Bonanzle

Network effect.
Image via Wikimedia CommonsI sell on eBay. Mostly LEGO brand sets, because that's what I have a lot of and what I know a fair bit about (plus b... IBM doesn't sell a lot of LEGO products so I'm clear on Conflict Of Interest concerns)

(I think I've got a link to my store over there on the sidebar... but hey, just in case you missed it, my store is Milton Train Works...)

I made Power Seller status a while back. Nothing big, it's very small time, but we do sell a fair bit. I do OK, but I am there not because it's cheap but rather, it's the biggest venue. Network effect means it's a good place to be if you want a lot of buyers.

For the record eBay charges small sellers like me, all in, somewhere around 15 %, give or take, of the gross sale price when you calculate store fees, listing fees, and final value fees. Plus another 3% for Paypal. Periodically, I look at what eBay is charging me and wish I had a different alternative. People keep trying to introduce some, but so far none has panned out.

But maybe this time it will be different. Bonanzle.com has come on the scene fairly recently and seems to actually be doing OK. They make it easy to migrate, you can just import all your eBay listings into a "booth" and away you go.

So I figured why not. I set up yesterday. It was easy. And today, I had my first sale.

Color me pleased. I hope you will give Bonanzle a try. Competition is good.

My Bonanzle "booth" is also called Milton Train Works. Tell all your friends :) If you mention this blog posting when you make an offer, I'll give you a 5 percent discount. Let's see if that viral marketing thing actually works :)

LEGOdometer

Image at right is from Brickshelf...

I'm slow. This has been buzzed up already, and I'm late to add my raves. But for the benefit of my paltry readership, if you like LEGO at all, you need to go check this out. Read the LUGNET posting.

Shaun Sullivan of NELUG has built a LEGO based odometer for measuring distance that trains run on exhibition layouts.

Note that an odometer was used at the PNLTC Guinness record attempt but it was electronic.

This one is purely mechanical. It's testimony to Shaun's addiction that he chose to do it this way... but ironically used significant computer time to calculate the gear ratios needed to get to within 8 feet per mile of accuracy in his measurements.

BrickWorld is coming

Some of us in the LEGO fan community have to ration how many fests we go to each year. While I used to go to BrickFest pretty regularly, this year I'm going to attend BrickWorld. This regional fest will be in Chicago, Illinois from June 19 to 22.

The BrickWorld site is at http://www.brickworld.us/ (that's right, a us domain... seems squatters have both the com and org domains already...)

There will be a large train layout on display with multiple clubs participating. I think Jo and I will be the only MichLTC representatives participating in the train display, which will be interesting... the display is being coordinated by Jeramy Spurgeon of IndyLUG and RailBricks fame.

Hope to see you there!

Couplers revealed

LEGO Trains at NMRA
(one of mine is in the pic!)
Image via Wikimedia CommonsA while back, I posted about the apparent change in the LEGO train coupler design, in which it seemed likely the old style coupler which consisted of a 3 part assembly (buffer, magnet holder, magnet) was going to be replaced with a single piece.

Railbricks, the fan generated LEGO Train online magazine had a piece about it at the time as well. It was discussed on quite a few venues, including LUGNET.

The LEGO Company has announced the new design, via a release to several fan sites, including Railbricks, which has this copy, and it confirms the speculation of fans, it was done for safety reasons.

I think the old design is more flexible, but the reasons given for the change (safety) do seem fairly irrefutable and they have put some thought into interoperability.

It's nice to see that the fans speculating got it right, and nice to see that LEGO announced the change well in advance via fan media. LEGO is getting better at working with fans.

What do you think? Good change or bad? Well publicized or not?

The answer wasn't blowing in the wind

MLCad, a popular modeler

(fair use claimed)

Image via Wikipedia
I found a nifty gadget, and I have a rather intractable problem to thank.

Many LEGO fans do it virtually, and have since 1995 when James Jessiman released the first software and parts library for LDraw. Since that time the LEGO Community has modeled almost all the parts LEGO has ever developed as part of the LEGO System, and there have been quite a few freeware or shareware tools developed, addressing parts modeling/authoring, model capture and development, rendering, instruction generation, animation and other aspects of virtual LEGO. The parts themselves are licensed under an open license (although getting there has been a bit of a struggle, perhaps a story for another blog post)

The LEGO company was a bit late to the game with their offering, Lego Digital Designer (or LDD), designed to be more kid friendly but widely derided as far harder to use by most serious modelers. It has the very significant advantage of being tied to official parts, and of being tied to the sales apparatus, things designed in it, if designed using a subset, can be bought from the factory.

So anyway... LDraw is great at modeling LEGO elements and constructions. These tend to be rigid or at least solid for the most part, and amorphous elements are rare... While there is a string generator out there, one thing that hasn't been addressed by this community is cloth. String at least is essentially a two dimensional problem, as most strings can be modeled as combinations of shape adhering sections, and catenary or parabolic curves that lie in a plane. But cloth has no such strictures.

Recently, there was a thread about modeling cloth. Don Heyse, long involeved in the LDraw community, was writing about the difficulties of modeling cloth in the LUGNET newsgroup lugnet.cad ... as part of explaining why it was so hard to model cloth he presented this little gadget. It lets you model cloth, and see the effect of wind and gravity on drapings, in real time. I found it quite enjoyable, and educational. Just a nifty little time waster. Hope you like it too!

So that is my serendipity story of the day, I guess.

Got any good serendipity stories?

Indiana Jones IV

LEGO Indy
Image via Wikipedia
Fair use claimedI got a chance to see the new LEGO sets for the Indiana Jones IV movie (Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull) and I'm psyched. Nice designs, all in all.

LEGO brought out 4 sets earlier this year with scenes from earlier movies:

• Indiana Jones Motorcycle Chase with 79 pieces
• Indiana Jones and the Lost Tomb with 277 pieces
• Race for the Stolen Treasure with 272 pieces
• Temple Escape with 554 pieces

(links go to Peeron inventory)

Usually when LEGO does a new theme the sets are increasing in price as well as piece count, oddly this time two of the sets have almost the same piece count but one is 20 and the other 30 USD. Fans have been pretty complimentary of these.

When I was in California last week I got to see the new ones on display, all featuring scenes from the new movie:

• Jungle Duel with 90 pieces
• River Chase with 234 pieces
• Jungle Cutter with 511 pieces
• Temple of Akator with 929 pieces

(no links this time, the inventories aren't done by the fans yet.... but here's a link to the LEGO site's description of the new theme)

Anyway, I'm psyched. Great sets and great play value.

Oh ya, I'm excited about the movie too.

From the what were they thinking department

The iconic LEGO brick.
Image via Wikimedia CommonsThe LEGO company continues to confound and confuse adult train fans.

Their latest move, apparently, is to replace the current magnetic coupling scheme, which uses magnets free to rotate around a horizontal axis, in a way that finesses which end is which polarity issues, mounted in a holder that is free to swivel from side to side (to allow the train cars to go around curves) and then mounted on a buffer, with a new scheme in which the magnet is apparently encased inside the buffer.

Why?

No one yet knows for sure. Speculation in the online LEGO community has it that this is to address safety concerns that might arise if young children swallow magnets... there have been reports in the media of children suffering problems when two magnets join adjacent stomach or intestinal walls and cause blockages.

How do we know this?

Seems that the new part libraries just refreshed into LDD show some new parts. You can see the images at this LUGNET post.

All in one and presumably harder to swallow by kids.

Oddly, these will probably be harder to swallow by adults too, as they make it harder to build things compared to what they replace.

Well, one more old style part to hoard, I guess, along with 9V motors and track.


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