blocklogic

PORTALS2 STYLE BLOCKS CONTINUE TO EVOLVE

2011-11-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

Or devolve, but they're definitely still changing. The first effort (antique storage cube) was good enough, even if a little ham-handed, to lead to further development of a Portals2 style block set. But the companion block in it's several incarnations kept development stalled for days. Marking accurately, and then the equally important burning correctly seemed at first to be the biggest challenges, But no!

Frustrated by by my first couple of tries at burning good clear circles, I tried carving a couple. Ow, While the obviously needed carving workout was eventually justified by a couple of pretty excellent laser cubes, the extensive lowering of background required in the carved companion-cubes slowed their production to less than one a day. The worst thing though, was I was stuck with several dead end cubes, too nice to toss and too hard to fix. I wasn't ready to give up, but wasn't sure which way to jump just yet, so I tried a new direction and made the cube-symbol block from the legend (level instruction panels).

The rebirth of the wayward laser cube was a turning point. Hey, you didn't think every carving turned out right the first time, did you? I can't speak for any other wood-cutter types, but I don't throw away every project that takes an unexpected turn.

What about the, "I meant to do that," factor? Often the detour leads to an undiscovered but equally if not more interesting destination. Hence two lack luster wood-burned laser cubes, followed by an interesting but injured carved one, followed by a cool carved but non-directional one, followed by an excellent aim-able carved one, and at last a do-able interesting wood-burned version.

All these repairs and redesigns have brought me back to the less than satisfactory carved companion cubes. Emboldened by my laser cube success I jumped the most chipped face of one of the carved companion cube experiments , and laid a couple of razor-saw cuts with the grain and patched in a complementary grained piece and clamped it up. Woo-hoo! I liked it so much I went back and fixed the lowered end grain and remarked and lightly cut my new lines. The wood-burner follows the lightly scored line very accurately, while scoring too deeply produces a double line.

PORTAL BLOCKS FROM BLOCKLOGIC

2011-11-15T22:01:00.000-08:00

After three or four tries I managed to make a couple of companion looking cubes good enough that they need a job, like sitting onna button. These were the ones that inspired me to carve the button. The 2nd "laser cube" was good enough to make me consider maybe making a few more. At least try a couple of more styles. I'm still hoping for a wood-burned version that's close enough to be fun to make and play with.

Alright then, I've got eight keepers and a button so far. The antique storage cube was the first I tried and it was acceptable, but the necessary logo art was way too to dense to burn at that size. I faked the logo (simplified as accurately as possible) and was going to leave the words off altogether till Plush Neon Monkey suggested that I just fake it. Huh? "You know", he said. "Just make a fairly good first letter followed by the approximate number of uprights and down strokes with some of the cross-strokes for spice." It must have worked pretty good, Cheddar Vic tried to correct the spelling.

BALL-O-CAPS, CLACKEY-SACK

2011-10-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

Alright so I'm not momentarily nimble enough to Hacky the Clackey, but I still love to slap them around. They sound great and the dead-blow nature of the ball-o-caps slows down the action just enough to make it fun.

I've made a number of these balls-o-caps over the years, but I always tied them together with soft wire. I've recently mastered tying them up with string. Here's a few of the new ones.

In the Acorn-Bamboo article I mentioned Poly. That excellent shareware program shows 157 shapes. Crystallographic Polyhedra by Dr. Steffen Weber also shows several really cool ones. It's under the Wireframe Polyhera heading on his homepage jcrystal.com

BAMBOO ACORN RHOMBIC DODECAHEDRON

2011-10-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yeah one of those. Looks like it might make a pretty cool Christmas tree ornament huh? Good thing it's only mid October, it took about three hours to get this one done. After I figured out how to get the knots tight enough (hemostats) it went pretty smooth.

I love working with bamboo and acorns, but haven't thought of anything this interesting lately. I picked up most of the acorns in the Plush Neon Monkeys yard. Then I broke a bunch drilling the holes with an Xacto. Good thing I had a stash from past acorn projects.

The bamboo was left over from earlier projects too. I made a whole bunch (two or three square feet) of bamboo beads, most of which split while drying. Mimosa sticks work good too. The seasonal growth is pretty soft, and has a pith core you can push out. We used to make beads out of them when we were little.

