FLL Day One

Well, I'll start out by saying that we (me and Tommy Armstrong) arrived late. Traffic is bad going to Atlanta during rush hour. And this time there was a wreck. No fun, and a long drive.

And at the last intersection, we witnessed a car wreck when a car tried to run a red light...it was not a high speed wreck, but both cars were torn up.

But once we got to the event at the World Congress Center and Georgia Dome, things just got busy...at the LEGO NXT booth, Bryan Bonahoom of BrickWorld was one fo the volunteers showing off robots. From LEGO, Steven Canvin and Vince Rubino were present as well as other staff from Education.

All the teams were settling into their spaces, so decorations were coming up as the day went on. And one of teams was gnome-based:



so naturally, one of their sponsors was Travelocity:-)

By the LEGo Booth, LEGO Education had a table with Jim Kelly from the NXT Step blog showing off some stuff, like:



and NXT Segway or Legway - designed by Steve Hassenplug and built by Jim! It uses a HiTechnic gyro sensor to keep it in balance.

Speaking of Technic stuff, one of the FLL teams had a Great Ball Contraption at their space:



At the Georgia Dome,there was practice heats going on, and teams waiting...



and teams playing...



And after all this, there was an ice cream social with entertainment bythe teams... so one team did a rap



another team did a rubik's cube-off, with Scott Evans, one of teh challenge designers of FLL helping out



Another team from Denmark gave out lyrics to a song that they sang



EDIT: I have the lyrics to the song from the Danes:

Dear
Ladies and Gentlemen
Young and Old
Girls and Boys

Hope you will sing with us

Hold your hands above your head
And clap along

And now we sing

Hey NXT - Nano
We are a teaaam - Who likes the FLL
Hey U.S.A. - Nano
We are many here, right here - Who likes the FLL

Our team is NXT
Generation is part of it
What we love is to make
Make this day oh so great

Hey NXT - Nano
We are a teaaaam - Who like the FLL
Hey USA - Nano
We are many, right here - Who likes the FLL

Our robot is looking so great
Program it is very very straight
Driving left and right and back again
Oh we hope its working working well

Yes we are the greatest team
We are sweet and we are cool
Nobody can drive us off
We are NXT GENERATION yes

Hey NXT - Nano
We are a teaaaam - Who likes the FLL
Hey USA - Nano
We are many here, right here - Who likes the FLL

Hey NXT - Nano
We are a teaaaam - Who likes the FLL
Hey Hey Atlanta - Nano
We are many here,
right here - Who likes the FLL

Hey Everybody - Nano
We are the teaaaam who wish you all a good day



The Haitian team did a nativ dance, and there were many more...but a nice performance was done by a team that did a sonng that was based on theBrady Bunch theme - that wished all the other teams good luck...


and at the end they all held signs that said good luck in all the languages that were at the World Festival...that was really nice!

And teh best way to sum up the day?



Just bubbly:-)!

Off to FLL!

wearing my Hawaiian shirt that was given to me by the SPIDERS team in Hawaii!

I figure I will be pretty distinctive!

What the...:-)

Way to go, Arvo!

You can see the entire car at the gallery.

It's a beaut, but it's Arvo, so that's kinda expected:-)

Certified Professionals At Work...

Nathan Sawaya has a display in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the local paper has a story.

A little earlier in the month, Sean Kenney was in New York building an alligator at FAO Schwarz.

Progress on website...

I added graphics to three more articles, and an extended gallery. There's a long way to go, but I got a couple of articles that actually look like something I want!

I created a web article for the Squidmen that not only has a photo gallery, but also has video from the creator's films he did for BrickFest last year!

The photos are going to kill me, it appears.

If you are wondering what all of this looks like, drop me a line, and I will invite you to the test site. It's very much a work in progress, though.

Here's something I have been wanting to do, and hope to see in the BrickJournal website - a video podcast review!

Thanks to millionaireplayboy.com and Joe Fulton over there for point me to this!




Another reason for a website:-)

Website progress report...

BrickJournal.com is in its first stages of growth, with intial pages being placed, and a site map slowly growing.

While some things are obvious to do (archives, for example), there are other things that are, well....not so obvious. The service that I am using also is having some interesting issue - at this point, I need to get some forms up, and they can't do it yet. Hm. And photos can only be seen by members of the webiste (which isn't a bad thing, but not necessarily a good thing either)

All of the article copy to Issue 7 has been placed, but because of the photo problem, there are only a few pix so far. All of them have also been tagged so a user can search by author, issue, article title or subject.

I will also be placing galleries of pics I didn't use in this so everyone can see more than the magazine:-). Not to mention video if I can get it - I plan to do video of FLL next week, for example.

And BrickJournal Germany is already beginning, as well as BrickJournal Italy. I will be doing what I can to creat an international site, so I am open to ideas and thoughts on that.

Both BrickJournal Germany and Italy are going under BrickJournal, but I will not the the webmaster - community leaders of hte respective countries are working with me on this. I really appreciate their efforts  and hope that  other  countries will become  represented in the magazine.