[HN Gopher] Scan of the Month: Lego Minifigures
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Scan of the Month: Lego Minifigures
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 371 points
Date : 2021-11-17 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scanofthemonth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scanofthemonth.com)
| martin_drapeau wrote:
| Legos are truly a marvel of engineering in terms of design,
| robustness and longevity. Dimensions are constant across time and
| parts last forever. Legos 40 years ago work well with today's
| pieces.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Quality on vintage Lego is usually better than what you buy
| today. They claim they haven't made many changes to the
| process, but a yardsale batch of Lego usually has less color
| abnormalities (aside from the age yellowing) and brittleness
| than a box right off the store shelf.
|
| Perhaps QA isn't as rigorous anymore.
| modeless wrote:
| On the other hand, vintage Legos contain cadmium.
| JeanSebTr wrote:
| Quite an alarming claim!
|
| Looks like regarding to Cadmium, "vintage" means up to mid-
| to-late 1980s [0]
|
| > Apparently The [Lego] has been aware of this concern for
| at least three decades (hence the switch to Cadmium free
| plastic colorants sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s)
|
| [0] https://tamararubin.com/2019/05/vintage-1970s-legos-
| test-pos...
| dolmen wrote:
| Or just that QA didn't scale with multiple factories around
| the world?
| philk10 wrote:
| or QA notices but is told it's not a problem to be fixed
| vanviegen wrote:
| Based on my old Lego from the mid eighties, I have a
| different experience. The old bricks now fit together rather
| loosely, compared to my children's brand new Lego. Most of
| the colors are also not what they used to be, besides having
| been stored in an UV-free environment most of the time.
|
| No telling what the new bricks will be like in 35 years of
| course.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| They will be holograms. We will be too.
| brianpaul wrote:
| I concur. My childhood LEGO from 1980-ish (now my son's)
| have noticeable color and fit variation. Still usable, but
| definitely not as nice as the new stuff.
| incanus77 wrote:
| Same here, some going back to the late 70s.
| thrower123 wrote:
| A thing I see a lot in the new bricks is that the color
| isn't true all the way through a brick. It's almost like a
| gradient, where the dye wasn't mixed into the base white
| ABS plastic very well
| handrous wrote:
| IIRC they switched to some kind of biodegradable plastic a
| few years back. I'm pretty sure they're softer, but it might
| be in my head.
|
| What'd help _way more_ with waste is if they would stop
| making like 75% of the part count of modern sets short 1x1s
| and other really tiny--often flat-topped, because the box
| photo mustn 't display any nubs, I guess--pieces. If my kids
| take some legos outside, those are what get lost permanently.
| I get them to pick up what I can, and make a pass myself for
| any they missed, because as toys go they're gold, but some of
| those tiny pieces are for-sure buried in my yard.
|
| That'd also make the sets more playable--repairing play-
| induced damage on a modern set is hell because of the fiddly
| little constructions they use, and there are few exposed nubs
| to connect things to for expanding/customizing/having-
| minifigs-stand-on-it, without tearing off a bunch of pieces.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Hey, random question from someone who isn't a parent, do
| you have any read on whether home 3D printed legos are cool
| to kids? I guess it's hard to match the look and 3D print
| the majority of your pieces while buying special boxed sets
| that your child wants.
|
| I walked past a lot of Legos last week and I was thinking
| "these are very cool, but wow my parents spent so much
| money on legos". I also used to paint some of the Games
| Workshop Warhammer figurines in my teens. If I ever had the
| urge to get back into something like Legos or figurines
| later in life, I think I'd definitely go the 3D printing
| route.
| svachalek wrote:
| 3D printing is great for a lot of little plastic toys but
| it also teaches you about the mechanical perfection that
| is Lego. Even the cheap offbrand bricks probably fit more
| consistently than what you can print.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| 3D printing, at least typical FDM, does not have near the
| tolerances required to snap onto the real bricks, but I
| found that the "LEGO technics" side of things (with the
| pegs and holes) is much more forgiving since the real
| lego pegs are flexible, they can snap into rigid 3D
| printed parts once you get the scale right.
