Apropos my previous "those of us who will not rest until we've faithfully reproduced a 100% self-aware Johnny Five in Technic" bit:
The Mindstorms NXT sonic sensor already looks like Five's eyes, which helps. But it's still completely brilliant.
Next stop: The T-1 Battle Units from Rise of the Machines. Which aren't nearly as clever as Johnny, so should be easier to imitate - the Lego Johnny ain't gonna be speed-reading any books with those sonar eyes of his.
(By the way, who knew the T-1s had tracks made by the same company who made the tracks on Jamie Hyneman's remote controlled vending machines? One of them's standing there behind him in his Web site home page portrait; and like the giant penny in the Batcave, a Vending Tank also lurks in the background of many Mythbusters scenes.)
Good news for people in search of a sixteenth-scale (trans: quite big) radio controlled tank.
It's a Mitsuwa T-34-85, and it only costs about 17700 yen ($US150, $AU180, as I write this) delivered.
That's not peanuts, but it's far cheaper than Tamiya's famous kits in the same scale. And this is a built tank, ready to roll; just add a bunch of AA batteries (preferably rechargeables...).
For comparison, here's HLJ's page for the Tamiya Pershing I reviewed here (the Sherman's not in production any more).
That's the neat-o Japanese version of the Pershing kit that includes radio, batteries and charger (not normally included with "proper" R/C models), but you could still buy six of the Mitsuwa tanks for the delivered price of the unbuilt Tamiya kit. Probably more, actually, since shipping would then be likely to cost less per unit.
The shipping cost for one T-34 is more than a third of the total price. That's because the tank itself has been marked down to half of its list price. I presume the customers of Hobbylink Japan found the humble T-34 insufficiently sexy.
The Tamiya kits do give you a more impressive toy when you've finished, of course. The HLJ page makes pretty clear what the Mitsuwa kit's missing, though it doesn't mention that this tank doesn't have proportional control - everything's either moving or it isn't, with no control over the speed. People are apparently refitting the Mitsuwa kits with better control gear to fix this, but it'll work well enough without for less demanding users.
You can also expect this kit to be less durable than a Tamiya one, and there's no way to buy spare parts for it, either.
But c'mon. A sixth the price. And it's ready to run.
The big advantage of the Mitsuwa kit over everyday large-scale toy-store R/C tanks is that it has proper articulated tracks. Cheap tanks always have rubber tracks. Those are simple and durable, but they eat a huge amount of the tank's motor power, so even big rubber-tracked tanks are generally an indoor-only proposition.
The Mitsuwa also apparently scrubs up real nice if you invest some work in it. That's another point of difference with cheap tanks - they're seldom very good models, scale-accuracy-wise.
Readers: Please save me from myself, and buy up HLJ's remaining stock of this thing before I do.
(In case you're wondering, I do not have an affiliate deal with Hobbylink Japan. I even had to pay for this. The horror!)
"The remarkable thing about a dancing bear steam-powered radio-controlled R2-D2 is not how gracefully it dances..."
This year's Lego sets will include some pretty nifty stuff. The stand-out for your average kid will, I hope, be the new Castle sets featuring such things as dudes firing flaming spears at undead horsemen (on undead horses!). But those of us who will not rest until we've faithfully reproduced a 100% self-aware Johnny Five in Technic will be intensely interested in the new tank-track pieces, to be seen in sets 8272 and 8275 (featuring IR remote control!).
The older, narrower black tracks, as seen in classic Technic sets like the 8851 Excavator and 856 Bulldozer, are relatively delicate, because their central chain part has to mesh with standard Technic gears. And they're not cheap, either - 15 cents a piece doesn't sound like much, until you realise that your fantasy crane or Shuttle Transporter or whatever needs sixty US bucks worth of treads even if you assume you're never going to break any of those dinky little hook connectors.
The new tracks, like the very old chain links that engaged the ancient peg gears, have a coarser drive gear pitch (and, therefore, new special drive gears), and should therefore be tougher.
But nobody really seems to care about that very much, because they've all immediately started perverting the new parts into weird and wonderful contraptions.
The heck of it is, though, that people keep coming up with brand new things to do with parts that've been around for ten or twenty years.
Like the old chain parts, for instance. Check this out. Do not miss the movie.
And, to give a more abstract example, how about spheres made out of radar dishes?
(This is from the same dude who came up with the most famous Lego sphere technique, which breaks free from the constraints of the obvious shape. It's been expanded into various creations by others.)
I can't quite pin down the exact part for the things on the bottom of the dish-sphere, by the way; they're close to these hair clips (I envy those who don't know about Lego's "girl products"...), but they're not the same.
A useful function for this clip has yet to be found. It slightly suggests a tentacular mouth.
Very Honourable Mention: This.
Yeah, like all you dorks haven't seen it already.
It could only be better if it had legs.
That, of course, would slow it down enormously. As it is, it makes pretty good time for a 20 pound model, thanks to four-cylinder steam power. Which is largely responsible for the weight, of course. (Welcome to engineering, please attempt to enjoy your stay.)
Needless to say, this is another creation from I-Wei Huang.
(At first glance I thought he'd committed the sacrilege of butchering an old Tamiya Bruiser, but the chassis is actually from the new F350 High-Lift, which is superficially similar.)
Herewith, some outstanding video clips (as in, not a whole series of something) that everybody linked to when they were new and exciting (years ago, in one case).
But you, gentle reader, may have missed out on one or more of them. So I don't feel too guilty about this Outside-Scoop blog post.
The title links go to the pages where you can find the big full-resolution versions of each for download.
Buggy Saints Row: The Musical:
Rockfish (soon to be a major motion picture!):
I live in Katoomba, a town replete with cafes and art galleries. Not to mention art galleries with cafes in them. And cafes with little art displays.
This kind of town tends to breed sculptors, and that subcategory of sculptor who's good enough with a welder to make sculptures but not good enough to get a proper job (OK, some of them are true MIG poets, but most aren't) tends to produce weird garden art.
They didn't necessarily mean it to be garden art in the first place. But they couldn't sell it, and it was really big and pointy, and their wives were perfectly clear that it wasn't going to stay in the front room no matter how much they enjoyed opening their beers on it, so out in the garden it went.
I'm not really a fan of the usual whimsical googly-eyed-giraffe-made-out-of-springs kind of welded sculpture.
(Though I much prefer it to what one gallery not far from here has out front - a life-sized 3D replica of the screaming horse from Picasso's Guernica. Dear god.)
But I could, in certain circumstances, be persuaded to make an exception.
It would appear to be to scale with the original actor, if not even bigger. It's not cheap, but great art never is, is it?
(If you're reading this after the auction page is gone, it was from this eBay seller, and I've archived the page here.)
I realise that not all men would want this thing. I further realise that women who would also like it do exist.
I do not, however, feel I am being unfairly stereotypical by pointing out that it is (a) awesome and (b) perfectly acceptable grounds for divorce.
