Summer in the City

Posted by on May 18, 2015 in Updates | No Comments

Good news, everyone! I’m glad to say the funding for the aptly-titled video game convention A Video Game Con has reached its proper funding via Kickstarter, and is now going to commence in September of this year! I’ll be there with an entire booth to show off my giant LEGO NES controller, as well as to sell some prints of my best LEGO works, in addition to some electronic creations themselves.

I haven’t released a lot of new LEGO projects in the recent weeks due to being busy with various things, such as helping to get a new company launched. I did however take some more self-portraits (found in my portfolio page), and some minor minifig shoots. At the exact moment I’m making a few new electronic LEGO models, similar to my power-ups from late 2014. This time I’m stepping it up a notch and doing something more sophisticated than Arduino: I’m actually going to have these new models play polyphonic tunes via an elaborate AVR code written by a wonderful bloke named Blake Livingston! This time around I’m building models of the Super Mario Bros. 3 enemies known as Dry Bones. . .

DryBones

So far, I don’t have a video demonstration of the circuit in action, since I’m still getting the hang of the coding phase. This code is very sophisticated versus my prior Arduino codes, thus I’m using slightly different technology, thanks to the hard work of Blake’s genius chiptunes code. My previous power-ups used a simple monophonic tone library generated by Arduino, but these ones will actually use an elaborate chiptunes player with Python and Renoise, in order to generate some true classic Nintendo sounds! I can’t put an exact date on the release of this project, but it should be ready within the next weeks, pending the refining of the coding.

In other internet-related news, I’ve officially joined Reddit. I got off to a rough start after I stirred up a hornets’ nest in /r/OkCupid a few times, but I’ve bounced back thanks to my posts in /r/lego. Feel free to follow me and upvote my witty mannerisms.

This summer I’ll be starting a new electronics job in Brooklyn for a startup — trust me, none of that Tzumi junk from 2011-2012, this is the big enchilada! Hopefully I’ll be able to move to Dumbo or Greenpoint before the fall season, in a huge loft apartment like Tom Hanks in Big — arcade machines and everything (except I’ll be cooler, because Tom Hanks is kind of a jerk). . .

-Baron von Brunk

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