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Hoberman Sphere Building Blocks
jmoyers writes "From the people that brought you the Hoberman Sphere comes the Expandagon Construction System. It allows you to build your own folding structures. "Each building block (called an Expandagon) is made of preassembled parts that allow it to expand and contract. This means that you can build very complex expanding shapes easily, using only a few building blocks."
"
It makes the rest of us look bad.
I just cut my arms up with a craft knife :)
I guess you wouldn't know anything about those, eh "FiberSocialist"???
If we are going to post about this then why not also discuss things such as the snow/ice storms in the east with regards to connectivity and IP traffic, or how CNN's allpolitics search (http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/) sorts things by date with stories dated Jan * 2000 being listed last.
i see you don't have the balls to tell us who you are. dirty little faggot.
I mean, in all seriousness, listen to yourself..."a way to contruct convex hull containers of arbitrary interesting shapes"??? You're so out of touch with what the rest of the world thinks it's scary. It's people like you (look at the bios of the turn-of-the-[previous]-century German chemists, and how disconnected they were from what the common people of their own nation thought) who came up with chemical weapons and other horrors. Just because you work for Apogee doesn't make it any different.
>>"There is too much information on the net." Is there such a thing as too much information? >>"Information is valuable..." Yeah, the more the better! >>"It takes too long to find useful stuff. " The traditional library system is just as bad, in a different way. Even a good library doesn't have everything you need. If you actually spend the time leafing through books, until you find what you need... Most of the time, the library doesn't have what you need. You have to drive to anther library on the other end of town to get the books that you need. Sux huh? Talk about taking a long time. I have experience with the retarded nature of the traditional library system. ...the end all be all of annoying things is having to photocopy pages out of useful texts, at a library, where they charge ten cents a copy. The problem with the internet, is not its geometric growth. The problem is with crappy search engine technology. The need for better search engines grows and grows. Eventually someone will come out with better search technology. Something based on Latent Semantic Analysis research. While you are waiting for LSA technology search engines, use www.google.com It works great!
64 out of 103 comments...Robin, this is what happens when about half of the past 10 posts are yours, and they're all boring. What else can you expect?
you are worthless and weak.
wow, first post and all! I want to be _just_like_you_ You are my hero (pussy)
Slashdot: no longer news for nerds, stuff that matters Now its just a playground for brainless twits like this one that think anyone gives a damn about how cool it is to post irrelevant shit like this. Kid, why don't you go run out into traffic or something and see if anyone gives a damn about that either.
Anyone for pizza?
...one wonders if Jon Katz is egaging us in psychological warfare.
There are so many holes in your so-called "logic" I can hardly begin to find them all. So... I won't. You're very misguided, dude...
Sounds like the WCG, which I was raised in. :(
What does this have to do with Expandagons?
Mmmm... Peanut Butter...
SGI fucking sucks! Avoid them like the plague!
So, you went from the Christians, to the Moonies, and then back to the Christians? Sorry to be judgemental, but you're just a weak-minded fool. You just want Someone Else to show you the way, since it's really tough to find your own way.
Personally, I like to stick to just Legos. While I was growing up, the only thing I would do is create a lego building. Up till 5th grade, I would sit in my seat at school practically begging for school to let out because there was something I wanted to build with my big vat of Legos. Then, my parents sold them all. :(
OFF-TOPIC?!@$ THIS ARTICLE IS ENTIRELY ABOUT MY BALLS! WHO THE HELL MODERATED THIS TO OFF-TOPIC?
Charles Hoberman
I got one for christmas, the box is sitting right behind me. kind of interesting. I have no idea why I asked for it though.
Fascinating; I think his trolls show that the entropy of the English language is substantially lower than most people believe. For example, although less than 15 characters are used, there is more than enough redundancy for the message to be relatively clearly conveyed.
why is anyone bothering to moderate in this thread?
There are like 4 or 5 comments in here that are ontopic in anyway. The trolls are having a feild day.
