Today, The Grandma has been reading about R2D2,another a great example of loyalty, friendship and leadership. Remember again: the real leader is always in the shadow.
R2-D2 or Artoo-Detoo is a fictional robot character in the Star Wars franchisecreated by George Lucas.
He has appeared in ten of the eleven theatrical Star Wars films to date. At various points throughout the course of the films, R2, an astromech droid, is a friend to C-3PO, Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
R2-D2 and his companion C-3PO are the only characters to appear in every theatrical Star Wars film, with the exception of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
English actor Kenny Baker played R2-D2 in all three original Star Wars films and received billing credit for the character in the prequel trilogy, where Baker's role was reduced as R2-D2 was portrayed mainly by radio controlled props and CGI models. In the sequel trilogy, Baker was credited as consultant for The Force Awakens; however, Jimmy Vee also co-performed the character in some scenes. Vee later took over the role beginning in The Last Jedi.
In The Rise of Skywalker, puppeteers Hassan Taj and Lee Towersey perform the role of R2-D2,
replacing Jimmy Vee, who had played the role in the previous two films.
His sounds and vocal effects were created by sound designer Ben Burtt.
R2-D2 was designed in artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, co-developed by John Stears and built by Peteric Engineering. The revised Empire Strikes Backdroids had fibreglass shells built by Tony Dyson and his White Horse Toy Company.
George Lucas's creation of R2-D2 was influenced by the peasant Matashichi from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 feature film The Hidden Fortress
(released in the United States in 1962), although his personality is
completely the opposite. Lucas and artist Ralph McQuarrie also drew
inspiration from the robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Douglas
Trumbull's 1972 film Silent Running.
Around the same time that A New Hope was being shot, Ray Harryhausen had already created Bubo for the 1981 film Clash of the Titans.
In the film, Bubo is a mechanical metal owl that flies heavily and
communicates through whistles and tweets. Harryhausen denied a relation.
The name derives from when Lucas was making one of his earlier films, American Graffiti.
Sound editor Walter Murch states that he is responsible for the
utterance which sparked the name for the droid. Murch asked for Reel 2, Dialog Track 2, in the abbreviated form R-2-D-2. Lucas, who was in the room and had dozed off while working on the script for Star Wars, momentarily woke when he heard the request and, after asking for clarification, stated that it was a great name before going back to writing his script.
R2-D2 stands for Second Generation Robotic Droid Series-2, according to a Star Wars encyclopedia published after the release of the film Star Wars.
Tony Dyson, owner of the special effects studio The White Horse Toy
Company, was commissioned by special effects supervisor Brian Johnson to
fabricate the revised mechanical design for The Empire Strikes Back,
making several units operated by remote control. A number were used by
Baker, and two were stunt double models made for the scene where the
droid was shot from the swamp onto the shore on Dagobah.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about R2D2,another a great example of loyalty, friendship and leadership. Remember again: the real leader is always in the shadow.
R2-D2 or Artoo-Detoo is a fictional robot character in the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas.
He has appeared in ten of the eleven theatrical Star Wars films to date. At various points throughout the course of the films, R2, an astromech droid, is a friend to C-3PO, Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
R2-D2 and his companion C-3PO are the only characters to appear in every theatrical Star Wars film, with the exception of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
English actor Kenny Baker played R2-D2 in all three original Star Wars films and received billing credit for the character in the prequel trilogy, where Baker's role was reduced as R2-D2 was portrayed mainly by radio controlled props and CGI models. In the sequel trilogy, Baker was credited as consultant for The Force Awakens; however, Jimmy Vee also co-performed the character in some scenes. Vee later took over the role beginning in The Last Jedi.
In The Rise of Skywalker, puppeteers Hassan Taj and Lee Towersey perform the role of R2-D2, replacing Jimmy Vee, who had played the role in the previous two films. His sounds and vocal effects were created by sound designer Ben Burtt.
