Details: The details seem a bit hazy (I'm still not sure when this event ends - I've seen conflicting dates but nothing official), but it appears that there is are two large, long-term LEGO displays going on in Sydney, Australia - one at the Sydney Aquarium and another at Sydney Wildlife World. I'm not sure how this snuck in under our radar, but apparently these models have been "on the loose" since December 22nd, 2010. Long story short: there's a need to round-up photos of great sculptures: Stobbsc (Christopher Sobbs)'s flickr photos Wanderer and Wonderer's flickr photos News.com.au article Eeks! A mouse . . . blog post (includes some photos)
Details: There aren't enough good Aquazone layouts out there. Here's a small base for loading a decent-sized Aquanaut sub (and a few smaller subs). The ship has some non-LEGO supports to hold it up, but considering how hard it would be to truly recapture the feel of the Aquashark set 6190 Shark's Crystal Cave in an Aquanaut-themed model, I think it's fine. Besides, submarines don't generally land on the ocean floor, so a higher loading area that requires the submarine to hover above the ocean floor is more realistic. Any submarine that can carry this size of Aquanaut army is clearly doing things right.
For those of you with no idea what I'm talking about, Aquazone was a LEGO theme introduced in 1995 and phased out around 1999. It was loosely revived more recently as "Aqua Raiders", which is even more confusing since "Aquaraiders" was also the name of the drill-happy faction released in 1997. The original two factions were Aquanauts and Aquasharks. Sadly, the short life of the Aquazone series is now seen as the beginning of the "playthemes" phenomenon, where LEGO is increasingly releasing short-lived lines with original characters and simple plot lines (like good guys vs bad guys in fantasy wars - you'll notice very similar plots in Power Miners, Agents, the current Pirates line, Exo-Force, Mars Mission, Life On Mars, etc.). Now it's a bit easier to see the writing on the wall where discontinued themes go - pretty much anything that LEGO's "playthemes" department works on isn't bound to stick around.
...of course, that will never stop us from reviving our favorites for original creations - which is why models like this one are so exciting in the first place. These models revive something special that was clearly only meant for a few years that have since passed.
Details: Last time we featured JP Brown's work, we saw his Rubik's Cube Solver, which was conveniently hosted on his own site. This time though, LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT-themed blog TheNXTStep brings us his new aquatic robot. This robot has some non-LEGO parts that float (I don't know what they are, exactly, but I am pretty sure it's technically "cheating" some astute commenters filled me in - these are zeppelin parts from the Adventures line (which was out about 8 years ago)), but and the programming and the moving parts are all done with MINDSTORMS parts. You can even see it steer itself with different rowing patterns in the YouTube video:
This is controlled remotely via bluetooth with a .NET program - which means that this isn't completely autonomous, but I suspect that the programming has simplified it to the point where not much is done manually either.
Oh, and DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS, it's NOT SAFE to risk your NXT by putting it too close to the water. If you are going to try to create something like this yourself, make sure that you can test the non-electronic parts first in a smaller body of water (maybe a full sink or tub) so that you can make sure that the expensive electronic parts will be safe and dry.
The details seem a bit hazy (I'm still not sure when this event ends - I've seen conflicting dates but nothing official), but it appears that there is are two large, long-term LEGO displays going on in Sydney, Australia - one at the Sydney Aquarium and another at Sydney Wildlife World. I'm not sure how this snuck in under our radar, but apparently these models have been "on the loose" since December 22nd, 2010. Long story short: there's a need to round-up photos of great sculptures:
-themed blog 
