Children’s author and photographer Walter Wick decided to balance 117 toys of various sizes and shapes on a LEGO block to create the shot that he was looking for. And then, with some difficulty, he knocked it down.
I created this photograph for the Kids Gallery of the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. It shows 117 objects balancing on a single Lego block. No adhesives, glue or hidden supports were used. The stability of this improbable pile of objects is helped by positioning the center of gravity of each horizontal section directly above the Lego block and by lowering the center of gravity of the entire structure as much as possible through the use of hanging objects.
The process involved about a week of trial and error, with many, many crashes along the way. After settling on a design for the lower half of the structure, I worked on the horizontal segments separately, adding them to the stack with temporary supports in place. This allowed me to swap out different objects and shift them around until all the parts were in balance. I then removed the supports and took this photograph. The stack remained up until I decided to knock it down (captured on video!)
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.
The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.
A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?” The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:
“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.
Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.
Children are rarely familiar with the names the LEGO company gives its various bricks and accessories. Giles Turnbull was delighted to find his son had his own terms for each piece. So he gathered more children, four in all, to find out what names they used, and assembled those names in a handy chart. Link -via Buzzfeeed
Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students
Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know
that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or
that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company
officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google
dog?
Neatorama presents the Top 10 Neat Facts About Google:
1. Before Google, There Was BackRub
In
1996, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on a research
project to understand the link structure of the World Wide Web. They're
particularly interested in determining the importance of a given web page
based on its backlinks or how many other web pages link to it (which later
became the concept behind Google's "PageRank" algorithm).
The project was named BackRub (yes, a play on the word "backlink").
You can see an archived
page of BackRub in the Wayback Machine:
8) Your logo is upside down: Why is the light source obviously
below the image? It looks quite unnatural...
The logo is simply a scan of my hand, from a flatbed scanner converted
to black and white. The "back" in the picture is the scanner
cover, and the shadows are from the scanner light.
Larry and Sergey needed large amount of disk space to test their PageRank
algo, but the largest hard disks available at the time were only 4 GB.
So they assembled 10 of these drives together.
While he was an undergrad at Michigan University, Larry had built a programmable
plotter out of LEGO, so it's only natural that he used the colorful bricks
to create Google's
first computer storage!
3. Google's First Investor
Sun
Microsystem co-founder Andy
Bechtolsheim knew a good thing when he saw it. After talking to Larry
and Sergey about Google for 30 minutes, he whipped out his checkbook and
wrote a check for $100,000, made out to "Google, Inc." Problem
was, Google, Inc. hasn't existed yet!
Oh, by the way, the Sun in Sun Microsystem stands for "Stanford
University Network."
4.
Google Garage
Talk about getting lucky tenants. In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented
her garage to two Stanford students - you know who they are - for
$1,700 a month to help out with the mortgage. That turned out to be a
life-changing decision for Susan - it got her a key early job at Google
which translated to a top executive position later on, introduced a future
husband to her younger sister Anne,
and created a mini cottage industry for the rest
of her family. (Photo: Jack Gruber/USA Today)
In
2006, Google
bought the house which had become a tourist attraction (the busloads
of people who show up to take pictures were so annoying that Google decided
not to publish the address - though ironically, you can still Google
Map it.)
5. Google's First Dog
Despite the Internet's obsession with cats, dogs rule Google. In 1999,
a Leonberger breed named Yoshka
came to work with Google's first VP of Engineering Urs Hölzle and
became the company's
"first" dog. (Photo: Google
Timeline)
If you must know, Leonbergers are big dogs with lionesque mane that look
really majestic. They are, however, useless
as guard dogs because they're much too kind and gentle.
6. Just How Many Servers Does Google Have?
A sign near the Googleville data center. Photo: ahockley
[Flickr]
The real Googleville.
Photo: Melanie Conner/NY Times
Good question. Nobody outside the company knows, and Google ain't talkin'.
The company's famously secretive when it comes to its data centers (Heck,
no one even knows for sure how many data centers the company has!)
For example, The Dalles or "Googleville" data center in a small
Washington Oregon town, was cloaked
in secrecy:
"No one says the 'G' word," said Diane Sherwood, executive
director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river
from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. "It's a little
bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter."
Recently, Google Fellow Jeff
Dean gave a revealing talk on large-scale computing systems in which
he discussed technical details of a new storage and computation system
called Spanner, which is designed for up to 10
million servers. Skynet, anyone?
7. "Green" Search
All those hardware must use a lot of electricity (indeed, Googleville
data center is calculated to require
about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 82,000 homes
or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington), but just how much
energy do you use when you perform a Google search?
Google calculated that it uses about 1
kJ (0.0003 kWh) of energy to answer the average search query. It's
so efficient that your PC will likely use more energy in the time it takes
to do a Google search.
