I love Back to The Future. I even have a DeLorean tattoo. Back in December of last year, Lego announced that that they were going to be making a Back to The Future themed set. On Saturday my Back to The Future Lego set arrived and I opened it like a kid on Christmas morning. The set has 401 pieces, plus the usual random selection of spares, and a huge instruction manual. A majority of the manual is to construct the DeLorean from the first film with the last few pages showing the modifications needed to make the other two versions. You get both the “OUTATIME” licence plate as well as the barcode one from the future. The flux capacitor custom brick is great and the time circuit states the destination time, rather than 1955, as 1958 which is the year the first Lego brick was introduced. The gull-wing doors are particularly fun to use, despite not having actual windows in them. They can be a little fragile and tend to fall off if I try and move the set whilst holding them. The Marty and Doc minifigures have double-sided faces (happy and shocked) and Doc has a double sided body;
one side is his lab coat and one is a radiation suit. The figures are slightly too big to fit comfortably into the car, making it somewhat frustrating to close the doors. Although the finished product doesn’t look exactly like the films, it’s pretty close considering it’s made of Lego and if you’re a fan of Back to The Future, you’re going to want this set. I got mine from the Lego online store but it’s available pretty much anywhere Lego sets are sold. How PF Meet Helped Me Get a Placement »Seven year old Charlotte Benjamin penned a letter that went viral in January, criticizing the company for the lack of professional female Legos. This month, the toy manufacturer rolled out a new set called the Research Institute created by female geophysicist, Ellen Kooijman. The set, which costs $20, features three female scientists -- one paleontologist, one astronomer, and one chemist. It seems to address many of Charlotte's concerns. "All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks," she wrote.
" I want you to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?! The set launched on August 1 and was sold out on Lego's website by Monday. The company wouldn't say how many of the sets it's sold so far, but a spokesman said it was "produced in a limited number for select retailers." It's also for sale in Lego store and at Legoland amusement parks and discovery centers in the US and Canada. This isn't Lego's first attempt to go after the female market -- it introduced Lego Friends in December 2011, targeted specifically to girls. Those sets feature everything from a bakery to a pet salon and a juice bar. But there's a real shortage of women in science and technology fields. According to Girls Who Code, an organization devoted to bridging the computer science skills gender gap, women earn a mere 12 percent of computer science degrees. That's down from 1984, when the figure stood at 37 percent. "Studies show that girls in adolescence start to lose their confidence," said Nathalie Molina Niño, co-founder of Entrepreneurs@Athena, a Barnard College initiative for women entrepreneurs.
"That means...you have to catch them before then."If you would like to appear to be from a different country - e.g. to change the displayed currencies - select a country from below. {'SERVER_PORT': '80', 'wsgi.version': (1, 0), 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING': 'gzip', 'REMOTE_ADDR': '122.248.196.19', 'CONTENT_LENGTH': '', 'HTTP_USER_AGENT': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; n_once': False, 'wsgi.multithread': False, 'HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP': '122.248.196.19', 'wsgi.url_scheme': 'http', 'HTTP_CF_RAY': '339831ea0428179e-SIN', 'HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY': 'SG', 'wsgi.file_wrapper': , 'SCRIPT_NAME': '', 'SERVER_PROTOCOL': 'HTTP/1.1', 'REQUEST_METHOD': 'GET', 'REQUEST_URI': '/blog/5/compare-lego-sets/', 'QUERY_STRING': '', '', '', 'wsgi.multiprocess': True, 'wsgi.input': , 'wsgi.errors': <_io.TextIOWrapper name=2 mode='w' encoding='UTF-8'>, 'uwsgi.version': b'2.0.11.1', 'SERVER_NAME': '127.0.0.1', 'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/home/nathan/rb/site'} Here's a new feature that I think will come in extremely handy.
The new Compare Sets page (under the Sets menu) lets you pick two sets and see which parts they have in common and which parts from each set are unique.First, simply enter two set ids (or MOC ids). You can use the magnifying glass to bring up a search box if you prefer. Click the Compare button when ready.A simple side-by-side comparison of the two sets will be shown. First a summary of the number of parts they have in common. Click the "Show Parts" link to toggle display of these parts.Under that, there are two columns of parts. The left column shows parts that are in the first set but not in the second. The right column shows parts that are in the second set but not in the first.Not much to it really. Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit gets an education, school-friendly platform to ship August 2013 Lego's new Mindstorms EV3 kit isn't all just gun-firing robots and killer scorpions. Unfortunately, there's also some learning to be done, with the new Mindstorm EV3 kit ready to land in schools this August.
Lego reckons the kit touches on several curriculum areas like computer science, math, engineering mixed with (we hope) a little fun -- c'mon, it's class-time Lego! We got to have a brief play with it back at CES, and as far as Lego goes, it appears to have more than enough additions to keep young minds ticking over, including Linux firmware that connects to Android and iOS apps, infrared and its very own 3D construction guide from Autodesk. The core kit includes the EV3 brick nerve center, a rechargeable battery, sensors, motors, a pile of bricks, a new ball wheel and (thankfully) instructions. Added to that, the teaching set includes a "customizable curriculum", digital workbook and 48 step-by-step tutorials to get the lil' tykes started. LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 Platform Available August 1, 2013 for Classrooms PITTSBURG, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 platform will begin shipping August 1, 2013. The education platform is now available in the U.S. for educators to preorder.
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS: The LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 platform will begin shipping August 1, 2013. Announced in January 2013, the LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 platform is the third generation of LEGO Education robotics technology designed for classroom use. It is a full teaching solution developed with educators to actively engage students in a number of key curriculum areas such as computer science, science, technology, engineering, and math correlated to national standards. The EV3 platform includes customizable curriculum and digital workbooks; a hardware platform based on real-world robotics technology for engaging, hands-on activities; an intuitive software platform consisting of both programming and data-logging interface including 48 step-by-step tutorials; and extensive professional development courses. The LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 Core Set comes with the EV3 Brick, rechargeable battery, sensors, motors, large brick selection, a new ball wheel, and building instructions.