You may know I dig LEGO. I find it a relaxing hobby, & a carryover from my youth when it was definitely my favorite toy. These days, shelf real estate is low and big sets are expensive… but more & more competitors are popping up. They’re all over the place quality-wise.
Built some not-quite-LEGO bat sets. They are cheap as in affordable, but are they cheap as in quality?
Block Tech(fromFiveBelow) Shadow Bat 🦇 This set was pretty neat to build. The pieces don’t clasp & hold together as well as “leading brick brands,” but was fun for the money. The cage piece seemed out of place… but it works, and this used some pretty unconventional pieces in neat ways. I feel like the wings are repurposed sword blades or something? Not sure how they get away with outright cloning real LEGO pieces. This set retails for $6.00, which is decidedly off brand for Five Below. (Yes, I know.)
BrickcraftHanging Bat 72741 🦇 This set snapped together a little better, and had wildly fun building techniques, but you can see through the gaps in the bricks which usually does not happen with the “other name brands” mentioned on the box. The poseable wings are awesome and the printed pieces instead of stickers are a big win. This set is $9.99 online. If LEGO can learn anything here, it’s printed bricks over stickers all day every day.
All-in-all, they were both fun sets and neat builds. They didn’t take long, they didn’t break the bank, and they’ll look neat as part of Halloween decor. I’d suggest building both while rocking a Halloween playlist on random.
Do you stick to LEGO or do you think outside the blocks™?
I really like the little Zuru Max sets, and I am super curious about Lumibricks and some other brands like Pantasy or just the generic stuff from AliExpress or Temu that seems to be creeping into Amazon. I also have a few Snap & Switch sets form Five Below.
I may have a problem. Let me know if I’m missing some obvious or obscure bangers! A lot of these I will listen to on shuffle/random, because I add stuff in what could be aptly described ss manic bursts of energy. Bold ones are ones I probably hit more often.
I felt like drawing another Halloween sort of maze. I will probably do some more. I wanted to give this a bit of color too. As always, I’d love it if you solved the maze on paper or on a screen, posted it so social media, & tagged me.
Have fun with this. Print it for your Halloween parties, to pass out with candy, or just for fun. Free to use, just don’t steal & sell it.
I really used to be super creeped out by spiders. Perhaps I should make a series of different kinds of spider mazes. The fly is kind of a blob here. I may do a cleaner version at some point. Still working out if I want the next book to have a theme or just be chaos (again).
You can get the black & white version on all kinds of stuff like stickers, T-shirts, mugs, & wall art at TeePublic & Redbubble.
You can also get the orange version on all kinds of stuff like stickers, T-shirts, hoodies, & aprons at TeePublic & Redbubble.
Have you noticed that I like Halloween? I made some more Halloween-themed mazes. I felt like doing a haunted house and a graveyard. My drawing skills have waned, I need more practice. Third book? Maybe. I have sold 10’s of copies of the others so far. If you try these mazes out, be sure to post your solution on your social media of choice, and tag me. I’m @AiXeLsyD13 just about everywhere. You can even listen to one of my Halloween playlists while you do it… or the monster playlists, or the newest one: Halloween | Certified Bangers 💀🦇🕸️🕷️
I have a playlist problem. So, I have a lot of Halloween and Halloween-adjacent playlists. Some I have that are just massive & I listen to them on random. Some are a little more compact. What are your favorite Halloween songs? Anything I’m missing, songs or themes?
Here’s a few to do for free, and you can get ’em on some stuff at my TeePublic & RedBubble Stores! As always, if you try ’em, please share your solution & tag me on social media. I’m @AiXeLsyD13 on just about everything.
I drew this one quickly & did some color on it today. I really could have leaned into the pumpkin patch theme had I planned it out a bit better. What should I do for my next book? Holidays? Spooky stuff? Just mazes? Simple stuff? A mix?
I wanted to do some simple ones for merch, the food ones seem fun, and I wanted to do some more Halloween mazes.
Seriously, check this stuff out on all the merch! You can get it on a variety of things, and customize a lot of the colors.
Is there anything you’d like to see made into merch? Any of my mazes I have drawn, or have an idea for one?
Also… for the artists… Ever have a hard time drawing something simple? I could not settle on a bat shape for the maze. I worked up sketches, which I rarely do. I worked through a bunch of stuff & shared it on Instagram.
If you read this, you know I mostly use Amazon Music, but I do copy stuff to Spotify. I should copy these ones over. I refuse to pay to synch them with Tune My Music though, so I try to wait until I’m close to done to copy it. I may have copied some of these a long time ago.
