Long before there were “fidget spinners”, Pokemon and “Pogs” there was a craze that swept me away when it first hit the market. A Hungarian designer called Erno Rubic devised a cube, subdivided up into 3x3x3 cubies that all slid on each other in layers:
I instantly had to have one (well, in truth I had 9, including a triangular, circular and 4x4x4 one that I still have). Continue reading
A craze among the young kids at the moment is the “fidgit spinner“, that little toy that … spins, and … well, that is just about it:
According to some fairly shady “research”, these toys improve concentration, and that may be correct for a limited number of kids with specific learning issues, but, yeah.
Enterprising businesses sell these, advertise “tricks” you can do with them, and offer ways to pimp out your rig in ways that, well, make it more fully sick. Continue reading
…a little known fact, up until the night of the day this fold was supposed to be folded (last night if I am honest, missed a day, catching up, sorry) I had NEVER watched a Rugby match. Ever:
So I was over at a mates place, we were supposed to be playing a board game but apparently State of Origin was on, so they watched and I did too. Continue reading
It is late, I am tired, the first week back at the start of the term is exhausting but this little alien is looking after me:
Folded from Japanese foil, it compliments yesterdays model. Incidentally today is a few days after the 56th anniversary of humans in space as Yuri Gagarin first left our atmosphere Continue reading
Potter Nerds and Minecraft Nerds unite, for I present to you a “Minecraft” style cubey golden snitch:
This buzzy little bugger would be difficult to catch in a full on game of Quidditch indeed. This is Riccardo Foschi’s “CuBird”, an interesting little CP that collapses with a little wrangling to make a lovely little cube and enough paper to fan out a quite solid set of wings. Continue reading
For those of you keeping up, you will notice SOME of the posts on this blog have numbers. The first number (in this case 600) represents a catalogue of sorts – it documents the number of new models that I have never folded, before documenting it here:
Jo Nakashima’s “6” is new for me, the “0” is a refold but, yeah, 600!!!! Continue reading
Now I am not really one for card-based rpg/gattle games – Pokemon, Yugioh, Magic the gathering, but I know they have a huge and passionate fan-base. Trolling through a Tanteidan I found a curious little skeletal character and decided to fold it:
A modular, in 3 bits (head, shoulders, knees+toes … everybody sing..), it struck me as a cutie little skeleton.
I then went on the interwebs only to discover this character is part of a vast universe collection of macabre boney critters that battle each other, almost certainly have anime series dedicated to them and a number of animated series in Japan. Continue reading
Social media, gift that it is, has fundamentally broken two concepts I think. The “friend” and the “like” now no longer mean what they used to, and culturally I am not sure we are not really ready for that change:
The “friend” has come to mean some random that stalks you, watching what you do. Continue reading
Needless to say the media is abuzz with reactions to Trump’s inauguration. Let us hope that the he does not become the “Bane” of their existence (even though part of his speech was plagiarised from the Marvel Universes’ fictitious tyrant presidential coup, I am sure this is merely coincidence):
One has to have hope in the power of intellect, value of human dignity, common sense and sane application of spray tanning solutions. Continue reading
Determined not to let Shuki Kato’s “Western Dragon” beat me, I decided to isolate the part of the model that I had failed on each of the 4 times I have attempted this nightmare of bent paper – the head:
Using the crease pattern, I isolated the corner that is the head and made that section HUGE, then ignoring the rest of the model (that I have successfully folded twice) I only did instructions that effected the bit of the crease pattern that I had on my 60cm square section.
Yee gods! Continue reading
I try to mark the passing of Hiroshima Day August 6 with respect and effort.
Having folded the traditional 1000 cranes twice in my life (oddly, the second time my cranes were “borrowed” by a then campaigning year 11 for a community project where he received the credit and was subsequently elected School Captain … but I digress) so thought it time to try something new. Continue reading
Now I am not of the generation that grew up with Pokemon, but seem surrounded by adults that were. Fandom/enthusiasm takes many forms and the latest augmented reality game “Pokemon GO!” is so hot right now I felt I had to fold a poke-thing because…reasons
I had seen a video tutorial from Tadashi Mori on a complex model called “Charizard” so thought I would give it a go. Squaring up a large sheet of crumpled VOG paper (I used red, the critter should be orange – not sure if it matters) and began folding.
Turns out the tutorial was in 3 parts, and the model was really challenging, but I think I managed a reasonable rendition of the critter. Continue reading
Voting is something democratic societies hold as an important right. Some counties have compulsory voting, most allow citizens to choose whether they want to vote – all too often the result is the same – groups of opinionated, empty-headed people are elected to represent the views of the common people.
Anyone who knows me, realises I take the political piss whenever I can – voting only encouraged politicians to think they are more important than the rest of us, but they are just us, right, paid to argue (usually paid a LOT more that those of us who enjoy a good argument). 
We organise candidates into “parties”, “alliances” and “coalitions”, pick “leaders” and rally behind them like their personalities are what really matters. All too often, in the end, we end up with the government we deserve. Continue reading
Continuing my exploration of Hiden Senbazuru Orikata (The Secret of One Thousand Cranes Origami), published in 1797 I managed to wrangle a triple Tsuru:
The original schematic suggests that you use 2 small squares attached to the wings of the larger square, and I cannot fathom whether the dotted lines mean “remove” the unused paper or “hide” it. I chose to hide it.
We end up with parent and 2 kids, joined at the wings. The actual folding is fairly fiddly and the paper hiding makes the head/tail of the parent very thick (or was it the paper I chose?) Continue reading
Taking a square and (nearly) cleaving it into 4 separate sheets leads to an interesting design dilemma:
When the join is in the centre of the sheet, you can join wings, tails or I suppose beaks together.
When the joins are at the edges of the sheet, you could join wings, beaks or tails but I went for the symmetry of wings in this fold. Continue reading