R2-D2 was designed in artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, co-developed by John Stears and built by Peteric Engineering. The revised Empire Strikes Backdroids had fibreglass shells built by Tony Dyson and his White Horse Toy Company.
George Lucas's creation of R2-D2 was influenced by the peasant Matashichi from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 feature film The Hidden Fortress (released in the United States in 1962), although his personality is completely the opposite. Lucas and artist Ralph McQuarrie also drew inspiration from the robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Douglas Trumbull's 1972 film Silent Running.
Around the same time that A New Hope was being shot, Ray Harryhausen had already created Bubo for the 1981 film Clash of the Titans. In the film, Bubo is a mechanical metal owl that flies heavily and communicates through whistles and tweets. Harryhausen denied a relation.
The name derives from when Lucas was making one of his earlier films, American Graffiti. Sound editor Walter Murch states that he is responsible for the utterance which sparked the name for the droid. Murch asked for Reel 2, Dialog Track 2, in the abbreviated form R-2-D-2. Lucas, who was in the room and had dozed off while working on the script for Star Wars, momentarily woke when he heard the request and, after asking for clarification, stated that it was a great name before going back to writing his script.
R2-D2 stands for Second Generation Robotic Droid Series-2, according to a Star Wars encyclopedia published after the release of the film Star Wars. Tony Dyson, owner of the special effects studio The White Horse Toy Company, was commissioned by special effects supervisor Brian Johnson to fabricate the revised mechanical design for The Empire Strikes Back, making several units operated by remote control. A number were used by Baker, and two were stunt double models made for the scene where the droid was shot from the swamp onto the shore on Dagobah.
Today, The Grandma has finished her English course in Castelldefels with The Bishops.It has been a wonderful time with her nice partners. They have been playing some game to practice oral English, and they have been talking about leaders and leadership.
Good luck, Bishops!
R2-D2 is a fictional robot character in the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas.
He has appeared in ten of the eleven theatrical Star Wars films to date. At various points throughout the course of the films, R2, an astromech droid, is a friend to C-3PO, Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. R2-D2 and his companion C-3PO are the only characters to appear in every theatrical StarWars film, with the exception of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
English actor Kenny Baker played R2-D2 in all three original Star Wars films and received billing credit for the character in the prequel trilogy, where Baker's role was reduced as R2-D2 was portrayed mainly by radio controlled props and CGI models. In the sequel trilogy, Baker was credited as consultant for The Force Awakens; however, Jimmy Vee also co-performed the character in some scenes. Vee later took over the role beginning in The Last Jedi. In The Rise of Skywalker, puppeteers Hassan Taj and Lee Towersey perform the role of R2-D2,replacing Jimmy Vee, who had played the role in the previous two films. His sounds and vocal effects were created by sound designer Ben Burtt.
R2-D2 was designed in artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, co-developed by John Stears and built by Peteric Engineering. The revised Empire Strikes Back droids had fibreglass shells built by Tony Dyson and his White Horse Toy Company.
George Lucas's creation of R2-D2 was influenced by the peasant Matashichi from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 feature film The Hidden Fortress (released in the United States in 1962), although his personality is completely the opposite. Lucas and artist Ralph McQuarrie also drew inspiration from the robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Douglas Trumbull's 1972 film Silent Running.
Around the same time that A New Hope was being shot, Ray Harryhausen had already created "Bubo" for the 1981 film Clash of the Titans. In the film, Bubo is a mechanical metal owl that flies heavily and communicates through whistles and tweets. Harryhausen denied a relation.
The name derives from when Lucas was making one of his earlier films, American Graffiti. Sound editor Walter Murch states that he is responsible for the utterance which sparked the name for the droid. Murch asked for Reel 2, Dialog Track 2, in the abbreviated form R-2-D-2. Lucas, who was in the room and had dozed off while working on the script for Star Wars, momentarily woke when he heard the request and, after asking for clarification, stated that it was a great name before going back to writing his script.
