Details: Remember the wings from the 6495 Time Tunnelator kit? I'm sure I'm not the only one who was young in the nineties (OK, not that young...) - the Time Twisters subtheme (and the larger Time Cruisers theme) gets derided for absurd set designs, but they actually came with a slew of rare and hard-to-find parts. The wing element from the Time Tunnelator finds some new use here by obeying the standard rule of bizarre LEGO elements - everything is more useful if you have a large amount of it. Suddenly small printed sail "wings" become giant dragon wings, suitable for an awesome giant Bionicle dragon.
While this particular dragon first surfaced at BrickFair 2010 (where it also looked great in person), it's actually an updated version of a model originally built for the fiftieth BZ Power contest (which was invitation-only for previous Bionicle-Based Building Challenge winners).
EDIT 9/11/2010: Looks like I may have referenced the wrong part and set above. The exact printed pattern visible on the wing elements in the photo above is actually this one, found in three sets (in the Adventurers and Ninja themes) between 1998 and 2000.
Details: Not too long ago, the Spanish-language LEGO Mindstorms NXT blog electricBricks wrote about holonomic robots. Holonomic driving systems are systems in which a vehicle has no turning radius - it can travel in direction without needing to have a "front" that is specifically powered. In the post I'm featuring today (as well as the video above), you can see a fully-functional, stable, and practical design for one made out of LEGO. While a three-wheeled version (as suggested in the earlier post) seems like a better idea at first glance, the difficulty of getting multi-directional wheels to work (and LEGO to fit into triangular shapes) makes it surprisingly complicated and often unsturdy. This one is fairly easy to build, with only turntables as a hard-to-find part you don't have enough of in the standard NXT kit.
Details: On his way back from Comic Con, BrickJournal magazine editor Joe Meno went to LEGOLAND California and took some photos. Highlights include several large swaths of miniland and some of the sculptures around the park (I'd get more specific like I usually do, but for some reason flickr photos aren't loading smoothly on my end today - with any luck they'll load better when you look through these photos).
There are 102 photos in the first flickr set and 28 in the second.
Details: A few months back, I featured some headlight brick patterns. Those designs and tips inspired a few of us to share some other examples of headlight brick patterns - including the builder who posted today's patterns. There are 55 photos here explaining and expanding on the basic concept.
Details: I know I've covered a Cadillac before, and even another from this same year. There's something special about a pink Cadillac, though. Elvis' pink Cadillac started the craze of painting classic caddies pink, but he never actually owned a 1969 Cadillac. Once the ball was rolling, though, the image of a pink Cadillac became one of the more enduring icons of the era.
Not even all that, though, completely captures just how awesome it is to render a pink '59 Caddy in LEGO. For some reason, LEGO has never really taken pink seriously as a color. They've manufactured a few different shades of pink over the years, and they've never really released all that many parts in any given shade of pink. As the builder of this car mentioned:
There are only seven different pink parts in this car, 1x1, 1x2, 1x3 and 1x6 plates and 1x1, 1x2 and 2x2 tiles.
So not only does this accurately convey the shape and style of this iconic classic car, but it actually manages that without using many of the special parts and techniques we know and love. It's a difficult challenge, but one that I think was succeeded at here in near-miniland scale.
Details: Minifig-scale battleship, anyone? For the purposes of this model, minifig scale (a nebulous concept considering that minifigure proportions don't resemble the proportions of real people) is set to 1:40.
This is a recreation of the Japanese Battleship Yamato, a record-setting (in both weight and amount of weapons) vessel used during World War II. Even the LEGO version weighs in at a staggering 330 pounds (150 kilograms). At 6.6 meters (22 feet) long, this is the largest battleship ever made out of LEGO pieces, and it's likely to hold the record for some time to come.
Details: Every once in a while, you'll see someone put together a whimsical "still life" out of LEGO. Usually it's just a light sculpture, but sometimes you'll see a mosaic thrown in like you do here. The utensils here really help to make the scene - not to mention how realistic the can appears (complete with that mosaic on the front to make it distinctively a SPAM can). The use of cheese slopes and studs-not-on-top trickery really makes the letters on the can pop. More great techniques can be seen on the wine glass - one chunk is upside-down, another entirely sideways.
Details: There aren't enough people willing to try making mosaics for minifig-scale creations. This model goes a ways towards fixing that - there are mosaics in brick-built (sidways) floors, and on the inner and outer walls. I don't think I've seen a minifig-scale bowling alley before, but this one will be tough to beat. The roof is removable - tiles were used to make that lift off the same way the "modular building" sets have their floors lift up. This is perfectly in scale for those buildings too!
Details: 222Doc claims to have created the first NXT-based biped that can climb stairs. I'll have to take him at his word for that (I'm not aware of any video to prove that, and he hasn't posted programs either). His new creation, though, is even more impressive - a quadruped robot with three-toed limbs that can climb like a sloth. That's the theory, anyway - the machinery has been tested to verify that it can handle the load of lifting it's own weight on ladders in any direction, but the programming's not done yet. This isn't quite purist - you can see some multiplexers and unofficial cable used so that the one NXT can control all of the motors (looks like 8 NXT motors and 4 Power Functions motors to me). Still - this is proof of concept for a type of four-legged walker we've never seen before. I can't wait to see one of these things crawling overhead at a LEGO or robotics event.
EDIT: This is what I get for rushing posts - it turns out that there is, in fact, a video of the X2 walking up stairs, and you can see other videos from the same builder on YouTube as well. More details about the X4 sloth 'bot can be found on the nxtasy forums.
Remember the wings from the 6495 Time Tunnelator kit? I'm sure I'm not the only one who was young in the nineties (OK, not that young...) - the Time Twisters subtheme (and the larger Time Cruisers theme) gets derided for absurd set designs, but they actually came with a slew of rare and hard-to-find parts. The wing element from the Time Tunnelator finds some new use here by obeying the standard rule of bizarre LEGO elements - everything is more useful if you have a large amount of it. Suddenly small printed sail "wings" become giant dragon wings, suitable for an awesome giant Bionicle dragon. 
can control all of the motors (looks like 8 NXT motors and 4 Power Functions motors to me). Still - this is proof of concept for a type of four-legged walker we've never seen before. I can't wait to see one of these things crawling overhead at a LEGO or robotics event.
