The End.

Writing The End.  As the title fo this post reminded me of the Series of Unfortuant events.  The last book is entitled The End, or I think it is.  Havne't read it for a while now.  Anyway, our last class, we very productively cleaned up the entire room.  You can now see both the desk and the floors and the Hogwarts castle, alas has been torn down brick by brick and now resides in pieces, each in its properly labeled bin.  We ended up sorting a lot of the LEGOs from the miscellaneous bin and now the bins of sorted LEGOs are practically overflowing.
Then to celebrate the ending of class, we made ice cream, but because our teacher is also a physics professor, we made ice cream with liquid nitrogen.  Definently cool.

Well, its been fun, but here is where my blog ends.

Performance Time: Welcome to Hoggy Warty Hogwarts!

    The exhibition was exciting.  The good part was a lot fo people loved our project, the bad part was that we unfortunantly were unable to see any of the other projects, because we were so busy with the Hogwarts Castle.  It was neat how our castle captured the interest of everyone.  The little kids, who couldn't quite understand the Room of Requirement or Fluffy's room, were amazed by the fire changing colors when spoken to.  Then there was the Voldemort versus Harry battle game that had people anxious to try and beat.  One kid came back to battle three times!  This battle had both older kids and adults entertained and it made Karishma and I happy to see that other people were having fun with the castle we had created.  The funny thing about the room of requirement though, was that your hand needed to be slender enough to get into the door and grab the Potions book.  Some adult hands and some teenagers for that matter were just able to fit through, making that task more of a challenge for them than for other people.

    The thing we would perhaps take into more account next time when making something like this is that the detail of Harry Potter lore, just may not be as needed.  A few things we needed to explain the reasoning behind the contraption or action that occurred because not eveyone had seen the movies or read the book.  But that wasn't too bad.  For those Harry Potter enthusiast that were there, they were excited about seeing Hogwarts.  One girl was able to name every room, just by looking at them.  That kinda' shocked me, because I didn't think we'd decorated that well, but she did have a hard time with namming the chamber of secrets until we told her that the creature there was a Basilisk.

The hour exhibition went over quickly and we were slightly late packing up, because there was one more kid who wanted to explore the castle before we put it up.  Then taking it down, it only broke into three pieces.  We were kinda' fustrated.  Taking the structure up to sage lounge resulted in it collapsing into easily six or seven pieces and us repairing it two hours before the exhibition.  Oh well.  At least we did repair it.  Here are some clips from the exhibition.

It was exciting and fun and now I'm tired.

The Final Days: Busy, Busy, Busy....

These last few classes and work outside of class has been completed with such expectations.  The castle has turned out really well.  Tommorrow's the big exhibition day.  Looking back, I almost think we may have been too detail centric in our Hogwarts castle.  When it came to choosing between how things are done in the book and the movie, we choose the book, even though more people have seen the movie.  Oh well.  It's sure to get some attention even if its not completly understood.  So here are some last final pictures and if I remember, I get some video footage of the Hogwarts castle in action tommorrow.  Thursday is the sad day, when the castle must be dismembered.

Potions Books, can anyone say "Half Blood Prince."  These will be found in the
Room of Requirement and one of the tasks is to retrive a book before the door closes.

Harry Potter of course!

Voldemort boo, hisss.

Banners to decorate the great hall.  Each of the Four Houses,
Hufflepuff, Slytherin...

Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.

We wanted to include the Hogwarts school crest in here somewhere.
It always decorates the wall very nicely.

Fluffy really is fluffy.  He doesn't look as ferocious as the one in the movie,
but then the danger always comes from the least expected locations.

Our sensor for opening the door is cleverly hidden by my
partner Karishma's beautifully handmade rug.

We don't have any pictures of the Basilisk which was finished last night, but I will be sure to post pictures of him from tommorrow's exhibition.  Last night we ran into technical dificulties, when we put on the Basilisk's head and realized he now couldn't fit through the doorway.  So that is also one reason why we don't have pictures of him.  He wasn't completly decorated until last night.

Day Eight: Construction Complete

The Tuesday before we left for the Turkey holiday, Karishma and I finished the construction of all the programming and physical construction for the rooms.  We finished the sensor for opening the room of requirement and the fireplace to talk to Sirius is constructed and hooked up.  That's probably one of the coolest and one of my favorite rooms.  When you speak, the light in the fire turns from red to green, like when harry talked to Sirius in the fire in Order of the Phoenix.  So that leaves Decor and making this into a Hogwarts castle.  Finding a stuffed animal to play Fluffy may pose a problem, but that's the only thing I can think of at the moment that needs attention.  We'll find something, it just may not be the perfect Fluffy.  Even if we end of making a sock puppet.  Hey, that's not a bad idea.  The Great Hall needs to be hung with the House Banners, and the fireplace room could use some Gryffindor cheer.
Anyways, here are some pictures of the bare rooms in our castle.

This is the box-ish fireplace.  You can see the light inside.  It will change colors from red to green, when spoken.
One of mine and Karishma's favorite parts to the castle.

This picture was taken outside the room of requirement.
The foil sensor in front needs to be tapped three times and then the room will open.

This cricket resides behind the fireplace and powers the light for the fireplace. 
Of all the switches to flip, this one is the most difficult, because its near so many walls,
but its not impossible.

That's our current progress update.  Little more than a week and we'll be presenting the castle at our class exhibition.  I'm excited!

Days Six and Seven: Almost There!

