Monthly Archives: January 2011

Origami – Penultimate Modules

Here are some models made with another type of unit - Robert Neale's Penultimate unit. I've made both the standard 30-unit dodecahedron, and something of my own design - a dodecahedron with each face extruded into a pentagonal prism, which required 150 units.

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Origami – More Sonobes

Here are some more modular origami models I've made with sonobe units lately: a 60-unit spiked pentakis dodecahedron, a 72-unit level-1 Menger sponge, and a 90-unit dodecahedral.

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Mr. Blur

When Grampy was here to watch Sean a couple of days ago, they made up a game called "Mr. Blur". Here's how it worked: Sean would run by as fast as he could, and Grampy would take his picture with his cell phone. Sean thought it was so cool, because he was a half-invisible blur in all the photos. He has always said that he can run so fast that no one can see him - now he's got the photographic proof!

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Sledding

During our Christmas break, we all headed out to a park in Amesbury to go sledding. This was Carter's first real time sledding - before this, all she'd done was the snowbank next to the drivewat that the plow guy makes. She was a little nervous and whiny, but it broke the ice, and she did MUCH better when we went sledding again a week or two later.

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Paige

This happened almost two weeks ago, but I've only now been able to really talk about it. Our dog, Paige, passed away just after midnight on January 9th, 2011. On January 8th, she wouldn't eat and just laid around all day. That night, Lori took her to the vet just to make sure everything was ok. When they examined her, they found that she was anemic and bleeding internally. Just one day prior, she had been fine, and playing outside in the snow with us. But the vet said that the kind of tumor she had can grow and grow undetected, and cause her no symptoms, and then suddenly cross a threshold where it starts to bleed. This has been very hard for all of us, because it was so sudden. I always thought that she would get old and sick before the end, and we'd have time to prepare for her passing. She's been a part of our family for so long, I am still not used to the idea that she is gone. We adopted Paige when we moved to Texas - until the kids were born, Paige WAS our family. She will be greatly missed.




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Sean’s Video Camera

Santa got Sean a cheapo video camera as one of his Christmas gifts. I was unsure of whether or not he would enjoy it, but so far it's been a big hit. He loves making movies with it, especially since I got him a much bigger memory card for it. I'll look through it this weekend for some better stuff, but here is one of the first videos he made right after I opened it and showed him how to use it. It's pretty hard to watch visually, because he hadn't learned yet that you need to hold it still while recording. But the audio is pretty funny. He's just showing us, the audience, a bunch of what he and his sister got for Christmas.

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Modular Origami

I've been getting into modular origami lately, as a hobby I can do while watching TV, or in a meeting, or while code is compiling - or any time I've got some down time where I'm sitting down and my hands aren't busy. Modular origami involves folding multiple copies of a single module, and then assembling all of the modules into a geometric form. Here are a few pics of some I made a few weeks ago. I've since made a lot more - and more complicated ones as well. I plan to get pics of those together soon, but in the meantime, here's a sample. From left to right they are: three copies of one type of module called a 'sonobe', a 3-unit model called "Tokahama's Jewel", a 6 unit cube, a 12-unit octahedral, and a 30-unit icosahedral.

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