Star Destroyer Built Before Your Eyes

hardcoredreamer writes "These people spent 10 hours constructing their very own Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from LEGO and capturing over 7000 frames of the process with their webcam. The images were encoded with divx5 and are available to download in a 4 minute .avi. mirror 1 , mirror 2 , mirror 3."

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

i swear i saw the guy eat a piece. in frame 3857.

Re:heh

[BlackMesaLabs]

In frame 313, you can clearly see his head move BACK, and to the LEFT!
BACK, and to the LEFT!
BACK, and to the LEFT!!

Re:heh

[QuantumG]

Was that the frame where his female building companion opened the pot noodle?

Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[Hungus]

This would have been far more interesting if:
A) it had not come as a kit with all the parts in neat little bags
B) They had not kept looking at the instructions.

Putting together legos using the manuals really doesn't take that much does it? Now a to scale ISD out of 3m expanding foam carved with a hot wire and plumbed with LEDs .. now that would be cool AND you could float it on a pond.

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[cybercobra]

Where did you steal my plans from?
I'll get you for this!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to change my pgp key.

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[John_Booty]

Gentoo: Like Deb, but faster and with none of the overzealousness. POWER TO PYTHON!

I like how your signature contains an implicit criticism of Debian for "overzealousness", immediately followed by "POWER TO PYTHON!" in all caps. Pot, kettle...

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[FidelCatsro]

Yes , but you know how many problems are caused by people not RTFM .
That said , LEGO models like this are just collectors pieces for display(I have about 50), I make other models from my spare LEGOs going by models and so on this is where the real fun is. Designing and building your own .
If you pay 300 (I have seen this kit go for anything from 200-400 roughly) then your not going to want to risk losing pieces

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[The Grey Clone]

It goes for $299 on Lego.com right now. Ouch.

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[leuk_he]

strange, for me it shows Price: EUR 369.99 , which is considerable more then $299 (looks like they got the euro dollar ratio in reverse since 354 dollar = 299 euro ?)

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[kf6auf]

I wouldn't pay more than $300 [lego.com] for it. But that's just me.

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[badboy_tw2002]

Do you know how many Bothans died for those plans? They damn well BETTER use them!

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[epicstruggle]

This would have been far more interesting if:

-Get rid of the guy, add another chick
-Strip as they put the ship together ....

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[ciroknight]

Are you kidding me? Dude, that thing's massive!!! They had to even stop and EAT during it's construction. Doing that without a little guidance is a bit nuts.

But still, the guy gets geek points for doing it in under 5 minutes AND he had a chick help (minus 10 geek points if the chick was his sister / relative).

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[welsh git]

The geek WAS the girl, and the bloke was her b/f

It's the girls site!

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[ciroknight]

*clears throat*, excuse me? I just clearly watched a video of them doing it in less than five minutes. So that whole "record" thing is wrong ;)

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[Inda]

I was expecting something different...

It would have been more interesting if they started at the bottom and glued the first section to the table. They could have made a time-lapse animation of it being built a few pieces at a time.

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[ciroknight]

Erm, the design of the model's kinda prohibitive; it has an inner framework and panels that attach to the outside. It'd be like a navel ship designer starting at the bottom and building the frame at the same time as they built the outer panels; while the ship might get built, it's horribly inefficient if the work is divided up evenly, and might not even get the same expected outcome if a problem arrised during construction.

Of course, I'm speaking in general engineering terms, but specifically, you have to

What is he designing?

[Actuator Man]

A navel [swing.be] ship? Oh yes, that would be cool!

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[ciroknight]

Hate to reply again, but does anyone see this ironic? The day we're supposed to be blowing things up, we instead put Lego things together? Weeird..

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[apa666]

Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!
Don't you mean idiots?

Re:Geeks don't RTFM on the first attempt!

[Goth Biker Babe]

I was given the Back Hoe excavator LEGO technics set. It's both technics and pneumatic. Even with the instructions it took several sessions and I got the piping wrong. Some of these big sets would be difficult unless you're a very experienced LEGO builder.

