Recent articles on CBC and Gizmodo about the best thing to ever come out of Denmark brings to mind a question -- call it an informal poll -- for O-Nerds: Did you play with Legos? If you did, what was your favorite set? Favorite original creation? Do you have any Lego memories you'd like to share?
If you didn't play with Legos, the question is: why the heck not?
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Alien Moon Stalker
Definitely one of my most memorable toys growing up was the Alien Moon Stalker. Two detachable space vessels and two missiles ... I mean, seriously, what's better than that?
The site I linked to above is awesome. It's got a picture index of every Lego set since 1970.
Lego Robotics
Ten years ago, we were looking for a gift for our son who was about eight at the time, and came upon something called Lego Mind Storms. He loved to play with Lego's, and since it looked cool, we bought it. As I sat reading the book that came with it I can remember thinking, "Wow, this thing is way more complex than I ever imagined!" It turns out the RCX brick is really a mini industrial controller capable of performing many complex tasks. To make a long story short, it more or less became my toy as I explored the many possibilities. At the time, there were light sensors, touch sensors, and rotational encoders to name a few of the many ways to feed information to the controller. It also can be used as a data recorder. I helped my son make a temperature sensor out of a diode in order to test and record heat loss data from different insulation materials for an 8th grade science project.
I wound up helping coach a Lego Robotics team for a few years made up of kids grade 3-5, with my daughter as one of the team members. (Turns out she's the mechanical one in the family.)
This is a true nerd sport. Just like any other sport we:
- Train: (Teach the skills of programming and building)
- Practice: (Run the kids and the robot through the steps of the challenge so many times, batteries become expensive.)
- Compete (Try to get the most points possible in the challenge by completing as many tasks as the ridiculous 3 minute time allotment allows.
We won our local competition one year. It was not necessarily because we had the best robot, although it was pretty good. It was because the two kids running it had nerves of steel.
Back in our day we were just using the RCX 1.0, which was more than adequate for the job. Now the young whippersnappers are using the NXT with Bluetooth, webcam, sonar, and proximity sensors. (Not to mention servo motors.) I'm obsolete already.
Arrr!
The 1983 Classic Super Model was my favorite space one. I also got pretty into the pirates although those sets were harder to make different things out of. Tradition was Christmas and birthdays my main gift was a lego set. I had a few rubbermaid buckets filled with all the extra pieces that I would dump out and sift through.
Good times.
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My Lego Experience by VnutZ :: NR8 :: Show
Amongst the regular Lego sets, the trains were my favorites. We lived in Europe for awhile so I actually got to make a pilgrimage to Legoland in Denmark (which was very cool). The Lego trainsets offered in Europe were much cooler than those offered in America.
My favorites were Technics - it was pretty cool being able to build just about anything where your only limitation was the number of pieces at your disposal. I keep wanting to get into MindStorms and do the robotic programming. But I've been resistant as I don't want to get involved in the hobby all anew and have pieces scattered all over my house. Although, building automated robots to chase my cats would be sooooo much fun.