliantly with the coffee.
Blocks Galore. Hot concrete rammed, injection molding, egg laying concrete block machine. Get smart blocks... and loving it.
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