Hello, I’m Veronica
The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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Finial Touch
In early January you walked into my blog, took a seat in a pew up front, and witnessed the longest church service in the history of France. From the first LEGO piece I laid as the cornerstone – a now-hidden flat black rectangle – to this week’s placement of the oversized finial on top of the roof, you watched – for almost two hundred years – the slow, somewhat steady rise of Notre-Dame de Paris. Time sure flies, doesn’t it? But at last we’ve made it to the end (or at least, the year 1345), where the pastor dismisses the congregation with a “Go in peace!”(which sounds much better than “Go in pieces!”)
Notre-Dame de Paris Some reflection is in order today, especially since we’re talking about a building of faith. Our cathedral adventure over the last 19 weeks took us through 4,383 LEGO pieces and 393 steps of the instruction manual, snapped together in fifteen hours, resulting in a five-pound plastic model that – “thank heavens” – really does look like the famous French cathedral on the Seine River in Paris.
[Builder/blogger note: I chose my Spotify classical music playlist while I finished up the cathedral. The first selection was entirely fitting: Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance”, because this really did feel like a graduation of sorts. But the second selection was eerily more fitting: the final chorus of Handel’s “Messiah”. Ha-a-a-a-a-llelujah indeed!]
Some of the photos here aren’t much different than last week’s, but only because bags 31-34… of 34 bags of pieces, were all about embellishment: capstones, pinnacles, tabernacles, finials, statuary, and all the other little architectural flourishes unique to a cathedral (plus a little landscape on the sidewalk). You know those cake decorator videos where a white cake sits on a spinner and you get to witness the slow, mesmerizing development of frosting, flowers, and such? That was me this week; spinning, applying, and fully decorating my cake… er, cathedral.
Here’s a good photo of some of this decor (and click on any of the photos to see everything better). To the far left you can see several of the pinnacles; the little spires all in a row high up. There are 30 pinnacles on the entire cathedral. To the right you can see a couple of the tabernacles (14 of those); the open box-like structures above the tiny drainpipes. And running along the first floor you can see capstones; the helmet-like headers on either side of the open bays. There are more capstones on Notre-Dame de Paris than any other decorative element (68!)
Here’s a look at the cathedral’s famous flying buttresses, the exterior structural elements keeping the building from falling in on itself. There are 28 buttresses, including 14 running around the chancel and apse on the east end. Just below the tabernacle boxes you see the drainpipes. There are 46 of those. During a good rainstorm this view would include an elegant line of waterfalls.
Remember those curious “stars on flagpoles” (or “magic wands”)? Here they are again, all grouped together just below the part of the towers housing the bells. There are 24 of them. You can also see one of the cathedral’s three majestic rose windows front and center. Finally, note the round “medallions” just under the curved arches on either side of the rose window. You’ll find 24 of those on Notre-Dame de Paris as well; several stamped proudly with a “LEGO” logo.
Okay, one more example of embellishment. Here you can see the 12 disciples in green, symmetrically positioned around the base of the finial (all facing inward). When I pulled these little guys out of the plastic bag I thought they were scale figures for down on the sidewalk, but instead they are the statuary I referred to when I first talked about the cathedral back in January.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something about the model’s landscape elements. LEGO has come a long way since the boxy trees surrounding LEGO Fallingwater. These little “growees” are pretty sophisticated. Consider the tree in the middle. (Click on the photo for more detail). It’s made up of 37 LEGO pieces, including the trunk, branches, and leaves. Furthermore, the branches up against the cathedral are a darker green because, of course, that part of the tree is typically shaded.
Now then, before you “go in peace” I must mention one more thing; the so-called surprise I teased in last week’s post. Notre-Dame de Paris is such an elegant structure it deserves to be seen by day… and by night. Thanks to the good people at Briksmax, I am able to do just that: light up the cathedral from one end to the other. That’s the good news. The bad? I’m looking at another 2 instruction manuals and another 230 steps to get it done. Are you kidding me?
