Mylenium

It's ultimately an academic discussion. There is per se no intrinsic reason "The System" could not have this and that element and wacky, uneven offsets or weird angles. The real issue is that in order for any of that to be useful you'd always need a second element to undo these irregular operations and then it simply gets too specific. It's no longer a universal connection and it ends up in a mess that is snowballing into an avalanche of single-use special parts. A case could probably made that their could be a sub-group of dedicated road-building elements as per the OP's request that allow to do this using sideways building with gap-less slopes plus tiles, plates and bricks without grooves, but even then you run into that simple problem of people getting creative and wanting to use this for other stuff and then you'd have to explain to them why they can't use it or implement technical counter measures that prevent these from connecting with the regular ones. It's really a catch 22. Mylenium

One of those nonsense "solution in search of a problem" apps. The time he spends spreading out the pieces and scrolling through the lists could just as well have been spent sorting stuff manually. Mylenium

Never? It's one of those weird things where LEGO's design philosophy figures in. They rather invest in seemingly redundant molds of existing pieces turned upside-down to keep the build experience simple (in their view). I also mentioned in another thread that those direction inverters could be problematic in terms of internal tension in the elements, elements grinding on one another and of course disassembling stuff. Based on those criteria it's unlikely we will ever see this. Mylenium

I can understand pretty much all your points. I'm just not there yet. Due to my health issues getting worse every year I have considered just stopping and selling off my stuff, but I still enjoy it. It's more a case of not being able to live out that hobby as I would like. Mylenium

Agree with the others. If you buy so rarely, it probably isn't even worth pondering over it. Just get whatever you want at the cheapest price and/ or when there's a good deal with some extras thrown in like with the upcoming "Endurance" set where in theory you could get three GWPs. Mylenium

Most people likely never make that much. I'd have to look it up, but if I remember correctly you get 3 Cent for a 1000 views plus the share of the ad revenue. Arguably a lot of smaller creators never make back what they invested or barely break even. Shilling for someone or something isn't exactly a new concept, is it? Thank god I'm old enough to no longer care, but I've seen those circle wanks enough in software and creative communities and can without shame admit to have been a troll and fanboy myself far too many times, but ultimately it's just a stupid waste of time to defend stupid corporate decisions or "geniuses" that are terrible human beings or company drones. In any case, it's a natural thing and it just takes time until you wise up. Sometimes people have to learn this the hard way when the mask comes off on their favorite influencer, but it's a repeating pattern and will happen again. Mylenium

Though that always is one of the biggest points of contention and a personal pet peeve, TBH. You know, it's easy to go out and buy another 200 Euro set on your own dime when you have gotten five others for free and saved the money... Mylenium Not sure if it's entitlement, but simply some form of non-considerate ignorance (as in being ignorant of circumstances, not dumb). I have this picture in my head where you just click on some form on the LEGO LAN web site or get a mail where you just need to confirm that you want the latest release and then it's easy to just always click and say yes. After a while you just may not think about it anymore... Mylenium

Allow me to trim your words and make them even more generalized. Especially in the last two years things on YT seem to have turned sour for many creators. The arbitrary rule changes, the continued abuses, copyright battles and their highly dysfunctional reporting system make it a struggle to have your content on the system let alone work on expanding your channel and getting it promoted by the algorithm. I know several creators who have been on there for years and do excellent content, yet the system simply works against them. That's why everyone is begging people to sign up to Patreon or other alternative platforms with regular, predictable monetization because YT is simply kaput and doesn't work for them. Mylenium

At the end of the day it's one of those "You don't dump where you eat." things. Most sponsored reviews are simply too positively biased, period. You just need to look at the respective sites to have that verified. I'm not accusing anyone of doing this consciously, it's just simply psychology getting in the way no matter how much they claim to be "neutral". When you're getting stuff for free via the Ambassador Network literally almost every week you just live in that world and take on a certain view of things. Same with others. Arguably there is no harm in getting free stuff, but you need to be self-aware enough that it will influence your decisions. That said, I've long tuned out of that creator I think you are referring to because he's generally quite too soft on that stuff IMO and let's LEGO and the others get away too easily with terrible products, so it probably won't skewer the scales much one way or the other. Mylenium