I thought I was making a cube octahedron (intersections only) but I couldn't get the acorn caps to tie that close together. The symmetry I was after, was fours surrounded by threes. After I was done I looked for my symmetry on Poly, and found it in the Catalan solids list.

During the assembly phase the model developed some weird tensions. It seemed like it was heading for the ditch, but I remembered the plastic strap rhombic triacontahedron Sarah (MillieKitty's human) and I assembled with pop-rivets. It developed such weird tensions that as we were getting close to closing it up, it pulled it's self into a wad. So this time I was confident that if I stuck with the symmetry and made sure all my fours were surrounded by threes eventually it would close up.

Ok, its not a block but it is fun and thought provoking. Interpreting polyhedra is one my favorite things to play at. The plastic strap models were springy and cast cool shadows, and the pillow forms are just nice to have around. Gotta love a 32 sided pillow, eh?

I used Jute twine cause I liked the color, but I realize now the knot tension thing would have been easier if I'd used elastic.The jute was a bit of a pain, but with a waxed end on it, getting it through the holes wasn't that bad. It definitely looks funky and organic.

WHEN BLOCKS WEREN'T CUBES

2011-08-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

They really were a bit more interesting. Admittedly the pentagonal cylinders and tori were more challenging to produce, although accurate cubes turned out to be more challenging than expected. The linear polygons were a good bit easier than the toroidal ones. For all but the rhombic rods, the solution that we favored was to begin with a fat dowel. We laid the blanks against a scrap of plank and made a reference line lengthwise, and then matched up the polygons on the ends. Using the same plank, marks from one polygon to the other marked where the points (edges) touched the surface. Then it was just whittling down the humps between the lines and sanding them, trying to leave the lines to the last then erasing them.

The methods worked out for the smaller polygons came in handy when I started thinking about packing. How circles relate to polygons fascinated me and they seemed like they'd be a thought provoking bunch of blocks. Fitting the polygonal rings tight enough so they didn't slide down unless pushed was a slow tuning challenge. Thank goodness for self adhesive sandpaper sanding disks. Using the home made wood files I made we managed to get a pretty fun set going. Who knows how far this would have progressed if I hadn't burned up the vacuum cleaner using it to capture the dust coming off the band-saw. Oh well, the neighbors downstairs were good sports about my hours of hand sawing and chiseling but no doubt they'd had about a dose of my block mania. Chloe and Madison were great at testing and didn't mind that I kept showing up with grocery sacks full of new and odd kinds of blocks, but Amy, Niko and Jason though very helpful with the hours of hand-sanding were also ready to round off the block fest.

Lately I've had my hands full organizing the Blocklogic section of The Flatware County General Store. The retro collection just mentioned already rate a couple of mugs, but the arithmetic blocks (the Buffalo Mao collection) are so far the biggest part of this section.
With eleven so far, Mineral Comix # 47 still has a few more surprises in store.

"Dem Bones," are a pair of blocks that started out to be dice. The idea of dice that had human skulls for numbers though strange seemed kinda fun, till i got well into the first one. You probably haven't counted the spots on dice, there's twenty one (each). Well before I finished the first one I was way tired of trying to find new and interesting ways to draw human skulls.

The thing is one dice (di, dye, whatever) isn't quite right, eh? Still the prospect of another few hours on a block I was already tired of, well maybe one die wasn't so bad.

Then I started looking at animal skulls. Awesome, so there was no way to make twenty one of them fit on a block less than two inches square. These animal skulls rock. The first challenge was picking six that I could fit on block faces, and the next was burning them in.

The Blocklogic section is due to be well represented in The Flatware County General Store. So far there are only 15 mugs in the Blocklogic section, but we're just scratching the surface. The Olmec, Toasters And Squid, The Okinawa Aquarium, and the Hamlin/Kelly block all seem like candidates, but I'm leaning toward the cornbread next I think.

BUFFALO MAO KALEIDOCYCLES

2011-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ok there they are. Since I was giving away my only color proofs of these two kaleidocycles, I figured I better get a picture up showing how they look assembled. The two printable Buffalo Mao kaleidocycles themselves and the assembly instruction tips I offered are in an older post, "Buffalo Mao and the Banned Dental Boop" post May1, 2010. I had to change the way I loaded the originals in the article to get them to print right for folding, this made them look lame in the article but they printed and folded great.

