Lego Stats and Facts

I've always been a Lego fan, since when my grandmother gave me my first lego back in 1979 (this one!)

Then i grew up, and as a teenager there is no way you'd admit to anyone that you still like lego (right?!?) and i "forgot" about Lego for a very long time. Until i turned 27ish... then the latent kid-side turned on suddenly, thanks to the RIS 1.0 (that gave me the perfect excuse to buy a Lego set: i had to have it as you could build robotics inventions and program those with a computer!).. and so this is how i got back into my child-hood and started to collect Legos as i used to in the '80s.
But how big is Lego? how popular is it? I've been searching some interesting stats and facts and here is the most affascinating ones i've discovered.

LEGO stats:

• 400.000.000.000 - There have been 400 billion LEGO elements made in the 50 years of the brick (since 1958).
• 4.000.000.000 - Four billion mini-figures have been made since 1978.  - this means that every 100 lego bricks created, 1 is a mini-fig!
• 915,103,765 - Six eight-stud Lego bricks of the same colour can be put together in 915,103,765 ways, and just three bricks of the same colour offer 1,560 combinations. The figure of 102,981,500 is often given for six pieces, but it is incorrect. The number 102,981,504 (four more than that figure) is the number of six-piece towers (of a height of six).
• 306,000,000 - The LEGO Group is the world's largest tire producer, with an annual production of 306 millions.
• 62 - There are enough LEGO bricks in the world for each human to own 62.
• 32 - "Legot" (or "leegot"), plural form of "lego" (or "leego") is also used as a Finnish slang term for human teeth (32), because of the rectangular shape of the teeth.
• 7 - LEGO sets sell somewhere in the world every second.
• 7 - It takes about 7 seconds in the mould for a LEGO element to cool from 232 degrees celcius.
• 5 - End to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would go around the word 5 times.

New dress for this blog

So, I finally decided today to change a little bit this blog's dress to refresh its look a little bit. Now I'm fine with it as it seems much cleaner and less "flashy" :-)

Afterall we all judge books by their cover, don't we?

Interesting to note how in two years Blogger didn't update much the toold that can be added to the page.. but i have to admit that this interface is dummy-proof, so works very well unless you really want to start customizing thigs around a lot.

Maybe i will change the color scheme in the next few days, but given that time is always my enemy, i guess this is how the blog will look like for a very long time.

If you travel a lot...

.. you can't miss the opportunity to get yourself a fully working mouse that is also small enough to easily fit in your desktop case without making it look oddly shaped....

So far until yesterday i thought the only solution was to use a mini-mouse, but i've always found myself very unconfortable with those tiny devices, and changing the mouse while travelling and while working @ my desk is not a nice option either (as i'm lazy and i can't be bothered getting used to one or the other too often)....

Anyway, my old mouse finally broke last week, and i've speent some time looking for the best compromise between size (i like to feel the mouse in my hand when i use it) and portability (i don't want it to fill the entire laptop-case internal pocket)... then today I came across the latest Microsoft Arc Mouse. It's basically a foldable full-sized mouse. Looks great and, even if it's morern derigned, it's also very confy to use! :-)

I had an HP wireless mouse and it's a pity this new one doesn't work with the same wireless usb dongle, but, hey...

   you can't always get what you want

Live from Madrid

Here I am... after 2 hours flight and few kids screaming in the seats behind me i've finally landed and reached the hotel. Didn't take any picture yet, mainly because i have been very busy playing with my new toy, the Sony ebook reader - pocket version (AKA as PRS 300.. )

The reason i choose this version instead of the touch version is mainly because i want to be able to read a book and the touch in my opinion has a big problem when it comes to this aspect: the screen is way too glossy... which is a bit disappointing for an e-Reader where it all should end up with a nice, confortable reading session.

I've been using this e-Reader for a month now and I have to say that it was defenetly worth the price i've paid for it (180 pounds @Harrods, London). Feature-wise this reader doesn't have anything: no memory card reader, no search feature, no nothing. But it does it's job really well: you can read under almost any light conditions (except the dark, as it doens't have any backlight) and it's really pocket size, as it fits in my internal jacket pocket easily even in it's pouch.

Compatibility-wise i've managed to use PDF standard file mainly and it does offer 3 zoom levels (but the 1st level is almost impossible to read and i always use it at the 2nd zoom level). i've also used to read MS word document (.doc format, not the .docx version) and it works smoothly. So far it only crashed once but hard reset got it back to work.

By the way: wondering what am i reading now? I'm currently finishing the first 3 books of the Asimov's Foundation trilogy... and i'm enjoying each page of it!

i'm back

After 2 years of "lazyness" i'm back (mainly because i've faced soome problems maintaining the domain manuelmontanari(dot)com). So i'm here, hoping to have time to update this blog. Welcome back Manuel! :-)