Benny Hill

[njcoder]

Anyone else start humming the theme song for the Benny Hill show while watching this?

Re:Benny Hill

[SamMichaels]

Anyone else start humming the theme song for the Benny Hill show while watching this?

I expected Tux to come out of the back room, smash it to pieces, and then see the 3 of them chasing each other around for 3 of the 4 minutes.

That gives me an idea for a new sketch [oldeenglish.org]...

Re:Benny Hill

[doyen2000]

Yep. Once it was finished I expected him to chase her with the star destroyer. The benny hill music playing while he looked at the camera and giggled everytime he touched her with the pointy bit of the cruiser.

Re:Benny Hill

[agraupe]

For more funny with the Benny Hill song, try this video [midnightdown.com].

You'll either end up on the floor laughing, or think I'm a horrible person who deserves to go to hell.

Re:Benny Hill

[agraupe]

Ooops... I hadn't checked the link in a while; it doesn't work. And since I don't feel like sacrificing my bandwidth to see it, I guess you'll just have to google for tribute.wmv until you find a working link.

Re:Benny Hill

[SnprBoB86]

ABSOLUTELY. I was gonna post this. The Benny Hill theme makes everything histerical, expecially whatever you are viewing is in fast motion.

I would like to suggest that they re-encode the video with the Imperial March playing at double speed. (try this at home, it's quite funny...)

Nice

[ATAMAH]

Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational /. battle station

Re:Nice

[gkwok]

Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've constructed.

Ice cream..

[Paska]

These guys like their ice cream a little too much, they got down a whole entire bowl in 1 second flat.

Re:Ice cream..

[madaxe42]

That's no ice cream - that's germknodel! Tasty austrian dish topped with poppy seeds and filled with damsen jam. With butter. Yum.

Re:Ice cream..

[SeventyBang]

Q: What's the difference between:

a) the whole bowl
b) the entire bowl
c) the whole entire bowl?

Is this anything like:

a) the exact same thing
b) the same exact thing
c) exactly the same thing

????????

And whilst we're at it, why do computer people seem to think it's means belongs to it?

Re:Ice cream..

[GutBomb]

And whilst we're at it, why do computer people seem to think it's means belongs to it?

While it is incorrect, it would make more sense that way since almost all possessives have " 's "

The burning question for me is: why do people like you care?

Re:Ice cream..

[jimhill]

"...almost all possessives have 's".

Only if by "almost all possessives" you mean "possessive nouns". It's always been a mystery to me why so many people use it's as a possessive but not hi's, her's, or min'e. Come to think of it, there's a lot of pronoun-bungling going on, as I see a lot of your's, our's, and their's.

Re:Ice cream..

[SeventyBang]

So that means people who consider themselves smarter than the rest of the population can't remember a small number of exceptions, perhaps one? Now that is sad.

The reason "why" is because it gives everyone else a bad name.

punta.

Here's Why ?

[Gopal.V]

Have you ever wondered why geeks do all kinds of impossible and silly things ?. It's my theory that geeks without any problems will create some of his own - like I don't have my own star destroyer made out of lego or my kernel should blink SOS using keyboard lights when it oops() (etc..). My programming guru has recently taken up buidling models [nyud.net] too - crazy I tell ya !.

Considering how cool the dark side is recently - I'd have thought someone would've built the death star too - with a Nuetrino torpedos here in neon ?.

Re:Here's Why ?

[cvd6262]

The professor that got me into regex, who, interestingly enough, was a professor of medieval French, told me, "You'll know you've gotten carried away when you start thinking of problems to solve."

That is the difference between most geeks and most athletes. With the exception of perhaps moutain climbers, most athletes have others propose the problem-task and then they craft the solution-performance.

Fun but... old?

[The Grey Clone]

It looks really fun, however, it's from 2003. We're a little late, guys. There is a girl, though. I'm going to go watch it again.

The headline could be better

[MadFarmAnimalz]

I watched the video.