The bizarre critters above are from the excellent collection of flatware animals at Hoveyware. The black and white pictures of stainless steel tableware sculptures made an even better black and white kaleidocycle than the "Banned Dental Boop." All of my kaleidocycles except the first "Buffalo Mao" one were made with the kaleidocycle maker at Foldplay.

BREAKFAST WITH BADGERS

2010-12-22T01:52:00.000-08:00

Alrighty then, I finally completed "Breakfast With Badgers" and it only took till 3:30 in the morning. The proof is only black and white so far but it folded up nice and there weren`t any obvious flaws to fix with the images.

I had to draw from 3 blocks this time. Not all of the fore ground breakfast block was looking good enough. The squid tentacle holding a coffee cup was just a confusing tangle, and the espresso looked better than the coffee.

So there it is, enjoy, but remember if the badgers ask you to pass the marmalade you probably shouldn`t make them wait. As before, the best assembly instructions I`ve found are by Sam Ciulla online in pdf form. Other than that the hint photos in the previous post might be useful here as well. I had some challenges opening the pdf instructions after saving them to print them out, so here they are in jpg form eh?

JINGLE BONES, JINGLE BONES ...

2010-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

Ah-yup, there`s a cheery thought. Getting past the arithmetic blocks didn`t cause the outpouring of block post variety I had expected, but I have taken a couple of interesting themes up. Toaster And Squid cartoons and finally a pair of blocks, were just the beginning. The "Toaster Squid" spiky-ball Christmas ornament was a challenging but fun experiment that led to the "Xmas-Bones," ball and then the "Tribe-Ball." Each of these ornaments include faces from two wood-burned, cube-shaped blocks draped over the faces of stellated-octahedra (spiky-balls). Forgive my black and white proofs, my printer`s stumblin.

The single sheet origami stella-octangula plan I used was designed by Sam Ciulla. The instructions I found most useful were, stellated_octahedron.pdf.

I`ve made several in the process of working out image placement precision. The only things I would add to these directions are, these hints as to how it should look as you get close to finished folding. If you got this far with the folding, you probably woulda figured it out anyway, but here they are.

My friend Keven came through wit the color proofs, and they`re pretty cool even with no jingle bell showing.

BUFFALO MAO # 47 TO GO

2010-09-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

Alright I`m about tired of messin whith this book, I hope somebody enjoys it. for viewing on the computer screen or some mobile device these images are organized as they would appear in the booklet, but for printing the 2 previous posts are the ones you want. Anyway here they are.

Alrighty then.

SHIRT POCKET BUFFALO MAO # 47

2010-09-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Well the loading of the big booklet went smooth enough, reckon I`ll just git on with it eh? Here`s the 6 pages of proofs for the shirt pocket (2 7/8 inch square) size booklet. All these proofs were setup to print on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.You had a little wiggle room on the larger one, but registration is closer here. Anda one ,anda two, anda...

Welcome to my world. This some what different world view fits like gravy in mashed potatoes into Flatware County. I can`t help but think of this little booklet as a passport to Flatware County ( yeah, like we hada border). these pages also don`t have the text that matches the pictures next to them (except for the middle page) as they are print ordered...
The next post will contain the correctly juxtaposed pictures and text for perusal on the web.
Inaminute, eh?

BUFFALO MAO # 47 GOES OPEN SOURCE

2010-09-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

BlockLogic was started as a way to share the fun of making and playing with blocks. The Arithmetic Block Project, spun up out of day dream about a curving wambly looking wall-stack of kinda clumsily home-made blocks. I thought "In the tradition of John Steinbeck`s "The Drapes Of Math", I could probably get away with some wambly walls-o-withmetic blocks even if they won`t stack straight." Leave it to Plush Neon Monkey to notice that the six and the nine burned into the same block was not the most efficient use of time. "So is there some pattern to how the numbers fall on the faces,"he asked innocently?

