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Author Topic: DF Miniprojects?  (Read 4853 times)

Starver

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #30 on: October 12, 2011, 11:46:58 am »

Ahh, I suppose it had to do with the way I stored all my tiles. One big ton, turned over for playing purposes.
Back then, I actually had a big drawstring bag (that my mum made) which all the 'classic' lego went into, but when undrawn and laid out into a big sheet was (relatively) easy to sift through for anything but the rarest pieces.  Space Lego (I go back to when there were just red and white astronauts, not quite far enough back for just the one colour) and Space-sets compatible town-set bricks did eventually get stored more orderly, and Technic lego (starting from the blue helicopter, with gyrocopter alt) was immediately sorted into some stackable plastic boxes (all axles in one, all "little grey things" in another, all pin-type grey-things in another) or otherwise stored together (all yellow beams bunched together with yellow plates, all blue beams bunched together with blue plates).  When the first pneumatic sets came out, I went for "all pneumatic components stuff in one box", IIRC, all the way from the little T-pieces to the sprung pumping piston, including both black and grey air-tubes.

When I revived my collecting with the very first Star Wars-themed sets (some time after all but the most occasional purchase of Technic, IIRC) I did try and keep each set within each box, barring the occasional bit of temporary cross-pollination of parts.  If not fully constructed (hard to do with some of the larger models), then carefully disassembled into sections that would either slide into the boxes (smaller models) or lay in the large-side opening boxes without too much inhibition of the closing process.  The original Collector's Set Blockade Runner was never disassembled, and is currently gathering dust (and the rubber bands used to keep the truncated cone segments closed, doubtless perished) in the tray of the unclosable box on top of a cupboard.  My attitude with the Star Wars stuff is very much an antithesis to my old pleasures, and perhaps affected by the concept of them being potentially collectable.  (Which, because by then the concept of Collectible Stuff had already been proven with the original Star Wars merchandise, is probably far from true and a pipe-dream.  They are also by no means in prime-condition, and definitely not unopened, packaging.  Other than that, I suppose some of the models in this range that I possess might be worth something equivalent to the inflation-adjusted original purchase price.)  It's not even as if I have been able to maintain a completist approach to this series (although I have at least four different versions of the X-Wing (possibly five), and at least a triptych insofar as the Millenium Falcon, not including the currently available versions.

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Thinking of it, I really can't remember green brick tiles. Not sure about brown, but I think I was really short on green bricks.
The first 'more standard', and not absolutely 'biological' green bricks I remember (excepting green-transluscent ones, from the Space series, used as either navigation lights on the various space-planes/vehicles or (interestingly, given the original no-war mandate) the "glowy end" of the lasergun-like/possible-scanner-like pieces) were perhaps from the very early 90s or probably late 80s.  I have in mind some Technic set that included one or two 2x1 standard-height normal blocks in a non-beam situ as decoration.  But this is a very vague recollection.  I think green bricks got particularly prevalent in the Star Wars series (Slave I and/or II, there having been several versions of this, and even discounting pure "vegetation" pieces, like the "swamp stuff to hang off of the X-Wing" pieces, decoration around Yoda's house I think there are other green blocks in there... plus green lightsaber 'beams', in their transluscent green stuff) but I had spent some time only casually observing the changing world of Lego.  Some of the other themed stuff (Indiana Jones, that generic adventure series, maybe Harry Potter) or indeed green-liveried train-sets might also be using them, but they never interested me enough to purchase them.  And I'm pretty sure that with their brick-ordering service (which I last used in the early 80s to gather together 1000 or so caterpillar-track links for a project at that time which merely caused me to burn out the two Technic motors that I had accumulated at that time) has been able to service green-brick needs for anyone that wants them for at least two decades.

Indeed, they've very much strayed away from the "no weapons" ideology.  And given that the late 70s space series men had those gun-like pieces (and in the early 80s this became more obvious with the black "bazooka with sighting ring"-type item, or whenever that eight-wheeled multi-suspensioned rocket carrier/launcher first came about... I know I got it for a birthday, but not which one) it has long been the case.


But I fear I digress from the subject at hand. :)
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hjd_uk

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #31 on: October 12, 2011, 12:00:41 pm »

Newton
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Charles Babbage -> Analytical Engine
Bletchley Park -> Collossus

Could go on but can't be arsed :)
You're mildly ninjaed, and I'm sure a continental bod will counter at least with the likes of Leibniz, Pascal and Zuse's Z3 that I already mentioned.

(Not too sure who would counterpart Brunel, the trouble being that he was working right at the beginning of the era we sort of created (YMMV)... But if there was one person primarily responsible for the engineering part of the modern TGV (or ICE, or whatavyer) rail system then they might be considered comparable.  Don't know quite so much about trains, though, so really can't be sure.)

At no point did I mean to infer "we're better" just wanted to add a few to the "us too" list :)

I really wish Babbage had been given the money to make his Analytical engine etc -the mind boggles at where computing might be now.

Anyway - Thread derailed. ill shutup.
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Starver

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #32 on: October 12, 2011, 12:19:57 pm »

I really wish Babbage had been given the money to make his Analytical engine etc -the mind boggles at where computing might be now.
See the book 'The Difference Engine' (ironically) by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, for a mere few years into such an alternate history.

(Reminds me, I meant to see if I could get myself a copy of some 'Space: 1889' RPG resource books or other materials.  Purely for the reading pleasure, at the moment.)

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Anyway - Thread derailed. ill shutup.
It appears that self-awareness (and announcements to that effect) of my own derailing has not yet stopped me.  I'd apologise again, but I don't think anybody would take such an attempt to convey my contriteness seriously, any more.
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Sappho

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #33 on: October 13, 2011, 05:04:03 am »

It would be so awesome if we could just take all those posts full of people trying to prove who knows the most trivial bit of completely useless unrelated information and stick them somewhere else, so the rest of us could enjoy the original purpose of this thread (which I am still very interested in).

My current project is simply to make an interesting fortress (in whatever way proves easiest) which I can kill off fairly quickly and upload for others to explore in adventure mode as archaeologists, a la this thread about Minecraft. Unfortunately, I'm having a harder time than expected making the fort reasonably interesting without getting so invested that I no longer want to let it die...

Catastrophic lolcats

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #34 on: October 13, 2011, 05:24:08 am »

*Looks at his hands*
What have I done?!? A whole thread lost with no chance of salvage ...

*Walks into a lake*
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dr_random

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #35 on: October 14, 2011, 07:59:20 am »

*Looks at his hands*
What have I done?!? A whole thread lost with no chance of salvage ...

*Walks into a lake*
True, but I learned things I either never knew or had completely forgotten about one of my favourite playthings back from my childhood. *Pulls Pre-poster out of lake again*
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Gamerlord

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Re: DF Miniprojects?
« Reply #36 on: October 14, 2011, 08:18:03 am »

Awesome megaproject: Dig out a mountain, with a one-square entrance at the bottom so that all squares that don't adjoin to the outside are gone. Then build a city out of the stone. This megaproject leaves shit-tons of stone for other mega-projects so it can be considered as a side-project!
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