Jon Ippolito, Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Maine and an oft-quoted source in some past Wired stories, has a problem. You see, Jon purchases Lego sets for his son — specifically Star Wars Lego sets. That's not the problem, as we all know how awesome those sets are. Lego has done a great job expanding their universe to include the Star Wars one as well. So back to Jon's problem. His problem is that the Lego universe has not expanded far enough to include the Star Trek universe as well as the Star Wars one. That's Jon's problem, because like his son and daughter, he loves Star Trek.

However, it's not his son's problem. With the occasional help from his sister, Jon's son has found a way to incorporate the Star Trek universe into the Lego universe by utilizing the Star Wars universe. Did you get all that? He's using the Star Wars sets to create smaller but accurate Star Trek sets. So Jon built his son a blog to honor his work, as it's best shared with the world. The blog is accurately called Legohacker and celebrates creative misuse. As Jon states on the blog,

"This spirit of creative misuse has been key to the history of art and technology of the past fifty years, from Nam June Paik's lugging a magnet onto a TV set to the invention of remote scripting through a hidden iFrame hack. Children naturally think outside the box, and I think adults could become more creative by emulating their example."

As the above picture demonstrates (a Republic Walker from the Star Wars universe hacked into a Klingon battlecruiser from Star Trek) the hack works. Creative misuse at its simple best. Here at GeekDad, we celebrate creative misuse because it does lead down the creative path.

From taking apart and reassembling G.I. Joe in different assemblies to using a Lego set intended for one purpose for another. That is not a particularity easy feat. We all know how specific the pieces in Lego sets are these days, very much so. To able to take those highly specific pieces and turn them into something else, that takes creative talent and all kinds of patience. GeekDad tips its collective hat to the Ippolito family for their clear understanding of creative misuse and complete disregard for the directions. Head over to the blog for more pics of their Lego hacks.

Image Credit: Jon Ippolito, NASA