Who knew that can-worms would end up containing 12 kinds of Arithmetic blocks and include 36 math symbols. Chloe and Madison was glad to get the blocks, but their parents, Neko and Amy wanted if not instructions at least some definitions. What 36 math symbols? With the help of Mineral Comix and the Flatware County Gazette, it was Buffalo Mao #47 to the rescue. Well, we made two sets of arithmetic blocks and the booklets to go with them. All totaled there are currently more kinds of Arithmetic Blocks inna set than there are copies of Buffalo Mao #47. What tha hey?. I tried to put them side by side, but without resizing them (which might make them not print as well) they only fit one wide on the blog page. These pages are print ordered, so they won`t have the pictures across from the text intended to show there in the book. They`re meant to print front to back, with a fold at the center line (probably easier to fold first). Then mark lightly in pencil on the guide marks (except center lines) and cut with scissors. The booklet is too wide for most staplers, and I liked how the stitcher stapler at the print shop hit right on the fold and tightened everything up neatly. I offered but they were real nice about it and wouldn't `t take money for just a couple of staples. They did offer a good price to print copies collated, folded, cut, and stapled. They also had the kind of color copier that made brilliant durable copies. The cover prints front up. It looks good on white and even better on ivory parchment (paper), which seems tougher too.

Well thats it, the top of the stack. When you`ve gotten everything printed folded and slipped one inside the other, this is the middle of the booklet. The next post will contain the the 6 page proofs for the shirt pocket sized 2 7/8 in version. In the words of famous native-American mathematician Buffalo Mao," Power flows from the point of a pencil, keep your eraser handy"

Buffalo Mao and The Banned Dental Boop

2010-05-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

This post has been too long coming. I blame it on the Boop. I love to capture frozen comic frames to tumble on my kaleidocycle, but doing it to the Boop? Well if it`s so easy, you do it.

Not to be stingy, but I feel a little sheepish about posting captured comic frames. I made a couple of test efforts, but I was never satisfied with how much of the 6 min 23 second cartoon I left out. So I`ll let the Boop speak for herself.

Foldplay`s kaleidocycle maker is one of my new favorite toys. Even without Foldplay I was putting pictures onto kaleidocycles, but it took me an hour or more to remember how to crop and stretch my image chunks to get it to work right. One of my home spun efforts (stretched a triangle at-a time in Photo-Shop) appears below. It is the first Buffalo Mao kaleidocycle. It works as well as the one I made with the kaleidocycle maker @ foldplay, but theirs is easier to load, fold, and assemble.

Guilala A.K.A.: Gilala, Girara, and Monster X is an alien kaiju from outer space.

Hey, I tried to wait. I sent a copy of episode 47 of Buffalo Mao to The American Mathematical Society, and a block (they`ll have to use the book to figure out which one). Anyway it`s been weeks now. As far I can determine their arithmetic block department is really busy. According to the USPS (item was delivered at 10:11 on the 9th of April, 2010 in Providence RI 02904). Whatever, it`s probably perfect, after all I am a yenius.

In the mean time, I thought what the heck. How about a Buffalo Mao kaleidocycle? My first effort was very labor intensive.It took 2 hours to get a good one, but I liked the result. I was browsing the web in search of a kaleidocycle assembly tutorial when I ran across Foldplay.

I used a glue stick (sticky kind, not hot kind) to put mine together. I never found the tutorial I was looking for. This will have to do. When gluing the sides shut leave one side flap unglued. Reach inside and squeeze the end flaps to get a good bond, then close the last side flap.

Excellent, this place was amazing. I loaded four pictures into the device at foldplay and clicked make kaleidocycle. The kaleidocycle was ready in less than a minute. I printed the result, scored the lines as instructed, and cut it out. The foldplay device auto cropped the second Buffalo Mao kaleidocycle well enough that, after I assembled and checked it, I didn`t change anything.Well I suppose the afore mentioned "Banned Dental Boop" should be included as well. With the challenges involved in captures from YouTube, my selections from the cartoon were somewhat limited. Still, the crisp black and white images made a pretty cool kaleidocycle. Banned huh, maybe they felt Boop was havin too much fun with the gas.

Colin said quietly behind his hand, "Her head looks like a butt". We tried not to stare. Content for Colin`s kaleidocycle began with two of his own drawings from Paint Box. In addition he wanted a couple of good monsters. His first choice was Helios MK2. The exact spelling was very important, what a monster?