Briksmax lighting When I purchased the lights I figured they would be simply and cleverly inserted in and around the completed structure, but NO-O-O-O-O-O!!! (cue horror-movie music). In order to light up Notre Dame de Paris I must deconstruct the model. Again I say, are you kidding me? Here I finally complete my cathedral and now you want me to take it apart again? Sorry good readers; it’s just not something I can stomach right now. I’m going to sit and admire my completed cathedral while you settle for admiring the Briksmax photo above. You don’t place the finial on the roof of the catheral with a flourish, only to then remove the entire roof. Another church service for another time.
I leave you with one last look at our poor, unused, leftover pieces, all 48 of them in plastic-bagged captivity (but still trying to escape). I think they all ganged up and cried, “RUN FOR IT!”, because the 49th leftover – a tiny cluster of leaves from one of the trees – went skittering off the desk and onto the carpet below, where it immediately hushed and hid. I still haven’t found it, but no worries. The next time I walk into my office I’ll probably step on it with a satisfying crunch.Running build time: 15 hrs. 6 min.
Total leftover pieces: 49
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My Unforeseeable Future
In the not-so-distant year of 2062, forecasters predict we will have perfected the invention of “nanofabricators” – machines capable of producing food, clothing, electronics and such, not from assembly-line parts but from the very atoms of those parts. It’s a mind-blowing concept: technology that creates virtually anything by manipulating the structure of raw materials at the molecular level. Too bad I won’t be around to see it.
Is it making your dinner? When you reach your mid-sixties, the harsh reality is that predictions of what life on Earth will look like in the future focus on a period of time beyond the years you’ve been given. The experts tend to look fifty years ahead or more, so, sorry Dave, you just won’t be here when all these wonders take place. It’s a little strange to think about a world without you in it. Sure, you can also imagine the years before you were born, when your parents and grandparents were living life without you, but those were simpler times devoid of the technology we take for granted today.
Driver’s license not necessary Consider self-driving cars. Fifty years ago I was a teenager and couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license (the very definition of “freedom” back then). But had you told me, “Hey Dave, you’re not going to need that little card in fifty years because cars will drive themselves”, I would’ve given you a strange look and accused you of watching too many science-fiction movies. Yet here we are.
I hit on this topic today because I’m still processing the fact we have humanoids who can run half-marathons (my post from last week). When the world’s technology exceeds your expectations, you push the pause button and wonder if you’re getting left behind (or just getting old). Am I suddenly more inclined to believe those fifty-year forecasts? You bet I am. And nanofabricators are just the tip of the inventive iceberg.
Ping-pong partner Nanobots (does everything in a post-Dave world start with “nano”?) are in the works as well. A nanobot is a robot so tiny you might not be able to see it with the naked eye. I was introduced to the concept in Michael Crichton’s sci-fi novel Prey. Imagine a pile of nanobots sitting in the corner of a window in your house. Once a day those nanobots spill out over the glass like a wave, consuming any dirt or other matter like little vacuums. Perfectly clean windows! Of course, “Prey” takes the technology in a more sinister, out-of-control direction and a bestseller is born.
[Blogger’s note: You’ll find “nanobot” in your favorite online dictionary. At least in some lab environment out there, nanobots are already here.]
With Prey in mind, Hollywood isn’t helping us to embrace these fifty-year forecasts. Virtually every movie (or book) about yet-to-be-here technology takes the concept in a not-so-nice direction. (The Terminator comes to mind.) The fact is, nobody’s going to buy a ticket just to watch a happy application of future tech on the big screen. Something always has to go “worng” (to quote Westworld).
I hope you’ll be around in fifty years to see and experience some of the wonders our forecasters predict today. Brace yourself: you’ll have a “wearable” of some sort (watch, eyeglasses, implant). One of you will have bionics in a limb or organ that wasn’t functioning properly. Some of you will live up in space or deep down in the ocean instead of on terra firma. It’s a wonderous world I’ll never get to see, but I’ve made peace with it. At least I won’t be around in 2182, when Asteroid Bennu (we name asteroids?) will be on a collision course with Earth.
LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #14
(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)
The service is rapidly coming to a close. I sense the inevitable benediction and dismissal of the congregation as our work on LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris wraps up. The remaining pieces in Bag 28 brought the cathedral’s bell towers to an even (if not finished) height, while Bags 29 and 30 – of 34 bags of pieces – added more detail to those towers, as well as some elegant structure above the transept doorways.
Bell tower detail We worked high off the ground today; quite a bit higher than the roof line of the cathedral. My shaking fingers had a sense of vertigo as I added the little drainpipes, railings, and such you see here. I imagined one of those towering mechanical cranes dropping the LEGO pieces into place until, of course, I remembered I was working in the thirteenth century. The word “crane” hadn’t even been invented yet.
Again with the missing pieces. For the first time since I laid the cornerstone I thought I threw a piece away, along with the plastic bag it came in. I searched in vain on my office desk, only to decide I’d be going through the garage trash later on. Then lo and behold, just as I was completing today’s build, there sat the missing piece right in front of me as if to say, “What the heck is wrong with you? I was right here in plain sight!”
My hat is off to LEGO’s engineers today. Look at the process above where I completed the structure above the transept doorways. Those two long LEGO pieces in the first photo are designed to hinge open, simply to allow easier placement of the central cap piece in between. Then you close those long pieces around the cap like a hug and voila – second photo – the transept is complete.
Our work really is almost done. Just four small bags of pieces remain – two for the top structure of the bell towers (and a little ornamentation around the cathedral roof), and two for landscape elements to soften the edges of the model. Don’t walk out of the sanctuary just yet. The final product includes a surprise!Running build time: 13 hrs. 58 min.
Total leftover pieces: 40
Some content sourced from the FutureTimeline.net website, the CNN Science article, “Near-Earth asteroid Bennu could hit Earth in 157 years…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Running Amuck
Last Saturday our little town hosted a festive 10k run. High school cheerleaders pom-pommed us away from the starting line while hundreds of residents waved flags and tossed water bottles along the way. The finish in the town square was packed with people, and included the music, food, and fun you’d find at a carnival. As I struggled to complete the last couple of “k’s” I struck up a conversation with a nearby runner to distract myself from the effort. She was pleasant enough, with just the right pace, and she was even a human being. At least, I think she was.
Suddenly, shockingly, we’ve come to this. The entry form for your next running race may ask you to identify as 1) human being, or 2) human-oid . If you choose the latter, you’re saying you still have the physical form and characteristics of a human being. You just happen to be a robot.Ten days ago this eerie scenario really played out in Beijing. A half-marathon took place with thousands of human participants, but the spotlight was clearly on the twenty-one humanoids who also showed up at the starting line. These robots were accompanied by operators running close behind them, but make no mistake; absent of the wires or other attachments you might expect with a remote-controlled device. They were running free, with the look and gait of any other runner in the race.
I’m wondering how any of the human runners kept their focus as they ran this race. I’d want to pace myself against one or two of these machines and just admire their every step. The humanoid winner, Tiangong Ultra, finished the half-marathon in 2 hours and 40 minutes, or about five miles an hour. Trust me: five miles an hour is not a walk; it’s a run.I’ll have to search for the video online, because a still of a running humanoid doesn’t do the accomplishment justice. I just can’t get over the fact we now have robots who run. Granted, the Beijing half-marathon wasn’t what you’d call a “run in the park” for these technological marvels. Only six of the twenty-one finished the race. Others fell down or exhausted their battery packs. Still others lost their heads or spun out of control. If there had been a humanoid hospital nearby, its ER would’ve been a machine-shop hotbed of activity.
My perception of all things “robot” is clearly outdated. I’m more inclined to picture self-guided vacuum cleaners and assembly-line automatons than race-running humanoids. Case in point: I’ll never forget the grade-school novel, Andy Buckram’s Tin Men. It was a wonderfully imaginative tale about a boy who created a family of robots from a pile of cans, and his unexpected adventures when those robots came to life courtesy of a lightning strike. The book was written in the 1960s and was a work of fiction. Of course it was.
I’ll also never forget the movie Silent Running (1972), a future shock story of a destroyed Earth, with spaceships housing giant terrariums cared for by lovable lifelike service robots. Or Westworld – the 1973 original, not the HBO series – an adult amusement park of sorts where robots catered to the guilty pleasures of their human customers (until collectively the robots decided to run amuck).