To offset its electricity consumption, Google even installed 1.6MW
solar panels on the rooftops of the Googleplex. A total of 9,212 solar
panels generate 4,475 kWh daily, the equivalent of about the amount of
electricity used by 1,000 California homes.
I'm sure you're all familiar with Google Street View and the camera-topped
Google Car, but what about all of the interesting places inaccessible
to cars? Enter the Google
Trike, which started as a project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical
Engineer on the Street View team:
"I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View
system after realizing how many interesting places around the world
- ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts
- aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the
trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or
how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to
see what our users come up with."
9. I'm Feeling Lucky Costs Google $110 Million a Year
The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's homepage takes you
straight to the first web page result. Because it bypasses Google's own
search result page, where users are shown ads, the button actually costs
Google around $110 million a year.
Why keep it? Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience
Marisa Mayer said:
You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it,
that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about
making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google
and about the "I'm Feeling Lucky," is that they remind you
that the people here have personality and that they have interests and
that there is real people.
In 2005, Ben Rathbone (then
at Google's Hardware Operations) gave us a glimpse of humanity's future.
I, for one, welcome our new Googlebot
overlord:
Then I pondered the question: what does Google do? The grossly
simplified answer that I came up with is Google connects the world with
the Internet.
It all snapped into place: the idea of a robot, connecting a world
with the Internet, with wires, that connect to big cabinets of computers.
It was not hard then to make the leap to representing the internet as
a world, or globe, made up of pages.
If you think a pop-up book is impressive, check this one out: a pop-up diorama of the Kinkaku-ji Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, made entirely out of LEGO blocks! YouTube user talapz created this out of 4,500 bricks.
You may recall the Dalek Pumpkin from 2006, the Snap-o-Lantern from 2007, and the Dark Detecting Jack-o-Lantern from 2008. The fertile minds at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have announced their Halloween pumpkin project for 2009, and it’s a winner!
The Rovin’ Pumpkin’ is a simple robotic pumpkin, and a close cousin of the Snap-O-Lantern. Silently, it sits on your porch– camouflaged amongst the humble squashes.
After a minute, its green eyes start to glow, and it creeps… moving about one foot to the left… and stops. The eyes go dark again. It fades into the darkness. And it waits.
After several minutes and several steps, it reverses direction, and begins to creep the other way. Hopefully before it falls off of your porch.
The Rovin’ Pumpkin is made from Lego parts, a small motor, LEDs for eyes, and a pumpkin. Instructions and a video are included in the article. Link
Here at Neatorama, we’re big fans of LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya. His latest project is a functional cello made out of LEGO bricks. At the link, there are more pictures and a time-elapsed video of the construction process.
Tron is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi movies and it’s a pleasure to see that almost three decades later, it’s still inspiring its fans. Here’s a fantastic diorama of the Tron Light cycles scene by Flickr user 2×4 we first spotted over at The Brothers Brick blog.
Artist Angela Moramarco has a very odd belief about the innards of video game controllers.
I bet you didn’t know that the average Wii controller has all kinds of guts like this. Guts. I’ve seen a lot of guts projects lately. That one with the lego guy turning around and around, those KAWS Dissected Companions from a few years ago. It’s no longer a joke! But that’s ok, that’s not what this is about anyway. It’s about how physical therapists are using the Wii to help their patients gain muscle strength by playing games! Yay Nintendo!
A month ago, I linked to a news story about plans for a full-sized LEGO house in the UK. James May, the TV host responsible, has construction of the three-million brick project well underway. And yes, it has a functioning bathroom. You can view twenty photos of the construction process at the link.
James May of the British television show Top Gear is planning to build a full-sized house out of LEGOs:
On Friday, more than three million Lego bricks were delivered to the vineyard in preparation for the task.
Denbies marketing and business development manager, Jeanette Simpson, said: “The millions of bricks came all the way from the Czech Republic. The house will be life-size with a staircase, toilet and shower.”
Cake Wrecks has a collection of awesome Lego cakes. Some are Lego creations that look like cakes, but most are cakes that resemble Lego creations, including three awesome wedding cakes. This birthday cake by blogger jumpinmonkies was made from 125 cake bricks, with each connector stub individually added! Link -via b3ta
You’ve heard of X-men, but do you remember Doom Patrol?
Unlike the X-Men, the Doom Patrollers were once normal people who suffered an accident that disfigured them but also gave them superpowers. Shunned by the world for just being plain ugly, the freaks were gathered by Doctor Caulder, a paraplegic, who thought that maybe the world wouldn’t dislike them so much if they used their powers to save the normal people’s asses from giant robots once in a while.
If this sounds somewhat familiar to you, it’s because the same thing as X-Men with the only difference that the smart guy in the wheelchair was bald in one and X-Men uses mutants as an allegory for minorities instead of people with elephantiasis or whatever the heck Doom Patrol was going for.
