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In lugnet.general, Michael Huffman wrote:
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Now here’s the tricky bit, before I can finish setting up a store in iPaB, I
need to know the dimensions of the PaB wall. Does anyone know how big the
PaB walls are for the Chicago area stores? Once I know how big a store’s
wall is (in terms of rows & columns), I can go ahead and un-hide the store.
Thanks,
--Mike.
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I’ll make sure to gather that info when I’m there. I’ll be going to the store
in the Northbrook Mall, the Woodfield store in Schaumburg and possibly the new
Discovery Center close to the Woodfield Mall.
David
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http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/lifestyles/1081876,3_5_EL31_LEGOS_S1.article
Block party
Legoland Discovery Center in Schaumburg is first in the US
July 31, 2008
By MIKE DANAHEY Staff Writer
Had Led Zeppelin recorded a song called Whole Lotta Legos instead of Whole Lotta
Love, it would be on Dan Morey's iPod.
Morey, a carpenter by trade and graduate of Nequa Valley High School in
Naperville, is a master builder at the new LEGOLAND Discovery Centre on the
Streets of Woodfield in Schaumburg. He will be busy showing children what they
can create with the plastic blocks.
Morey also will build his own objects of art.
"With it (almost) being football season, I'd like to make a model of Soldier
Field," he said. "I figure it would take about three to four months working by
myself."
The Soldier Field replica would fit nicely in the "Miniland" cityscape of
Chicago, an impressive display of downtown architecture.
Morey's first creation -- a jumbo Chicago-style hot dog (mustard, no ketchup)
made from more than 700 LEGO pieces -- greets guests entering the
30,000-square-foot fun town. To get to the hot dog, guests must pass through a
giant Lego giraffe standing over the doorway of the first indoor amusement park
of its kind in the United States.
It's a LEGO lovers dream.
There is a Hall of Fame with LEGO models of Batman, Darth Vader and characters
from the Harry Potter saga; the Dragon Ride through a castle replete with LEGO
bats, knights, damsels, a chef in shackles and a fire-breathing dragon; a Jungle
Expedition of LEGO animals; and a faux factory where guests learn how LEGOs are
made.
There even is an old man made of LEGOs sleeping on a park bench, a Lego bust of
Albert Einstein and a store selling LEGOs to take home.
The center will change exhibits every three to four months, said attraction
manager Mike Pastor of Joliet, who also said there will be special events for
certain holidays.
Pastor said LEGOLAND also is working to partner with another attraction, the
joust-and-dine Medieval Times, and will offer educational outings for schools.
LEGOLAND has a movie room, too, currently showing Spellbreaker, a 4-D flick
about a medieval blacksmith who, with the aid of his lady, a jester and a
friendly young dragon, saves his land from a band of marshmallow-headed ghost
skeletons. The fourth dimension includes simulated wind, rain, snow and more.
On the center's second floor is the Build and Test area, where children can play
with LEGOs on a speed ramp, on an earthquake table or wherever their
imaginations take them.
It all went over well with Schaumburg's Campanelli YMCA campers, who visited
Friday in advance of today's grand opening.
"I liked the race cars and Batman," said Logan Caro, 6, of Hoffman Estates.
The race cars, Batman and the LEGO version of Chicago topped the list of fellow
campers Rohan Pathak, 9, of Schaumburg, Ajai Rajeev, 9, of Streamwood, Nikolas
Pohlschmidt, 8, of Hoffman Estates, Harshita Kumbham, 8, of Schaumburg, and
Julie Pallas, 8, of Elk Grove Village.
The two "Golden Brick" winners who received a free tour were Claire Strother, 8,
and Garrett Strother, 10, who both enjoyed the jungle area.
"I liked the Indiana Jones," said Garrett.
"And I liked all the animals," said Claire.
Taking it all in, wearing a big smile and a bright red golf shirt, was Joseph
Tiesch of Frankfort, who works at the center as an entertainer.
"I've always been a big LEGO fan," said Tiesch, who studied broadcasting in
college. "When I saw a pamphlet that they were hiring, I applied right away.
