hertenberger.co.za

June sees the release of a rather nice addition to the current Lego airport and City themes. Proving that some minifigs are just like their real-world counterparts and insist on special modes of transport, set #3222 provides a helicopter and stretched limousine.

Whether or not the limo will make it through the tight alleys of Lego City remains to be seen…

Set #3222 is a special edition and may not be available generally available in retail outlets.

While we’re waiting for that set to be released, we’ll settle back and enjoy our copy of The Adventures of Clutch Powers.

The DVD contains the first ever, full-length Lego movie, featuring the hero Clutch Powers. Clutch makes his way through the entire gamut of the Lego universe, from the mines to the City to finally battle the evil wizard Malloc the Malign.

For the first time, Lego has publicized its official colour palette. All elements in the Lego range can now be identified by their official colour code and colour description. The palette covers solid, transparent and so-called effect elements.

If you want your Lego building experience to include the difference between transparent bright orange and transparent reddish-orange, the colour palette details for the 2010 Lego range may be of interest to you. Get the PDF from the Brothers Brick.

Lego City is an exciting place to be lately, specifically with regard to the stunning buildings that are available in boxed form. The recent fire house was yet another fine example of a building featuring a lot of interior detail and a modular design that blends in with the others available. Creating a sprawling cityscape is rather easy and indications are that further additions in this range will be available in the future. In addition to the market place, hotel, green grocer, winter toy shop, fire house and various others, Lego is releasing the Grand Emporium.

It’s a corner building with a lot of interior detail and removable sections for easy access and play.

Set #10211 includes a number of mini figures to round out the Lego shopping experience and comprises roughly 2200 pieces. It should be available locally from June this year.

Here’s another great Lego sculpture by Arvo – this time of a classic Polaroid camera.

More pictures are available on Brickshelf.

Lego has added another popular franchise to its existing toy line-up: to coincide with the release of a new Toy Story adventure and the re-screening of the first two movies in 3D in the next two months, a few Lego Toy Story sets are available. Aimed at smaller builders, the range includes a box with the characters from the famous Andy‘s truck chase scene in Toy Story.

Complete with Buzz, Woody and RC with a pull-back motor, these look like a lot of fun.

I picked this set up by chance on a walk-about through ORT duty free. It’s a set I’ve never heard of and didn’t spot at any time in any of the online stores. A bit of investigation reveals that #7643 is a special promotional item, for sale only on certain airlines.

The small plane and ice cream stand were quickly built and feature some interesting details.  It’s a nice addition to any Lego airfield, if you can lay your hands on one.

It’s been ten years since moviegoers got to see the first installment of The Matrix. As a tribute, a number of fans with a passion for Lego have re-created the now iconic bullet-dodge scene in spectacular detail as a stop-motion movie.

The stop-motion clip is frame-accurate: each video frame from the segment in the actual movie was reproduced as a frame using Lego elements and minifigs. According to the website, almost 900 frames had to be painstakingly reproduced for 44 seconds of footage. The result is impressive to say the least. Check out the video clips here.

I tried rather hard to get the new Mindstorms NXT 2.0 software to install on the iMac, but to no avail. Though the installer ran through without any hint of trouble, and even after following the suggestion to install Rosetta, no NXT application icon ever appeared in the Applications folder. I tried a number of times, had to shut down Firefox each time due to an update required to Adobe Flash and even had to sit through a number of system restarts. Nothing much helped. Removing the existing installation and then re-installing likewise had no effect. The only thing I could think of was that the trouble with the installation was somehow related to Snow Leopard. A good guess: a brief Google and I found a solution.

It’s not exactly complicated, but is something I would never have considered. The workaround involves the opening of an installer package and the removal of the preflight script.

Once that has been done and the package closed, another try at the installation yields the desired result: a working installation of the Lego Mindstorms NXT software on a Mac running Snow Leopard.

Here’s a rundown of the steps to get the software to work on Snow Leopard:
1. Copy all files from the MINDSTORMS CD to a folder on your desktop.
2. Open that folder and look under “Parts”.
3. Locate MindstormsUnivEdu.pkg or MindstormsUnivRet.pkg.
4. Right-click (control-click) and choose “Show Package Contents”.
5. Navigate into the Contents » Resources directory and delete the “preflight” file.
6. Close this package and run the meta-package (LEGOMindstormsEngRet.mpkg) from the desktop to install MINDSTORMS NXT.

The rising up of the robots may commence…

November will see the release of two new console titles from the Lego stable.

First off is the follow-up the Indiana Jones adventures in Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. In this title, players will once again get to re-create adventures from all the movies, including the latest including the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Jones will visit South American jungles, Peruvian Ruins and many other places.

The second release I’m quite keen to get hold of is the Lego Rock Band game, bringing the fun of multi-user band members and the Lego universe together.

Until these titles are available locally in the next two or so weeks, why not build something related to Lego Rock Band? A tour bus might be a great idea…

Get the building instructions here (direct PDF link).

If you’re looking to keep the young ones busy this holiday season, you may want to head on over to the Lego site to download some building instructions with a distinct Christmas flavour.

You’ll need to supply your own collection of coloured bricks, then download the individual instructions.This may form the basis for a Lego-themed Christmas…

Then, the building fun can begin.

For those of us in sunny climes the subject matter is applicable, though luckily, a plastic snowman won’t melt