Five intersecting tetrahedra. Of the models I found when diving into modular origami, this is the one which impressed and intimidated me the most. I waited until I'd built a few things before I tried it, and I was probably right to be cautious. The individual components are very basic, and not unlike modules I made earlier, but assembly was just a ( Read more... )

Another stellated polyhedron, made from Post-It notes... I've 'acquired' several different colors of post-its over the years, and it was thrilling to realize I finally had a use for them which realizes their full potential. (I'd been using them for notes!)

Each folded-up parallelogram is called a Sonobe unit, for reasons no one is entirely sure of ( Read more... )

Well, I had to cut Firefox loose today. They removed the option to allow or deny individual cookies on the fly. It's just gone, both interface and backend. The 'official' explanation, if you care to dig through Mozilla's bugbase, is that such capability is 'not really nice,' which is what parents say to their four-year-olds when they act up. Coders ( Read more... )

Last week I read Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. I liked it; I was pretty impressed by its naturalistic approach. The book is formally a work of fiction, but the understanding is that the story is nearly autobiographical. It's been called a coming-of-age story; the protagonist, Henry Chinaski, describes his life from grade school up to the year ( Read more... )

A stellated dodecahedron, or maybe a stellated icosahedron-- I find the distinction confusing. Pointy star thing. :) Not entirely happy with the tips of the points being white. I considered wrapping them in more paper, but this appeared unworkable; I also thought about building the model inside-out. I'm not sure it would be stable enough to hold ( Read more... )

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I just read Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. I picked it up partly from watching Bright Young Things, the movie by Stephen Fry which is based upon it, and in part because I recently saw a couple of documentaries dealing with the same setting ( Read more... )

The name given this model by its designer was 'Star Holes,' which sounded to me like a really unfortunate porn channel program. "Hullo, I'm Robin Leach, and welcome to STAR HOLES!" But I thought it was a really beautiful model, so that was my next origami project.
As before, it's made from wrapping paper with a hologrammatic finish. Because of the ( Read more... )

Just after Christmas I started doing modular origami. As a kid, I saw modular origami models in a general book of origami, and while it captured my imagination, I dismissed it as beyond my capabilities. But last year I watched a video which shows you how to make a dodecahedron out of Post-it Notes, and after that I really got into it. I'm going to ( Read more... )

A lot of metal bands put out vinyl-only EPs these days, and I'm like, c'mon, do a CD version, I can't afford a turntable! But what's amusing is that years ago I had exactly the opposite problem. I had a turntable, everybody had a turntable, and stuff is coming out on compact disc and I can't afford a CD player. Have I always been a loser?