What are your go-to Halloween songs? What am I missing from these lists?
I have really enjoyed seeing the wildlife in my backyard through my Birdfy Feeder & my Birdfy camera (& the accessories). The folks at Birdfy reached out to ask if I would like to test a new product, so of course I said yes! I have been using it, sharing my camera feeds with the company, & providing feedback for a while now with the company, & uploading photos/videos to a private Google photos album. It was exciting to see them respond & change features/settings as the testing went on. They really improved tracking, AI recognition, & picture/video quality rather quickly.
It has ben hard to keep quiet about it & not share the video or photos!
As a company, they’re constantly reaching out to solicit suggestions on product ideas, design, features, and more. They have recently updated their app to enable editing of AI tags as per customer suggestions.
I’m relieved to be able to share the fact that I have been helping to test the new camera, & to finally share the photos/video.
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I need to make a blog post when I get time, but if you're looking to get a camera birdfeeder, and you like my videos, please consider buying a Birdfy by Netvue, and doing so with this affiliate link:https://t.co/KBCtDHH9D1
Here my son helped me film the unboxing/setup, if you want to see a really poorly edited video. I have set up over 7 Birdfy cameras at this point through the app, and all of them have been really simple.
The one that was sent to me has two cameras, the Birdfy 2, & the Birdfy 2 Pro, and it’s a Duo feeder with the Pro camera mounted in the middle, and the 2 mounted on the side. It also came with a solar panel. I mounted it on a pole that I had purchased from Amazon.
The Birdfy 2 Duo Feeder with the Birdfy 2 Pro & Birdfy 2 cameras.
I like the looks of it, and the color when compared to the original feeder. It just seems a bit more elegant or classic of a design. The bamboo feeder is really nice looking, too. I also like that the lid of this newer model opens up & back, so you can see better into the hopper as you’re filling it… and that the cameras are wholly independent of the housing for ease of access. I have removed the two plates per Birdfy’s request, as the bords seem to have more room to perch without them in the way.
The cameras take a while to charge at first, but the solar panel typically keeps it close to 100%. Occasionally, I do have to bring a camera in for a recharge across all the products. (I don’t have a nest or a hummingbird feeder yet, but maybe someday.)
The app is easy to navigate from the setup of the cameras, to checking out the various videos and photos captured. It has a daily highlights feature, and a monthly recap. The FB community is great for ideas and seeing others’ setups and the birds (& other animals)#CaughtOnBirdfy, and Birdfy support is incredibly responsive.
The video & photos are what shines here, though. The Pro 2 has two cameras, one that moves & tracks the birds. Videos can be downloaded, shared with the community or “collected” in the app, and you can see both cameras at once from the live view. I had to quiet the notifications, because I literally get them all day. The AI bird recognition is pretty good, and getting better, especially now that functionality for correcting the tags has been implemented.
Photos from the Birdfy Duo Feeder with the Birdfy 2 Pro & Birdfy 2 cameras.
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If you have any questions about the feeders, my setups, or anything related to this… don’t hesitate to ask in the comments or reach out on social media. I enjoy vegetable gardening, keeping a nice backyard, and living in harmony with nature even here in the suburbs. These feeders add to the enjoyment. I don’t have to be outside all day to catch a glimpse of nature at work. I try to plant flowers for the pollinators, I’m working on a birdbath and may eventually make a little pond. I have bee/butterfly baths & bug houses.
Bird people seem to be mixed on the squirrels & chipmunks though. I love to watch them, too. Ha ha. I have a squirrel feeder out with a camera trained on it, but may use a Birdfy camera to build into a squirrel feeder eventually. Maybe a barstool style feeder? I’ll have to fortify the wires, as sometimes they can apparently chew them and be quite destructive.
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I am in the suburbs just south of Pittsburgh, PA, and I use a varying mix of fruit & nut mix, dried mealworms, a songbird seed mix, sunflower seeds, & sometimes some hot pepper seed mix or cayenne pepper or chili powder. The latter tends to keep the squirrels at the squirrel feeder, but the dust can smudge the camera lenses sometimes. I also tent to put out peanuts and corn for the squirrels (although that pulls in raccoons & deer, too).
You can poke through my whole playlist, or see some videos from just the Birdfy 2 cameras here:
Halloween has the coolest music. I have made some playlists on various platforms over the years, Amazon & Spotify being the most recent. I thought I’d not only put them all in once place, but also share. I’m always adding to them and changing. I’m listening to the 1st list now.
The maze bug bit me lately. Thought I’d share here. These are scans from my phone, so not the highest quality maybe? At any rate.. post ’em if you solve ’em!