Well this sucks a little, I came back to this post to print some of the kaleidocycles above and the only images I could get loose from it were way too small to print right. I resized and when I made them original size again they blew up, but now if you open them in another tab they print with the right detail. What ever, they aren`t much to look ya fold em up anyway. I`ll keep an eye on em.

Buffalo Mao Rides Again

2010-03-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Native American mathematician Buffalo Mao is once again blazing the way to excellent math fun. The 27 arithmetic blocks in this set are accompanied by the latest offering from Mineral Comix. The booklets (one the size of the top of the cube-stacked block set, the other about 2 1/2 inches square, shirt pocket-sized) come in the box with the blocks . There are twelve kinds of blocks and 36 math symbols in this set. Even with no suggestions of games or activities the 36 pages of definitions and somewhat crazed illustrations still manage to evoke a somewhat arithmeticklish worldview.

I mentioned to Kevin that a dove tailed box would be cool, but when I tried to thumbnail the pieces, oy! Later I was trying to use a free UV mapper to wrap peel patterns around some obj blocks. This was much more challenging than all the tutorials suggested. After I fooled around with this for a couple of hours the idea of dovetails seemed much more approachable. I spent quite a while thumb-nailing and then drawing each piece of the box. I used the miter-saw I already had, and improvised a vise (using boards screwed to my portable work-bench with long dry-wall screws). Getting through the dove-tails took several more hours of marking and sawing (while watching TV).

The box came together tight. I wedged it between wood scraps fastened to the bench and belt sanded it smooth, but a little too sharp to hold comfortably (out on the deck). After the belt sanding I considered the next step. Ease the edges of the box? Take it apart and soften all the edges? It fit so well I had to set it aside and think a bit. It was six inches by six inches by six inches and sorta looked like a big block, except for the edges. Maybe just bevel all the edges? Nah, I finally realized that it could be more than a box, it could be a blox!
This time it`s a "Fibonacci blox", only eleven to go eh? The "blox" the arithmetic blocks reside in is my third experiment in dovetails. My friend Kevin`s kids assembled it quickly (with only a minimum of hand wringing on my part).

"...and that anger is a blocked wish." No Really!

2010-01-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, so Paul Vitti was talking to Primo Sadone at the time, and I don`t really do angry blocks. I still think Paul had a good thread going there for a second. The idea of a blocked wish, killer, I mean I knew you could block hats. Anyway it was a while before a block that really set off the quote, but the Kelly-Hamlin (with replacement Oop) is a hunk-o-wish that should be hard to stuff inna box.

Every block so far has been a wish as soon as it was penciled, and a drum roll till it was burned in. Lest you think I`ve taken these little miracles for granted, I have been stunned and a bit amazed that so many have turned out cool enough to save. I started figure blocks to relieve the grind of the arithmetic blocks. I used the reject blocks to experiment on. A few came out so cool that I had to fix them, and re-evaluate what a block could be. It was these early successes that got me draggin around a sack-o-blocks and a pencil, in case I found something cool to put on one.

Some begun with no plan, burned so well I was hesitant to add anything off the cuff to fill the empty faces. Then came the 17-Fish block followed by the Pin-Up block, an innocent enough wish that bit me a couple of places I`d rather not remember.

These weren't lonely for long. A big coffee-table book, "Visions Of The American West" inspired "The West" and the supplementary "Indian Tribal Art" series that began with a face per tribe on the first two. The series continued to open out with addition the of "The Olmec", a possibly too scary block including the were-jaguar mask and an altar support figure. The Escher-Cairo-Penrose tiling block was the first of a tiling series temporarily on hold, waiting for even cooler blocks to get outta the way.

Re-energized by the discovery that an inch-ana-half square fills up quick, I moved boldly into the second arithmetic-block set, sorta, about a third of the way through. What?, did somebody say pantograph? There`s a reason these things aren't everywhere. Granted, mine came out interesting. It took the better part of three days to get it going and required the making of templates (I used Gimp and a little Photo shop), several hours worth. It took too long to find it again, but here`s the instructions and pattern I used to make the pantograph pictured last post.

