LEGO artist Jeff Friesen created 50 LEGO dioramas showing something (in his own mental image) of the 50 states.  Check it out on Jeff's Brickfantastic website. 

Can you identify each state by what is in the picture?

If you click on the smaller images you'll get your answer in the lower right corner (it will open up a full size image of the state) and catch the short snippet/joke that goes along with it.
Post a comment with your favorite image/state!

So Maker's Faires have been getting more popular across the country.  People getting together and building stuff.  Learning skills, learning to work together, and in general building some really cool things.
So in the spirit of building even more cool things... the White House is hosting its own Makers Faire on June 18th.  You can check out more <here>. And if you like the OK Go group (as seen all over YouTube, check out their YouTube Channel.  They will be there on the 18th and I'm guessing they'll have something new for folks.

Sam and Ben sortin' LEGOs back at the home office...

Update 5/28/2014: South Portland Track Meet went great even with the pouring rain in the morning.  We had 20 teams and about 95 students competing.  Thanks to the Riot Crew FIRST Robotics Team for helping out!

Of note: The Hawkbotics from Eliot gave a great demonstration of their Ping Pong Shot Putting robot with a high score of 201 points (64 in the high goal and 9 in the low goal)!

PLEASE NOTE: The winners:
1st Place Overall: Oxford Hills Homeschool Team, Boys with a 2/2/2 record
2nd Place Overall: Intergalactic Time Traveling Knights from Berwick with a 3/0/0 record
3rd Place Overall: The Robotic Warriors from Wells with a 0/2/1 record
Here are the results from the South Portland Meet.

Congratulations to the Auburn Middle School's RoboMasters for having an awesome run at the meet last Saturday.  They earned 4 first places, and 2 third places at the competition, earning them the Meet Champions award.  Way to go Robo Masters!!
In 2nd place was the Winthrop Ramblers with a 1/1/3 record and
we had a tie for 3rd place (both getting a 1/1/1 record)
From Gray-New Gloucester the L-E-GNG-O team and from Gardiner the Rainbow Robotic Rules
Here are the results in PDF form.

The Maine Discovery Museum will be hosting a Scratch Day event for people to come in, learn about Scratch, share ideas, and connect with other programmers. It is free and open to all ages, but preregistration is required.

Scratch is a free graphical programming language designed to be fun and easy to use for all ages. It was designed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group of the MIT Media Lab to help introduce kids and adults to programming.

The event is this Saturday, May 17, starts at 10:30am, and it will be held at The Maine Discovery Museum.

Location: Maine Discovery Museum
74 Main Street
Bangor, ME 04401

Register at http://mmsa.org/scratchday
For more info contact jgates@mmsa.org
Scratch can be found at: http://scratch.mit.edu/

From the FLL Results Press Release
See below: Bar Harbor's 'Pickles' got a 1st and a 3rd (out of the 80 teams competing at the World Festival)


FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) World Festival – FLL introduces younger children to real-world engineering challenges by conducting research projects and building LEGO-based autonomous robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface. FLL teams, guided by their imaginations, discover exciting career possibilities and learn to make positive contributions to society. This year’s challenge, NATURE’S FURYSM, engaged 228,000+ kids on nearly 23,000 teams to explore the awe-inspiring storms, quakes, waves, and other natural disasters.

Top honors went to Champion’s Award 1st Place winner, Team 20650, Invicta, Canterbury, United Kingdom;Champion’s Award 2nd Place winner, Team 21450, Fast and Curious, Aley, Lebanon; and Champion’s Award 3rd Place winner, Team 737, S.H.I.E.L.D., Brookfield, Wis.

Other FLL awards included:

• Robot Performance Award – Team 21550, OMG, of Kaoshiung, Taiwan (and the Pickles got 3rd place in this as well)
• Strategy & Innovation Award – Team 5515, Oh Boy…These Pickles are Natural Disasters, Bar Harbor, Maine
• Programming Award – Team 3551, M, San Mateo, Calif.
• Mechanical Design Award – Team 20700, sAPG-Tigers, Mosbach, Germany
• Research Award – Team 10296, CyberHawks, River Vale, N.J.
• Presentation Award – Team 21350, DYCI Blue Ocean 10, Bulacan, Philippines
• Innovative Solution Award – Team 6371, Positive Aftermath, Great Falls, Va.
• Teamwork Award – Team 8157, The Golden Eaglz, Bear, Del.
• Inspiration Award – Team 654, MO Peeps, Flint, Mich.
• Gracious Professionalism® Award – Team 21900, Team DAS, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
• Outstanding Volunteer Awards – Mark Daniels of New Hampshire and Stephen Scherr of Virginia
• Young Adult Mentor Awards – Christopher Smith of Flint, Mich., and Akshay “Big” Rathish, of Folsom, Calif.
• Adult Coach/Mentor Awards – Teofilo A. Gutierrez Gonzales of Peru and Robert and Chris Allsbrooks of Bowie, Md.

Two big things this spring!!

• Our summer camps are filling up fast.  We're already half full and 6 weeks of camp are completely full!  
  
• Our spring robot track meets are set for the largest year yet.  With two weeks to the first one (and some likely late registrations coming in) we are at 45 teams and over 320 students.  That makes it the biggest season that we've had since we started the track meets in 2005.