Hasta La Gadget!

You can say that Lego bricks are the building blocks of ideas, and when it comes to electronics and Lego, they have shared a similar path along the way from time to time. With the release of the iPhone 5 from Apple along with the new Lightning connector, you know for sure that there is a whole lot of money to be made if you were to manufacture iPhone 5 docks, speaker or otherwise. Enter the Lego iPhone 5 Dock which has been tilted at a slight angle in order to be easier for your eyes to look upon, similar to how the official docks work.

There is also the presence of Lego Grills which will be where all audio is played through, located right underneath the iPhone speaker. Clips have been thrown into the mix to hold the cable in place, and it boasts of a design which allows you to perform one-handed removal of the iPhone 5 from the dock itself. You will need to have enough Lego acumen to build the dock though, and the asking price of £11.95 for the Lego iPhone 5 Dock does seem to be a pretty reasonable one.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LEGO Go-Kart for humans and not minifigs, Lego Submarine might not be yellow, but it submerges just fine,

Here’s a neat LEGO trick that I haven’t seen before. Made by husband and wife team Sean and Steph Mayo, their Invert Island enlists the help of your computer to show off its trick:

That is not the actual appearance of Invert Island. Here’s what it really looks like:

As you may have deduced, the island was made with blocks that have the inverse colors of the objects they’re supposed to represent. If you want to see the switch for yourself, just hold alt+shift+print screen on your keyboard if you’re using a PC, ctrl+option+command+8 if you’re on a Mac (or follow these directions if you’re on Mountain Lion.) Of course, there are other ways to invert the colors of your browser or screen. I highly suggest you head to Sean and Steph’s Flickr page so you can switch while viewing the high resolution image of the island.

[via Brothers Brick]

LEGOs can be used to make all sorts of contraptions, but I never thought about making a record player out of them. But that hasn’t stopped numerous people from attempting the task over the years – as you’ll find if you do a search on YouTube.

YouTuber Old Music on Vinyl’s LEGO turntable is fully-functional, and has LEGO and Technic components for the base, mechanism and the parts that hold the arm. The platter itself isn’t a LEGO part though, and is actually a giant gear from a toy kit called “The Gear Box.” Of course when I say “fully-functional,” that doesn’t mean that records play properly – something about the instability of the player causes records to play with a horrible, warbly tone that sounds like it came out of a horror movie. Or maybe something you’d hear in the background after Rapture floods in BioShock 2.

Wow, I’m going to have nightmares with that song going through my head now. That sounded like ABBA on quaaludes. So maybe LEGO isn’t the most practical tool for building a good record player, but it’s still kind of cool that people are trying.

The battle for Hoth just got all brainy and strategic. This large scale (18″ x 18″) custom chess set by Brickplace puts the Empire against the Rebel Alliance in an all new way.

The detail is amazing. You have the Rebel troops in Hoth gear, the Snowtroopers, some AT-ATs, an Imperial Probe droid and of course the Wampa monster and more! All lovingly made out of LEGO. This isn’t some overpriced Franklin Mint set that just looks gaudy. This is pure geek joy.

It even has Luke in his watery Bacta tank and Han riding a Tauntaun. Man, I wish I owned this awesome chess set. I would play chess all day just to play with the figures. Check out more amazing pics on Flickr.

[via IT LEGO via Obvious Winner]

While it’s not an official LEGO brick on the cover of these journals, that doesn’t make them any less awesome as a place to sketch down ideas for your next big LEGO build, right?

Each memo pad measures about 3.14″ x 5.43″, and is adorned with a 2×4 grid of LEGO-like bumps on the front. While Moleskine does sell some official LEGO journals, I like how much more literal these are – despite the fact that they don’t interlock.

They’re available in red, green or yellow, and sell for $12(USD) each, or $29 for a set of all three over at Brando, where according to the site: “LEGOMAN does not include.” Indeed.