I liked a lot of the ones I found while trying to find this one again but this plan did produce a working model, and the plan called for yard-sticks. I used round head slotted 10-32 x 1-1/2 machine screws (I bought 10, used 5). I also got 12 extra nuts (stacked to make em lock, over and under) and 30 washers, galvanized like the rest. The total cost including the 3 yard-sticks was $6.33 at The Home Despot.

Pantographyville Next Stop

2009-12-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

OK! I needed a break from the Gimp anyway. Well, the pantograph works like a champ. It required a bit of tinkering to get it and the image platform at the block-face level required for block imprinting, got it!

The rig took up allot of room on the table, cause it`s temporary I didn`t cut anything. I found stuff that added up to block-face and either clamped it or set rocks on it to keep it from sliding (the forces involved weren`t much).

The first experiment was with fonts for arithmetic blocks. They were sooo crisp, but tended to use the room allowed for figure stretching to fill the space less interestingly than hand drawn ones. This pointed out how highly accurate aspect-ratio was in the image transfers, so-what,eh?

On the first foray into Pantographyville our block spot-lights the genius of Walt Kelly and V T Hamlin particularly their strips "POGO" and "ALLEY OPP".

The force of the weight (usually my cell phone) on the pencil arm of the pantograph sometimes rolled the block out of the stage-blocks when working close to the edge. Even that small of a weight makes a tweakable pencil image of amazing accuracy. Notice,it`s a little tough picking out that left Oop face on Hamlin-Kelly-blocko2. Cause I`m erasing that crap. Well, I am. The other faces are looking cool enough to invest a burn in to see if they`re possible. Even with good hints from the pantograph, and a simple looking scene, I couldn't`t see any hint-o-Hamlin except the trippy bell-bottom leg. Good thing wood erases good .

Finding the small scenes that will burn and still reveal at least a hint of the artist being remembered is a weird and picky direction to go, but if it works it could open up a cool vein-o-blocks. I want to see Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec blocks, how about Henri Rousseau, or Edward Gorey, gnahhh, gnahhh, gnahhh!

Merry Arithmechristmas boy I like sayin that

2009-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

The fraction block was`t looking as good as I wanted so I did another one. In case anybody`s counting, yeah yer being shorted one Indian`s O Tha West block. Instead here`s a tease fom the Olmec (aprox. 1400BCE to 400BCE) block so far it`s still in pencil, but it`s fun pencil.

This post includes the two cube root blocks, the two fraction blocks and the first of two varios tribes indian blocks. Unfortunatly I didn`t get all the indian tribes named on their style faces. The research I did was image oriented, tilted at first toward diversity, then more toward a celebration of their cultural richness. I did this research at the public library, and unfortunatly didn`t get tribal origins pinned down on the first few faces. I hope to remedy this eventually, and apologize if I stepped on any religios toes, as I am only a student of these cultures ( and a rookie at that).

On the mass production front, I`ve begun experiments with a pantograph.

It`s built outta yard-sticks from homedepot ($.61 each, took 3) from somewhat incomplete plans and partial instructions found on the web. In the first tests it produced much better reductions than enlargements, but so far I haven`t gotten it to mark on a block face yet. Hey, gimmie a minute, I`ll provide the links eventually (such as they are).

R0 H0 H02

2009-12-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

Now see, there it is again. I wanted the headline to read Ro Ho Ho squared but I couldn`t even sneak up on it with a cut, paste, back door like (mañana) cut and pasted from Wictionary to get tha ~ to get over the n. Anyway I finally got the square root blocks done and three Roman numeral blocks. I even did tha-one with the XII and the IIX adajacent to each other, it felt pretty dumd though.

The plan for the next addition to the set is the two cube root blocks and the fraction block. This leaves room for the next two blocks in "The West" series to fill our the next five eh?

Ho Ho Ow, Damn that`s Hot!

2009-12-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

Fa la la la hah! Props to Santa, man with all the soot, smoke, and hot ceramic
pipe, I couldn`t even get in the chimney, much less down it. Just as well, I guess, my best efforts at coming up with the 4 or 5 sets of arithmetic blocks I wanted to share with my favorite tiny humans are still well beyond my reach. When Niko first saw the arithmetic blocks he wanted to share them with Chloe and Madison`s cousins, but none of us has been successful making the shift into mass production necessary for this to happen.

