Categories
Consumerism music Video games

Foolish lockdown purchases

Forgive me for this indulgence. No transport stuff in this post – try this link if that’s what you’re looking for. I started writing this post in 2020 after my sons moved out, adding to it every few months. The space in the house after they left plus lockdowns plus online ordering resulted in some  ... [More]

Categories
Geek transport

Lego Myki and Metcard readers, from Brickvention

I didn’t make it to Brickvention this year, but Adrian O’Hagan did, and sent me this photo. It’s a Lego Myki reader… and on the back of it is a Metcard reader. Adrian says when a Myki card was presented it beeped and displayed a balance (which may or may not have been the real  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Doctor Who

Spotted at Minotaur

I’ve shopped at Minotaur Books for decades. I first found it in the early 80s when it was at the top end of Swanston Street. Then it moved to a multi-level shop in Bourke Street. Then to its current home in Elizabeth Street. It’s always had way more cool stuff than I could afford to  ... [More]

Categories
Culture Melbourne

Brickvention 2009

I’m hearing that there are incredibly long queues for Brickvention today at Melbourne Town Hall. Shame… when we went in 2009, the queues weren’t too bad. Perhaps they’ve become a bigger event than they realise. (According to the web site 1000 members of the public attended in 2009, and 2700 in 2010. Clearly it’s growing.)  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Lego: Santa’s little helper

For the past year or two, Lego have advertised heavily around Christmas time on billboards and in newspapers. Surprisingly, they don’t direct you to the Lego web site, but say to search for “Santa’s little helper”. This is tied into their advertising for those keywords on Google, which goes through to their web site with  ... [More]

Categories
Film Retrospectives Video games

The toy of the movie of the game

Spotted in K-Mart: Lego Prince of Persia. So let me get this straight… this is the toy of the movie of the video game. I wonder if there’ll be (as there was with Star Wars and others) a Lego video game of it. That would be the game of the toy of the movie of  ... [More]

Categories
Culture transport

Lego PT stereotypes

I’m probably reading too much into this, but here’s a PT stereotype: Lego’s Duplo bus. It appears that in the view of whoever designed this set, only old people and kids ride the bus. Okay, okay, we all know that in some cases this is probably very realistic. Many services simply aren’t good enough to  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Adults-only Lego

I found this Lego set on Amazon UK. It’s actually way more elaborate (and expensive) than any I remember seeing in the Australian catalogues, but what I thought was really funny was that Amazon has attached a legal-sounding age restriction to it, as if it was an adult video game or DVD, or alcohol. “Not  ... [More]