Cracked looks at six famous characters and their lesser-known precursors. I knew about The Lion King, but I was unfamiliar with the rest. Oh, I knew the last one, too, but I didn’t know how much they had in common. Link
We’ve posted about Spaceship Battleship Yamato in LEGO before on Neatorama, but as the old saying goes, the original is still the best: here’s the namesake the battleship Yamato (also in LEGO) which sailed (and sank) during World War II.
The LEGO battleship Yamato was built by Jumpei Mitsui (who cleverly outsourced the building of some 200,000 elements to other LEGO fans). It only took him 6 (!) years: Link
Flickr user On The Set has created some of the most beloved sitcom shows in scale model form. Some haven’t been worked on in several years but are being brought out of storage to be completed.
For fun, try and name the sets without looking at the titles.
Sets are made of lots of different things but the basis is Lego bricks. A set can take from 2 weeks to a month to complete. Strange hobby I know but I hope you enjoy them!
No, this is not a real space shuttle. It’s made of Lego bricks!
Two Japanese LEGOsmiths used a whopping 65,000 bricks and 1,590 man hours to complete the stunning diorama, which even simulates a launch with flashing lights under the boosters and a vocal countdown. The only thing it doesn’t do is lift off.
Part of the “Nasu Space Center,” it appeared as a scene in Nasu Highland Park, an amusement park in Japan.
For someone that works at LEGO, this is a functional business card that also happens to be an iconic toy! Moreover, they even try to match the look of the minifig (gender, hair, and glasses) to the person.
One of the largest Lego creations ever constructed is a 16-ft-tall model of an Egyptian pharaoh that looks suspiciously like King Tut.
The giant pharaoh is currently floating down the River Thames on its way to Legoland in Windsor, England, where it will be the centerpiece of Legoland’s Kingdom of the Pharaohs, which is set to open March 21.
This is the final leg in its 1,395-mile journey by truck and boat from the Czech Republic, where it was constructed.
The pharaoh required more than 200,000 Lego bricks and weighs one ton.
This rainbow-colored car is covered entirely in computer keys. There’s more where this came from, though – DarkRoastedBlend has cars covered in grass, Legos, pens, and even a car covered in cars. Tiny cars, that is, like the Matchbox variety. How meta. Now if only each Matchbox car was covered in even smaller cars…
The name of this geeky retro work of art is Big Blue.
Lego PC that SCREAMS 80s LEGO with what I think are the most recognized LEGO sets of the 80s representing Space, Castle, Town, with Touch Screen LCD, RF Remote, Blue NEON light, Spectrum Analyzer display, HDTV Tuner card coming soon. I call it BIG BLUE.
See lots more pictures at Brickshelf. Link -via Gizmodo
Celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species with these 10 illustrated butcherings of its iconic cover art, from the evolution of Lego man to the devolution of alternative rockers.
Oh, I fondly remember watching the anime Space Battleship Yamato as a little kid, so it’s a neat treat to find this replica of the Yamato (or Argo in the American dub of the series, retitled Star Blazers) made with LEGO by Vincent Cheung: Link – via The Brothers Brick
Christoph Niemann shows us how you only need a few LEGO pieces to make a whimsical yet brilliant homage to New York City:
During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, Christoph Niemann spends a lot of time with his boys in their room. And as he looks at the toys scattered on the floor, his mind inevitably wanders back to New York. I LEGO N.Y.
Ochre Jelly recreated Gaius Baltar, Six, Starbuck, and Morbo from Battlestar Galactica in Lego! I looked up pictures of these characters, and found they are pretty much dead-on. Link-Thanks, Ochre Jelly!
Italian photographer Marco Pece likes to replicate classic works of art in Lego form. And why not? They look pretty sweet. I’m especially partial to American Gothic, but The Last Supper is pretty impressive as well.
Legoland in Carlsbad, California has a new display in honor of the presidential inauguration Tuesday. The park has modified its US Capitol model to portray Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, president Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and the other dignitaries who will be present as Obama takes the oath of office, as well as the crowd! In addition to the swearing-in ceremony, see Aretha Franklin ready to entertain and the presidential motorcade waiting to join the inaugural parade. The display opens to the public today. Pictured is a detail showing George H.W. Bush nodding off. SF Weekly has a slide show featuring many other details. Link-Thanks, Janine Kahn!
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in 
In
1996, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on a research
project to understand the link structure of the World Wide Web. They're
particularly interested in determining the importance of a given web page
based on its backlinks or how many other web pages link to it (which later
became the concept behind Google's "PageRank" algorithm). 
Sun
Microsystem co-founder 
4.
Google Garage
In
2006, 
You may recall the 
ueue
James May of the British television show Top Gear is planning to build a full-sized house out of LEGOs:
You’ve heard of X-men, but do you remember Doom Patrol? 
I could waste a lot of time at TotallyLooksLike.com. No, wait, I already have. Some of the comparisons are astute (
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