An "almost Joe Vig" time travel vignette.
If you are not familiar with Lego vignettes and Joe Vig, read this and this.
I call this an "almost Joe Vig" vignette because I built it with the intent of entering it in a Joe Vig contest but I never got around to buying the proper pieces to build a "correct" Joe Vig minifig (on top of not having the right part for the head, I built the minifig from memory and got the red and blue parts swapped...). So after months of procrastination, I've decided to publish it as is. Click on the picture to view the matching photo gallery.
The concept is that in the present day aJV (almost Joe Vig) is walking down the street when he gets distracted by a girl on a bicycle and is about to fall into a hole. The hole happens to be the mouth of a worm hole through the fabric of Lego time: the other end opens in the early 1970s.
I used as much distinctive parts from each era to show the evolution of Lego system over the last 30 years. The modern scene uses a large window and door, a bicycle, a jumper plate, some 1x8 tiles in black, green bricks and of course minifigs. To build the scene from the 1970s, I looked for each part in the idea book number 222.
To link the two scenes, I needed a worm hole: of course we don't even know if such thing exists let alone what it might look like (in fact, if they do exist, they probably are invisible to the naked eye!). Next stop was worm hole representation in movies: they are usualy shown as spiralling things, so I built a double spiral out of blue and red clear 1x2 bricks.
The result captures the concept and is surpringly strong: I've moved this vig many times, It's even been bumped into several times over a period of six months and it stayed together !

Announcing my latest Lego project: a walking dragline.
A dragline is a type of excavator which uses a bucket suspended by cables from the end of a boom and the front of the machine.
A walking dragline rests on a circular tub and does most of its work while stationary. In order to move it uses to feet that come down, lift and pull the crane back.
These machines are used mainly in large open pit mines. They are themselves very large: a typical bucket contains 100 cubic yard of dirt. Total machine weight is measured in thousands of tons.
Here is a link such a machine at work. You can see the erection of such machine here.
I will not model a specific machine as my main goal is to build a functional model in a scale suitable for the Lego minifigs (about 1:50). The model will have four main powered functions: walk, slew and bucket motion (two winches).
The electrical system will be custom built. This provides several advantages: full rado control, use of the transformers as ballast, reliable high power available.
The machine, like the real ones, will be electrically powered through a long power cord. While the real machines use high voltage (several thousands of volts), mine will have a standard 110V cable. This cable will go through the pivot point using a Mercotac slip ring. The upper works will contain three transformers: two 20V units and one 5V unit. While the 5V unit will power the radio receiver and drive logic, the 20V will be used to power the motors, wired in series two by two trough a pair of H-bridge chips from Allegro.
The radio control system will be based on a cordless gamepad controller for PC manufactured by Logitech. I picked this product because I worked on its development and I have access to its schematics and firmware source code. This part of the project will not be documented on this site.