The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Think

For Gregory, who will only use IBM ThinkPad laptops, comes the original IBM ThinkPad (link via Jason Kottke), which is still available for only a buck ninety-three.

But I want to know where to get this leather case for the IBM ThinkPad …

It's not a single-use brick, it's a lack of our imagination

Earlier last month, Jason Kottke posted a story about how Lego has become single use. It's the sort of golden-era thinking that I promised myself I wouldn't fall in to, but I ended up nodding along. Yeah, Lego's too corporate. Lego sold out!

Except that it hasn't.

Robin Sloan at Snarkmarket shook me out of my false nostalgia with the Tao of Lego. Despite opening by agreeing with Jason, Robin put together a post crammed to the gills with links to amazing repurposing of the supposedly single-use bricks. Want an example?

…

I bought a pile of the standard bricks and—as an experiment—this Star Wars kit to see how ridiculous the pieces were. On the box, it appears to be made of all-kinds of single-use bits. Building it told a different story. The feet of the walker turn out to be the same part as the bodies of the Droids. Some of the joints are re-purposed guns. There are dozens of little clever things so that as you follow the instructions, there is moment after moment of discovery. “Oh, I can do THAT with that part?”

Via Jason Kottke, There is no single-use Lego | Quiet Babylon

It's amazing what can be done using Lego, even with the non-Lego Lego Bionicle parts.

Click the link. Click all the links. You know you want to. And it's worth it.

[Hard to believe this is Lego]

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