AFOL A Blocumentary from AFOL on Vimeo.

What is it about the term AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) that I don’t like? It is hard to put it into words but it is the word “Fan” that I don’t care for.

I am not a “fan” of LEGO but I enjoy creating things out of LEGO and I enjoy the LEGO hobby. I refer to myself as a hobbyist or enthusiast but never as a fan. In fact, there is a lot of things about LEGO that I am probably not a fan of (e.g. the lack of product offering in the $5 – $20 range, the inability to buy train cars individually, etc.). Despite my feelings about the term “AFOL”, it isn’t going to go away and the video is well done.

But times change and Cary has phased out of the LEGO hobby and TrackDraw, while it still works, hasn’t been updated in years.  At one point I could build it from source myself but about a year ago I tried to build it and was unable to.  So the version I have running is from the RailBricks site and includes some custom parts in the library.  TrackDraw still has some oddities and will crash from time to time.

Recently while working on the 2010 LEGOPalooza track plan I couldn’t get text to work correctly so on a whim I decided to try BlueBrick.  I had looked at BlueBrick about a year ago and dismissed it as it had some real limitations.  However when I looked at it again, most of my issues had been addressed and it works pretty well.

I have not tried to create my own parts yet but probably will soon but I do like the layering model in particular.  I recaptured the NCLTC layout I am doing for 2010 LEGOPalooza in BlueBrick and did a couple more iterations using it.  I really wish the layout area had scroll bars and I really miss the TrackDraw feature to add a bunch of elements using the numbers on the keyboard followed by clicking on the part you want to place but other than that, I don’t have any real complaints.

The train layout looks great, we had a bit of trouble getting the outer loop to run (it is really long) but everything worked for the most part.  The room is very crowded so there isn’t a lot of buffer space between the crowd and the layout which means lots of hands in it.  For some reason people feel the need to touch something (it is LEGO) but are then surprised when a train derails!  Oh well, it is part of the fun of exhibiting.

I’ll post some pictures later today.  The event has outgrown the space at Morehead.  If it happens next year (there seems to be some contention about this with the Planetarium, I am not sure why), we’ll either need the whole room (there is a section blocked off for some reason) or need to limit exhibits.  As it is now, it is hard to move around the room, particularly around the west end of the train layout.

Hopefully today I will have a chance to look at the other exhibits, I didn’t even try yesterday with the crowd.