@kelly_lou_smith brought my attention to this amazing LEGO ball contraption
What do you think? Creative genius? A complete waste of time? Both?
@kelly_lou_smith brought my attention to this amazing LEGO ball contraption
What do you think? Creative genius? A complete waste of time? Both?
Richard Wiseman 
Definitely both.
Eraserhead
Given the option, I’d say “both” as well, but definitely siding strongly on the side of “creative genius”. Fascinating to watch. I love huge, detailed LEGO contraptions. It takes an amazing mind to put them together, and it’s wonderful that we live in a world where there is a freely available material for prototyping such wonderous machines.
On one level a kind of moving catalogue of ingenuity. The different transport mechanisms are impossibly imaginative, but I presume fairly standard in industry. My personal favourite was the wheels that seemed to hand the balls from one to the next, but there were many many others.
On another level reminds me of the ingenuity of early steam engineers who had to figure out how to convert one type of motion into another.
It held me for the full duration.
Creative genius… With too much time on his/her hands. 600 hours!!!
I agree, that is a fun and absolutely amazing waste of time and money!
Definitely creative genius. And a bit bonkers. Totally gripping. Making stuff is never a waste of time.
Loving it! And let’s not forget about the Blue Ball Machine, http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/
I’m sure the builders learnt a lot in the process, and they might make some money from their youtube hits.
I can imagine it as the result of far more than 600 hours of design work being part of an engineering degree course.
We are such a lazy people that we think the completion of this is “genius”. It is definitely great to see, but it isn’t necessarily “genius”. This guy/girl was willing to put in 600 hours to make this. They were willing to dedicate the time to project. Since our world is so lazy now days they think that any accomplishment is either “genius”, “gifted”, or “provided by the government” that no one is willing to say “that person worked their ass off to get this done”. So, not genius and not waste of time. Very dedicated person!
Do you really find it THAT difficult to say something nice to someone who has displayed considerable craft, guile and indeed ingenuity, in producing something as creative and innovative as this?
“They worked hard.” Is that the best you can do?
It’s terrific! It’s satisfying to watch because it uses process, playfulness, creativity, systems, games, expert precision, humor. Reminds me of the old Honda Cog invention.
Just wonderful!
Rube Goldberg would be proud. I don’t think it’s ever a waste of time if you’re enjoying what you’re doing. And it looks like this person had a lot of fun making this contraption.
Genius. And living in a country where the vast majority of people watch countless hours of television I don’t see how anyone could categorize any activity that actually requires people to use their brains and be creative as a waste of time.
I completely agree!
I’m sure the person who did this had a great time, plus the amazement of thousands of people like me watching the video.
By no means a waste of time, quite the contrary.
I love it. I’d love to see it in real life, and hear the story of how it evolved…in what order he (she?, they?) built it, what failures had to be overcome, etc. But, definitely NOT a waste of time.
Well, I guess one should finally concede that age old argument, “which is better, Lego or Meccano”? Still, I miss Meccano…
very cool, anything creative whether crazy or not is never a waste of time. Not doing it if you can..now that’s a waste of time.
Okay, TOTALLY fascinating to construct, and I would be thrilled if my kids did it, but a waste of time to watch. 🙂
My girlfriend wasn’t impressed when having made her watch it, it went all the way back to the start again. Are men inherently better at wasting time than women? I loved it by the way.
a bit of both actually……:)
If it’s a waste of time but cool, then it’s not a waste of time!
It’s awesome 🙂
It’s Art!
ASD?
My son is now desperate to make this. Alas, one Mindstorms kit won’t do it. He’ll be saving his allowance for a very long time….
the workflow here is serious underoptimized and full of redundancies and unclear processed. a simpler production/transport system would enable the factory to handle far more balls with fewer potential points of failure.
if this is representative of modern manufacturing techniques then no wonder the chinese are taking over.
Hello! Someone in my Facebook group shared this website with us so I
came to look it over. I’m definitely loving the information. I’m bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my followers!
Fantastic blog and amazing design and style.