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TexLUG was invited to participate at Maker Faire 2008 in Austin, Texas this past
weekend. Were not the first LUG to display at Maker Faire, but this was our
first time, and we walked away with not one but two Editors Choice awards for
our display/booth.
We were given a huge area to work with, which we filled with two displays - a
Space/Moonbase and a Town/Train (with tall ships). We also had two areas for
kids to come and build, one filled with Duplo, the other with regular System.
My pictures can be found here:
Gallery
We had a lot of fun and we hope that well be invited back next year.
--Tony
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On Saturday, April 19th, Im having a book signing at a Barnes & Noble in
Austin, Texas for my book The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventors Guide
(No Starch Press, 2007). The signing will begin at 2PM, and Ill be bringing two
robots with me to the event: Tag-Bot (shown on front cover of book) and also
Spike from the NXT set.
Following is the address of the Barnes & Noble where the book signing will be
held:
Sunset Valley Village
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300
Austin, TX 78745
Hope to see you there!
Thanks,
David J. Perdue
Inventors Guide companion website: http://www.nxtguide.davidjperdue.com/
Inventors Guide companion blog: http://www.nxtblog.davidjperdue.com/
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Flickr
Gallery
For a third year, TexLUG was invited to display at the Healthy Baby and Child
Expo in San Antonio on March 8th and 9th, 2008. While only two TexLUG members
were able to attend, the layout was nevertheless a success. The theme this year
was Around the World in 80 days, featuring well known landmarks and monuments
from around the globe, along with a few LEGO sets and MOCs.
--Tony
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Im having a book signing this month for my new book The Unofficial LEGO
MINDSTORMS NXT Inventors Guide (No Starch Press), and I decided to officially
announce the book here on LUGNET and invite everyone who lives in the Round
Rock, Texas area to stop by the signing (details below).
First, The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventors Guide is a general guide
to the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set (retail version). In a nutshell, the book teaches
you how to effectively create NXT robots. It examines all the pieces in the NXT
set and discusses building techniques; covers the NXT-G programming language and
introduces some text-based languages; and provides six projects with building,
programming, and testing instructions. There are also three appendixes,
including an NXT Piece Library and an NXT-G Quick Reference. At the books
companion website, you can read a complete description, the table of contents,
and sample pages. In addition, youll find pictures of all the books projects
(robots), the source code (NXT-G), and more. Furthermore, Ive started a
companion blog, and I also have several videos of the robots on YouTube. Here
are the links:
The book signing is scheduled for January 12th, 2008 at 2PM, and Ill be
bringing two robots from the book with me (probably Tag-Bot and Guard-Bot).
Following is the address of the Barnes & Noble location where the book signing
will be held:
La Frontera Village 2701 Parker Road Bldg A Suite 700 Round Rock, TX 78681
See you there! :)
David J. Perdue
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It was really nice having Tony visit our show and share his steam MOCs with
us and the public at the show. I will be posting a review of the show within
a day or two...
Kirk H
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Here is the promised review.
The show was sponsored by the Texas & Pacific Historical Society in Marshall to
raise money for the T&P museum and the old historic depot. The Marshall Civic
Center housed the show. In addition to the NETLTC, there were 2 HO layouts, 1 N
scale, and 1 Lionel layout. We were debuting our modular tables and we only had
6 full sized and 2 skinny tables finished - so we displayed a much smaller
layout than at previous shows (10 x 15ish). Our smallness was a benefit because
the show organizers miscalculated the meeting space and didnt have room for us
if we had been full sized.
The show was lightly attended with the strongest crowd numbers showing up Sunday
afternoon. There had been some media coverage on Saturday. I was interviewed
for a local radio station. As usual, the Lego trains are a real crowd pleaser
and we get the usual - didnt know Lego made trains, etc...
We have done shows in Tyler, Tx and now in Marshall, TX - all of these shows
have been for rail historical societies. One of my personal Lego train goals is
to model the fallen flags from East Texas. So the Cotton Belt folks in Tyler
(birthplace of the St Louis and Southwestern - aka Cotton Belt) really like my
Cotton Belt engines and the T&P folks (birthplace in Marshall) really like my
T&P engines in Swamp Holly Orange. Well - Lego orange is close enough! So we
have won some friends.
Our future plans are to build more tables and improve the layout and add more
engines and rolling stock in road colors from East Texas...
for pictures visit the NETLTC website:
NETLTC
also see tonys pictures - links below...
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I took some pictures of my time there, plus some video. Ill link to the
video once I can figure out how to get it out of the camcorder and online.
Full
Gallery
-Tony
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In lugnet.events, Anthony Sava wrote:
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I just recently found out about the existence of the North Eastern Texas LEGO
Train Club (NETLTC), and even more recently discovered that they were going
to be attending the train show in Marshall, Texas. I was only able to attend
one day but the members of NETLTC were kind enough to let me run my trains on
their layout, plus they made me an official member :)
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It was really nice having Tony visit our show and share his steam MOCs with us
and the public at the show. I will be posting a review of the show within a day
or two...
Kirk H
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I took some pictures of my time there, plus some video. Ill link to the
video once I can figure out how to get it out of the camcorder and online.
Full
Gallery
-Tony
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I just recently found out about the existence of the North Eastern Texas LEGO
Train Club (NETLTC), and even more recently discovered that they were going to
be attending the train show in Marshall, Texas. I was only able to attend one
day but the members of NETLTC were kind enough to let me run my trains on their
layout, plus they made me an official member :)
I took some pictures of my time there, plus some video. Ill link to the video
once I can figure out how to get it out of the camcorder and online.
Full Gallery
-Tony
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In lugnet.org.us.texlug, Anthony Sava wrote:
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TexLUG was invited to attend the Institute of Texan Cultures Halloween
Howlr event in San Antonio, which corresponded with their Here Be Dragons!
exhibit. We were asked to put together a medieval/dragon themed display, and
while only Chris MacDougald and I were able to attend, between the two of us
I think we did pretty good (well, the young master MacDougald helped, too).
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Looks like it was a lot of fun! I esp. like the use of upside-down 1x1 orange
bricks for the kiddies trick-or-treat bags!! Very nice detail for sure.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that you managed to take a photo of BrickLinks
main Admin/owner as seen below! ;-)
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TexLUG was invited to attend the Institute of Texan Cultures Halloween Howlr
event in San Antonio, which corresponded with their Here Be Dragons! exhibit.
We were asked to put together a medieval/dragon themed display, and while only
Chris MacDougald and I were able to attend, between the two of us I think we did
pretty good (well, the young master MacDougald helped, too).
We also added a Trick or Seek to our layout - a laundry list of hidden
findables in the layout, with a little prize going to whomever could find
everything on the list. On the list was everything from 10 Harry Potters to
Spongebob and David Hasselhoff. It went so well I have suggested a seek and
find be a permanent part of all of our future public displays (though our mail
server seems to be down at present).
The lighting was horrible for photography in the museum, so I apologize in
advance.
Full Gallery
--Tony
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What: TexLUG-SA Meeting
When: May 19, 2007 - 1PM
Where: Goerkes Country Tavern
Who: TexLUG Austin, San Antonio, and the surrounding areas. Or anyone else
interested in LEGO.
Why: Because we want too.
See: http://www.texlugsa.org/2007/05/09/may-meeting/ for more details.
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