White space is the oxygen of any print design or for that matter even classic paintings. Nothing wrong with that per se. Yes, they could have used a different style and framing, but overall it's okay. But then again they clearly have used more than one software and there may have been other restrictions and preset requirements. Somehow your comments feel like you don't understand much of the technical side of print production and package design and you also don't seem to acknowledge that at the end of the day the client is always right. The design actually even tells the story in a way - standardized package size and placement of elements to keep things cheap and the dark brown text just didn't work in this case, but would be just fine on a red rose or whatever other flowery stuff they may have. I'm certain the designer was fully aware of this. It was just a restriction that the client imposed. Mylenium

Yeah, it looks okay for a 5 dollar job. Not sure what you expect. Not every design job is luxury brand level where you spend weeks with meetings and design iterations. Many times it's really just a job done by a freelancer who needs to fire out twenty designs in a week to make a living and who works with clients that don't appreciate the finer points. They just want functional packaging that communicates the selling points at as low as possible cost. And let's be real: LEGO's box designs won't win awards, either. Given how much money the company throws around I'm always baffled by how bad some of that is. Mylenium

And you appear very defensive of it. I won't use certain words here, but your stance doesn't make it any better, either, no offense. Really depends on how you think about that stuff. That's an eternally ongoing debate in creative circles and at the end of the day there's no satisfactory resolution to the dilemma. I work in the graphics business, but I've never cramped my megablocks over someone copying/ imitating my work and to a degree I don't even mind them making money of it. It's just a matter to what extent. Sure, getting ripped off without even a mention sucks, but I'm not losing sleep over it. There's more to life than worrying about this and it's a matter of whether you are in it for the joy and fulfillment you get out of creating stuff or if you are just doing it for the money. At least in the creative industries there's also a self-cleaning effect and those hacks that just rely on copying work will only get so far. I would apply the same logic to brick-built projects. Why would I care about some weird company at the other end of the world using my designs when I have no way of getting to them or it is too much of a distraction to even hunt them down? I got better things to do. Mylenium

CaDa has had such beams since the beginning of eternity (and by extension other alternative brands that copied CaDa), so your interpretation doesn't make much sense. I would agree, but ultimately we have to take the facts for what they are: LEGO are weaponizing the protected designs exactly for that reason. It's the old debate of whether it's an inevitable, natural technical solution or a conscious decision to pick this exact design. And since this is based on the "first come, first served" principle, it's all an effed up mess. Whoever beats the others to the punch can basically dictate what's right and what's wrong and abuse the system. That's why we are in this mess, after all. 10000 % agree. It's just disappointing that so far no court has ordered LEGO to even provide a FRAND licensing option and spare the legal system all that annoying trouble and cost. Mylenium

I don't think so. It's not his responsibility to know all of the hundreds or thousands of products. That is up to some sub-sub-sub wholesale manager or whoever. Likewise, it's not their responsibility to check the package design of a competitor. This is once more a case where LEGO are simply pulling the "nuclear" option based on questionable claims. One can only hope that the court shows some measure of common sense... Mylenium

https://brickset.com/sets/5002801-1/Friends-Brick-Light-(Purple) Only LEGO-fied keychain pendant I ever bought. Only did so as sort of an emergency solution when MAGLite mini broke while I was on medical rehab back in 2013. Couldn't walk those beach paths at the Baltic Sea without some extra light in the middle of November when it was getting dark early... Still have it today, but of course the edges are all rounded off and I apparently had to change the batteries once or twice. Mylenium

I could think of a few things using sideways building to create a pin vice like setup to clamp stuff in, but it will never be fully invisible. Really depends on what the table is actually supposed to look like and how organic it needs to look as apparently there would be limitations placing stuff at an angle and some areas of the table would still be unusable. Mylenium

Secure the brick with a T-style bracket ( https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4585#T=C ). Also see my old post for how to use such sideways pin connections: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/egged-all-over/. You just have to plan for a little more space. Mylenium

