How to Spot a Psychopath

Another Crabfu creation.

Slightly louder than the previous ones.

I recognised the chassis as being from a Kyosho Blizzard just from the first picture of the thing. I haven't a clue about the motors and boilers, but if you want an R/C tracked vehicle of any size spotted, I'm your man.

Apropos my previous "those of us who will not rest until we've faithfully reproduced a 100% self-aware Johnny Five in Technic" bit:

We're one step closer.

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.)

(Via, via.)

I-Wei's been busy lately.

"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.)