C-3PO C-3PO from the original Star Wars trilogy (1977) might’ve been the first humanoid to get me wondering if such technology was possible. Blade Runner (1982) took the concept an interesting step further, with humanoids desperate to demonstrate their emotional capacity. Less than fifty years later we’re still working on that emotions bit, but I certainly wouldn’t have bet we’d have humanoids who could run.
Let’s be clear – we’re at least another fifty years removed from any technology that remotely suggests “human”. Even if Siri and Alexa appear to read your mind and hold meaningful conversations with you, they’re not going to jump out of your smartphone tomorrow and land on two legs. Even if your little robot dog wags its tail, lies down, and rolls over, it’s not going to take a bite out of your leg when it doesn’t get enough attention. Your Roomba might suck up the lion’s share of dust and dirt in your house but it’s not coming for your valuables.
I sleep peacefully at night knowing the nightmares of Westworld and Blade Runner continue to be the stuff of (evil) Hollywood imaginations. Virtual reality will remain virtual, and robots will continue to be nothing more than subservient devices for years to come. But admittedly, you can’t help but question “years to come” when you see a humanoid run a half-marathon.
LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #13
(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)
I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped the construction of a LEGO model smack-dab in the middle of a bag of pieces. Imagine our priest at Notre-Dame de Paris, pausing midway/mid-sentence into his homily only to say to his congregation, “I’m tired. Let’s pick this up next week, shall we?”
Cathedral roof structure Bags 25-28 – of 34 bags of pieces, were a study in opposites. In a crisp fifteen minutes, Bag 25 assembled to the roof structure you see here, covering the remainder of the nave (the sanctuary) and transept (the cross section). Even Bag 26 wasn’t a stretch as we built the “cores” of the uppermost cubes of the cathedral towers.
Two bags = hundreds of pieces. Seriously. But that’s when I should’ve stepped on the brakes. The instruction manual told me to break open Bags 27 and 28 together and this is what stared up at me. If you think the pile on the right adds up to a lot of pieces, you are correct about both piles and you’re probably underestimating the number. These tiny, tiny pieces come together slowly to complete the uppermost cubes of the cathedral towers. One cube took 75 minutes. Why so long? 186 pieces each. No kidding – zoom in on the top of the completed tower below and you’ll get some sense of how intricate it is. Now you understand why we paused in the middle of the homily. I just didn’t have the energy to build up the other tower. Next week!
(Click the photo for more detail) Since we’re close to the end of the build, let me admit to looking ahead in the process. The remaining six bags are small, and the pieces inside of them are minuscule. If I had visions of finishing off the cathedral in a flurry of construction, they’ve been dashed by the thought that I’m still a good five hundred pieces from the finish line. Sigh… this church service is getting a little long.
Running build time: 13 hrs. 0 min.
Total leftover pieces: 32
Some content sourced from the Smithsonian Magazine article, “Humanoid Robots Just Raced Alongside Human Runners…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Pretty In Pink (and Green)
Here in the South, the arrival of spring has been declared with aplomb. You can already watch the grass grow, and it seems to need cutting every other day. But even more apparent, the blooms are everywhere. Pink azaleas (a staple at last weekend’s Masters golf tournament) run rampant. The roses have never been redder. And the giant flower heads of white hydrangeas will soon spring forth. This Easter week therefore, it seems appropriate for this blog to pay a visit to another cathedral: Saint Mary of the Flowers in Florence, Italy.
Santa Maria dei Fiore My LEGO creation of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is quickly coming to a close, so I need to tour you through at least one or two more cathedrals before I’m done. The first, you may recall, was Saint John Lateran in Rome (read about that one in Tucked-Away Place to Pray). Today we’re a three-hour drive to the north, at Santa Maria dei Fiore. It’s no surprise my tour of the world’s prominent cathedrals continues in Italy. To be honest, the whole tour would do just fine if it never left the country.