But hey, tis the season, there is still hope for the hard-headed. I`m still working on the peels of the original Chloe/Madison set with a few picture blocks tossed in for spice. Today`s installment includes the odd, even, prime, the fibonacci, and the first of the three blocks in "The West" series.

The patterns seem to be getting better looking to me, but there`s way too many to go for me to go back and tweak up the first few yet. Well drag out yer round pointed scissors and yer glue stik. Set up the tv-tray table and go to cuttin anda foldin while watchin re-runs (you don`t need to watch em so close). Good luck, hope the picture matched tabs hide yer seams, they worked pretty well on the test block (da fish). Well, I got my five blocks to photograph and assemble into today`s peels, mañana.

Merry Arithmachristmas

2009-12-10T23:17:00.000-08:00

Ho ho ho, merry arithmechristmas. Well they`re finally here, the first patterns for the Blocklogic arithmetic blocks. They were slow coming and won`t be all that fast in unfurling. Originally the plan was to make a plan and a list of the block-set but instead I tried to concentrate on making a few sets of the blocks, ouy! Whata pain in the butt. The one at a time cutting with a band-saw improved the quality, but even a belt sander and a jig to hold 16 blocks at a time didn`t make it fast. Hand mortissing, free hand lettering, multiple fonts, and wood burning the letters made each block take about two anda half hours.

Much as I wanna see these in play this version may not be very common. The printer version should take about 10 minutes apiece to print cut fold and glue. Making the first 5 patterns, of a set of 21 with some picture blocks to round up to 27 (to fit inna cube), took me about an hour each with photoshop.These were slow but I think they`re gonna make good arithmechrismas ornaments so I`ll still continue to crank em out. This will also be the plan for the set. Somewhere in a later post I may post definitions of the symbols, maybe not.

Here`s the link to the list on wikipedia that was the source of most of my favorites.

The set being mapped is the only set so far and are all on home-made blocks.

So far my research has yielded a number of manufacturers of blank blocks. , but I haven`t tried any of them yet.

17 Fish-block

2009-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

Well I`ve finally run the arithmetic blocks into the ground. Don`t get me wrong I still think they`re cool but I`m tired of dreaming about them. This block came to me at the edge of sleep. I had to get up and write myself a note for in the morning. It worked great, so well in fact I was inspired to play some more. Next came the spikey cat, the escaping puppy, the swollen bunny, the irritated cat, the star-gazing dog, Yak with mountains, barking night dog, and the texture blocks.

Ahhhh! Above is the 17 fish block as a full size peel, with image tabs to help hide the seams. It works pretty good, I asembled a couple to test the pattern. More to follow.

Arithmetic Block Set Specs

2009-11-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well the entire first set of digits and symbol blocks are ready. The complete set of blocks contains two serial blocks, one odd, one even, one prime, one fibonacci, three Roman numeral, two square-root, two cube-root, one fraction, four factor, and three symbol blocks. This comes to twenty one number blocks and a total of twenty eight symbols. The symbols include a great many more than I ever heard of studying arithmatic. The real criterion for making the list was cool symbols that might be possible to explain to a kid. Some of them are going to be a bit of a stretch, to use in an equation correctly or to define in a usefull way. There is no doubt they look cool and they`re definitly thought provoking, heck makes me want to learn more math. Well they`re all sealed. Now that theyr`e photographed the list of definitions of the symbols on them is next, but it aint ready yet.

This Neopolitan Has Nine Layers Already

2009-11-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

We are once agian indebted to The Plush Neon Monkey, just couldn`t leave it alone.

I`d hoped carefull thought might generate a few more fun number catagories for block content.

Look-out! There`s more than a dozen diferent block configurations so far. These pictures represent an in progress preview of the first arithmetic blocks, still unsealed.

The latest additions include lower digits of square roots,

cube-roots, roman numerals to twelve, and one block of fractions. These are in addition to serial on two blocks, even, odd, prime, and fibonacci blocks already made.

The block holder mortis-jig and the gang sanding-jig have made mass-production as easy
it seems likely till I`ve got a belt-sander.

