Jetro's blog

Despite rumours to the contrary, I seriously doubt anyone really believed the Lord Of The Rings theme was finished after a single year. However, none of the early rumours pointed to anything remotely similar to a ship in this theme.  The fact of the matter is that the pirate ships used by the army of the dead are only a marginal (though not unimportant) part of the story as a whole, but a ship allows for a different kind of construction from what we have seen so far in this theme. The piece count is relatively low for the largest set in a theme, but the set contains a number of rather large pieces (the hull parts and sails) that give the set a considerable volume. In addition, the set comes with no less than 9 minifigures, many of which are exclusive to the set.

Thanks to a colaboration between LEGO® Australia and Google we can now enjoy this latest Chrome experiment. The app is called Build and allows you to explore and build a new world of LEGO constructions online.

The LEGO bricks have been created with WebGL, which allows for some powerful 3D in the browser and show the great performance of. It is all connected to Google Maps which puts these LEGO creations in reach of everyone.
For now it is only available for Australia and New Zealand and it is expected to be launched in other countries soon.

You can start using Build at buildwithchrome.com
 

To those really up to date with LDraw this is of course old news and to those really not that up to date it may seem the kind of information that sounds good, but you are not quite sure what to do with it...

Well, let me explain. The LDConfig.ldr file is a file that contains all the colour definitions that are used by the various LDraw compatible programs. You may remember that some time ago we published an interview with Micael Lachman (at least the initials should ring a bell...) who explained that MLCad would be changed to use LDConfig.ldr for colour definitions. It is important that the file is updated becasue it now reflects the latest incorporations into the palette of colours that LEGO surrently uses (and the new colours use the internal numbers LEGO uses for the colours to make things easier).

New in this version are Medium_Azure (322), Medium_Lavender (30), and Olive_Green (326). Additionally a new internal colour (493) for Magnet materials has been introduced.

The file will be included in the next edition of the All-In-One Installer (AIOI), but should you want to start using it right away, it can be downloaded from the Core Files and Libraries download page. For a full list of colours in a practical format you should visit the LDraw.org colour chart.

A little later than hoped for, but this is the second part of the collaboration between LEGO, Ericsson and Hispabrick Magazine. A robot (or rather 12 robots) to play a game of soccer..

For the last couple of weeks, a number of HispaBrick Magazine collaborators have been preparing for this and we can finally show you what we have been up to. In collaboration with LRoboticas.net and students from La Salle, HBM pis participating in a MINDSTORMS event organised by LEGO and Ericsson at the Mobile World Congress.

During the weekend we have put the finishing touches to the MINDSTORMS robots:

It's a great day for LEGO® Star Wars™ fans as the ELGO Group has announced the Star Wars lisence has been renewed for the next 10 years. Since 1999 the LEGO® Star Wars theme has been a success with more than 200 million sets sold and over 400 characters of the saga reproduced as minifigs.

Below the official press release:

In the previous blogpost I talked about the 2011-2 Parts Update and mentioned how easy itis to install it using the windows executable (.exe) that is available on the LDraw.org website. However, I forgot two important details I must mention.

First of all there is the location of the LDraw folder on your hard disk. Traditionally LDraw parts and programs were installed to C:\LDraw. However, the All-In-One-installer (AIOI) uses a different default location C:\Program Files (x86)\LDraw. This cretaes a conflict between the LDraw.org Parts Update executable for the 2011-2 update and the files installed by the AIOI. Nothing serious though. You simply need to remember to change the installation folder the LDraw.org executable proposes to match the location the AIOI used, but it is an important detail.

Secondly, there is another, possibly easier, method to update your parts library: by means of LDView (included in the AIOI). If you open LDview and go to File>Library Updates... a window will open informing you of the progress the application makes checking your parts library and downloading and installing any missing files..

However, there is a small problem with this method if you are using Windows 7 as this Operating System won't allow LDview to make changes to the installation folder! To solve this minor issue you need to open the windows explorer and go to the LDraw installation folder (which the AIOI by default sets to C:\Program Files (x86)). Once there you need to right-click on the LDraw foñder and select "Properties". In the window that opens you need to uncheck the "Read only" check box and agree to all the questions the you will be asked. After this yu will be abel to use LDView to update your LDraw Parts Library.
 

A new update of the LDraw Parts Library has been made available recently. It is the second update of 2011 and contains 786 elements, with a total of 474 new parts.

The update can be downloaded from LDraw.org and the new parts that are aincluded can be seen on the preview page.

The All-In-One-Installer (AIOI) will be updated shortly to include these new parts. In the mean time, even if you are doing a completely new installation, including the update is very easyas the update is available as a windows executable, making automatic installation very easy.

Michael Lachman has just announced a new version of MLCad on LUGNET:

Hello all,

I would like to announce that there is a new version of MLCad available!

MLCad V3.40

What's new:

• Implemented basic undo functionality (might be a bit slow, but should work)
• Improvements for network installation or installation under Windows Vista and above. MLCad now doesn't write to its installation path anymore.
• Save pictures in more formats, now supporting Bitmap, Jpeg, Gif, Tiff and Png.
• Serveral bug-fixes

More detailed information is available in the release notes and on the web-site:

http://mlcad.lm-software.com

I wish you fun with the new release and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Best regards,

Michael

Having the 11th of Decembre as a reference for BYFMTWW can be a little cponfusing this year: is Sunday the first or the last day of the week?

In any case, this week is nearing its end so I'm leaving you some of the pictures that were taken for the Bring-Your-Favourite-Minifig-To-Work-Week:

Hispabrick Magazine is pleased to present the new minifigs of the 6th series. The collectible minifig series 6 uses grey as its distinctive colour both on the box and the bags.

As you can see there isn't any code to help identify the content of each bag.

Without further ado, we will have a look at all the minifig. The best way to do that is by showing a picture of the front and back of each one as well as of the parts. In some cases we have added a shot of an interesting detail.

 Aunque la información es de hace ya un mes, no ha sido hasta ahora que nos ha llegado. Se trata de una nota de prensa anunciando novelas gráficas para la línea Ninjago, publicadas por Papercutz, editorial que también publica las noveñas gráficas de BIONICLE®

Official Press Release

Last May, Papercutz, the graphic novel publisher of GERONIMO STILTON, THE SMURFS, BIONICLE®, and DISNEY FAIRIES, announced that its newest series of licensed graphic novels would be based on the red-hot toy line LEGO NINJAGO. Three short months later, Terry Nantier, the publisher of the Papercutz, details that pre-orders for the first LEGO NINJAGO graphic novel, LEGO NINJAGO #1: The Challenge of Samurkai ($6.99) “are the strongest we’ve ever seen.” So strong in fact, that the pre-orders top 150,000 copies. This is a record-breaking achievement for Papercutz.

Para entender qué es LEGO CUUSOO echad un vistazo a este divertido vídeo: