The Glade 4.0

I have a feeling that some rascally writers snuck in the gag name after approval and it caught him off guard.

Lol I bet he knew about the bit but the names were probably a surprise to him until he read it.

Something called "Zen Magnets" are in the crosshairs too.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5932638/us-governm ... en-magnets

This **** is just insane, between me an my employees there must be 50 to 60 sets of Bucky balls and cubes in the office, One person cut up some 3/16 stainless rod to mix in with them. I've seen the conference table covered in all kinds of different designs using Bucky balls and erector sets.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

My blue Buckyballs are on my desk, sitting proudly next to my EQ paraphenalia and my totem pole (small totem given to me from my EQ partner in crime).

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

I've got Fiona Vie sitting between my monitors. My Bearded dragon is named Naggy.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

My Buckyballs experience:

Using the coupon Midgen mentioned (which even now still seems to be in effect, and quite frankly lowers the price to what they should be in the first place; these things are way to expensive otherwise), I picked up a 125-count pack of blue Buckyballs.

Now, I should note: going into this, I believed only two things: 1) yeah, yeah, people claim Buckyballs to be "dangerous" and it's a load of crap, and 2) everyone seems to be in love with them, so I might as well give 'em a shot.

My order arrived on Saturday, and unfortunately, Phe got to them before I did, so she was the first to spoil the pristine cube formation in which they're shipped. We were getting ready to go out for lunch, so I was slipping on my socks and shoes while she played with the lump of magnets.

I wanted to give them a quick go before we left (because they were a new toy and duh, I must play with them). No sooner had she handed the misshapen blob of blue balls to me and I began picking at it to tease out a strand did the waveform collapse and the chunk of Buckyballs shattered.

We both freaked out. We don't have a child, but we do have a cherished cat. Phe ran for Cash, scooped him up, and deposited him safely into the bedroom. The painstaking search and rescue mission then began. I'm quite thankful now that I didn't get the 216-count box. Only after much searching and even more counting (and re-counting, and re-re-counting) were we satisfied that all of the little bastards had been recovered. Thankfully, our living room has tile floor; I would hate to try digging these things out of carpet.

Today I brought them to work with me, and in my office (safely away from Cash) they shall stay.

I say that all to say this: Had something tragic come of the great Buckyball de-ball-cle, it would most obviously have been my responsibility, not that of the Buckyball manufacturer. And while I still most definitely believe they should be legal and available, the notion that they're actually dangerous in a real-world sense, once far-fetched and laughable to me, was very, very quickly brought home in an effective (and literal) manner.

The solution here seems obvious.

Ban cats.

+1

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

/seconded

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

@Farsky

I am somewhat amazed at the fact that your blob of Buckyballs "shattered" into it's constituent parts.

I have had my original set of 216 for quite a while now, and I have been playing with them quite a bit since. Never have they even come close to separating as such. I have a hard time keeping them apart, let alone having to worry about them scattering.

I wonder if they are being manufactured less magnetized than the original sets. Honestly, I don't even know if I could scatter them even if I wanted to.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

erm.. Please elaborate on this? Did you drop them?

I have a half dozen sets of various forms of these, and have never experienced anything that could be described as an explosion. In fact, my frustration is usually the opposite. I'll be laying out some nice triangles on my desk, getting them arranged to make them into some nice snowflake shape or something, when, due to limited space, the entire arrangement will implode on itself, making an unidentifiable mass, follow immediately by me cursing....

I'm trying to picture what could cause them to separate into individual balls so easily?

Here is my current collection, sitting on my desk at work.



I have two more sets of the original 216 chrome on order. Once I get them, I'll be making this...

It's a symptom of Farsky's latent mutant power to control magenetism.

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Rynar wtf happened to your signature?

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Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how they explode too. They are magnets after all, so they typically like to group up. I've had one instance where I was specifically trying to pull off a single ball to put somewhere and I dropped it. That was annoying to find, but would not have been a threat to any animal, as you have to ingest 2 for there to be a potential problem.

LOL oh man...

i just saw this in the sidebar while watching the other video...

This is the only way I've ever had balls "scatter," as well, with one exception -- I got a "dud" in one of my sets, once, which was completely non-magnetic. Buckyballs replaced it gratis by sending me one of the 10-ball refills. Farskeee, that's definitely an odd occurrence. I'm glad you found them all, though.

Also, Midgen none of the dodecahedrons you've posted have edges or corners.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

hmmms?

Not sure I follow.

Notice my dodecahedron has single-row edges and single-ball vertices.

I also made it from a single continuous chain (with endcaps at beginning and end because it's a real nuisance getting the first and last corner to stick from a chain-wrapping methodology), because I'm masochistic about counting colors. I basically built it by continuing and extending what you probably did to make the pentagonal pyramid you've got in pink and then choking it down to make the middle ring of faces, etc.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

What do you mean?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Wow, that is hardcore! Nice work!

The 5 sided pink thing I made was just something I got out of the little pamphlet that came with the set. The blue and orange ...things?.. are also out of the pamphlet. They are just 20 small triangles formed together to make a ball. The Dodecahedron in the video is from the "Big Book of Bucky Vol 1". It has a reference to the 'secret' video i linked above.

I haven't spent much time looking 'out of the box' for stuff to make with them yet, although the bars and cubes open up a huge range of possibilities.

Bah. It just occurred to me that I meant to say icosahedron in my post. Which is what your blue and orange "things" are, as well.

Now I'm going to have to go home and make a similarly edged dodecahedron. The reason the one in the video has hollow faces is because they're not actually flat, since you can't make a flat pentagonal sheet by arranging spheres. So mine will probably be very small so I can get away with just the edges to stick to my single-row edge challenge. Let's see if I can do it...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The pink one in my picture, whatever it is, was made in the same way the video describes the sides of the dodecahedron being made, using a string of 105 balls.

The thing Im perplexed about is, it's not symmetrical. Two of the sides have 7 balls.. three have 8. :/

You're among geeks and friends. It's okay to say d20.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Hehehe...thank you Midgen.

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"