What I like about the job is it's great to see kids having such a good time, to
see that they liked LEGOs as much as I did when I was a kid."
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As many others have said already on LUGNET, BrickWorld was a fantastic event!
All of us coordinators were blown away by the attendance at this very first year
for BrickWorld. Here are some event highlights that I really enjoyed:
•
Watching a new motorized Monster Dino smash
its way down 12 feet of town layout and then push a
Knight Bus off the table at the end
•
Drinking enough root beer at the Ram to give a horse diabetes
• The look on my
face when Steve Witt gave out the gold C-3PO’s (or so Jeramy tells me)
•
Watching Jan Beyer and Steve Hassenplug line up the engraved BrickWorld minifigs
in a row and knock them over like dominos
• Seeing the white stress marks on
John Neal’s Pick-A-Brick tubs and feeling that they weighed about 15 pounds
each
• Seeing the displays on the news (all 20 seconds of it) ; )
• Realizing
Monday morning that I had forgotten to lock my car on Sunday night after I
packed everything in it, and finding that it hadn’t been touched
• Finding that
the Woodfield store had just gotten Market
Street sets back in on Monday morning before I got there
See everyone in
2008!
David
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Using the PicToBrick
program, I have made a 48X48 studs-out mosaic of the Chicago Bears NFL logo.
Once I had downloaded PicToBrick (and enough auxilliary components to get it to
run), I had a lot of fun running random pictures through to see what kind of
mosaic the program would generate. I thought that I would find some small
square image with not too many colors and run it through PicToBrick so that I
could actually build a mosaic instead of just staring at instructions for them
on a computer screen. For starters I wanted to do one that would fit onto a
48X48 baseplate.
Being a Bears fan and knowing that I’d be going up to
BrickWorld in Chicago in June, I thought
that a mosaic of the Bears logo would be perfect. Another plus for the Bears
logo choice is that it fits nicely into a square perimiter. I found a Bears
logo image and brightened it a little.
Orange and white are easy enough to come by, but enough dark blue for a 48X48
version of the Bears logo would be pretty expensive. Since the logo’s blue is
such a dark blue, I opted to use black instead. PicToBrick generated this
instruction image:
Now that I had full instructions for a creation that was only 1 layer of bricks
and only 3 colors, it wasn’t long before I had the completed mosaic:
I almost feel like a fraud by claiming to have built this “MOC” when I really
only followed instructions similar to how you’d build an official LEGO set. But
anyway, here it is.
Enjoy!
David “Fuzzy” Gregory
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Subject:
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HoB 2006, one month away
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks, lugnet.announce, lugnet.loc.us.il, lugnet.loc.us.in, lugnet.loc.us.mi, lugnet.loc.us.oh, lugnet.loc.us.mo, lugnet.loc.us.ia, lugnet.loc.us.ky
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks
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Date:
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Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:40:19 GMT
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!!
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This is a friendly reminder that Chicago House of Bricks is rapidly approaching.
Come join us May 12-14 in Downer’s Grove, Illinois! Please be sure to register
soon if you plan to attend.
Visit our website for more
information.
We hope to see you there!
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Subject:
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House of Bricks, 2006!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks, lugnet.announce, lugnet.loc.us.il, lugnet.loc.us.in, lugnet.loc.us.mi, lugnet.loc.us.oh, lugnet.loc.us.mo, lugnet.loc.us.ia, lugnet.loc.us.ky
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks
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Date:
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Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:02:11 GMT
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Chicago House of Bricks will once again be held in conjunction with To Be
Continued! A fine cut of LEGO will be served with savory science-fiction,
buttered fantasy, and field-fresh gaming. But the ‘piece de resistance’ will
be the fun camaraderie had by all. Come join us May 12-14 in Downer’s Grove,
Illinois!
2BeCONtinued brings together fans from all domains. Last years attendees
mingled with celebrities, comedians, pirates, artists, and more. This year
looks to be just as exciting. Though HoB is held in conjunction with a science
fiction convention, all themes are invited to attend (the train layout was a
crowd favorite last year).
