My Lego Page
I am primarily a collector of sets, and do little freestyle building. I
have three seperate collections of Lego: sets, loose bricks for creating,
and old bricks from my childhood.
The sets I keep disassembled and grouped together by
theme (Wild West, Pirates, Ninjas etc.). I don't have room to display it all,
and dusting the whole collection is such a pain, so instead I rotate what
I have on display. The added bonus is that it's nice to refamiliarize yourself
with a neat set by rebuilding it, and visitors can see details in a few sets,
rather than be overwhelmed by a large amount of stuff. Many people believe
that sets are bad, because Lego is supposed to be about freestyle creativity,
not getting in line and following instructions. First of all, Lego was originally
wooden toys created by an out of work carpenter in Denmark, so the point
has always been for the company to make money. Secondly, there are all sorts
of neat shaped or decorated pieces that you can only get in sets. Lastly,
giving children toys for which they have to read instructions if they
want what's on the front of the box is a good thing, because it teaches them
how to follow instructions. If they don't learn, then you get all sorts of
bozo adults who don't bother with instruction manuals. You may not think
its a big deal, but these people deal with all sorts of frustrations, like
having their VCR flash 12:00 forever because they haven't read the manual.
They also miss important safety information, like "don't use your cell phone
around open gas fumes", which has actually started several gas station fires.
Furthermore, the instructions in Lego sets can teach children neat building
tricks they may not have thought of, giving them more skills in building.
When a painter uses a certain technique, do we call him uncreative? Only
if he's using paint by numbers! It's the same with Lego. No, it isn't creative
to follow instructions. But learning how the professionals do something
can help you to express your own creativity. Of course, all of this applies
to children, who are just beginning to learn, whereas I am approximately
an adult, and can therefore do whatever I want with my own toys, so if you
don't like the way I collect, shut up and get your own Lego!
My loose bricks I keep sorted by shape into small parts
organizers and containers. There are also people think that this is no way
to treat Lego, that it should all be jumbled together because part of the
fun is to search through everything, looking for that special piece you
need. However, I have too much Lego to be able to remember how many of which
piece I have in my building collection, and keeping all my 2x2 bricks together
allows me to look and quickly see, that no, I don't have anymore yellow ones,
so I'll have to find another way to finish whatever I am building. Furthermore,
I have spent a fair chunk of my life searching for pieces, so any time I
can save is great. It is the creative and design processes which I enjoy
about building. Again, to these people who would disapprove of my methods,
I say get your own.
My old bricks I keep segregated and mixed together.
Partly because they're a little dingey and faded from being a well loved
toy, partly because they have a sentimental value my other bricks don't.
These bricks I try to use in handy 'around the house' ways. For example,
the fm antenna on my stereo is just a piece of wire that you are suppose
to stick up somewhere. My solution was to take my old bricks and make a
little antenna tower to attatch the wire to, and it worked quite nicely.
LDraw models: Raytraced images and .dat files
for instructions for a few models I've made.
Lego Inventory: A database (well, it's a chart
here) of all the sets I own. The list is copied from my default sort within
the database, which is first sorted alphabetically by category (Castle, Space,
Town, etc), then by sub-category (Blacktron II, Exploriens, Ice Planet, etc.)
and listed from smallest to largest within the sub-category
Wish list: Another chart of sets, this one listing what I am intending
of adding to my collection. Mostly here as a checklist for myself.
