The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide

I’ve posted before about cycling. Well, at least once that I can recall. I meant to post more. So, I’ve created a new category now and will try to do so.

Cycling’s been on my mind a lot in the last little while. About two and half weeks ago I was reading Wired Blogs: Gadget Lab. That’s something I’ve done before, as I’m a bit of a gadget geek (among the many other types of geek I am). This particular day I thought it was interesting that they were talking about a bike instead of an MP3 player or a cell phone or some such thing.

The thing that really caught my eye though, was the bike itself. Matte grey? Who makes a bike like that? And especially when that’s the only color choice. A single speed with a coaster brake? Was this a production bike or just some sort of prototype? And who or what was Swobo?

But the more I looked at the bike and read about it (on Wired and then on the Swobo site) I really began to think that someone at this little California cycling clothing (now also bike) company had been reading my mind. Let me back up a step…

I took up cycling as an adult about 11 years ago as a means of avoiding commuting to work by bus when I lived in a larger city than where I live now. Turns out it was a great way to commute, but I found I loved cycling for pleasure just as much as for getting to work. But at the time, when I first decided to buy a bike, our finances weren’t the best. So a used ride was the best I could do at the time. As it turns out I found a Crown Apache for $89 at a 2nd hand store. For those of you not familiar with this bike it was an early version of a mountain bike, though built with road bike gearing. It was a 12-speed hardtail (52-14 as the highest gear ratio) with massive knobby tires mounted on chrome rims. If you’ve ever ridden chrome rims in the rain you’ll know that wasn’t the best design decision ever made by a bike company. LOL

Fast forward a few years and I found and later restored a Roby single speed that likely dates from the early 1970s. Although I’ve been told some of the components on it are much older than the frame. I wrote about that bike in a previous blog entry.

But in more than a decade of riding bikes as an adult there was one thing that had been missing. A new bike to call my own. Yup, that sounds kinda child-like I guess, but then look at my other main hobby. I don’t mind being child-like sometimes… it often beats being an adult.

When I saw the Swobo bike on the Wired blog there were two thoughts going through my head:

1) It’s like someone took my favorite things about each of my two bikes and used them to create one new bike.

2) That’s a new bike!

And after just a couple days of deliberation I couldn’t resist anymore. I ordered one.

It wasn’t really in the budget at the time and you could argue I still had a working bike… or two. After all, I was riding my Roby to work daily come rain or shine.

But this was a new bike. And given that where I live there is only one bike shop that sells only two brands of bikes, this was a chance to have something truly unique.

The bike arrived just a few days later and after sending one of my kidneys to the government to cover duty and taxes I had a new bike sitting in my living room. If you’d been here last Friday night, this is what you would have seen:

Yes, that’s a partly assembled Swobo Folsom. That’s the way they come out of the box. Brilliantly packaged, but not over-packaged.

My wife took pics of me putting the front wheel on and attaching the handle bars. I’ll post more of those later, as well as pics of the bike in action and probably pics taken while out riding.

The Folsom is already my daily commuting vehicle and the Roby hasn’t seen asphalt in a week. My plan is to keep the Roby, since I’m a bona-fide single speed addict now, but I think the old Crown needs to go to the Goodwill, so that hopefully someone else who’s just starting out in cycling can afford to get on the road the way I did. It’s not a great bike, but it goes… and it stops. Two very important attributes of any bike!

Remember your helmets kids… and turn off that damn music player. Enjoy the ride (safely)!

Allan

I was a little worried the other day, when I first saw this mentioned on LUGNET, that it might just be a rumor or a practical joke.

But it would appear that The LEGO Group has indeed secured the rights to release Indiana Jones themed LEGO sets.

If you think back to 1998 and how well the Star Wars license did (specifically in drawing adults back to the hobby) I can only hope that this new series will be successful also. You can argue that LEGO should be developing their own themes and characters, and in fact I would probably agree with you. But you can’t get around the fact that more people buying more LEGO sets (for whatever reason) is a good thing.

I, for one, would love to see a model of the map room from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know, the one where Indy goes to figure out the location of the Well of Souls. But there’s really not much ‘action’ that happens there, so I’m not sure other fans, especially kids, would be as interested in that as I would.

But the press release does mention a set based on the escape from the temple and the now classic boulder scene. Of course… he escapes one peril only to fall into another. But then, that’s what makes that movie so much fun, isn’t it? Raiders is easily my second favorite movie of all time behind Star Wars. In case you were curious.

Allan

This Amazon Listmania List would be cool even if my book weren’t on it.

Check out some of the amazing how to build your own…… type books on this list!

Allan

Remember a little while ago I posted an entry about a really cool LEGO Vic-20?

Well, Joe Meno made sure that the instructions for it got included in the most recent edition of BrickJournal. I’m pretty sure I have about 75% of the parts I need to make one. So I’m slowly trying to figure out which ones I need (or need more of) and I’m going to order them from Bricklink. I think it would be really funny to have this model sitting on my desk next a a “modern” computer.

Allan

I’m not sure why, but I find this story utterly fascinating:

Scientists Grinding ‘Perfect’ Spheres

Though it does leave me wondering how many imperfect spheres there are in the world.

Allan

I find it both amazing and comforting to know when each issue of BrickJournal is released. Afterall, this is the LEGO hobby community’s only true periodical. So the fact that we’re already up to issue #8 is fantastic.

You can find all the download information on Joe’s posting to LUGNET.

There is a bitter-sweet tone to this issue though. Sadly Eric Brok, the fan designer of the new Market Street set, passed away at the beginning of this week. I remember Eric’s LEGO On My Mind website as being one of the first adult LEGO builder websites I discovered back in the late 1990s when I got back into LEGO building. Thankfully this issue of BrickJournal is a real celebration of one of Eric’s great accomplishments. Enjoy it, enjoy his work. He was a true asset to the LEGO community.

Allan

I saw this tugboat on Brickshelf the other day and was struck by how realistic it looked, without using a huge number of specialized pieces.

With the exception of some of the railings and other fittings, the majority of the model is formed of basic bricks, plates and slopes… my favorite type of LEGO parts.

So check out the rest of the gallery for more shots of this excellent model.

Allan

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I LOVE the LEGO sets from the 1970s, being that they were the ones I grew up with as a kid.

So you can imagine my delight when I saw Thomas Main’s posting on LUGNET the other day announcing that he’d created microscale versions of two of my favorite sets, including the hospital (#555):

If you love these sets even a little, you owe it to yourself to read Thomas’s post and then check out all the models that he’s posted on Brickshelf.

Allan

The proposal’s been submitted. Test page layouts have been completed. The Table of Contents is written.

Stay tuned for more details coming soon!

Allan

I was going through some of the stats for my website today and noticed a hit coming from someone who’d searched Google for the phrase, “how to make a LEGO sphere". Apotome.com comes up in the results, as the book contains instructions to make a sphere, but I noticed another site that I’d forgotten about that also came up in the results. That site belongs to Philippe Hurbain.

Here’s his amazing multi-color sphere built with nothing more than the contents of one of the old blue 3033 tubs.

After looking around Philippe’s site for a minute I noticed that he’s also the co-author of a new book called Extreme NXT about the newer LEGO Mindstorms system. Congratulations Philippe, I wish you great success with your book!

Allan B.