Posts Tagged ‘Lego’

To add to our blog post series about fun machines in Lego (Turing, most useless, 3D-printer and so on) here is a video of the antikythera mechanism built in Lego – that is the functionality is simulated with a machine built in Lego, but it certainly doesn’t look like the original.

If you don’t remember what the antikythera mechanism is then let wikipedia enlighten you:

“The Antikythera mechanism … is an ancient mechanical computer[1][2] designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–01 from the Antikythera wreck,[3] but its complexity and significance were not understood until decades later. It is now thought to have been built about 150–100 BCE. The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to late medieval Swiss watchmaking.[citation needed] Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.[4]”

The modern version is explained in this video:

A really really old computer rebuilt in Lego – what’s not to like?

This is almost as cool as the Lego Turing Machine and much cooler than the regular Lego printer: a Lego 3D printer.

Challenge: make a Lego 3D printer that prints Lego 3D printers.

I just found this great blog post on the MoMA-blog. This is what happens when you give MoMA-employees a Friday afternoon with Lego; they start copying the art!

My favorite was this yellow piece that they have made. It is probably the most complex of the pieces, so you can imagine that most pieces are quite simple, but so are the artwork that they copy. (You will have to go to the MoMA-blog to see the other photos.)

MoMA pieces in Lego

I would love to see an exhibit at MoMA just with Lego art. The Lego company should just send loads of Lego bricks to artists to see what would come of it.

This is what Poul is working on at Lego :-).

That’s soooo cool. I wish it was me working on that.

This little Lego monkey wants to be King Kong…

Wannabe King Kong by Poul Foged

My previous post about the Lego Turing Machine could (for some) be a contender for the title of “The most useless machine ever built in Lego”, but it is certainly a step up from this useless but entertaining machine: A machine that turns itself off.

Useless but cute. How do people even think up these things?

>”Honey, you’re my treasure.”
>”No, the Lego is the treasure. Dad – We’re Lego rich!”

Combining TED talks and Lego is a winning formula. This guy is really Lego-geeky – I love his story:

Lego is the greatest toy company ever and I’m not just saying that because my husband works for them. He and I have both played with Legos as children and kept playing until now… Even though there is officially no children in our household we both would qualify as children when it comes to Lego. Our passion for bricks is not ours alone; We know a lot of people who love Lego bricks.

The computer science department at Aarhus University (my old hangout) has a Lego Lab and many fun og cool projects has come out of that lab the last 15-20 years – some more serious than others. A fairly recent project is especially close to my heart because it was done by a group of my friends. It is… wait for it… a Lego Turing machine!

To promote it they made this short video:

Geeky and beautiful!

“We like to travel!”

Let me just break that sentence down for you. “We” are a Danish married couple (Poul and Therese) – both geeks working in IT as software developers.

The word “like” is a bit of an understatement – we actually love to travel but “love” is an overused word which we try to avoid. Alternatively we could have written “We ♥ to travel” or “We ♥ travelling” but that is also much too cliché – so we settled for “like”.

And then we come to “travel”. By travelling we mean both vacation, business travel, adventure and just getting out of the country for any reason. Denmark is a very lovely country but 30+ years here is enough; we need to see something new. In 2009 we travelled 8 times between us – some for business but mostly recreationally. We started the year in the African continent, spent most of our days in the European continent, visited the North-American continent and ended the year in the Asian continent. Our plans for 2010 is to work hard and eventually save enough money to travel in Asia for 6 months to a year.

So yes, we like to travel!

This blog is our diary

We started this blog because we would like to have a channel of communication when we travel and also to have a place to rave about our geeky projects. Right now we are both working full-time while also doing our own projects in our free-time and trying to keep up with interesting trends in software development. Our background include 3 ScrumMaster Certifications between us, one academic education as a Computer Scientist and one education as a Computer Engineer and we have been working for IBM, “Den Blå Avis” (Ebay), Lego, Aarhus University, one local hospital and the JAOO IT-conference to name a few.

When we travel we tend to take a lot of photographs and we intend to share a lot of them with our blog readers. The photo in the blog header is also one from our travels – it is taken in Bangkok at Christmas time. The blue spots on the picture are Christmas decorations that hung in front of the view. Beautiful isn’t it?