Post Race!

[Peter Porter]

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, that page didn't last long.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Uh oh, got a 503 error on that post, though it went through. I remember some recent troubles related to that.

[Shaggy Hiker]

By the way, did you make that picture?

[Peter Porter]

By the way, did you make that picture?

Yes. I did that Photoshop in 2018.

[Peter Porter]

I had to add something to this gingerbread town.

[Peter Porter]

[Shaggy Hiker]

Those are fun.

[dilettante]

Star Wabs Assemble!

[Peter Porter]

Star Wabs Assemble!

Makes me wanna Photoshop another Lego set.

[dday9]

@Peter - My son (who is 8) nearly died of laughter when he saw your "Salvaged Death Star" box.

He kept saying, "that can't be real, omg"

[Shaggy Hiker]

It's certainly a good idea, though. One of the complaints I have with the direction that Lego has gone is that they make too many models. The whole point of Lego is to see what you can do with your imagination, rather than just putting together some model. There need to be more, "a whole lot of random pieces" kits out there. It seems like that's all I had when I was growing up. The kid with the most pieces won, not the one with the most models.

[wes4dbt]

It's certainly a good idea, though. One of the complaints I have with the direction that Lego has gone is that they make too many models. The whole point of Lego is to see what you can do with your imagination, rather than just putting together some model. There need to be more, "a whole lot of random pieces" kits out there. It seems like that's all I had when I was growing up. The kid with the most pieces won, not the one with the most models.

Kits have there advantages. It makes all kids capable of making cool things with Legos. It makes it easier for the parents to participate. This way everyone gets a participation award. lol

[Peter Porter]

It's certainly a good idea, though. One of the complaints I have with the direction that Lego has gone is that they make too many models. The whole point of Lego is to see what you can do with your imagination, rather than just putting together some model. There need to be more, "a whole lot of random pieces" kits out there. It seems like that's all I had when I was growing up. The kid with the most pieces won, not the one with the most models.

When I was a kid, I use to love building my own pirate ships with Legos. I don't mind models, but large sets of random pieces is better. That's how I started my kids out when they were as young as yours. Before we brought Star Wars sets, me and my kids built our own space ships with retractable landing gears and slide and pop-up canopys and sliding doors. We actually built a Star Destroyer. It was huge, but it wasn't exact, using different colored pieces. Had alot of fun with that thing!

In Germany we can still buy sets with tons of random pieces. If there's something we need that's not included in these sets, well for my family, Legoland was close by to buy whatever we needed from their shops.

[Shaggy Hiker]

When I was a kid, I use to love building my own pirate ships with Legos.

Yeah, and it's a good thing that Legos float, because one hit from a Lego cannonball and those ships tended to fall to pieces. Eight of them, to be exact. They fell into pieces of eight.

[Shaggy Hiker]

My response was always, "Arrrrgggh!", but that was mostly because my Lego parrot would fall off my shoulder.

[dilettante]

Kits have there advantages. It makes all kids capable of making cool things with Legos. It makes it easier for the parents to participate. This way everyone gets a participation award. lol

Ahh, a way to reinforce the Lake Wobegon Effect.

[Peter Porter]

Yeah, and it's a good thing that Legos float, because one hit from a Lego cannonball and those ships tended to fall to pieces. Eight of them, to be exact. They fell into pieces of eight.

I'm sure if I would've placed any of my builds in water, it will sink without a single strike.

[2kaud]

I preferred Meccano to Lego - with screws and nuts and metal plates and gears and screwdrivers and spanners and chains and motors and ... I thought Meccano had gone but I see that it's still around. I've still got my old sets from the 60's and 70's. I spent many happy hours building cranes, bridges, engines, landmark models (favourite Blackpool Tower) etc. Ah, those were the days...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I vaguely remember that. I thought it went away decades back.

[Shaggy Hiker]

At one point, Lego also had extensive gear options. I don't remember pulleys, but there were certainly gears of many different sizes. You could create some really complicated moving designs that all shared one awesome feature: They fell apart as soon as you moved things.

As it turned out, Lego connections didn't really handle torque all that well.

[2kaud]

I vaguely remember that. I thought it went away decades back.

So did I - but apparently not.

https://www.meccano.com/en_gb

[Peter Porter]

I preferred Meccano to Lego - with screws and nuts and metal plates and gears and screwdrivers and spanners and chains and motors and ... I thought Meccano had gone but I see that it's still around. I've still got my old sets from the 60's and 70's. I spent many happy hours building cranes, bridges, engines, landmark models (favourite Blackpool Tower) etc. Ah, those were the days...

I've heard of Meccano, but during my Lego days, I always wanted to have something from Erector, which Meccano absorbed in 2000.

[dday9]

I see some of the Meccano stuff when I go to the Walmart. I never bought it for my son though. It looks like it's very cheap material to be honest.

[2kaud]

I don't know what it is like now - but back in the day (60's and 70's) it was all metal and very sturdy - held together with proper metal screws and nuts using metal spanners and screwdrivers. The only plastic seen were the trays the various parts were stored in.

[2kaud]

To me, this is Meccano. A motorised crane...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I don't know about motorized cranes, but I encountered a sandhill crane once. It was pretty well constructed.

[dday9]

We have plenty of egrets here.

[Peter Porter]

While my kids were into Legos and Playmobil, I showed them how to build a police station/hospital out of cardboard and small pieces of wood. Both sides have 2nd floors which wasn't part of the orginal box, with only one staircase, an elevator, and a bridge. I'll explain more about it's design as soon as I post a photo.

[dilettante]

I wonder if anyone builds stuff out of big piles of Starburst or Now-And-Later candy?

You'd need some sort of glue that works on waxed paper, or maybe unwrap them and lick them to stick them?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah, after reading your first line, I knew what the 'glue' should be, but you covered it in your second line.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Seems like I heard a story about a witch who built a house with those kinds of materials. It didn't end well for her. Diabetes, I think.

[Peter Porter]

Seems like I heard a story about a witch who built a house with those kinds of materials. It didn't end well for her. Diabetes, I think.

Nah... it was heart disease. Ginger is beneficial in small amounts, but she was living in it!

Her own damn fault!

[Shaggy Hiker]

Ginger is fine in any amount, but I still prefer Mary Ann.

[szlamany]

We have plenty of egrets here.

My Great Blue Heron chases away our Egrets - eats whatever it wants!

[Peter Porter]

My Great Blue Heron chases away our Egrets - eats whatever it wants!

A couple blackbirds help rid my garden of earwigs roaming around in the morning. They also come around when I work in my garden, hoping I would come across maybugs for them.

We thought about building a pond once, but dropped that idea due to major mosquitoe problems, birthed from our neighbors pond.

[Peter Porter]

Thank god affordable portable wireless telegraph machines weren't mass produced for the public!




Oxford University, Diseases of Modern Life article:
"The Victorians had the Same Concerns about Technology as We Do"

https://diseasesofmodernlife.web.ox....ology-as-we-do

[Shaggy Hiker]

That GBH looks like it had a frog in its throat.

[Jacob Roman]

I'm still baffled as to how they did the tickers for the stock market through those things.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Poorly.

I would assume that it was essentially a typewriter with a reduced set of keys (you need far fewer) and no moving carriage (the paper was one character wide, essentially, so each key stroke advanced the paper like a carriage return...without a carriage to return).