That's two radio interviews in the one week. I'm hoping I can get copies of them. Reasonably with how they went, though Tuesday's went a little better than today's, possibly because today my head is full of cotton wool, and thinking is a bit of a struggle.

I'm going to be interviewed on Spin 103.8 FM at about 1.30 today. In case you can't guess, it's about Lego.

If anyone has the ability to record it, I'd love to get a copy (in case I can't find in their Pod Casts.

Someone seems unimpressed at my earlier post about the 50th birthday of Lego bricks.

We've discussed it before, and I know he doesn't "get" Lego.

However, I think anagrams are something he does "get":

Lego Bricks are 50 today!

Even Google is celebrating:

It happens that I'm in London for the weekend that the LegoLand theme park opens for the season. Officially it doesn't open until Saturday (well, that's today), but I learned from the grapevine that they were secretly opening a day early for annual pass holders. As it happens I had a free voucher for an annual pass because I bought a bunch of sets that I'd have bought anyway before Christmas.

After landing in Gatwick, I got the train up to Blackwater, where I met with David, Stuart and Naomi. From there it was about a half hour up to Windsor.

The others already had their annual passes, so I went to get mine sorted out. There was a little girl ahead of me in the queue, sitting on the counter, having her annual pass bought for her. The man behind the counter asked her "and do you know when your birthday is?" The poor child's face suddenly fell, and in a very sad voice she replied, "I've had my birthday." Realising his blunder the man quickly reassured her that it was okay, she could still have her pass and a parent provided the necessary details.



My pass sorted, I rejoined the others and after a browse around the shop, we headed down towards Miniland. We spent a good while browsing around the fantastic models, trying to spot what was new this year, and arguing over whether we'd seen a particular model before. It was a bit tricky, because while there weren't any major new sections, there were quite a few new models that had been slotted into existing displays. The last time I saw it was back in December, when we had a sneaky behind the scenes look while it was closed, so it was good to see it with the water features filled and cars, trucks, trains and boats scurrying about. We did notice a DLR train that had overshot its buffers.



After that we headed down to the Jungle Coaster, which is the best roller coaster in the park, because we thought we ought to get to it before there was a big crowd. We needn't have worried - there was no queue at all. We got straight on, and when we got to the end we had to wait until they got another couple of cars off before we could get off. We went around a second time, but even that was a matter of getting out of our car and into one a couple ahead of us. First time I've ever been on a roller coaster that had a longer queue to get off than to get on!



After wandering around and jumping on a couple of silly kiddy rides, we stopped for a bite to eat (fish and chips). We then found the Pick-a-Brick store, which has now moved from the area near the entrance and is slightly larger. There were some quite good parts available, and I bought a little bit more than I really should have, but you can never have too many Lego bricks, can you?

After a little more wandering, we found ourselves back at the Jungle Coaster, and there was still no queue. Well, why not? We then tried out some JCB diggers and took a train ride around the park before finding ourselves at the castle and popping on to the Dragon Coaster.



As it was getting cold, we started heading back to the entrance area, but we stopped to have a look at the works on the new Viking ride. This is going to be a huge water ride where you are guaranteed to get wet. It sounds a lot of fun, and it certainly looks like they are moving a lot of earth to build it. Apparently they expect to have it finished this summer, so I'll have to come back to see it in action.



It was a fun day out, and it's great to be in a place like that when there aren't too many others there and the queues aren't too long. I picked up a couple on nice things in the shop, most notably a Harry Potter set for less than half price. Special thanks must go to Phil, who we met at the end of the day and very kindly went out of his way to give me a lift over to Stef's.

More photos here.

If I ever did, I take it all back!

Some guys in Germany have built a production line for building Lego cars - entirely out of Lego bricks. It uses lots of Lego Mindstorms RCX robotic controllers to make it all work. You can pick the colours and it will select the parts and assemble the car. Very very impressive.

This link shows a 6 minute video of it manufacturing a car.

I am in London for a short weekend break.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Brickish Christmas Party, where I will spend some time with other Lego geeks. This takes place in LegoLand in Windsor. Although the theme park will be closed, we'll have exclusive access to the Lego shops there, and one or two special offers. It should also be a good chance to meet up some other like minded people. I'm quite looking forward to it. It should be fun, though I will have to resist the temptation to come home with huge amounts of Lego!

I'm not sure about Sunday yet. Anyone want to meet up for a drink somewhere in the London area?

Life has been a bit complicated of late, and I haven't posted very much. This is partly because I'm not comfortable talking about everything that's been going on in a big anonymous forum like LiveJournal. The problem then is that when I meet up with people in person, it gets hard to remember who knows what.

Hopefully I'll get to post a few updates over the next week or two.

The short version is that I've taking a long hard look at my life over the last few months, and at the end of it I'm pretty excited about the future.

Hope to meet up with some of you guys soon!

Oh yeah.

On Friday I flew into Gatwick and got the train up to London bridge (it took just over 30 mins - why would anyone bother paying for the Gatwick Express?).

I met with Stef and we found our way to Flick and Mike's wedding. It was a fantastic party all round, and I believe the earlier part of the day was just amazing. Well done bride and groom.



More photos here!

On Saturday, James, Simoné and I went to Elvis's new house to experiment with Latex and stuff. Their Halloween party should be fun! We came home with several extra fingers, and scoped out a potential convention hotel while we were there.

Sunday, and after Simoné cooked a lovely brunch, we headed for Camden and found a giant bookshelf:



Later we headed out for a most excellent Chinese (still stuffed), and on to the pub to meet people for pints.

Must go to bed now, as tomorrow I'm off to Billund and the Lego factory.

I'll be doing a bit of travelling this weekend...

I fly into London, arriving 17:05, then getting the train into London Bridge for flickgc's and drplokta's wedding reception.

I'm meeting some people over the weekend, but I'm not quite sure who yet as I'm my usual lazy self about organising these things. If you'd like to meet up over the course of the weekend send me a text (you'll get my mobile number here).

On Monday I'm meeting some Lego fans in Gatwick, and we're flying on to Billund in Denmark where we will be treated to a tour of the Lego factory.

On Tuesday, we'll be meeting one of the Lego designers, then spending a few hours in the Danish LegoLand park. We'll then catch a flight back to Gatwick, and from there I'll get my flight back to Dublin.

I can't wait!

I'm going to Billund, Denmark for a tour of the Lego factory.

Can't wait. Shame it's not till September.

I just gotta get one of these:



Shame it's not in two halfs so the bricks would have hollowed out bottoms and you could stack them like normal Lego.

Available from the Lego website.

This is very cool. Make your own 3D chocolate printer. I want one!



Pretty interesting site, Instructables. Lets you share instructions with the world, and allow others to add comments and suggestions.

Ooh! I have to have one!



Don't follow this link unless you want to see more pictures and find out how obscenely expensive it is.