R2-D2 stands for Second Generation Robotic Droid Series-2, according to a Star Wars encyclopedia published after the release of the film Star Wars. Tony Dyson, owner of the special effects studio The White Horse Toy Company, was commissioned by special effects supervisor Brian Johnson to fabricate the revised mechanical design for The Empire Strikes Back, making several units operated by remote control. A number were used by Baker, and two were stunt double models made for the scene where the droid was shot from the swamp onto the shore on Dagobah.
Several R2-D2 models were built for the original Star Wars films; one that was remote controlled and rolled on three wheeled legs, and others which were worn by English actor Kenny Baker and walked on two legs. Deep Roy (who also doubled Yoda in several scenes), served as Baker's double, in both Episodes V and VI; providing stunts and filling in when Baker was unavailable. The original props for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope were designed by John Stears and built by Stears' team and Peteric Engineering. The revised fibreglass droids used in The Empire Strikes Back were built by Tony Dyson and the White Horse Toy Company. The radio controlled R2 was operated by John Stears in A New Hope, Brian Johnson in The Empire Strikes Back and by Kit West in Return of the Jedi.
R2-D2 was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A replica can be seen at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
The Smithsonian Institution included R2-D2 in its list of 101 Objects that Made America.
In 2022, R2-D2 was surveyed as being the most popular movie robot in the United States.
The telescope dome of Zweibrücken Observatory in Germany was repainted to resemble R2-D2 in 2018.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about MarkHamill, the American actor and writer, who was born on a day like today in 1951.
Mark Richard Hamill (born September 25, 1951) is anAmerican actor and writer.
He is known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars film series, beginning with the original 1977 film and subsequently winning three Saturn Awards for his performances in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), and The Last Jedi (2017). His other film appearances include Corvette Summer (1978) and The Big Red One (1980). Hamill has also appeared on stage in several theater productions, primarily during the 1980s.
He is a prolific voice actor who has portrayed characters in numerous animated television series, films and video games. Hamill is known for his long-standing role as the Joker in various DC Comics projects, commencing with Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1994). He has also voiced the Hobgoblin in Spider-Man (1994-1998), Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–2008), and Skips in Regular Show (2010-2017).
Mark Richard Hamill was born on September 25, 1951, in Oakland, California, to Virginia Suzanne and William Thomas Hamill, a U.S. Navy Captain. He is one of seven children, having two brothers, Will and Patrick, and four sisters, Terry, Jan, Jeanie, and Kim. His father has English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ancestry and his mother was of half Swedish and half English descent.
His father's changes of station and attendant family moves led to the Hamill children switching schools often. In his elementary years, he went to Walsingham Academy in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Edgar Allan Poe Middle School in Annandale, Virginia.
At age 11, he moved to the 5900 block of Castleton Drive in San Diego, California, where he attended Hale Junior High School. During his first year at James Madison High School in San Diego, his family moved back to Virginia, and Hamill attended Annandale High School. By his junior year, his father was stationed in Japan, where Hamill attended and was a member of the Drama Club at Nile C. Kinnick High School, from which he graduated in 1969. He later enrolled at Los Angeles City College, majoring in drama.
Hamill's early career included a recurring role on the soap opera General Hospital, and a starring role on the short-lived sitcom The Texas Wheelers. He portrayed the oldest son, David, in the pilot episode of Eight Is Enough, though the role was later performed by Grant Goodeve. He also had guest appearances on The Bill Cosby Show, The Partridge Family, Room 222 and One Day at a Time. He appeared in multiple television films such as The City, and Sarah T. Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic.
Robert Englund was auditioning for a role in Apocalypse Now when he walked across the hall where auditions were taking place for George Lucas's Star Wars. After watching the auditions for a while, he realized that Hamill, his friend, would be perfect for the role of Luke Skywalker. He suggested to Hamill that he audition for the role; as it turned out, Hamill's agent had already set up the audition that gave him the role.
Released in May 1977, Star Wars was an enormous, unexpected success and had a huge effect on the film industry.
Hamill also appeared in the less-than-successful Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978 and later starred in the successful sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. During the time between the first two films, Hamill was involved in a serious automobile accident, fracturing his nose and left cheekbone. False rumors spread that he required plastic surgery on his face. For both of the sequels, Hamill was honored with the Saturn Award for Best Actor given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
Hamill reprised the role of Luke Skywalker for the radio dramatizations of both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. For the Return of the Jedi radio drama, the role was played by a different actor.
After the success of Star Wars, Hamill found that audiences identified him very closely with the role of Luke Skywalker, after which he became a teen idol and appeared on teen magazine covers such as Tiger Beat and others.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some films interpreted by one of her favourite actors, AlecGuinness,who died on a day like today in 2000.
She thinks that the best way to pat tribute to AlecGuinness is talking about him and his incredible roles along his amazing career.
Alec Guinness (2 April 1914-5 August 2000) was anEnglishactor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played nine different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955).
He collaborated six times with director David Lean in Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984).
He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.
Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic. He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career. He was one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from theatre to films after the Second World War.
Guinness served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the war and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba. During the war he was granted leave to appear in the stage play Flare Path about RAF Bomber Command.
Guinness won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a TonyAward.
In 1959 he was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.
Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.
Guinness was born Alec
Guinness de Cuffe at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road,
Maida Vale in London. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff, born on 8
December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield.
Alec Guinness
On Guinness's birth certificate, his mother's name is given as Agnes de Cuffe; the infant's name, where first names only are placed, is given as Alec Guinness, and there are no details for the father.
Guinness first worked writing advertising copy. His first job in the theatre was on his 20th birthday (April 1934), while he was still a drama student, in the play Libel,which opened at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and then transferred to the West End's Playhouse, where his status was raised from a walk-on to understudying two lines, and his salary increased to £1 a week.
He appeared at the Albery Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet. Also in 1936, Guinness signed on with the Old Vic, where he was cast in a series of classic roles.
In 1939, he took over for Michael Redgrave as Charleston in a road-show production of Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock. At the Old Vic, Guinness worked with many actors and actresses who would become his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle, and Jack Hawkins. An early influence was film star Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.
Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles throughout his career.
In 1937, he played Aumerle in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice under the direction of John Gielgud. He starred in a 1938 production of Hamlet which won him acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. He also appeared as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet (1939), Malvolio in Twelfth Night,and as Exeter in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero.
In
1939, he adapted Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations for the
stage, playing Herbert Pocket. The play was a success. One of its
viewers was a young British film editor, David Lean, who would later
have Guinness reprise his role in Lean's 1946 film adaptation of the
play.
Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, initially as a seaman in 1941, before receiving a commission as a temporary Sub-lieutenant on 30 April 1942 and a promotion to Temporary Lieutenant the following year.
Guinness then commanded a landing craft at the Allied invasion of Sicily, and later ferried supplies and agents to the Yugoslav partisans in the eastern Mediterranean theatre.
R2D2, C3PO, Obi Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker
Guinness returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed until 1948,playing in TheAlchemist, King Lear, Cyrano de Bergerac and Shakespeare's Richard II.
In films, Guinness was initially associated mainly with the Ealing Comedies, and particularly for playing nine characters in KindHearts and Coronets (1949). Other films from this period included TheLavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), with all three ranked among the Best British films.
In 1950 he portrayed 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark, which included delivering an uninterrupted seven minute speech in Parliament.
In 1952, director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role, opposite Petula Clark in The Card. In 1951, exhibitors voted him the most popular British star. Guinness was idolised by Peter Sellers -who himself would become famous for inhabiting a variety of characters in a film- with Sellers's first major film role starring alongside his idol in The Ladykillers.
