Mark Pospesel (Coding and Other Stuff)
Coding, tech, living abroad, travel, hiking, vintage plastic bricks
I should have posted this last January as I have done in previous years, but I forgot about it. I thought I’d ought to get these posted before we begin the 2016 Advent Calendar next month. This was the 5th year in a row of doing the calendar with my son. All photos were shot on an iPhone 6S.
For the 4th year in a row, my son and I have enjoyed opening the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar each morning in December. Most of these photos were taken with an iPhone 6 Plus (and a couple with an iPhone 6). The iPhone cameras keep improving year-over-year. (The same cannot be said for my photography skills.)
This is the 3rd year in a row that I’ve gotten the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar for my (now 7 year old) son. Each day is either a mini-figure, accessories, or a micro-scale model. It makes each morning in December a lot of fun. Every year I take pictures of each day’s build using my current iPhone. This year I used the iOS 7 Camera.app on my iPhone 5S. Previously I had used Instagram to take square photos. It’s interesting to see the evolution of the iPhone camera (and Camera.app) over the years. For these types of photos (indoor, still-life macros) the 5S is a minor improvement only over the 5, but a major improvement over the 4S camera.
When the iPhone 5 was announced last September, it was the first iPhone to ship without an Apple dock, and also the first iPhone that would not fit via an adapter in Apple’s so-called “Universal” dock. As an iOS developer, it’s useful for me to keep my phones upright and charging at my desk, ready to be debugged via Xcode, so I’ve always bought a dock for each iPhone generation. Furthermore I’ve always gone with Apple’s docks because they were available on launch, cheap enough, compact, and work well. But with the iPhone 5 for the first time I had to look for 3rd party docking options. Then I stumbled upon these directions for a LEGO phone dock that would integrate a Lightning cable. Because I love LEGO’s and the parts were cheaper than any other dock, I went ahead and ordered the parts from LEGO’s Pick-A-Brick store (I had to make some substitutions due to availability).
The heart of the dock is the 2 bricks with vertical clips that hold the Lightning cable firmly in place.
Another nice touch is having two grill pieces that don’t block the speaker and microphone, so that you can use the phone in speaker phone mode while docked. I also like that the front portions are smoothly tiled over with nary a stud in sight.
Next up: revisions to make LEGO dock 1.1
Our 2nd year doing the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar. All these photos were shot with an iPhone 5.
