Author: Joseph

First Lego League BC Championships

I had an interesting opportunity this weekend to be a project judge at the BC Provincial Championships for First Lego League in Vancouver. Steve was there as a referee, as he’s done for several years in Victoria. I’ve tried my hat at ref’ing, design and now project judge over the past few years, and a couple of other VicLUG members have also done ref’ing and judging in the past as well but couldn’t make it to this stage.

Last week I was a project judge at a regional scrimmage match here in Victoria and saw a half dozen teams. Our role was to give the team extensive feedback so they could prep for the championships. I was able to see 4 of those teams and great to see how/if they followed through on the suggestions. There were 3 trophies for us to award and 2 of those went to teams we saw at the scrimmage. It was such a treat to see all of the kids’ presentations and kind of jealous of the ones I didn’t get to see, I was told that one team presented their project as an opera!

The clip below showcases one of the winning teams, the Hurricanes, and their project. Keep in mind most teams if they made a prototype, it might have been Lego replica or purely for demonstration. When I asked them how they got to their precise price point for their prototype they told me it was because they actually made it, factoring in patents and FDA approval.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=852272&playlistId=1.1131271&binId=1.821957&playlistPageNum=1

clip might not work in Chrome or IE, worked in FF for me.

The FLL trophies The FLL trophiesThe robot competition The robot competition

http://bcrobotics.wordpress.com/

Cherrybomb 10th Toy & Hobby Show

VicLUG is going to be at the CBT show, natch. Here’s the deets, hope to see you there!

Victoria’s 10th Ultimate Hobby & Toy Fair
October 14th, 2012
Pearkes Arena
3100 Tillicum Road (By Tillicum Mall and Silver City)

Vancouver Islands premier toy & hobby show! Vendors with items for sale including action figures, vintage toys, models, trains, comics, Barbie, dolls, bears, LEGO, video games, Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, diecast cars, Hot Wheels, vinyl records and more! You never know what you might find with 200 tables of fun!

General Admission – 9AM to 3PM

Adults $5 and kids are FREE!

Early Bird entry for the serious collector at 8am for $15.
Store Promo at Cherry Bomb Toys – Early Bird Tickets $7
Free door prize entry with admission. You could win stuff!
Loads of door prizes donated by local businesses!

Special Guests! Jim Henshaw, Ken Steacy, Glen Mullaly, Gareth Gaudin, Tanya Zbitnew

Silent auction for the MS Society.

Special Spooky Charity Carnival with all proceeds going to BC Children’s Hospital.

Costume Contest! Dress up and get an extra door prize entry!

Please visit our website for further show information and feel free to contact us if you need any further details.

http://www.ultimatetoyfair.com

Post Tillicum Mania event

Over the weekend, Robin Sather from Brickville in Vancouver came over to do the Tillicum Lego Mania event, now in it’s third year. Our local Lego club, VicLUG, was there to help Robin wherever needed.

This year we made the Bay Street Armoury, a military compound built in 1915 and still in active use. It’s quite close to downtown Victoria and is a well recognized landmark. Using photo reference and Google satellite/streetmap info, Robin was able to figure out the dimensions of the structure and build it over the course of the weekend. It has about 26,000 pieces and is almost 50/50 Duplo vs Lego.

The club had a display table of mocs and a street scene with a Where’s Waldo fig find. There was a very successful kids contest with a silly amount of wonderful entries and registration for it was filled within 4 days. We had a kid build area that was divided between baby/toddler and older kids as well.

If we talked at this event please followup the conversation by writing the club: lego@viclug.ca

Our next event is coming up soon, the Cherrybomb Toy and Hobby show on April 1st at Pearkes Arena!

http://www.tillicumkids.com/

http://www.brickville.ca

Article on the Times Colonist:

http://www.timescolonist.com/Photos+Lego+Mania+Challenge+Victoria/6285112/story.html

Article on Saanich News:

http://www.saanichnews.com/community/142538065.html

Great article on scrimporsplurge.ca that is very knowledgeable about everyone involved:

http://scrimporsplurge.ca/2011/03/lego-exhibits-in-victoria-and-sidney-unleash-the-imagination-in-adults-and-children-alike/

*edit: Ted noticed that this article is from last year’s Tillicum event, but all the facts hold true except for the dates interestingly enough

John Langrish’s photoset on flickr of the event:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j1a3l5/sets/72157629573544919/

Photos Joseph took of the event:

View post on imgur.com

Tillicum is Go!

The event is going great and the turnout is amazing. I’m making this post because I talked to *so many* people today and hopefully got our contact info to everyone. If you find this post and wondering… ok what now?

Our next event is April 1st at Cherrybomb Toy & Hobby Show at Pearkes, just trip outside the parking lot of Tillicum and there you are.

If you are interested in joining the forums please email me: joseph@viclug.ca and we’ll get things rolling.

Met a lot of great builders today and don’t want lose track of you people! Tomorrow is a big day, really looking forward to it!

Post Gottacon

Wow that was a lot of fun! It’s going to take a bit to recover but wanted to say hi to anyone we might have met at the con that found our site.

To everyone who wanted to see the rules for VicWars they will be here: www.viclug.ca/vicwars.html
As of the writing of this post it’s a text doc of our outdated ruleset

To those who are wanting to join the forums, I will get to that either tonight or tomorrow! Please remember we have a show coming up in March at Tillicum and it would be great to see you there 🙂 You don’t have to have any mocs made, we need lots of hands on deck to make the Duplo structure and work the crowds and contest. It’s a great chance to meet the whole club since most of us will be in attendance at the same time.

To Carson & Evan and all the countless volunteers and other event co-ordinators: thanks for putting on the best con yet!

Huge thanks to the huge crowd and all the awesome kids and adult sized kids who made playing VicWars a blast. Your imagination and wackiness is soul nectar.

First Lego League

Vancouver Island had it’s regional qualifier on December 3rd and VicLUG was on hand to help out! Steve & Rod wore the referee shirts ( and crazy hats ) while Joseph took on Design Judge this time around.

We had a lot of fun and the kids’ creations were amazing and inspiring! Here is the winner list and hopefully we’ll be hearing more about these teams moving on.

1 – Fungus Stormers
2 – Hurricanes
3 – Gear Girls
4 – Team Rock Solid
5 – Legobots
6 – Masterminds

Victoria 8th Ultimate Hobby and Toy Fair

VicLUG will be there!

Victoria 8th Ultimate Hobby and Toy Fair
October 16th 2011
Pearkes Areana, behind Silver City at Tillicum Mall
3100 Tillicum Road
General Admission $3
9am-3pm
8am Early Bird tickets $10 or $5 at Cherrybomb Toys
Kids are Free!
http://www.cherrybombtoys.com/toyshowfall2011.html
cbtoys@telus.net
250-385-8697

Lego Universe: Power of the Nexus Force

This huge update to the game, one of the largest to date will feature a new spider boss, faction classes, capes, character leveling plus a host of changes to items, areas and game mechanics. I’m pretty sure the free to play month will kick in at the same time.

This is due to be released on Tuesday, August 9th. Here is the release notes:
http://universe.lego.com/en-us/community/newsnetwork/story.aspx?id=343093