I couldn't help thinking that that was what I'd have been like if it wasn't for my girlfriend's constant vigilance...

I kept on looking for someone holding a gun to their heads but I don't think there were any.

oh my

[Francis85]

omg i'm wearing that same AYBABTU shirt at the moment o_O

best part was when they ate, i felt like i was playing the Sims or something O_o

huge mirror

[RoceKiller]

Mirror of the "huge" movie [rocekiller.dk]

Shameless

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched the video, found it very amazing and interesting, and at the end was incredibly impressed.

Then, I watched it again, and this time I actually watched them build the ISD, rather than simply stare at the breasts on the RHS of the screen.

Re:Shameless

[Ubergrendle]

Thanks for the spoiler...seriously! Now I will actually go and download the movie. 8)

Re:Shameless

[Lord_Dweomer]

For those that are wondering, you can get a shot of her face near the beginning. She's got red hair, and is pretty cute in a geek/punk kind of way. Plus, she's got a nice rack.

Re:Yeah, and she did most of the work.

[SomeGuyFromCA]

Well, it was *her* toy...

Re:Yeah, and she did most of the work.

[SeventyBang]

For the price involved - and if it was her toy - one would expect it to not only come with batteries, but spares to boot.

Try it for yourself!

[sinneb]

http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=10030 [lego.com]

Give it a go. For as little as 360 euro's you can try to beat the 10 hours! (if you have no friend(s) - the time to beat is 20 hours)

Re:Try it for yourself!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it a go. For as little as 360 euro's you can try to beat the 10 hours! (if you have no friend(s) - the time to beat is 20 hours)

You must be kidding:

http://www.legofan.org/ [legofan.org]

"Lately we have been making quite a stir in the community, and we're not about to stop yet. Earlier this year, LEGOLAND California hosted a Star Wars® Weekend . Part of this event included 2 Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD) speed build contests. The times for the two contests, held on separate days, were 1 hour, 34 minutes and

Re:Try it for yourself!

[mcbevin]

3104 pieces at 1 piece per second is 51 minutes something. So 46 minutes is quicker than 1 piece per second - if thats for one person thats crazy.

That's nothing

[gowen]

I once assembled some flat pack furniture in less than three days.

Star Wars Again ?

[Kartoch]

Am I the only geek here who are not interested in all the star wars stuff in ./ ?

This place is becoming a marketing heaven for Lucas.

Re:Star Wars Again ?

[felonius maximus]

Am I the only geek here who are not interested in all the star wars stuff in ./ ?

Yes, you am.

This place is becoming a marketing heaven for Lucas.

Yes, it are.

Re:Star Wars Again ?

[SeventyBang]

Free David Hicks [fairgofordavid.org]

Betcha Mr. Hicks is receiving far better treatment than Schapelle Corby!

(Why is the rest of the world intent upon imprisoning Aussie citizenry?)

Re:Star Wars Again ?

[Stormwatch]

Your geek license has just been revoked. Be sure to turn it in before leaving the building.

The real speed

[octafed]

I saw a similar recording from a sweatshop in china.

The video looks exactly like when chinese people assemble it, but they don't speed up the footage :)

Nice job, but...

[hidispenser]

...that red-headed geek at the top better lay off the ice cream. He's developing man-boobs.

Re:Nice job, but...

[DamienNightbane]

Actually, I think that might be a girl [wikipedia.org].

i want my 5 minutes back!

[Hes Nikke]

ok.. so lego has a kit to make a star destroyer... yawn

if they had made it out of generic bricks it *MIGHT* be interesting, but in the mean time.... i want my 5 minutes back... and i'm sure they want here 11 hours back.

That's no moon!

[Maavin]

...and no Deathstar, either.

sorry..

I once built "Airwolf" out of standard Lego bricks. That was nice. Until my cat tried its "landing capabilities", off the bookshelf... oh, well..

Re:That's no moon!

[Blondie-Wan]

Right. This [lego.com] is the LEGO Death Star. It's rounder and less pointy.

