blargh

Week before last I wandered past a garage sale down the block. At first glance there wasn't anything of interest, but then I saw the box for 4184 The Black Pearl peeking out of a tub. It had been taped back shut, so I had no idea what was actually inside it. Took a risk, asked what they wanted for it, they said $10. Sold. Emptying out the box, it looked like it was dismantled in chunks, but mostly there... score. After breaking it and rebuilding from the (included!) instructions, I found there were only about a dozen pieces missing, mostly small. About ten bucks on BrickLink and it's back together, complete except for (unfortunately) the two rare/unique minifigs Davy Jones and Maccus. There were also a handful of other-toy parts mixed in the box, including a couple bits from a Playmobil pirate ship. Close enough, eh?

hoeij, when you say you have measured the current, what kind of meter were you using to make the measurement? With the PWM system, the voltage (and thus current) is switching on and off at a frequency of tens if not hundreds of thousands of times per second -- depending on the circuit design, the PWM switching frequency is some fixed value likely between 20 kHz and 100 kHz. At these high frequencies, most hand-held consumer multimeters will not have the measurement bandwidth to accurately report a value, and the value that it does display may be misleading or meaningless. While you're still driving a DC motor, the output voltage from the controller is very much an AC signal, although not a sinusoidal one.

Sometime in my browsing in the past week I ran across someone's dioramas where they'd taken a minifig torso and put it on brickbuilt legs that ended up making them ~20%? taller than a standard minifg, but still retained the ability to pose the legs. Unfortunately I can't remember where exactly it was I saw this, but maybe my description can jog someone else's memory... the figures were Napoleonic-era soldiers, all done in this same way.

Wow, really great work on both of those excavators. Very detailed. How do they compare in size to the 7685 Dozer?

In my youth, Castle was by far the #1, though I enjoyed Pirates and City fairly well too. I did get occasional Space sets, but they never really held much interest for me for whatever reason -- not enough architecture, I suppose? Most of the Licensed sets don't have much appeal to me. I suppose the exception would be a few Star Wars and Batman display models; the 7784 Batmobile for example. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive myself for missing out on the 10129 Snowspeeder when it was (reasonably) affordable, but that's another matter. In my recent resurgence most of my interest has been toward the City sets (and related Creator sets, like the 5766 Log Cabin). Castle may gain some priority when I haul more of my older MOCs out of storage, but it will be a challenge balancing spending limits against the desire for the bigger structural sets. The only real appeal of the other themes and Licensed categories would be for useful/interesting pieces they contain.

Thanks everyone for the welcome. Yeah, I was just looking those both up this morning; I haven't actually been to either (yet ). The only LEGO Store I've been to is the one in the Mall of America in Minneapolis, when I was there on a business trip a few months ago.

Absolutely wonderful review, as always. I hadn't run across this set yet; I guess it was just released? This Creator line really has a lot of appeal, with great secondary models as well. I picked up the Log Cabin last week, and liked it so much that I went out and picked up a second set to build one of the other models as a neighbor in the vacation-home section of my nascent city layout. I think I might have to do the same with this Lighthouse; the lighthouse itself looks great, but the boat house has a lot of appeal as well.

Great design, and it really does fit in well with the other Modular buildings. I think a small bathroom in the back corner of the second floor could add some interest to that space, rather than just having tables up there.

That's a pretty cool design, almost like something that Batman would ride. I like the way you've put together the wheels. Has that been used anywhere before, or is it your own invention? Needs a little more detail on the "interior", maybe seating for 2 minifigs, and some sort of method for steering.

Really nice looking models; very recognizable even for an American who hasn't spent so much time around these classic cars. I really like the way the 5-stud -> 4-stud transition at the windshield level gives them a kind of "beltline"; excellent SNOT work as well.

Really neat pictures in here. You might be able to stuff the hollow space inside of the shark with closed-cell foam to get it to float better.

Hello all, I'm blargh, coming to you from the Bay Area in California. I've been a big LEGO fan since I got my start in ca. 1985, with Castle making up the bulk of my collection, but a fair bit of everything else as well. I was active on the rec.toys.lego newsgroup around 1997-98, as well as some of the early days of LEGO-CAD with the original LDraw. Other activities prevailed and my LEGO efforts fell (mostly) dormant, although I'd occasionally pick up a small set or two when I happened to pass the LEGO aisle in a store. Now that I have a bit more space, time, and disposable income to work with, I've been getting back into it... although I have yet to go back and recover the thousands of bricks and dozens of assembled sets that are still in storage at my parents' house. I'm still wrapping my head around how the online LEGO community has exploded since the last time I was paying attention, but from lurking around Eurobricks here it seems like a great spot. I just realized that a couple of ancient LEGO webpages I had are still online; I had a few micro-scale Star Wars ships, with LDraw-created build instructions (although I know that the micro-scale building state of the art has far surpassed these ). I also have a baseplate-floorplan of my massive castle layout, although unfortunately no pictures. I believe it's still mostly intact (stored under a bed), but it hasn't seen the light of day in about a decade, and is probably buried under a solid inch of dust by now.