Another impressive LEGO build, nice illuminated accents -

Real working (electronic) V8 engine made from Lego Technic. This is not a Lego set, but I completely designed and build it myself. It took me about 4/5 months. Enjoy!

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1440 rpms v8 LEGO engine

It's a 200,000-brick, 350-pound aircraft carrier -- the Harry S Truman -- complete with electrical lights as well as moving elevators and radar dishes.

As all of us geekdads can appreciate, building this model was not without difficulties on the homefront. Hawking, a German father of two and (at least before this masterwork) neophyte bricker spent over $20,000 on parts and it took the better part of a year. But despite "lots of arguments at home" he somehow succeeded and showed the Truman all over Europe. The brick de resistance was to be an appearance at Brickworld '07 with transport provided by the US Navy, but unfortunately the arrangement fell through.

This spot-on LEGO Man enclosure sports 2 machines running OSX within -

Made out of 2,588 Lego bricks, the Mac Pro was designed in Lego Digital Designer 2.0 for the MacMod Challenge 2008. The Hackintosh is a plain PC with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz CPU running Mac OS X, while the Mac Mini is a Core Duo 1.66Ghz.

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The Lego Computer

Inspired by the death of his grandfather, LEGO builder Shannon Ocean created this thoughtful and somewhat disturbing piece called "Letting go". via The Brothers Brick

Urmas Salu (a teenager!) won all of $40 for this re-enactment of The Simpsons opening sequence in LEGO. Watching it makes me ridiculously happy. via Boing Boing

Big-X made a wonderful model of the Ohmu from Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. He has some other incredible models in his Brickshelf gallery, too.

Crazed LEGO fan Chris Doyle has done an awesome job in creating this custom Nite Owl Owlship from the Watchmen comic (and upcoming film). I love how some builders go so far as to mock up packaging. Now that's dedication.

The Watchmen: Nite-Owl's Owlship

The Beijing Olympics inspired the Hong Kong LEGO Users Group to build the incredibly detailed LEGO Sport City - here's the flickr set. They used 300,000 bricks and 4,500 mini-figures! Via Metafilter

Check out this nifty LEGO NXT printer, a "needle plotter" with a ...er... prickable area of 90 x 70mm at 33 pricks per inch.

NXT pin-plotter III [via Hack-a-Day]

I love the way this LEGO NXT beastie walks - he's so expressive! Via NXT Step

Mitch writes in about Greg Blonder, who made this prototype slide rule clock with LEGO Mindstorms. The positioning of the two rules makes up the hours and minutes. I like the idea of sketching in a platform like Mindstorms; it sure beats building an entire custom circuit just for a proof-of-concept prototype.

Bricksmith allows you to create virtual instructions for your Lego creations on your Mac. The magic is based on the LDraw library, a collection of 3D models of Lego building blocks created by enthusiasts from around the world. With Bricksmith, you never have to worry about running out of parts!

Get your free copy of Bricksmith 2.0 [Mac only, sorry!]

What happens when you release a 3D movement dataset of Thom Yorke's head? Somebody uses it to recreate the video, frame by frame, in LEGO (Watch the high quality vid for the best experience). Via Create Digital Motion.

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• RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS - Radiohead releases data set
• Radiohead on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Bzupke and his son made this amazing steerable blimp using the LEGO RCX. via NXT Step

Using an RCX, 3 Motors, the Infrared Remote, Large trash bags, and lots of helium, my son and I created a steerable blimp. Two of the motors controlled propellers (made from a LEGO propeller with larger blades made out of packaging plastic). The third motor controlled the tilt of the two propellers. Each propeller can be separately controlled. For example, to rotate the craft, one propeller would be driven forward and the other backward.

Tim (BlueToothKiwi) at NXT Step blog says there is a new version of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 - it's designed to work with several robot vendors including LEGO Mindstorms and iRobot. The free download is here.

It's amazing what people make with LEGOs - here's a braiding machine.

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Lego Knitting Machine

I've been enjoying Joel Johnson's fawning fanboy coverage of Syd Mead on Boing Boing Gadgets. Hey, I'd fawn, too. I'm a huge fan of Mead's and even thought about becoming a conceptual or industrial designer on his inspiration. In this episode of BBtv, Joel talks with Mead about the awesome one-of-a-kind Spinner police vehicle from Bladerunner that the folks at LEGO did as a present to Syd.

Blade Runner LEGO Spinner Car: Syd Mead with Joel Johnson

The other Mead segments on BBtv:

This robot was built using the PICAXE controller and has a homebrew line sensor that uses light dependent resistors (LDRs) to find its way. The custom PICAXE board included an L293 driver chip and ran from battery power. Check out the link for details on the board and integration into the LEGO Mindstorms setup.

PICAXE Pete

Jason over at Haqckszine found the Tilted Twister, a LEGO NXT robot that can solve a Rubik's Cube without the help of a PC. It's really impressive to watch!

Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister's turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces of the cube. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.

Building instructions and source code are available on Hans Andersson's site.

Here's two things I'd never think to combine: Tori Amos portraiture and everyone's favorite childhood building blocks. Found in the MAKE Flickr pool, Steven Goodwin made this Tory Amos portrait entirely from LEGO blocks.It really looks a lot like her when you squint at it.

Jon Edmiston wrote a nicely flexible C# application to control a LEGO NXT car with a Wiimote - he says he could switch the remote out for a Wii balance board and he could still control the car. via NXT Step

A paper cup, a sewing needle, and a simple LEGO Mindstorms robot make for a nice little record player. This might be a fun project to work on with the kids this 4th of July weekend. You know they've been wondering about the boxes of vinyl frisbees in the basement. Aside from anything else they might be learning, it's a good opportunity to slip in some information about how music used to be groovy.

Here's an awesome LEGO version of the Chaos unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). The site is, unfortunately, not in English. Here's a translation:

LEGO Chaos Bot

The NXT STEP's BlueToothKiwi made an NXT Wall-E; he's shared instructions on NXTLOG.

He also points us to the adorable Wall-E Joe Meno made out of LEGO - there are lots of pictures in his Flickr set. Bigger eyes!

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Disney intros new bots @ Maker Faire
HOW TO - Build your own Wall-E robot

Here's another cool project from Studio 3D - a smart domino run, with an option for using a LEGO RCX brick.

You know the saying - If you can't buy it, build a lego version.

Matrixsynth points out this fine reproduction of a Nord keyboard synth. - NordLead Modular

Iconic Swiss architect Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye done in LEGOs.

Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye [via]