Re:That's no moon!

[SeventyBang]

And that gets filed under the bookmark "toy$" - for obvious reasons.

Re:That's no moon!

[Psykechan]

I once built "Airwolf" out of standard Lego bricks. That was nice. Until my cat tried its "landing capabilities", off the bookshelf... oh, well..

Did it at least go behind a mountain before breaking back into it's component blocks? If not, then it's not a true Airwolf model.

I used to watch that show and not only did Airwolf always rise out of a mountain but every other helicopter that was shot would always fly behind a mountain before exploding.

I'm not exactly sure what purpose mountains have with the l

Somehow this makes news

[Osmosis_Garett]

and the Deep Impact coverage doesnt? Slashdot once again moves down a peg. ... and why is two people following instructions news in the first place, even if there wasn't a far more noteworthy geek event taking place? Come on mods.

Re:Somehow this makes news

[madaxe42]

Much like when spaceshipone broke the record - slashdot didn't pick up on it for 24 hours.

RE: Even more obligatory quotes...

[Sabathius]

If this is a Councillor ship, where is the ambassador?

*crunch*
*thud*

Talk about old news ..

[Errtu76]

look at the date on the top of the article: Tuesday, 14 January 2003 !!

Observe Gentleman....

[meatflower]

...the only known 4 minute stop motion video of life long virgins known to man!
Yes, I realise the hypocrisy, this is "News for Nerds". But seriously, "Hey baby, check out this 4 minute video of me and my friends building a giant Imperial Star Destroyer from Legos! Yeah, its perfectly to scale! We set up this webcam to take a picture every 5 minutes and...."
The "girl" has left the room, she is never coming back, all hope is lost.
I'm a nerd, but not this kind of nerd. This is a nerd of higher caliber.

The bigger news...

[Vladan]

I think the bigger news is that he convinced a woman to join him in this endeavour or maybe that he was able to concentrate on building a plastic replica toy after she agreed

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:wow, big deal... i have one of these!

[ciroknight]

Well, they're kinda expensive.. you know, since one costs in line with an iPod and all.. really.

Besides, fast motion pictures of anything being done is entertaining (yes, even grass growing and being mowed and growing again and a barn being painted and the paint peeling and being painted again..)

Re:wow, big deal... i have one of these!

[strider44]

since one of them is a girl and one of them is a bloke, surely eventually they're going to figure out what to stick in where...

I always get a chuckle when people who read slashdot try to bring out the geeks with no girlfriends stereotype.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'd prefer to see a...

[ratta]

"Star Builder Destroyed Before Your Eyes"

Somebody set up us the bomb!

[core_dump_0]

Anyone catch the "All Your Base" T-shirt the guy was wearing? I'm surprised nobody mentioned it here!

Anyway, awesome video!

Re:Somebody set up us the bomb!

[tod_miller]

I was just about to say something, and I ctrl-f'd just to be sure.

I thought it was the best part, possibly the pinnacle of human achievement!

When I was a kid, designing lego sets was my dream job. Now, I think I have come full circle.

Noooooooooooo!

I preffer the good old technic lego sets, which actually do something engineering wise.

I'm so torn

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of me is thinking, "These people must have no life. Imagine spending so much money on that."

But another part of me is going INSANE with jealousy.

my dream

[VanillaCoke420]

That's all nice and stuff but it was like a prebuilt kit wasn't it?

Anyway, I dream about building a space shuttle with Lego... real size, of course.

Lazy

[otter42]

One of those guys (the one in the dark shirt) was a slacker. He lets the other one do all the work.

Stealth

[martalli]

Lucky for them they weren't building a stealth fighter in 2003. Think of the trouble they would be in now!

Yesterday, 125 most imp science ?s

[cinnamon colbert]

Today, starwars lego.... And people wonder why the Asians do all the high tech

WTF?

[KoReE]

Okay, I'm *really* not being a troll, but how is building a Star Destroyer from a *kit* front-page news on Slashdot? Big fucking deal, they know how to use legos. I guess next we're going to find out that they can wipe their own asses...