West facade and bell tower Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany, known for its stunning landscapes, world-class wines, and Renaissance art and architecture. Approaching the city from any direction, you cannot help but notice Santa Maria dei Fiore. The cathedral is not only one of the largest in the world, but its exterior is finished with marble panels of pink and green, giving the structure a light, airy contrast to the surrounding buildings. The church is crowned by a distinctive dome, which captures your attention even before the church itself.
Inside shell of the dome The architect in me wants to highlight Santa Maria dei Fiore for the remarkable engineering that went into this massive structure. I could spend an entire post talking about the design of the dome alone. Consider, its structure is actually one inside of another. The brick-clad concrete shell you see from the outside is connected to the one you see from the inside by “chains” of stone, iron, and wood. With this approach, Santa Maria dei Fiore doesn’t require the flying buttresses so prominent in Notre-Dame de Paris (a structural element the Italians regarded as “ugly makeshifts”). And the dome’s four million bricks – which might seem heavy-handed (ha) – are a much lighter material than stone or tile.
There’s more to this cathedral than its dome, of course. The plan, a traditional Latin cross, includes three rounded apses surrounding the altar, each used as a chapel. The nave (sanctuary) is the length of two football fields; a vast interior space with single aisles on either side. The structural arches soar 75 feet above the seemingly endless marble floor. And perhaps most unusual, Santa Maria dei Fiore is actually a complex of three buildings. You enter the adjacent octagonal Baptistry of St. John through sets of bronze doors (which are replacements for the famous originals now residing in a nearby museum). And the slender free-standing Giotto’s Campanile (bell tower) is a decorated work of art in itself. All three structures blend together with those distinctive pink and green marble tiles.
Baptistry of St. John If you’re ever fortunate enough to visit Saint Mary of the Flowers, be sure to purchase the ticket to climb to the top of the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi – the architect -included a narrow staircase between the two shells so you can reach the uppermost cupola for a spectacular view of Florence and the surrounding countryside. Brunelleschi designed other structures in his lifetime; churches, chapels, hospitals, and such, but the Florence Cathedral is his crowning achievement. It’s no wonder you’ll find his tomb right inside the entrance, alongside the more prominent players in Santa Maria’s storied history.
LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #12
(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)
Oh my stars, the build was challenging today! Bags 22, 23, and 24 – of 34 bags of pieces, focused almost exclusively on the west facade and the rising of the bell towers. We added the final rose window (above the west entrance) and reinforced the upper reaches of the nave in anticipation of adding the roof.
Magic wands? So here’s a detail I didn’t expect. In Notre-Dame’s towers, just below the uppermost structure (where the bells live – still to be built), you have – how else can I say it? – “stars on flag poles”. Forty stars on flag poles, to be precise. When I dumped out Bag 24, I thought, “What the…?” as the pile of magic wands you see here appeared. Did LEGO mistakenly add pieces from a Harry Potter model into mine? A Disney perhaps? Nope. Look at the final photo. Every one of those stars is planted at the west end of the cathedral like palm trees; most of them in the bell towers. Nice detail, Notre-Dame. As for installing them? It’s tough enough to push little poles into LEGO holes one-by-one-by one, but then you have to rotate the stars precisely forty-five degrees from the plane of the cathedral walls. The engineers at LEGO are having a barrel of laughs at my expense.
(Click for more detail) By the way, we’ve made it to the year 1245 as we build the bell towers, almost a hundred years after laying the first cornerstone at the opposite end. And we are almost done. By the numbers we have ten bags of pieces to go, but by the look of the model we’re closer than that. They must be small bags of pieces. Whatever. I just hope they don’t contain any more stars on flagpoles.
Running build time: 12 hrs. 01 min.
Total leftover pieces: 32
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Chugga Chugga Chew Chew
Technology isn’t always our friend. Recent studies show plastic water bottles shed as many as 24,000 “micro-bits” of plastic into the consumer’s body. These bits measure 1/1000th of a meter across. But more recent studies – studies we didn’t have the technology for even five years ago – reveal the same bottles sheds another 200,000 “nano-bits”. At 1/1,000th the width of a human hair, these infinitesimal particles are so small they pass through the membranes of the body’s organs, leading to heaven knows what kind of damage. “Gulp!”