|
| Years ago I was teaching a robotics class where I asked
| the kids to customize their robots' faces by drawing new
| parts like mustaches and eyebrows with markers, and then
| used Inkscape and Tinkercad to model the parts in 3D. If
| you scroll down to the last pics in my blog you can see
| the result: https://coltenj.com/learning-with-social-
| emotional-robots/
| dharmab wrote:
| Look into bulk used LEGOs from online stores, it's
| probably cheaper than printing your own and helps reuse
| existing plastic parts.
|
| 3D printing is awesome for figurines! Although they're
| banned at official Games Workshop events, it's one of the
| best ways to casually play 40K IMO.
| handrous wrote:
| 1) Seconding used as an option from the other post.
| That's great.
|
| 2) Big Buckets of legos still exist and are pretty cheap,
| actually.
|
| 3) Kids may like the sets on the shelf but _my_ kids have
| treated them like puzzles: they 're _really excited_ when
| they get them and put them together once, play with them
| barely if at all, then as soon as they get a little
| messed up, just destroy them and go back to making
| whatever, and never put them together again. I 've seen
| very few modern sets (but there are a few!) that look
| like they'd support the play-style I had as a kid. Even
| the "big" sets with huge part counts are tiny compared to
| large 90s sets, and have rooms and such that are almost
| too small even for kid-hands to play in, plus the
| aforementioned problems with so many of the pieces being
| tiny, so much of the construction being really fiddly
| (relying on all those tiny pieces) rather than
| straightforward so it's hard to fix if part of it gets
| broken, or you deliberately disassemble part of it for
| some reason. Few exposed studs plus the fiddly-
| construction thing makes expansion/customization and
| "kit-bashing" tougher, which was a big part of what I
| did. I suppose the modern ones appeal really well to kids
| who like to assemble lego sets, then display them, rather
| than playing with them. I knew a few kids like when I was
| a kid.
|
| I don't know whether 3d printed lego replacements are any
| good.
| dharmab wrote:
| The new bioplastic is only used on flexible parts like
| vegetation. Most bricks are still made from ABS (although
| they're continuing to prototype other plastics)
| tspike wrote:
| It's also not biodegradable; it's chemically identical to
| the polyethylene used before. It's only the process and
| materials sourcing that changed.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I'm personally fine with the term nubs and know exactly
| what you mean.
|
| In some AFOL circles, they'll jump down your throat for not
| using the "correct" term "stud". The canonical term for the
| "flat-topped" is tile.
|
| My personal gripe is just the explosion of special purpose
| pieces that Lego vends today. Less is more Lego.
| tspike wrote:
| > My personal gripe is just the explosion of special
| purpose pieces that Lego vends today. Less is more Lego.
|
| I've personally been amazed at the possibilities that
| seemingly single-purpose parts open up in the hands of a
| skilled builder.
|
| One example is the "stud shooter" -- a utensil for
| minifigures to shoot out 1x1 round plates. Check out what
| these folks did with it:
|
| https://www.newelementary.com/2020/05/stud-
| shooter-15391%20-...
|
| New Elementary is a gold mine for creative uses for
| "specialized" parts.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I've personally been amazed at the possibilities that
| seemingly single-purpose parts open up in the hands of a
| skilled builder.
|
| And this is great, but when you have small children who
| just want to join things together, a lot of the modern
| sets have a fairly limited ability to customise.
|
| It's frustrating. They sell plenty of simple sets, it's
| just so attractive to buy the fancy ones recreating some
| movie.
| handrous wrote:
| Ah, cool, thanks for the corrections. Yeah, I'm not into
| online lego fandom enough to know the correct terms--I
| just played with them for probably low-thousands of hours
| as a kid.
