BUFFALO MAO # 47 TO GO

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

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

                                                                             

 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

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

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!

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.