We love our water bottles! Let’s leave this horror movie of science-you-didn’t-want-to-know behind and go with glass or metal containers instead. But it’s virtually impossible to avoid ingesting plastic particles anyway. And many people make a habit of it every day… with chewing gum. Gum contains the same microplastics as water bottles. No surprise there. You shouldn’t really ingest any of the ingredients in chewing gum.
When you’re a kid however, you don’t care about ingredients (let alone bits of plastic). Gum chewing is a habit I absolutely subscribed to in childhood. I still remember the barber who cut my hair when I was single-digits old. The reward for being a good boy in the chair was to help myself to one of those little wrapped chunks of Bazooka bubble gum. Bubble gum has a distinctive flavor I can still recall decades later. The pink stuff also has the built-in game of blowing big, sticky bubbles.
gumballs After Bazooka came Bubble Yum, a trendy alternative because it was a softer chew from the get-go and packaged in larger chunks. Bubble Yum came in several flavors. But for me, chewing gum evolved from “bubble” to “sugarless” in a heartbeat, thanks to one too many trips to the dentist. Choosing from the “prize shelf” after my fillings, I always went for the pack of Dentyne instead of the toys. Dentyne was the dentist’s way of encouraging less sugar (and more saliva). Dentyne was my way of thinking it was still okay to chew gum.
Somewhere between Bubble Yum and Dentyne came those slim packs of “stick gum”, including Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, Clove, and for this licorice aficionado, Black Jack. I also consumed my fair share of Chiclets. But my gum habit eventually evolved to more of a”breath mint” chew. The one I remember best was “Freshen Up”, the green chunk of gum encasing the small dose of mouthwash gel. You’d get this mind-blowing burst of mint the moment you bit into it. Pretty novel for chewing gum.What I never saw coming – which ground my chewing gum habit to an abrupt halt – was TMJ, also known as (the more scary-sounding) “dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint”. In plain English, TMJ is sustained pain in the jaw muscles from overuse. It’s nasty, and if you’re not careful it can be chronic. For me it was relieved by backing off on the chewing gum… as well as breakfast bowls of Grape Nuts. If you’ve had TMJ yourself, you know it’s a little unnerving (pun intended) because there’s no guarantee you’re ever gonna get rid of it.
Every now and then someone offers me a piece of gum and I politely decline. I’m not interested in the return of jaw pain and besides, I’ve developed a preference for breath mints instead. As for you, whether you chugga chugga (your water) or chew chew (your gum), don’t forget about those nasty nano-plastics. Just like Mr. TMJ, they’re not your friend.
LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #11
(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)
Today we “leveled the praying field” 🙂 Bags 19, 20, and 21… of 34 bags of pieces, brought the height of the nave to virtually the same as the chancel. It’s safe to say the lion’s share of the remaining pieces will be (tiny and) focused on building the roof structure and west end bell towers.
Arches and more arches Dropping a piece down, down, down into the sanctuary – which I managed to do twice today through the top square openings you see here – is no laughing matter. You might say, “Just flip the model over and shake them out, Dave” but I’m way too far along to risk it falling apart. Instead, I had to reach down with my giant fingers, gently pinch, and then pull back like a construction crane. I hope I didn’t scare the parishioners in the process.
We built framed windows today, (plastic) glass and all! These can be seen in the final photo, on the west end of the cathedral above the doors. We also built – in somewhat assembly-line fashion – another fourteen of the cathedral’s distinctive flying buttresses. But the most tedious, time-consuming task of all was the arched windows you see along the upper walls of the nave in the first photo. Each is assembled from a dozen finger-numbing pieces.
Uniform height Finally, a word about weight. I picked up the cathedral the other day and went, “Holy cow!” (ha). Turns out this beast weighs a robust three pounds already. That’s a lot of plastic. And given today’s blog topic I’m thankful the model isn’t edible.
Running build time: 10 hrs. 28 min.
Total leftover pieces: 28 (no new ones!)
Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “Chewing gum can shed microplastics into saliva…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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