{"id":669,"date":"2008-06-30T22:37:26","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T03:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/2008\/06\/30\/another-rainy-lego-day\/"},"modified":"2008-07-13T16:37:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-13T21:37:30","slug":"another-rainy-lego-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/2008\/06\/30\/another-rainy-lego-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Rainy Lego Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was a kid, once summer arrived we were outside everyday from dawn until dark.\u00a0 On the occasional rainy day, one of our favorite things to do was play with Lego’s.\u00a0 We didn’t have all these fancy gears, custom curvy pieces\u00a0and twenty kinds of rubber tires.\u00a0 We had squares and rectangles and a couple of big green flat pieces.\u00a0 Over the years all the blocks were mixed into a small suitcase and we built a lot of stuff.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0had two basic contests: build the tallest tower or span the widest gap with a bridge. The only rule was that every brick in the suitcase had to be used.<\/p>\n

At some point, we acquired some Lock Blocks.\u00a0 These were not “file compatible” with Lego’s.\u00a0 They had the same footprint, but the studs were taller.\u00a0 You couldn’t usefully mix them with the Lego’s.\u00a0 I think we had an over night case for the Lock Blocks.\u00a0 It seems my youngest brother always got stuck with those any time there was a contest.<\/p>\n

Now there are Mega Bloks.\u00a0 These are the exact same size as Lego’s and can be used interchangeably.\u00a0 But Mega Bloks aren’t as nice as Lego’s.\u00a0 They aren’t as shiny.\u00a0 They don’t seem to fit as tight and they bend more–important properties when you are building a bridge.\u00a0 On the other hand, Mega Bloks are a lot cheaper so you can build a taller tower for less money.<\/p>\n

Today we had our first rainy-day-bridge-contest of the summer.\u00a0 The goal was to span a two foot gap and hold as much weight as possible.\u00a0 The contest was won by a third grader using Mega Bloks that bent, but stayed together.\u00a0 The stiffer Lego’s did come apart under heavy weight.<\/p>\n

I created the picture above using Lego Digital Designer<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s\u00a0a free download.\u00a0 Using the software you can use any piece that is made by Lego (763 different bricks) to create anything you can dream up.\u00a0 If you really like what you’ve made, Lego will put all the pieces in a package and send them to you.\u00a0 They charge by the brick.\u00a0 My Golden Gate replica would cost $146.08 if I were to order it.<\/p>\n

Aside from those black flat pieces, I used only square and rectangle pieces.\u00a0 I’m still “old school” when it comes to Lego’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, once summer arrived we were outside everyday from dawn until dark.\u00a0 On the occasional rainy day, one of our favorite things to do was play with Lego’s.\u00a0 We didn’t have all these fancy gears, custom … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,40],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leisure","tag-lego","tag-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}