Introduction I was looking for an alternative for my (this) blog and hold pictures. I’m a lego fan so I wanted to get some pictures uploaded but without bloating the site. In the article Lego Mini Cooper MOC I did add lot of pictures, same for Lego Chinese dinner and Lego Dragon Dance. I was checking and how telegram does handle some links and found that Instagram ’links’ get expanded to list the images inside directly to see if that could help in a task I was helping at Pelican-Elegant theme used at this site for creating a gallery. ...

Introduction on the new models I recently got the new Lego 2020 sets for the Speed Champions collection, which feature the new ‘8 studs’ wide. Overall impression is that it allows more details on the vehicles (and thus, it gets more pieces, now separated in the instructions in bags 1 and 2). The new baseplate allows enough space to hold two minifigs, but with a caveat, the side closer to the external place of the vehicle requires the minifig to have the arm lowered (not completely because it wouldn’t fit). ...

Introduction During last days I’ve been playing around with python and API access to Google Sheets. Since some time ago, I already experimented with ICS parsing from python because added https://t.me/redken_bot access to calendar files (.ics) so that it can provide daily reminders on chats about the events happening for the specific date, and had the chance to propose it’s usage to cover a specific use case: Accessing a spreadsheet in Google Sheets and parse its contents and output an ICS file so that the events listed and the dates specific for each one are available in an easier-to-consume approach. ...

Introduction In the article Lego Dimensions, I covered all the available packs for playing with the console. Unfortunately, not all of them are available for purchase anymore except from collectors, <brickset.com> or some resellers. After some research, several pages provide instructions about the tags themselves and how to ‘fix’ or ‘clone’ them. Materials Each base is a NFC tag NTAG 213 which is either read only (characters) or rewritable (vehicles). With an NFC writer/reader on your mobile phone, the tags can be cloned/copied so that you can ‘repair’ the broken ones, without buying again the pack (base can be opened with a precision screwdriver by pulling it out using the small marks (opposite in the base with + shape). ...

Introduction iCalendar (.ics or webcal) is a standard for providing ‘calendar’ information over text file, it allows to define events, etc and it’s ideal to ‘subscribe’ over the internet to remote calendars, which is commonly used to show free/busy slots for scheduling meetings, etc. If you’re familiar with Google Calendar or others, it uses ‘ics’ under the hood, and you can get full url for it so that it can be shared. ...