of some of the random geometric sculptures around my house are startlingly pretty and geometric themselves.
Magnetic balls
are a ridiculously fun (and sadly expensive) desk toy. I’ve been challenging myself to make as many of the Archimedean and Platonic solids of unit side length as possible.
So far I have made 6/13 Archimedean solids* and 4/5 Platonic solids**. Can you make any of the ones that I haven’t figured out yet?
* the rhombicosidodecahedron, rhombicuboctahedron, truncated octahedron, cuboctahedron, truncated cuboctahedron, and truncated icosidodecahedron
** all but the dodecahedron
Novel decorative knots
are particularly enjoyable to tie. There is something really enjoyable about making a design on paper or in my head come to life. The pan-chang-esque knot with the hexagonal grid is one of my favorites as I really like that grid pattern and was surprised that nobody seems to have ever used it in a large-scale knot. I’m also fond of the turk’s head-ish knot with unusual the “3 in 5” braid pattern.
An inexpensive iPhone dock
hacked out of a paper bowl has substantially improved my office setup. Now I can easily keep tabs on the music playing over the Sonos system and keep the charger cable hidden and out of the way. Perhaps I will decorate it later for extra bonus points. 🙂
Solar eclipses
Cause funny shadows on the ground.