|
| I do like how many bigger modern sets come with a "brick
| tool". I always wanted one as a kid when, but they were a
| separate purchase and I never wanted one bad enough for
| it to make my wishlists, over more sets. Even the $80+
| sets (in 80s/90s dollars!) back then didn't come with
| them. They _are_ handy.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Modern mini-figures from the past 10 yrs or so develop cracks
| in the arms where the hand fits, making them fall apart very
| easily. None of my old ones from the 80/90's develop them.
| Large blocks have been modified to use less material, so
| thinner walls and different structures to gain back the
| rigidity. They may not have change the process, but it feels
| like materials certainly have.
| real-dino wrote:
| You think Lego are incredible, check out Gundam Plastic Models.
| They have runner's made of multiple colours, and ready
| assembled hinges that are cast in a single injection mold.
|
| The RG models in particular are insane!
|
| Check out this video of Adam Savage making one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfmD1yYqP6k
| 420official wrote:
| He notices one of the hinges at around 6 minutes
| djstein wrote:
| thanks for the video link that was really cool
| Guidii wrote:
| Love it!
|
| If the author's here, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the
| upcoming scroll-linked animation api[1]
|
| [1] https://drafts.csswg.org/scroll-animations-1/EXPLAINER.md
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I really appreciate the writeup associated with the page. It's
| always interesting to see behind the scenes details on how things
| are manufactured. Back in college, the manufacturing professors
| had us bring things to them if we didn't know how they were made,
| which was always a fun discussion ruling out possibilities based
| on little details.
|
| I had no idea about the L and R on the legs, and wouldn't have
| guessed that for sorting in the factory despite being an
| industrial engineer myself.
|
| They got me to signup for future scans. Does anyone have other
| solid manufacturing type blogs, breakdowns, etc?
| marcodiego wrote:
| It does not scrolls well using keyboard arrows :/ I have to rely
| on my very imprecise touchpad.
| grlass wrote:
| This is a really fun format.
|
| It seems that this is their first month in posting --- I spent a
| minute looking for older scan, before checking the wayback
| machine.
| mfwit wrote:
| Hopefully, in the future, they add some background information
| on how they do the scan, etc as well. I find myself just as
| interested in that now.
| goodells wrote:
| The page mentions it's a CT scan. But from the looks of it,
| not the kind one would find in a hospital meant for humans.
| Probably something for research/industrial applications on
| much smaller samples, the materials science people at my
| university have one. They spit out a pretty usable voxel
| format (DICOM).
| cl3misch wrote:
| The machines are called "micro CT"
| ortusdux wrote:
| My first thought was neutron radiography, but this makes
| more sense. Neutron X-ray hybrid scanning can capture
| some amazing images.
|
| https://phoenixwi.com/neutron-radiography/neutron-image-
| gall...
| korla wrote:
| DICOM is also the format used at hospitals for medical
| images. At least in radiotherapy.
| capableweb wrote:
| Such a awesome idea! Such a poor implementation. Why is the
| scrollbar deciding where in the scan you are? Seems to be made
| for people on Apple hardware, where scrolling is very smooth, but
| people with normal mouse or using keyboards, are out of luck to
| see the details. My mouse wheel scrolls seemingly like pressing
| on the down arrow, so I can't really see the details without
| having to result to "grabbing" the scrollbar with the mouse, and
| slowly move downwards. Problem with that is that the page is very
| long, so each mouse movement is bigger than the scroll I actually
| want to do.
|
| I hope in the future they implement a slider that allows you to
| actually see the details, because they are there, but the
| implementation makes it really hard to see.
|
| Such an interesting idea though, and I really like the results.
| That Lego itself is so interesting helps a lot as well :)
| occamrazor wrote:
| On windows, you can click the middle button and move the mouse
| to scroll smoothly.
