When one intends to reflect on things, it seems appropriate to begin by a reflection on reflecting. One can ask many legitimate questions about how reflecting is possible, and one can debate the merit of particular reflections, but the question that comes first—especially in a pragmatic society like ours—is why? Why bother thinking?
Continue reading “Prolegomena: A Justification of Thought”LEGO Vault (Commissioned Model)
Over the course of the years I’ve built castles, dragons, life-sized tools, pirate towns, windmills and waterwheels, you name it. But I’ve never built anything quite like this–a commission model of six stacks of servers, loaded with detail to recreate, like tiny computer screens, wires, and fans. And this isn’t just any server, either: this is The Vault, Sermon Audio’s new array for hosting over two million sermons and making them available for worldwide listening. Creating a LEGO replica of their achievement was both an honor and a challenge!
Continue reading “LEGO Vault (Commissioned Model)”Pilgrim’s Progress: A LEGO Saga
It’s been almost six months since I posted work-in-progress pictures of my family’s LEGO Pilgrim’s Progress collaboration. Fittingly, our progress has been slow, but it’s been sure, and we’ve finally taken the last picture, recorded the last piece of audio, and yes, even sorted the last brick (well, except for a few special figures and the sheep, which are sticking around for a while). So at long last we’re ready to present: The Pilgrim’s Progress, built out of LEGO bricks at about 5x minifigure scale!
Continue reading “Pilgrim’s Progress: A LEGO Saga”Pilgrim-in-Progress
Not sure I’ve done a work-in-progress post before, but there’s a first time for everything. And there could be no better first time than this, the biggest in-person collaboration I’ve ever organized. (If any of my siblings tell you they’re organizing it… they’re wrong.)
The collaboration started with an ambition to bring something eye catching to BrickWorld Chicago 2023. Beyond being eye catching, we also wanted our collaboration to be meaningful. So what better than the classic story of the Christian life, Pilgrim’s Progress? I’ll tell you what would be better… Pilgrim’s Progress, but at 3x minifigure scale!
Continue reading “Pilgrim-in-Progress”The Destruction of Laketown
Amid shrieks and wailing and the shouts of men Smaug came over Laketown. A hail of dark arrows leaped up and snapped and rattled on his scales, and their shafts fell back kindled by his breath.
Fire leaped from the dragon’s jaws. Down he swooped straight through the arrow-storm, reckless in his rage, seeking only to set their town ablaze.
Fire leaped from thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he hurtled down past and round again. Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night.
Still a company of archers held their ground among the burning houses. Their captain was Bard, grim-voiced and grim-faced. He shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent.
Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear. The dragon was circling back, flying low.
“Arrow!” said the bowman. “Black arrow! If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!”
–Adapted from The Hobbit by Tolkien
Continue reading “The Destruction of Laketown”Endurance: Building Stories
I’ve always dreamed of one day building a MOC that would tell a good story all by itself. Last month, I finally did it.
Book Review: Jan of the Windmill (by Juliana Horatia Ewing)
Jan tries hard to be a miller’s boy… but his natural talent for painting keeps shining through. Yet wherever he goes and whatever success life brings to him, he’ll always remember his foster-family and always be proud of his “miller’s thumb.”
Jan of the Windmill is around the length of Anne of Green Gables or A Little Princess.
The story revolves around a young boy who eventually becomes a successful painter through his patience and hard work, but the writing style is not the simplest, so it’d probably be hard to follow for those younger than 11+.
You’ll find my brief conclusion and a link to the book if you skip to the end—or read on through if you want all the details!
Continue reading “Book Review: Jan of the Windmill (by Juliana Horatia Ewing)”Behind the Scenes: Hero Shots
What’s a hero shot, you ask? Well, it’s the distilled essence of a moment of epicness, the high point of a heroic act of daring, the emotion-charged second when against all odds a hero confronts seemingly unstoppable evil.
So, basically, a cool scene with two clear characters facing off.
Continue reading “Behind the Scenes: Hero Shots”Behind the Scenes: The Alleyway
This alleyway is a shady spot… in more senses than one. But what’s going on behind those complex 2×3 stones complete with grooves of dark grey in between? Is everything connected?
Probably Not…Wayland Terraformers, INC: Rogue Planet
Fenmoor is a little known planet in the deep suneast, barely lit by a red dwarf star whose rays struggle through a fog of rock dust. Life on Fenmoor is gloomy and tough, and so are those who live there–outcasts from the solar system, too bad at being bad to stay out of jail anywhere else in the galaxy.
But then, Fenmoor is a rogue planet–not owned by Earthcorp or Krancore, or by one of the little guys like Liberium or Envision. It’s not even all owned by a single person–like the Rockefeller System or the Duchy of Jupiter-Winslow. Most of Fenmoor is no man’s land, and the rest is a medley of tiny stake outs–usually a long day’s walk from each other–where each family independently farms just enough to feed and clothe themselves–most of the time.
Without capital–and without resources to attract it–terraforming has been slow in Fenmoor. Aegis, the biggest terraformer of the galaxy, hasn’t touched it with the long end of a stick ever since Jim Settler (formerly the notorious con artist Jamie Kalypso) scammed them out of a fifty acre wheat field and the waterworks to match by promising an Earthcorp job that wasn’t his to offer. Aegis tried to get Krancore to go after Settler, but Fenmoor was too far off the beaten path to go hunting con artists and besides, Krancore’s board felt that it served Aegis right for wanting to work with Earthcorp.
Can anything interesting happen on such a planet?
Geneva D 