Now the real limiting factor seems to be the twenty minutes to cut each mortis, and the need to limit the number of them in a day to about sixteen. The stress of the chissel turned my fingers bright red and painfull just short of blistering. Fifteen of the sixteen gang-sanded group were good and more uniform than most of those that were harder to do. The fractions were toughest to burn but they seem worth it. The Roman numeral blocks had the same inversion-juxtaposition chalenges that the six-nine block had, but it seems worth it because of the way it reveals Roman numeral construction techniques so clearly.

The next post will include the a complete list ot the arithmetic blocks and layout of each block. A list of definitions of the eighteen plus math symbols , will also be included.

serial,even, odd, prime, fibonacci

2009-10-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

On a recent visit to the den of the Plush Neon Monkey the spectre of block logic rose yet again. I`ve got that "crap did I carve another six fingered hand" feeling again . As he examined the first few of the arithmetic blocks I kinda didn`t want to look. "Is there some plan to how these numbers end up?"asked Plush Neon Monkey. So we began to list ways to catagorize the digits and prioritize their placement to compile an intrestesting, usefull set of number blocks. After all it`s not as much fun to finish a block like this one, deet-da-dee.

Arithmetic Blocks

2009-10-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

Surprise, Yet another fold in the block logic. Who`da thunk tha hexahedron would get so much play. Well there`s a reason that they call`em blocks. I kinda backed into them, I just wanted something to make walls out of. The square dimension lumber at Home Depot was limited to 13/8"x13/8"x8`white wood and 15/8"x15/8"x24" oak `parson`s-table` legs (nice wood, a little pricey and hard to sand). About 5` of the 13/8" was suficient to make a fair sized pile of cube and double-cube pieces. Even with careful marking the hand-cut wobble factor was a bit disconcerting. Testing revealed that simple cubes were very popular amoung the youngest of our test-pilots. the white wood was soft, but the small size of the recess made relief symbols not very inteligable. The white wood recessed evenly,and tests with a Weller WSB25WB wood-burner made the arithmetic blocks look atainable and fun.

I meant to do that

2009-10-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

I meant to do that, too. Well maybe not just like that. The `I meant to do that' factor doesn`t
really apply to blocks quite as easily as it does to some forms of art. The hand cut wobble factor has been humbling to disconcerting. A great deal of care was expended in precisley drawing and marking the polygons for these blocks (especially the packing set). Miter sawing every piece I can and using the sanding block and flipping the work around to keep the faces as true as possible, has still yielded some wobbly and some slightly asymitrical pieces. Well I guess block logic includes lessons in justifying. Precision length measurements seem more straightforward, and yet this dimension has given me cause to re-cut and gang-sand in an effort to make them stack better.

Ok so my ham cut blocks sometimes stack like warm cheese, hey even a crooked castle
is still pretty cool. So here`s the packing stacking set.

Indeedy, Packed!

2009-10-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Stacking and nesting and packing oh my! Yeah yeah, packing or crowding cylinders into a
polygon and making it fit snugly against them, has been surprisingly chalenging. The deceptively simple task of drawing patterns for snug fitting parts, requierd several attempts to just fit a poster-paper collar that didn`t bow or fall down.

How wide to not break, how thin to look like just a line, how long to fit in with at least some of the other blocks? With this set of blocks, the long piece is five and seven eights inches and the shorter one is two and fifteen sixteenths inches. The length of the long piece is also the same as three two-by-fours thicknesses.

Block-ish Blockidge-ah blocka-blocka-blocka

2009-09-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth or possibly the sixth group in this set of blocks.

The first group in this set of blocks were mostly a set of regular polygons, cut from inch thick pine. Since I used a small drill bit in the hand drill the coping-saw removed the centers so neatly
that the block-sanded, grain-matching centers were added to the set.
The first group contained triangles, hexagons, pentagons, heptagons and trapazoids. My cutting wasn`t nearly neat enough, the hand-sanding was beatin me down, and giving me a fever in my elbow. The blocks were looking fun when I passed these on to my friends. I mentioned that, "I like thinking about what shapes might be fun to play with and making them in wood, but the sanding was about to shut me down".

Niko, Amy, and Johnathin pitched in on the sanding and finished the first bunch. They stained a few and gave them all a first coat of water-based urathane and let them dry. Next, they once again sanded the heck outtah all of them because the grain raised up big time. The second coat worked good and the first of the block set got played.