| [deleted]
| azalemeth wrote:
| This site (and its beautiful images) only worked in Chrome
| scrolling on a trackpad for me. Not Safari, nor Firefox, nor
| Chromium, but Chrome. Truly it is an IE of the modern age.
|
| (As an aside, I'd love to download the dicoms and explore them
| at my own pace!)
| usefulcat wrote:
| Worked fine for me in Safari (mobile) and in Firefox on a
| Linux desktop (with mouse scroll wheel).
| mbreese wrote:
| Worked for me with Firefox and a scroll wheel (on a Mac). I
| don't know if it looks better on Chrome, but it was
| definitely functional for me.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Breaking the law in Missouri and viewing the source of the page
| finds lots of class names that are Apple-specific. Whatever
| library is being used, ReadyMag, seems to favor the fruity
| variety of hardware. Not sure if there's some checkboxes to add
| more/less.
| alluro2 wrote:
| Oh god, you're not joking about Missouri. I just read about
| how it came to be, and - well, I don't know what to say.
| dylan604 wrote:
| i personally will be trying to ensure this lives on in
| infamy through sarcasm at every opportunity. i'm in texas,
| so it's not often some other state does something as just
| obliviously dumb as the texas govt. except florida. it's
| neck and neck between texas and florida
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Major sites (The New York Times, for one, and the BBC, for
| another) have been doing this for "interactive stories," for a
| while now.
|
| In some cases, I like it. In others; not so much.
| driverdan wrote:
| It works very poorly in Firefox on Mac as well. Scrolling is
| jerky, if I go back the page turns white, and my fans go crazy.
| kraftman wrote:
| I don't usually like this kind of design, but in this case I
| like the way it works, and how the text pauses at interesting
| bits. Just my 2 cents.
|
| EDIT: I just tried with the arrow keys and agree that that's
| not a nice experience. For me, scrolling with the mouse is much
| more fine-grained than using the arrow keys
| capableweb wrote:
| It works well for the bits that are annotated, yes, because
| the scan stops "scrolling" at that point even if you scroll.
| Problem happens when you're interested in something they
| haven't annotated.
| kraftman wrote:
| not sure if its the same for you, but for me each arrow
| up/down is equivalent to about 15-20 scrollwheel notches of
| my mouse, which is enough to see the other parts.
| SamBam wrote:
| I'n on a 2020 MacBook Air with the defaults for
| scrolling. When using the keyboard, each press of an
| arrow key moved the scan nearly to the next annotation.
| There was no way to see the parts in between.
| jffry wrote:
| Beware if you load this on a mobile device with metered data!
|
| This animation is implemented by loading a large number of ~200KB
| PNG files, each 800x800px, such as this one [1] and then drawing
| them into a <canvas> as you scroll.
|
| Having scrolled through the entirety of the animations, Firefox
| reports that it transferred about 220MB of PNGs on top of the
| 3.4MB of JS and an inexplicable 202KB of CSS.
|
| Maybe I do not understand some key requirement. Shouldn't it be
| possible to encode a high quality video file, embed it with
| <video>, and control it from JS, and still come out with a much
| smaller file size? Perhaps there's just a requirement I'm missing
| but that's an eye watering amount of data being served by
| Cloudfront to every visitor, and Cloudfront isn't exactly the
| cheapest.
|
| [1]
| https://d11poao410tx6l.cloudfront.net/616f05008e9fa70027fff3...
|
| edit: I got nerd sniped and downloaded all the frames.
