More Collector's Party notes..

Didn't show any Technic (as it was in the Toy Fair display area a few blocks away). But saw the new Exo-Force, Bionicle, Batman and Spongebob line - the room was small, so the display was geared towardthe collectors. There peopl from ToyFar, Actionfigure,com, From Bricks to Bothans, and Raving Toy Maniac, among others.

So here's some more pics:



the rear of the Falcon...



with the cover down...

and Batman stuff -



the Batcopter and Scarecrow's biplane



that's a new motorcycle cowl! From the Battank set



and the Bat Tank! It has a dart gun in the back, like the Batwing!

More coming!

LEGO Collector's Party before Toy Fair

Quick pics:

is was unveiled!



it's big!



can be swooshed ( as about 12 pounds)



can seat 4



and can be easily scanned.



UCS Millennium Falcon - minifig scale. 

There's more coming - I just have been doing way too much and I have been in need of sleep.

Also met and talked with the designer of teh set (who was swooshing the model above, Sean Kenney, Nathan Sawaya, and Steve Witt.

A lot of fun and a lot to write about - so stay tuned!

Bad news/good news

Well, the bad news is that Issue 7 needs to be out at the beginning of March(!)

The good news is that there will be two issues inside of a month....

Hm.

112 pages.

That seems to be the page count for BrickJournal 6.

I get to paginate tomorrow!

Next stop, New York City!

So I just got my ticket to New York City to attend the LEGO Toy Fair Event this coming weekend.

I plan to take pics and upload as soon as I can frm the event, so this will be fun!

LEGO Palooza Day 2 and Wrapup: Or WOW! What fun!

Okay, I'm exhausted.

Been a busy day....

This the 'coast' day of the event, so all I am supposed to do is relax and have some fun and go around and see all the displays.

That didn't happen. I had fun, but I also was busy with my area.



I had 2 NXTs set up as spy robots from Philo's plans and programs - and a third was built on the spot by some boys who dropped by with their father for both days. Since I didn't have another ball on hand (I forgot it), they just put runners in its place. And Huey, Lewey and Dewey were busy playing 'keep away' from the kids at the edge of the tables.

I ended up learning that most of the time, two can run unless there are less than four people at the table. Three can run when the table is full. I also learned that once one falls off the table, at least one other will go down within the next five minutes, so when  one does go, make sure that only one is still running to allow repair - there was one instance when all three were in repair (and that was because some people backed away from the bots!).

This was the general reaction, though:



I got a LOT of questions about the NXT today - and it was really a lot of fun watching everyone interacting with the bots (and the bots were interacting with each other too)



This is when we had 3 fired up and going! That was....frantic. But fun! Everyone had a lot of fun waving the bots away and just watching.

Because of this, though I couldn't walk around like I'm used to - but I did get some pix:



Joe E. at the town layout



Jennifer Joy Poole at her Harry Potter display



Taylor Poole at his Batman display



Cyndi Bradham at her castle display



Carin and Jane Proctor at their retro town layout



Mike Walsh at the train layout

Other people not pictured who participated included Gupreet Jawa, Ian Brusso, Sabrina and Signe Gravatt, Gareth Bowler, and David Winegar.

Also thanks Karen Kornegay and the staff of Morehead Plaetarium for giving us the chance to display and play for the weekedn - it was great!

LEGO Palooza, Day 1.

Simply put, it was a lot of fun!

The oepning of the room was set for noon, and I was running behind schedule, so I made it to the Planetarium at around 11:30. I brought some spaceships and teh NXT stuff and came in straight into last minute building (and stringing) and pulling out the robots.

I had the NXT joystick, the spybot (without camera), and a sound bot (that used a sound avoidance program tat was simply the ultrasound avoidance program with sensor changed from ultrasonic to sound) - three NXT models! And I had two tables to play with them - with obstacles built by Carin and Jane.

And setup was quick, and before I knew it, the door had opend...and atfirst it was quiet. Then the place got filled with people.

And the NXT joystick and rover worked, then went down. I learned about the shutdown time on a brick  - apparently to keep them from running forever. Problem was that everytime the remote or the joystick went down, the bluetooh would have to be reconnected. On top of that the sound bot was set to sensitive - it used the ultrasound settings (which I figured out muchlater) and so it went crazy wi thteh ambient sound of the place.

So I switched the rover to its automode- which uses is ultrasound sensor to avoid obstacles, and let it go on the table - and that was all I needed to do - Kids loved watching it change direction and wavng it way with their hands. And I converted the sound botto another reomote, and set that to go automatically. And for 4 hours, everyone was completely entertained by them.

And there was moore stuff going on, but it was really fun to watch everyone light up when the bots truned and went to another part of the table. And there were many questions from adults and kids alike.  My laptop was on, so people could see the program behind the rovers too.

And except for the few times the rovers fell off the table, it was a pretty esay area to manage.

Great event - and this is only the first day!