Guinness's other notable film roles of this period included The Swan (1956) with Grace Kelly, in her penultimate film role; The Horse's Mouth (1958), in which Guinness played the part of drunken painter Gulley Jimson, and for which he also wrote the screenplay, which was nominated for an Academy Award; the lead in Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana (1959); Marcus Aurelius in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964); The Quiller Memorandum (1966); Marley's Ghost in Scrooge (1970); Charles I in Cromwell (1970); Pope Innocent III in Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972); and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), which he considered his best film performance, though critics disagreed.
Another role which is sometimes referred to as one which he considered his best, and is so considered by many critics, is that of Colonel Jock Sinclair in Tunes of Glory (1960). Guinness also played the role of Jamessir Bensonmum, the blind butler, in the 1976 Neil Simon film Murder by Death.
Guinness won particular acclaim for his work with director David Lean, which today is his most critically acclaimed work. After appearing in Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, he was given a starring role opposite William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai. For his performance as Colonel Nicholson, the unyielding British POW commanding officer, Guinness won an Academy Award for Best Actor and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor.
Guinness appeared in five Lean films that were ranked in the British Film Institute's top 50 greatest British films of the 20th century: 3rd (Lawrence of Arabia), 5th (Great Expectations), 11th (The Bridge on the River Kwai), 27th (Doctor Zhivago) and 46th (Oliver Twist).
Guinness's role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition to a new generation, as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. In letters to his friends, Guinness described the film as fairy tale rubbish but the film's sense of moral good -and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer- appealed to him and he agreed to take the part of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do any publicity to promote the film.
In 2003, Obi-Wan Kenobi as portrayed by Guinness was selected as the 37th-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute.
Digitally altered archival audio of Guinness's voice was used in the films Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
Guinness died on the night of 5 August 2000 at Midhurst in West Sussex. He was interred at Petersfield Cemetery, Hampshire.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to practise one of her favourite hobbies: building a Lego construction. Last Christmas, she received a lot of Lego set games and she has started to build them to celebrate that on a day like today in 1958, the Lego company patented the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced nowadays.
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, aprivately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego,consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts.
Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's world's most powerful brand.
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called Lego, derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well.
In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them Automatic Binding Bricks. These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which had been patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947.
Lego Figure & Block
Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originallymanufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto is det bedste er ikke for godt which means the best is not too good. This motto, which is still used today, was created by Christiansen to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly.
By 1951 plastic toys accounted for half of the Lego company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende, visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, felt that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not versatile.
In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer.
The modern Lego brick design was patented on 28 January 1958.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of simple blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.
In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program.
In May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York City and was made of over 5 million bricks; a 1:1 scale model of an X-wing fighter. Other records include a 34 m tower and a 4 km railway.
Lego & The X Files (Fox Mulder & Dana Scully)
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system.Despite variation in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each piece remains compatible in some way with existing pieces.
Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in the current time, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each Lego piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at these markets.
The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first stage is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children.
The second stage is the design and development of the product based upon the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine.
These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and for testing by parents and children during the validation process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation, for marketing and packaging.
Lego & Star Wars
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Legodesigns. The program once allowed customers to order their custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrilebutadiene styrene (ABS).As ofSeptember 2008, Lego engineersuse the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production.
The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds at pressures between 25 and 150 tonnes, and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres, to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness.
According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego has a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic it currently uses in its bricks.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico and Kladno in the Czech Republic.
The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could be considered the world's No. 1 tire manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tires a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
Lego Bricks
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west.
Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City, a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973 and LegoTechnic, a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977.
Over the years, Lego has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and even some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The X Files and Minecraft.
Although some of the licensed themes, Lego Star Wars, Lego The X Files and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, Lego has expressed a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes, and less upon licensed themes related to movie releases.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest Lego sets commercially produced was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon recently retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces.
Lego branched out into the video game market in 1997 by founding LegoMedia International Limited, and Lego Island was released that year by Mindscape. After this Lego released titles such as Lego Creator and LegoRacers.