You probably dropped off their suggestion list. They will try and push new channels for a while, but if they don't grow enough over a given period of time or a video doesn't accrue enough views they will stop doing so. Happens all the time even to bigger channels. Sometimes there also apparently are major glitches in the system and channels just completely get ghosted because the suggestion algorithm messes up. That said, with only twenty videos to date it's too early to worry about anything. Just keep chugging along. I don't see anything there that would interest me, but there may be others. From following other channels and their complaints about the YouTube machine it seems to help to focus on specific subjects and develop a consistent style. I don't think video is ideal to promote MOCs in the first place, so you may want to reconsider. Your videos might do better if they are embedded in a blog that also has the instructions and perhaps discusses some pros and cons. I don't think that kids thing has anything to do with it. That would be a oversimplification and I'm pretty sure the metrics wouldn't support it. Mylenium

I think you are overthinking this. There is nothing wrong with >>>some moisture<<< since it stabilizes the polymers (water attaching to open ends of molecules and preventing them to break down and all that good stuff). You just don't want it to be too high. I probably should have written "excessive moisture" from the get-go and now that I think of it the proper better term is relative air humidity. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much. Even though summers get hotter in Canada, too, it probably will never reach a level where you need to put minifigs in cold storage. just keep them in some nice dark boxes or a shadowy room not exposed to direct sun and you should be fine. Mylenium

Not necessary. There may be a few million oxygen molecules in the bag, but there are many times more polymer chains. Whatever reactions happen will happen slowly and over time, a.k.a. normal aging. It's not like your minifigs will burst into flames over rapid oxidization of every molecule. Also you cannot evacuate enough air in a meaningful way, anyway. That would require lab equipment and/ or replacing the oxygen with non-reactive/ lazy gases. With that in mind it's much more important to take care of other factors like exposure to light, heat and moisture. Just keeping your minifigs in a dark box in a not so hot room will do more for their longevity than just putting them into bags. Mylenium

Not sure about that. When we were visiting Deutsche Bücherei here in Leipzig, which also has one of the largest book restoration facilities, we were told it would contain some special ingredients. Might be some mild tensides to "soften" the water, a bit of glycol or even certain alcohols. Might also use complex salts to stop the stuff from re-growing. Anyway, barring deeper research I can only repeat what we were told. They definitely use a lot of purified water for sure, but also other stuff depending on the use case. Mylenium

It's a debatable point, though, since none of this is an intrinsic problem inherent in the system. It has more to do with LEGO being extremely reluctant to introduce elements that would facilitate compensating these offsets or in a similar fashion give us simple direction inverter plates like other companies have. Not trying to re-open those endless old discussions, but it's more about their design philosophy than a limitation per se. Mylenium

In professional book restoration they use gas chambers to kill this stuff and then gently wipe it off with their specialized liquids. For home use it would probably be good to put the instructions in a vacuum sealed bag and indeed freeze them as cold as possible. I'd go easy on the baking soda, though. Cellulose is, after all, just a complex hydrocarbon that would respond to alkaline materials. Exposing the paper too long could make it brittle and cause additional gilding. If at all I would use such a process only in the open like covering the pages for a few minutes to draw out moisture and then brushing away the magic dust. Wearing a filter mask is of course advised. Mylenium

Cause and effect, I suppose. As long as models are "soggy", as you put it, any extremely rigid connection throws this system out of wack. Funny enough I do understand why some models are built this way when I put my mechanical engineering hat on with regards to force loads, torque and other factors. Not saying that it's perfect and they always get it right, but occasionally it makes perfect sense (beyond LEGO just trying to cut corners). For me it's the other way around. Since I'm only doing LEGO since 2016 and started out with Technic it feels just as natural. No doubt having been involved in engineering stuff before and having seen some odd solutions probably also pre-conditioned me. That said, I would agree that the number of special elements has exploded in the last few years and it often feels like they are designed to make it easy for newcomers and/ or contribute to the visual appearance rather than being genuinely necessary technical solutions. Mylenium

In certain markets they apparently outstrip LEGO by a mile and CaDa has made massive inroads in Western markets as well. At the end of the day it's one of the reasons why LEGO are so hyper-sensitive and are weaponizing their trademarks and protected designs. Apparently there's quite a lot going on behind the scenes and LEGO take notice of people buying alternate brands more and more... Mylenium