This is a video of one of Geekologie Reader Liz's coworkers at the LEGO Store in Minneapolis showing off his homemade LEGO Portal Gun. The gun took about a year to plan, three weeks to build, and is just under 2,000 pieces. It has a LEGO Mindstorm controller stuffed inside, so the prongs can be opened and closed via a switch, as well as some light-up effects. Now blast a hole in the floor and make that kid in the background crash into a display! Hit the jump for the demo. Thanks to Liz, who allegedly got to shoot the thing before and sent a LEGO Lord Of The Rings playset to kingdom-come. Shit, next time shoot one over to my place! Z-World Detroit: Concept To Turn An Abandoned Area Of The City Into A Zombie Outbreak Experience Theme Park Feel-Good Friday: Ron Perlman And Special Effects Studio Team Up For 'Hellboy' Make-A-Wish Foundation Wish Modern radio drama 'Paranoria, TX' releases 100th episode Wikinews interviews India's first female Paralympic medalist Deepa Malik
Wikinews interviews Augustus Sol Invictus, Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate Wikinews interviews Rocky De La Fuente, U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past Wikinews interviews Steve Burke, U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Wikinews interviews painter Pricasso on his art and freedom of expression Biologist Nick Bos tells Wikinews about 'self-medicating' ants Wikinews interviews Mark Everson, U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Wikinews interviews Christopher Hill, U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Pillars of Wikinews writing 17-year-old Jack Streat has accomplished something some people spend a lifetime reaching for: he's a published author. Streat's book, "LEGO Heavy Weapons: Build Working Replicas of Four of the World's Most Impressive Guns", was released in May by indie publisher No Starch Press. The book features detailed drawings and explanations on how to build highly sophisticated working models of 4 assault weapons, including the Desert Eagle handgun, among others.
Wikinews interviewed Jack, to learn more about his passion for building. Jack Streat, with a LEGO weapon model.First, how old are you now and how old were you when the book was published?Who is the publisher of the book?How long have you been serious about LEGOs?Are there any designers/creators who've inspired you?Educationally, where are you: finished with high school? What have your parents/family thought about your passions for LEGOs?With the publishing world, did you face any challenges in getting your book published? Jack Streat, with a copy of his book, "LEGO Heavy Weapons".Are you working on another book at present?Have there been other activities/classes that have helped your LEGO work improve?Where can our readers see videos or other forms of your work?This is where you train to become a Master Builder! Starting with the basics, you’ll face a series of building challenges in different locations. Before you know it, you'll be building complex magical worlds of your own.
What happened to DESIGN byME? The original Design byMe vision was for a unique customization service, where consumers could design whatever they imagined on their computer, and buy the real model in their own LEGO box. Design byMe attracted several million people each year to build a huge range of amazing creations using the LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) software. Despite this success, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service. As a result, the LEGO® Design byME service was closed in January 2012. Where did my models go? You can still design what you want with LEGO Digital Designer and upload models into a public gallery on the new LEGO Digital Designer website. All of your old existing models have been transferred the new LDD gallery . You will also be able to generate building instructions from LEGO Digital Designer to build your models. What about other Custom products? This is not the end of customization for the LEGO Group, but a revision.
We believe in the future of customization, but the service we offer has to be right for our consumers. If you wish to buy bricks separately, you can use our Pick a Brick service. The LEGO Design byME and the LEGO Factory team would like to thank you all for six great years of custom building! Please contact our consumer service department if you have any additional questions.I don't want to be one of those people saying you were either a Lego or K'nex kid growing up because I had and loved both. But as a rent paying, superannuation having adult, I'm gonna go ahead and take a stand. K'nex is superior to Lego in every way. For a long time K'nex sets were superior because they included instructions for so many things you could build from one box, while Lego gave you instructions for just that one damn castle and expected you to just imagine new builds. But now K'nex is superior because you can build some really sweet dart guns out of the pieces. Can't do that with your Lego bricks.
You also can't customise a Nerf gun like you can a K'nex gun. If you want to build a giant targeting sight on the front of your K'nex K-Force gun, you can. If you want to link four K'nex guns together and create one giant K'nex gun like something out of Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book, you can do that too. Despite the aggressive name of K-Force, Knex's series of build-able dart guns are downright whimsical. But if you're buying a whole range of the gun sets with the hopes of recapturing the glory days of weekend-long K'nex builds you'll be out of luck. I found that even the most complicated build (K'nex include instructions for one in the box and have multiple others available online) only took me a little more than 30 minutes, and some of the smaller builds, like the pistol and crossbow above, took less than fifteen. So they're fun K'nex builds, but they're the easy kind. The most difficult part of building one is figuring out how the shooting mechanisms work so you can start to play around with newer and more imaginative builds.
Each K-Force model seems to have its own firing mechanism so you have to reinvent the wheel every time. Fortunately, they all shoot darts really well. The boxes claim each gun will shoot a dart up to 23m and I found that to be a very accurate measurement. The only downside, at least compared to other foam dart gun systems, is that there aren't a lot of rapid-fire guns in the K-Force line up. K'nex only sent me one, a mingun, and I couldn't finish the build because the set was missing a key piece of the firing mechanism. That was a major bummer. In another case, a gun was missing all its foam darts. And two different builds had multiple leftover pieces in the box. These issues could be chalked up to a problem with PR samples (I'm crossing my fingers), or there could be a problem at the manufacturer level. But when the parts are in hand, and the gun is built it's hard to care about the little snafus. Constructing my first gun I felt like some badass assassin piecing together a sniper rifle on a rooftop.