After Lego closed down their publishing subsidiary, they moved on to a partnership with Traveller's Tales, and went on to make games like Lego Star Wars, Lego The X Files, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman, and many more including the very well-received Lego Marvel Super Heroes game,featuring New York City as the overworld and including Marvel characters from the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and more.
More recently, Lego has created a game based on The Lego Movie, due to its popularity.
Today, The Grandma has decided to stay at home watching George Lucas' films to homage him in his 75th anniversary.
The Grandma loves Star Wars, IndianaJones, Willow and ET, and it is always a great pleasure watching these films once and once again. Cinema is a beautiful art that explores the best and the worst of the human genre.
George Walton Lucas Jr., born May 14, 1944, is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. Lucas is known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic. He was the chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his earlier student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure.
Hamill, Lucas & Ford in Star Wars
His next work as a writer-director was the film American Graffiti(1973),inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California,andproduced through the newly founded Lucasfilm.
Lucas' next film, the epic space opera Star Wars(1977), had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and cowrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).
With director Steven Spielberg, he created the Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Temple of Doom (1984), and The Last Crusade (1989). He also produced and wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s and during this same period Lucas' LucasArts developed high-impact video games, including Maniac Mansion (1987), The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and Grim Fandango (1998) alongside many video games based on the Star Wars universe.
In 1997, Lucas rereleased the Star Wars trilogy as part of a Special Edition, featuring several alterations; home media versions with further changes were released in 2004 and 2011. He returned to directing with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, comprising The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He later collaborated on served as executive producer for the war film Red Tails (2012) and wrote the CGI film Strange Magic (2015).
George Lucas & Mark Hamill in Star Wars
Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successfulfilmmakers and has been nominated for four Academy Awards. His films are among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation.
Lucas is considered a significant figure in the New Hollywood era. Lucas then set his sights on adapting Flash Gordon, an adventure serial from his childhood that he fondly remembered. When he was unable to obtain the rights, he set out to write an original space adventure that would eventually become Star Wars.
Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After the success of American Graffiti and prior to the beginning of filming on Star Wars, Lucas was encouraged to renegotiate for a higher fee for writing and directing Star Wars than the $150,000 agreed.
Following the release of the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and producer, including on the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, television, and other media.
Lucas acted as a writer and executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, commissioning Irvin Kershner to direct The Empire Strikes Back, and Richard Marquand to direct Return of the Jedi, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. He also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films, which his colleague and good friend Steven Spielberg directed.
The animation studio Pixar was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, one third of the ComputerDivision of Lucasfilm.
Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer.
In 1997, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas returned to the original trilogy and made numerous modifications using newly available digital technology, releasing them in theaters as the Star Wars Special Edition.
The first Star Wars prequel was finished and released in 1999 as Episode I-The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film Lucas had directed in over two decades. Following the release of the first prequel, Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two, and began working on Episode II.
The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. It was completed and released in 2002 as Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones.
The final prequel, Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith, began production in 2002 and was released in 2005.
Numerous fans and critics considered the prequels inferior to the original trilogy, though they were box office successes nonetheless.
Harrison Ford, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg
From 2003 to 2005, Lucas also served as an executive producer on Star Wars: Clone Wars, an animated microseries on Cartoon Network created by Genndy Tartakovsky, that bridged the events between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
Lucas collaborated with Jeff Nathanson as a writer of the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg.
In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large blockbuster films and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features.
Since 2014, Lucas is working as a creative consultant on the Star Wars sequel trilogy, including work on the first film, Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.
In 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first film of a Star Wars anthology series was released. It told the story of the rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star featured in the original Star Wars film, and it was reported that Lucas liked it more than The Force Awakens.
In 2017, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was released, which Lucas described as beautifully made.
Lucas has had cursory involvement with Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Today, The Beans have enjoyed another wonderful day together. It's very difficult for The Grandma to write a post today because although she knows that it's the end of a season, it's also the beginning of another one full of hope, effort and common help in the distance.
