Category: Blog

LEGO Pac-Man

September 9, 2023

Kristin bought me the LEGO Pac-Man set earlier this year, and last week I assembled it. I went into this set ‘spoiler free’, and it was a delight to discover it’s special feature!

You first built the (removable) character display on top, which features Pac-Man and two pursuing ghosts. At the push of a button the all turn around to replicate what happens when Pac-Man eats a power pill. It’s a nice trick, but just a side dish to the main act. Oh and see those tiny Pac-Men and ghosts at the bottom? They’re printed tiles:

The main cabinet took me several overs over a few days and was an intriguing build because for a while I couldn’t see how the set was coming together. As mentioned I was initially oblivious of the special feature so half-way through the build of the main ‘screen’ I had no idea why I was adding a chain drive:

Then adding an axle attached to a crank on the back made it clear this set had hand-powered animations:

But I still wasn’t prepared for how smooth the movement was once finished, and how good the ‘screen’ looked:

Pac-Man, all the ghosts and the cherry all animate in some way, moving in various cycles around the board. There are two chains and a lever attached via different gears to the crank axle, so they don’t even all move at the same speed. It’s incredibly well done, and needs to be seen in action to appreciate it. I’ve made a lot of legos over the years, including some gigantic technic sets, but the engineering on this one surprised and impressed me more than any I’d ever seen.

There’s a few other nice little touches, like a moving joystick and light up ‘coin slot’, and even a cute little diorama hidden behind the back panel:

One interesting aspect to this set was that it’s slightly on the ‘harder’ side as far as assembly was concerned. A few steps required a second or even third look to make sure I was doing them correctly, and I was extremely careful for the screen part itself since errors there may have taken a long time to fix! Overall assembly was fun, and I the only real negative I can think of is the usual one: I wish LEGO stopped using stickers entirely.

The success of this set is just how great it looks assembled, and how smooth and wonderful the movement is when you turn the crank. This is one I’ll be happy to leave on display for many years to come 🙂

First Day

August 21, 2023

It was the first day of classes today. This is now my 21st year of teaching. The cycle continues as it always has.

Dramatic weather this morning, although it warmed in the afternoon. I hated wearing jeans, but I’ve never taught in shorts. For years now I always wear the same ‘outfit’: black jeans, t-shirt and shoes.

Here’s the room in which I teach my morning class, which has about 70 students. They looked young, and were very quiet (as the current generation often is). Many sat half way or further back until I chided them, at which point half moved to the front. I expect next lecture many will have moved closer to the front.

Some things never change, such as people selling posters at the start of semester. I remember this being an occurrence even 33 years ago when I first started University. I flipped through the selection and saw many eternal topics (Bob Marley, Star Wars, Superheroes) as well as some much more recent ones (Harry Styles, Fortnite, Stranger Things). There were also many people I didn’t recognize. Streamers maybe?

Coincidentally enough, one of the posters was Australian and over 30 years old! Do kids these days buy posters of bands their parents were into?

My afternoon lecture is taught in a bigger lecture center, and has 175+ students. They were much rowdier than the morning class, probably because it wasn’t so early in the morning 🙂

Here’s my office. I spend many hours in here each week, mostly accompanied by students looking for help. It’s fun, but tiring, and makes the time – and days – speed by.

21 years! How much longer will I be doing this?

No, I Don’t Believe

July 7, 2023

I learned of a new local ‘attraction’ that may have been of interest to me, so naturally today I went to check it out. It’s called ‘Do You Believe’ and is a fantasy/supernatural ‘museum’ in a nearby mall.

First things first: the mall was terrifying. Dying malls are always creepy, but this one was doubly so. Almost every shopfront was empty, and the few remaining rarely had names or any signage and seemed to contain teenage employees sitting disinterestedly behind tables full of second hand trash. Only one ‘restaurant’ remained in the enormous food court and even though it was lunch time there wasn’t a single soul eating. Every fiber of my being told me to turn around and leave this depressing place and yet I soldiered on, found ‘Do You Believe’ and handed over my $10 entry fee. I walked around the corner and saw this:

It’s an animatronic Sasquatch! He didn’t move much, and his movement was a bit jerky, but he got points for being the only robotic Bigfoot I’ve ever seen (aside from on The Six Million Dollar Man). He was truly massive as well, and towered over me. Next to him, on the wall, were some Bigfoot facts:

That’s the format of the place: an animatronic accompanied by a list of dubious facts. You stand and look at the creature for a moment, read he facts, and move on. I was alone and had the place to myself, but only spent seconds at each display.

After the Bigfoot came a mermaid:

Her tail rose and fell but the display was otherwise static. Amongst the mermaid facts were these two:

The use of the word ‘fact’ to describe nonsense lit a fire in me, and less than 30 seconds into this attraction it was clear there was absolutely no science or anything educational to be found. Oh well, let’s take a look at the mermaid relics and artifacts…

After the mermaid came a dragon:

He was more animated than the others, and his mouth even glowed to simulate the fire. At least they didn’t attempt to suggest he was real!

The centaur was paired with a toy stuffed lion they probably bought on amazon. And he made horse ‘whinny’ noises, which was weird to say the least.

Around the corner from him was a giant ape versus (?) a small T-Rex:

And a unicorn:

A griffin:

And even (why?) giant insects:

None other than King Kong himself made an appearance:

Don’t worry, they didn’t forget to include some (non-animatronic) aliens as well:

Here’s the one and only ‘fact’ that accompanied the alien display:

There were a few other ‘displays’ that were just printouts pinned to the walls, including the Loch Ness monster, the Kraken and even the Bermuda Triangle:

The above is the entirety of the Bermuda Triangle display. The Loch Ness and Kraken sections were even smaller, and included what seemed to be a poor quality printout of concept art from Clash Of The Titans.

I wish one of those Atlanteans living in the Bermuda Triangle that turned into a mermaid had used her clairvoyance to learn I was planning a visit to this place and then hypnotized me to change my mind!

The ghost ‘fact’ stated that they keep their personalities, memories and emotions and act the same as when they are alive. (And yes, the above was supposed to be a ghost.)

Let me be blunt: this was the worst thing I’ve ever paid money to see. It was in fact worse than everything I’ve ever seen. Even though it only took me five minutes to walk through, I felt I had wasted my time.

Sure it’s intended for kids, and sure the budget is probably microscopic and they spent it all on the animatronics, but even had this been free I would have felt ripped off.

The mall also included a ‘Pop Culture Museum’ which also cost $10, and I was – insanely – about to enter before I noticed the feature display right now was some guys collection of Funko Pops. I turned away and left the mall without a second thought. I’ll never return.

Robot Claw