Category Archives: Legos

NorthStar Nerd, Now Bird Brained!

Android | iPad | Kindle Fire, China, College Search, Economy 2.0, Legos, Northern Life

This blog, NorthstarNerd.Org is a maintained as an archive to my 28+ years as a web development / software project manager with Honeywell. My projects stretch back to the earliest days of the internet, and I often blogged about the world wide web and knowledge management.

In the Spring of 2014 I decided to retire at the early age of 57. I have never looked back. I am now a northern Minnesota based naturalist. I have been publishing since January 2014 at my web site: 365DaysOfBirds.Com.

For the moment please use these links to the WayBack Machine from the Internet Archive. During the Fall of 2025 I will be bringing back online at this site my archival content. Please note, the WayBack Machine can be slow to load content …

Northern Hawk Owl After the Storm

Here are the first posts from the old NorthstarNerd.Org archive.  An additional 500 in PDF format will be added in the near future.

  • eContent (chronologically the last posts)
    • One
    • Two
    • Three
    • Four
    • Five
    • The remainder will be categorized by the these topics
      • Android | iPad | Kindle Fire
      • China
      • College Search
      • Legos
      • Northern Life

Nature’s Fury Lego Robotics

Legos

Exciting Lego Robotics weekend in store. For years I coached my son's team, but now given he is working as an Aerospace engineer for Honeywell, I will judge Lego Robotics design. In fact, almost every former team member is now working as an engineer. This is a great testimonial for Lego Robotics.

Tonight I will help train other judges. Tomorrow I will judge robotic design for the Northeastern Minnesota First Lego League Tournament. Imagine teams of 4 to 8 children (elementary and middle school) programming and designing robots made out of Legos, a small computer and various sensors!

Come watch some of tomorrow's competition (Marshall School in Duluth Minnesota, Saturday, December 14th at 9 am). It's free and exciting. Given most of you can't visit God's Country of Northeastern Minnesota, here is a cool video from First Lego League demonstating this years mission. 

Free Universal Construction Kit

Legos

I need access to a 3D printer! If you love Legos, K'Nex and Tinkertoys, then you you have a similar need. The folks at F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab just developed items you can print out for free via your rapid prototyping 3D printer which allows these three building / construction toys to be interconnected. How cool is that?! Here is the link to download your designs / free universal construction kit!

If you have some engineering prototype designs in the queue for your 3D printer, they can wait. This is really important!

Post Update on April 13th: I'm investigating the online 3D Printing Service named Shapeways. I uploaded some of the models, but I need to find out if the design dimensions use metric or inches.

Free-universal-contruction-kit1  Free-universal-contruction-kit2

Lego Mindstorms Meets HDR Photography!

Legos, Northern Life

Wow! Fantastic! Superb! I really can not think of enough adjectives to complement French photographer Tanguy Louvigny, who created a time lapse video of the Normandy and Brittany country-side using High Dynamic Range photography (HDR Wikipedia Link). His movie incorporated 30 frames per second, that’s 90 exposures for each second of screen time (HDR takes each shot in triplicate using different exposure settings … learn more from my prior post on HDR).

Equally amazing is the Legos camera / tracking system Mr. Louvigny  built using Lego Mindstorms. Quoting Open Culture, which is the web site from which I first learned of this video: "To create the moving-camera effects, Louvigny designed and built his own robotic three-axis motion system using Tetrix motors and a LEGO Mindstorms control system, which he programmed in ROBOTC language. This allowed him to automate the tortoise-like dolly, pan and tilt movements."

Lego-Camera-Tracking

Take some time to review the photographer's web site … you'll find more equally fascinating creations. However, for the moment, relax, turn your computer's speakers on, and enjoy a trip through the French country-side from sunrise to sunset. Wow!

Hdr skies from Tanguy Louvigny on Vimeo.

 

It All Began With Legos!

College Search, Legos

Back on Arpil 2nd, 2007, I asked my son, Erik, if I could blog about his search for the perfect undergraduate engineering college. Given an answer of "yes", it led to an interesting series of posts, which now finishes with Erik's senior year at Rose-Hulman. You could actually say, it all began with Legos! Thus, you really have to go back nine years when our Lego Robotics Team "Super Nerds In Pink (SNIP)" was formed (I was the coach); the end result will be Erik's graduation this Spring with his electrical engineering degree. Everyone else on that team has also pursued a technical degree!

Along the journey, there were such memorable posts as:

At times, Erik would be my guest blogger. For instance he wrote:

As a parent I am still pleased with Erik's choice. His engineering internships (GE and Oshkosh) provided good technical learning opportunities, and what can you say about a school which has been ranked #1 for engineering undergraduate programs for over a decade?! (Rose-Hulman: US News and World Report rankings for schools where the top degree awarded is a master's degree). Thus, if you are looking for a sharp young man (I'm biased), download Erik's resume. However, I warn you … there is plenty of competition!

  • Erik Hoeg: Resume (job search completed! see below)

Erik-Pumpkin

What a great Christmas present! New full-time job for both of my boys! This past holiday season (Christmas 2011) both of my sons entered the job market looking for their first full time job. Given the economy, like any parent, I was concerned, but believed in my boys. In the course of four weeks, both Carl (newly minted masters in economics and international relations from Johns Hopkins) and Erik (will graduate this Spring with his BSEE) received great job offers. Particularily pleasing was they both had many different companies pursing them. Life is good!

In closing, lest you think our home always had a serious, academic focus … enjoy this video of one or Erik's earlier robots: Cyrus the Cat vs. the Lego Synchro Drive Robot (121,676 views to date)