Holy Crap, Dudes

[David Rolfe]

I cannot believe there's no torrent yet. Whoever finishes the 'huge' version first -- link a torrent here... Please?

Aw, crap

[noewun]

I want one now.

That was a waste of time.

[dave1g]

I am not normally one to complain about the stories here, but this got me hyped up over nothing.

I can't believe I just downloaded a video (from a seemingly registration required tracker, forced to use the DHT) in which 2 people bought a boxed set of legos with instructions on exactly how to build an ISD with the exact right peices straight from LEGO.

I completely expected a home brew type lego creation. And instead I got a packaged deal.

Next on slashdot, 2 guys build a complete FORD Truck!!! (webcam insid

Re:/,-ed

[Lord Duran]

Try one of the mirrors - they're slow, but working. Downloading it right now (at 8kb/s -_-) from mirror 3.

Re:/,-ed

[Gopal.V]

Always use mirror dot [mirrordot.com] or coralc cache. If you are a regular /. reader, please install and use coralize greasemonkey script [oregonstate.edu] or slashdot cache gm script [uni-magdeburg.de].

These days I have my mod_proxy url_rewrite check for HTTP_REFERRER and rewrite to nyud.net URLS

Re:/,-ed

[The Grey Clone]

I pulled it off mirror three. The slowest transfer rate I saw was 362 kB/s. Not bad for a comcast connection.

Web server destroyed before your very eyes

[gkwok]

These people spent 10 hours constructing their very own Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from LEGO...and we spent 10 seconds taking down any server brave enough to offer movies of it.

Re:Web server destroyed before your very eyes

[jcuervo]

These people spent 10 hours constructing their very own Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from LEGO...and we spent 10 seconds taking down any server brave enough to offer movies of it.

But our server is peaceful! We have a bandwidth cap, you can't possibly...

Re:Web server destroyed before your very eyes

[jizmonkey]

And that's the original main page, and the original video! Quite stunning. I wonder if there's a "I survived a /.ing" club?

The video is hosted on his university account, not his blog ISP account. Universities are known for having web server farms and more bandwidth than $god.

I think it's pretty unusual for a university (not departmental) web server be slashdotted. I don't remember that ever happening.

Re:/,-ed

[Gordonjcp]

Mirror 1 was working great, 1700KB/s download.

Unfortunately, because I'm at work I've got Windows XP, which doesn't support playing back video.

Re:/,-ed

[lxs]

Unfortunately, because I'm at work I've got Windows XP, which doesn't support playing back video.

Congratulations! You have first Windows XP-N post! Now go back to work.

Re:/,-ed

[Gordonjcp]

Just proves that Windows XP isn't ready for the desktop. Why should I have to fiddle about to get video playback working?

You're missing my point.

[Gordonjcp]

If I go and sit in my car, and put a CD in the CD player, it plays. Simple. If I open a movie file on one of my laptops, running Linux, or even my elderly Mac, it just plays the damn movie. I shouldn't have to go and find codecs and stuff to get it to work.

Re:/,-ed

[bahamat]

Wow, I've heard of sites being slashdotted, but I've never heard of one being slashcommaed before!

Re:Very nice

[yobbo]

That's what I thought when they dropped all the bags on the table. I thought they were drugs :(

Re:Very nice

[ciroknight]

Indeed.. Three mirrors on a Slashdot story. That's gotta be some kind of record!

Re:Very nice

[xortw]

Next week on slashdot: She how his little sister 'breaks the record'.

Re:Very nice

[ciroknight]

Dude.. that record of less than 5 minutes is gonna be a hard one to break ;) I'd be entertained watching some girl (ESPECIALLY some girl) do it in a shorter amount of time (though longer would be appreciable as well...)

Re:Interesting, but...

[dan dan the dna man]

Nice lift from wikipedia there ;) I guess that's what it's there for, plagarising for that all important +5 Informative?