Visit our website for more
information.
We hope to see you there!
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Subject:
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House of Bricks (May 12 -14, 2006) is Coming Up!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks, lugnet.announce, lugnet.loc.us.il, lugnet.loc.us.in, lugnet.loc.us.mi, lugnet.loc.us.oh, lugnet.loc.us.mo, lugnet.loc.us.ia, lugnet.loc.us.ky
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.events.houseofbricks
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Date:
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Mon, 20 Feb 2006 04:38:15 GMT
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I’m very happy to announce that registration for Chicago House of Bricks at To
Be CONtinued 5: Legends is now online. Prices and information for registration
can be accessed here.
Registration is not exclusive to House of Bricks and will allow attendees access
to all areas of the convention. To Be CONtinued 5: Legends is being held at the
Doubletree Guest Suites and Conference Center in Downers Grove, which can be
seen here.
For Dealer information, please click on the Dealers link on the sidebar.
What’s really neat is that the Guest of Honor of this convention is
Weta Workshop, the effects facility that was
responsible for the visual effects to all of the Lord of the Rings movies and
King Kong.
Currently, plans are for a Great Ball Contraption and sci-fi models. Attendees
are encouraged to bring models that tie into the movies mentioned above, as
there is a nice SPACE to fill!
If you have questions or comments, please post them to
lugnet.events.houseofbricks, as others may have similar questions. Questions can
also be sent to HoB@2BeCONtinued.com which will forward to me as well as other
members of the ToBeCONtinued staff. Please refer to the following list of event
coordinators for any specific question.
Joe Meno
Chicago House of Bricks Coordinator
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Hi, everybody!
For the past 3 months, I’ve been working with folks from Gortons Seafood on a sculpture of the Gortons’ Fisherman (as seen in
their logo.)
Alone, he’s not such a big model -- but I was asked to build EIGHT of them!
See photos on my MOCpages site
Six of the models will be touring the U.S. over the next month, in conjunction
with their new “Build dinner around Gorton’s” campaign. They will be visiting
about 100 supermarkets across six metro areas: Los Angeles, Chicago,
Indianapolis, San Antonio, Harrisburg, and Charlotte. (There’s a
full schedule on my web site.)
The remaining two models will go on permanent display in Gorton’s headquarters
and their marketing firm’s headquarters.
I hope folks get a chance to get out and see the model sometime over the next
few weeks! Unfortunately, I don’t live near any of those cities, so I won’t be
able to see any of the finished models “on site”... If anyone happens to snap a
photo of it while they’re there, I’d love if you could e-mail me a copy!
Each model is 2 feet tall from the waist to the head, and contains about 6,000
LEGO elements. It’s a straightforward “sculpture”, using almost entirely
studs-up construction and just basic LEGO bricks and plates. (I had to giggle,
actually, that one of few places that I actually used some SNOT was... on his
nose.) :)
As some of you know, I just moved back to New York City, after spending a few
years in Texas. What fun it was to move 2000 miles in the middle of a giant
commission! I’ve been working out of boxes and in a very temporary
makeshift-workshop for the latter half of this project... I’m looking forward
to finally being able to set my space back up! :)
Oh, and oddly enough: midway through this project, I was coincidentally
commissioned to build Nemo and Marlin
from Disney’s “Finding Nemo”. What are the chances I would be asked to build a
fish & a fisherman at the same time? :)
I’ll part with a “fun-fact”... If you stacked the LEGO bricks from all 8
Gortons’ Fishermen one on top of another, they’d go higher than the Empire State
Building! :)
Sean
- - - - -
Sean Kenney
LEGO Certified Professional
http://www.seankenney.com/lego
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Meeting Report
MichLUG members got together for a meeting on Saturday, July 23rd.
Meeting Report
Chicago House of Bricks Report
House of Bricks was a blast! Three days of LEGO filled goodness. Unfortunately
things got really busy for me (and
other club members) after the con, so I didn’t get a chance to write this up
till now.
Event Wrap-Up
Jason Spears
Michigan LEGO Users Group
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