Michael Mhuffman's blog

NFFC Chapter Meeting

So I went to my first NFFC chapter meeting tonight.  Jim Korkis shared recordings of Walt Disney speaking "off the cuff" from various functions.  They were fun tails... I sat in the back waiting for my wife to join me at the meeting after she got off from work... I didn't realize it until later, but sitting behind us was Charles Ridgeway... as Jim was talking about different events Walt was speaking at, giving background behind the recording -- Charles was also sharing some commentary to someone sitting next to him -- adding another dimension to tonight's meeting.

For the most part, people were generally nice, but like most club meetings, there were cliques. And being new, we only knew a few people... There's a "Disney Dining" meeting coming up next month; that might give Erika and I time to meet other people more informally.

It's funny... I know a good deal about Disney... the company history, read biographies on Eisner & Walt, general information about both theme parks, Erika and I have gone on a walking tour of Disneyland, and I gather/read trivia/information about Disney on-line... but it still astounds me the levels of minutia people/fans will collect/know on Disney... from names of animators & able credit artwork to a given artist, drop cast members' names as if they knew them personally, and trivia about merchandising like they're Antique Roadshow experts.  It's amazing and scary what people know about their hobbies.

Test... Is this thing on?

This is a test sent from my iPhone.

Disney Cruise

DSC00125

Erika and I took a Disney Cruise over our 7th wedding anniversary weekend.  As you can see, she's grinning ear to ear.  :)  Erika was a little apprehensive at first and she got a little sea-sick at our first dinner, but she enjoyed herself completely -- she was pouting as we left the boat, she really didn't want to go home.

I think our next Disney Cruise will have to be 7 days.  There was just so much to do and not enough time to do it all in.  We ended up playing Wii bowling the last night before docking in Cape Canaveral -- she loved the game so much that I ran out last weekend to find a Wii.  To my good fortune, I picked one up at Circuit City on Sunday; the very last person in line to get one.

You can view more pictures from our cruise over on my Flickr account.

Today's Fortune

Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come from miles to watch you burn.

Festival of the Masters Time Again

FotM06: GFLUG Display
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

My LEGO club, the Greater Florida LEGO Users Group (or GFLUG for short), will be displaying our LEGO creations at Downtown Disney by the LEGO Imagination Center store November 9-11, 2007, from 10am – 5pm daily for Festival of the Masters. This year’s theme is ‘Vs.’ as in Spy vs. Spy (from Mad comics), Robots vs. Aliens, Giant Spiders vs. Tanks, etc.

Here’s some pictures from last year’s display.

Come out, there’s fun for the whole family. Chalk artist on the sidewalks, art booths everywhere, and LEGO.

LEGO HRMC Project

Front of HRMC
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

This past weekend, GFLUG finished up the Holmes Regional Medical Center (HRMC) LEGO Project, for Bovis. A scaled model of a hospital expansion in Melborne, FL. The display was about 30 inches by 100 inches (i.e. 3 green BP x 10 green BP long). We budgeted around $1K for materials, using PaB, a few sets, a few small BL orders, and parts from our own collections -- we managed to stay within budget! We had 4 days (2 weekends) to build within, 3-5 people were working on it at times (150 man hours total), and I think we pulled something wonderful off. See pictures here: HRMC LEGO Project

Yarrrrrr, it's a double letter score

Yarrrrrr, it's a double letter score
Originally uploaded by Rattle and Hum

Happy Talk like a Pirate day!

Detroit NMRA

Tampa Skyline
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

Got back Monday from Detroit. I was an exhibitor at the Detroit NMRA show -- a show for model trains. GFLTC/GFLUG (my local LEGO clubs) had a LEGO display at NMRA along with 9+ other LEGO train clubs.

Overall, it was a great show. People were friendly & appreciative of us driving all the way up from Florida to be there. The public (and their kids) were well behaved and amazed. The layout was big enough that there wasn't too big of a crowd in front the of displays at any time.