The Grandma has tried to share her knowledge with The Beans during some months and she's very happy with the effort and commitment demonstrated by all of them. Listening to old stories, remembering personal memories, talking about literature, history or music, she has tried to cheer them to start again in the wonderful adventure of learning.
Without temporal goals and without pressure only with the idea of enjoying every moment and giving the best of everyone; without the obligation of demonstrating anything, only with the intention of having an open mind to discover new cultures, countries and stories, The Beans have demonstrated that they are ready to confront whatever they want if they have the strong idea of doing it and the most important, that they are not alone in this difficult and long way to find a success route that determinates the closer future.
It's very important to trust in yourself to be ready to get over the difficulties but it's also very important to know and reaffirm that you are doing this travel rounded by your special family, fourteen different people with different characters, points of views and origins but with the same objective: learning new things every day and enjoying every moment, because it's not important where they come from but where they are going to arrive.
One day, a Bean will come, and the sword will rise... again.
Excalibur, Thomas Malory
Every member of the family has offered her/his colour to a multicultural family that has been able to work very hard every day. Every one of them is important and necessary because The Beans are a sum of all of them and they have left his/her footstep in this wonderful family that is called to do something fantastic in the closer future. Teamwork is the secret of their success, feeling important as a part of a totality and being missed when you're not with them, this family has shined a light in every colour of our hearts.
That's no way to say goodbye
The Grandma is sad and staying in Lisbon is a good way to try to change this sadness to joy. She loves fado and admires Mísia, one of her favourite female singers. They have a lot of things in common: both of them are adult, both of them have a life full of incredible stories, both of them have common Catalan origins and both of them like poetry and literature. The most importance difference between them is that Mísia has one of the most incredible voices around the world, and The Grandma has big ears to listen to her fados.
Some people say that The Beans don't exist and all is a legend although all the legends have a true base. These same people explain that this legend has been transmitted from generation to generation in an oral way across the Via Rubricatus towns with different versions talking about different families with different surnames: The Collins, The Addams, The Holmes, The Poppins, The Bonds or recently, The Beans.
Princess Leia and R2D2
All the versions of this legend have points in common, a reduced number of people who worked very strong to find something they thought they have lost: trust in themselves and force to continue fighting; an old woman with an undetermined age over the 90's, very rich, who loved explaining old-fashioned stories and was a fan of the Middle-Age, -especially Ramon Llull and King Arthur novels- and contemporany fiction like Star Wars films and The X Files Series; and who tries to follow their teachings.
From Ramon Llull, she learnt to think and question things without believing in official versions; from King Arthur, the value of the Round Table: honour, courage, loyalty, teamwork and enough imagination to create their own universe to protect themselves from the enemy; from Star Wars, she learnt to fight against the dark forces; and from The X Files to not give up searching the truth.
This is not the end, this is the beginning of a new season because the best is always ready to arrive.
Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story;
And tell it strong and clear if he has not: That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory Called The Beans Family. The Beans! The Beans!
Camelot, Alan Jay Lerne
Fado is a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that the only reliable information on the history of Fado was orally transmitted and goes back to the 1820s and 1830s at best. But even that information was frequently modified within the generational transmission process that made it reach us today.
Although the origins are difficult to trace, today fado is commonly regarded as simply a form of song which can be about anything, but must follow a certain traditional structure. In popular belief, fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fatefulness and melancholia. This is loosely captured by the Portuguese word saudade, or longing, symbolizing a feeling of loss, a permanent, irreparable loss and its consequent lifelong damage.
This connection to the music of a historic Portuguese urban and maritime proletariat: sailors, dock workers, port traders and other working-class people in general, can also be found in Brazilian modinha and Indonesian kroncong, although all these music genres subsequently developed their own independent traditions.
On 27 November 2011, fado was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. It is one of two Portuguese music traditions part of the lists, the other being Cante Alentejano.
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