  I wrote this blog's title and now can't get that song from The Princess and the Frog out of my head, of well.  Anyways, this week the castle came together smoothly, or mostly smoothly and we are almost done.  Which is good because we have now have little more that two weeks until our exhibition and we'll miss one class because of Thanksgiving break.  Karishma finished the programming for the great hall this week, so our Harry versus Voldemorte battle is complete.  I won't tell more, because its a surprise.  I fixed the supports on the bottom of the second stack of rooms.  I tried my best to get the LEGO's sturdy, but when we do move this castle upstairs fro exhibition, we'll have to move it in parts.  We acknowledged this from the beggining as the castle grew larger(and heavier), but now its for sure, as long as the castle isn't being moved, the support columns on the bottom should be fine.
  So that was Tuesday's work.  On Thursday, we moved on to finishing Fluffy's room and the room of requirement.  I had one of the room's finished, and then quickly finished the other's construction.  We moved the small room, from being on top of the already constructed room  and moved it so that it now straddles, part of the hallway.  This works better in the overall construction as it helps connect the great hall and the stacked rooms, both constructionally and visually.  It definently is more visually appealing.  We ran into some issues with trying to figure out how to get the door to open in the room of requirement, but that was solved at the end of class when we found out there was a motor smaller than the one we were using, that went at a slower speed, and so had enough torq to open our LEGO door.  That was exciting.  So I think we will be in a very good position when leaving for Thanksgiving.  When we get back, all that's left is to put in all the accessories and decor; hand banners in the great hall, decorate the room of requirement with stuff, stylize the DADA classroom (this may take thought as to what year we would want it to display), and then to set-up Fluffy and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I'm starting on the Maurader Map Instructions this weekend hopefully, if not, I'll finish it over the break.  That will be fun to do, I think.  Well, here's the pictures from this week.

Here's one of the cross beams we put in to help keep the support columns from break/bending.

Here's a view of the extended hallway without the stairs.

This is a top view of the door to the room of requirement.
It took a while to find the right LEGO piece in which to make
hinge for the door.

Here's a picture of the hall with the stairs added in.

Another stairway picture.

 

Days Four & Five: What goes here?

Monday was pretty useful as Karishma(my partner) worked on the programming/construction of the epic battle in the Great Hall while I was working through constructing the walls and floors and the supports for our Hogwarts castle.  I ran into a little difficulty on building, when I forgot my layout sketch in my room, but I did finish the hallway's floor as well as starting the columns that would support the floor of the room across from the great hall.  We're still trying to decide what to exactly do with the area that's across the 'hall' from the chamber of secrets, it may turn into the Potions classroom, not really sure at the moment.  Today I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked.  Neither Karishma or me could make the crafts store run, due to commitments right after class, but craft materials are not a real integral part of our project, unlike other final projects, so about that I'm not really worried for.  Below are some pictures of our progress thus far.

Harry's path to victory.

The mechanism for which Harry Potter will run to defeat Voldemort.

The underside of the hallway and parts of the support columns.

The Great Hall, in the midst of being finished, programming wise.

Friday was even a greater leap as I finished extending the floor for the third room(across the hall from the great hall) and built up the walls and ceilings.  Forgot to put in a window, but inserted one towards the end of class.  So there is our third room, Umbidge's office.  So that leaves the Room of Requirement above Umbridge's office and then Fluffy's chamber above that.  I'm pretty sure we'll have the rooms skeletoned before Thanksgiving break.  Which will be a good place to break.  Karishma worked on programing the motor for our epic battle, but the programming was starting to get fustrating as the motor wanted to turn fast one way and then incredibly slow the other.  It had something to do with the programming though, because the motor turned fine when you told it to turn this way or that at normal speed.  After fixing the programming, we ran into more problems on how to gear this part and our blocks didn't want to line up nicely when connected, so by the end Karishma and I were both fustrated with this part of the project.  We'll come back to it on Tuesday.  Here's some pictures from today's work.

Here's one of the supporting columns for Umbridge's office.

A column next to the stand in column(my water bottle) while we fixed a column.

The motor that wanted to be so difficult. :|

Unbridge's office

Another picture of Umbridge's office in relation to the Great Hall and The Chamber of Secrets.

Day Three: Raise the Roof!!

     Today, I finished the ceiling of the Chamber of secrets/floor of the Great Hall, which will be directly on top of the chamber.  My partner was absent, so I focused on just trying to get the structure right.  I actually just started marking where i'd need to leave opening's in the wall where the windows should go.  The ceiling/floor took a little of time, but I enjoy putting this LEGO construction together.  I'm really excited for how this project will turn out.  Because our project really has more physical contruction than computer/program constructing, we look to have a lot of stuff accomplished.  Depending on how my work load goes this weekend, I may try to get in and finish the great hall. 
     After that is accomplished, we'll only have one more room to complete for the minimum design.  Although, I could very easily see us creating five rooms instead of the original three. It'd be really cool if we could get a total of seven with each room featuring a different main event in each of the books then colmenating ina final battle of sorts.  We're still trying to find out what/how we'd like to create the final battle, considering it would need to be epic. 
    Another question for next time is what is the outside of the Basilik going to be covered in?  I don't remember who, but one of my classmated pointed out that whatever material we used would need to be able to flex with the Basilisk's jerky movements.  Tells you how much I at least hadn't thought about it.  If we could find an ugly looking greenish sock, that could work.  With my sewing skills I could take it around enough give it some shape, and the sock material would allow the mechanism to stretch and recoil.  I don't know, its food for though at the very least.
   The sad news is that since I needed to be elsewhere right after class, I forgot to take pictures, so no pictures this time, but I'll be sure to get some for next blog and show how far we've then gone in two class periods.  Expect a very boxy great hall/and large creepy basement.