Did a little more drinking than normal -- there was a bar close to the hotel, so after the show, most AFOLs congregated there. So this event, I met someone who worked on the Red-Green show at one time -- he did the special effects on the last 2 seasons of the show. I'm a such a fan of the show, that this just blew me away -- and he's a very nice guy to boot.

It might have been me & whenever I talked with people, I began by asking about the drama behind Brickshelf to get the conversation rolling -- nothing like a "hot button" to get people to talk about something. Many were glad that it was back up; they still support it & might support it with cold hard cash. Others fear more LEGO community fragmentation. Others were looking long-term, like in how to keep the site operational. While some of us reflection on Brickshelf's moderation policy & history. Like others, I think if there's a fan-centric image repository web-site (something like Brickshelf, but brought into the 21st century, instead of using 90's technology) it could emerge as the leader. But then the conversation turned towards the classic developer vs. systems-architect argument of either rebuilding the web-site from scratch vs. taking an existing solution & customizing it to fit the community's needs. It's the same 80%/20% problem to me. :) Either the developer's delima (80% development completed on a new project vs. 20% left unfinished in the end) or the systems-architect's delima (pre-existing software off the shelf will only meet about 80% of the community's needs with customizations & the other 20% not able to be completed because of the software's structure). Either way you reach the same goal, but it depends on time & money at that point.

Anyway, how we build that better LEGO community shouldn't prevent us from striving for a better LEGO community. Now if only we can change people's attitudes on being so club-centric and be mature enough to assist other clubs in set-up/tear-down, when there's a surplus of people... :) It took Robin & I nearly 4 hours to tear down our display. We did have a little help -- I do appreciate that -- but to have a few extra hands, especially since Robin drove 21+ hours to attend the show.

Brickshelf RIP (2000-2007)

Legoland Windsor Gates
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

I've tried to resist jumping onto the bandwagon with this one... but I found this petition to be a little funny...

There seems to be a few different sides in reaction to Brickself going down: (a) those who feel entitled to knowing that BS was going down, (b) those wanting to help BS out (or buy it), (c) the clueless who doesn't understand how much effort goes into creating a site like BS and complain about it, (d) those who feel devastated that BS went down, (e) and those attacking Kevin personally. On one hand, it IS a blow to the LEGO community at large... but from what I understand, the images are not gone, but there is something in the works to preserve BS, so I expect to see a BS2 sometime soon... either the rights to BS will be bought and the web-site will be paid for somehow (either another volunteer or an business-smart group of investors); or another volunteer will fill in the the community gap.

But on the other hand, I really love Flickr and the tools/resources Flickr gives a person. Most people in Classic Space (and other fringe LEGO people) have moved to Flickr a long time ago, so it hasn't been that much of a blow. To be honest, I've stopped posting to BS over a year or more ago, in favor of posting to Flickr. I realized that not everyone got to see my pictures on a non-LEGO-community web-site, but I posted my Flickr gallery to LUGNET to get exposure. For awhile there, I favored my own image gallery -- I owned the images and it was easy to upload/maintain images on my own web-site -- but a few months back, I bought a Flickr Pro account, finding it worth the money.

The bottom line is that Brickshelf either needs to incorporate some of the features that Flickr does, otherwise not too many people will morn its passing.

Bowling

Ash & Me
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

Went to Sarasota on Sunday to visit my nieces. They were down with their grandparents (my brother-in-law's parents) for a few weeks & Erika and I hadn't had a chance to visit with them until now.

The six of us went bowling. To be honest, I don't think I've been bowling since I lived in Dallas, or about 10+ years ago... I might have gone once with my sister & her friends after I moved back to Ohio, but I can't remember. Anyway, we all had a lot of fun. Erika said we should go again sometime soon.

Barb took Erika and I on a tour of the local beaches after lunch -- a very pretty white beach & one the city had to import gray sand to to help it from not eroding away. Managed to get a few photos... I could have stayed longer, but we had plans to go swimming back at the grandparent's condo complex.

After swimming, we all grabbed some Chinese before Erika & I had to head back to Orlando. Wish we could have stayed longer... But aunt Rika and I had to get back in time to get some sleep before having to work.