| Considering only the largest animation
| (da2783d9-383d-43ec-8778-9b52f984c35a): - 230 PNG
| frames: 51MB - WebM (VP9, alpha, lossless): 6.7MB (-86.7%)
| - WebM (VP9, alpha, crf15): 2.3MB (-95.5%)
|
| Instead if I use all the frames in one big video:
| - 1087 PNG frames: 271MB - WebM (VP9, alpha, lossless):
| 39.0MB (-85.6%) - WebM (VP9, alpha, crf15): 12.0MB (-95.6%)
|
| I used ffmpeg 4.4.1 with the following commands:
| ffmpeg -i 'frames/%6d.png' -c:v libvpx-vp9 -lossless 1
| lossless.webm ffmpeg -i 'frames/%6d.png' -c:v libvpx-vp9
| -b:v 0 -crf 15 crf15.webm
|
| To my eye, crf15 is very very good quality, but I included
| lossless encoding so there can be no quibble about quality
| differences :)
|
| And yes I know Safari can't do VP9 but there's no reason you
| couldn't also encode a HEVC and AV1 version and list multiple
| <source> elements and let the browser decide which format it
| prefers
|
| edit to the edit: It seems that smoothly scrubbing through a
| <video> element is more tricky than I originally knew. Still, a
| lot of mileage could be gained by encoding the individual frames
| as AVIF or WebP and using them in supported browsers
| wdfx wrote:
| I was wondering why the text I was reading didn't match up with
| the background image - it hasnt fully loaded and there's no
| indication !
|
| grr
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| > This animation is implemented by loading a large number of
| ~200KB PNG files
|
| Wow, you're not joking! I counted ~1000 requests for PNG files.
| Not only expensive for the user, that has to be expensive for
| the people who built this too. 1000 visitors scrolling through
| the site and promptly forgetting about it's content would mean
| 180GB, that's ~10 USD per month just for that page (according
| to https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html).
| charcircuit wrote:
| If you use something like Cloudflare you can eliminate
| bandwidth costs.
|
| AWS way overcharges people on bandwith in general.
| ccheney wrote:
| Very possible to attach an event listener to the scroll event
| and use that to scrub a video
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| From the console:
|
| All 181 images loaded.
|
| All 230 images loaded.
|
| All 154 images loaded.
|
| All 50 images loaded.
|
| All 230 images loaded.
|
| All 242 images loaded.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Interestingly, apps like TinyPNG are able to bring down the
| size of that file by -74% (255.3 KB -> 67.5 KB) in a way that
| is invisible to the eye.
|
| Someone should have compressed their files better.
| servytor wrote:
| There is a great video on plastic injection molding by
| 'engineerguy' on YouTube.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjtmsr3CqA
| callesgg wrote:
| That is the first time i have seen someone change the scrolling
| behavior and it actually feeling like it works.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I'm not one for fancy UI frontend, but in this case it is
| appropriate and well-suited for the content. Medium, meet
| message.
| qwertox wrote:
| I had some trouble with the images getting loaded properly
| while scrolling. Scrolling back and forth a couple of times
| seemed to show more images. I noticed that when the text
| appeared not to be in sync with what I was seeing in the
| images.
|
| But I agree, it's a nice experience.
| [deleted]
| jffry wrote:
| That's because it's loading individual frames as 200kB PNGs
| and drawing them into a <canvas>
| afandian wrote:
| This is gorgeous. If the author's reading, it's jumpy if you have
| a clicky scrollwheel mouse, and jittery if you drag the scrollbar
| (on Firefox, at least).
|
| Could you add a slider or something to help with fine control?
| There's so much detail to look at.
| stuartbman wrote:
| Everyone in the comments discussing the UX of scrolling in this
| setting- this is exactly how you look through a CT scan! And in
| the different planes, as in this page. Sure a slider is useful,
| but I think this is really authentic.
| thom wrote:
| Nothing will ever convince me this is good UX. Makes it hard to
| find exact frames in the scan, breaks very fundamental
| expectations on how text works both on the internet and in real
| life. Stop it. It was an incredibly long and tedious fight to
| kill Flash, let's not relive that.
| korla wrote:
| Killing flash was not about UX. The issues with it were
| technical.
|
| Flash was not the UX for systems, but for fun little games and
| a means to tell a story in a way which wasn't available on the
| Web 20 years ago. This UX is fine as it is IMO. Cool even.
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(page generated 2021-11-17 23:00 UTC)