If you look at Craig McPherson's user info, he admits to posting the 31337 trolls. The only thing I troll is the trolls themselves.
. . . And then Mr. Gates is unplugged and wheeled away from the podium to be put back in the closet until the next speech is needed. Fnord
Dude you got trolled. This guy isn't serious, he probably stole most of it from some extremist and made it even worse
Um, that was something better left unsaid. I'm sure you're intentions are good but you've pretty much turned your post into a "Me too."
On a similar "what I'd like to see in a toy" subject, as a biochemist I've been on the lookout for a while for a toy that would enable you to quickly model proteins. In an ideal world it would be made of blocks with properties that simulated the properties of the 20 amino acids ie. polar, basic, acidic and hydrophobic. Each block would either be attracted to or be repelled from another block and if you had them in a particular order and threw the linear chain in the air it would come down folded into a protein... hmmmm.... not quite yet maybe... A more simple method might be to make the blocks into secondary structure elements - beta-strands, alpha-helices, turns, etc. These could then be strung together and would form the protein. You'd have to know the secondary structure, but this can be predicted quite accuractely form the amino acid sequence in many cases. Anyway, unfortunately I don't think this stuff is going to help... any other suggestions?
>Kid, why don't you go run out into traffic or something and see if anyone gives a damn about that either.
I know I'd give a damn. There'd be no more crap on slashdot and it would be useful again. That's worth giving a damn about.
I think I'll drive without my headlights on tonight...
Bright minds like Corrinne's are what enabled you to post your trolls.
No, they're not...please provide evidence.
Notice how this person, "crisco", has responded to my argument with 1) an expletive, 2) an insult, 3) a non sequitur, and 4) an irrelevant comment. Which one of us was the troll again?
Seek mental help, now, before you hurt yourself.
My cousin got these for his birthday and then a larger set for christmas. At first, I thought they were awesome, whoohoo another neato thing from charles hoberman, but they are severely limited. It's like having a lego set with only the special pieces that make everything into a helicopter. So at first, my cousin was like, "check this out!" and I was like, "neat lemme try". So I did, but that was all I could build, really. Then he told me he got that idea from the instruction book. So I think it's a commendable effort, but I think that perhaps these "motion sculptures" or whatever Hoberman calls the things, require too many specialized parts to be generalized to a few basic shapes like lego. Also, the connector design is hard to use. I don't know what else he would have done, because the range of motion afforded by the connections is key to the set's functionality. So in short, I commend the effort, but the sets are kind of weak. Maybe Hoberman will be able to come up with something better, maybe it's easy for him to think in terms of these shapes, I don't know, I have a really hard time thinking that way. Please try again for our sake Mr. Hoberman. Sorry, guys, I'd log in but I'm on my girlfriend's computer. jeb.
South Africans are evil. anyone who's seen Lethal Weapon 2 knows that.
Don't call him a troll, cuz he ain't, dicksucker. Maybe if i busta nut in your face, you might stand a chance of learning the difference, asshole.
in consequence: EAT MY HAiry PUSSY!!!
now that's Informative
Wow! Another media-driven name which will help us to sterotype and label an entire generation of people with nothing in common other than their dates of birth! *GAWD*, I can't wait!
But I guess I'm just cynical because I 'generation Y' (or X or something).
YOU MUST MODERATE HIM UP
OR I WILL USE KUNG-FU ON YOU
I will use kung-fu on anyone who doesn't think J.R.R. Trollkien should be moderated up. This included J.R.R. Trollkien. If J.R.R. Trollkien does not think that J.R.R. Trollkien should be moderated up, then, I, regretfully, will be forced to use kung-fu on J.R.R. Trollkien as well.
It is a heavy cross that I carry.
Mr. Trollkien:
I would like to see you parody the scene from the Hobbit where the trolls get turned to stone. OoooOOo baby, I LOVE petrification, and that scene REALLY turned me on, except that when I read it, I PRETENDED that the trolls looked like Pamela Anderson & stuff.
Yeah...... petrified+naked is good.
GIMME A T!
T!
GIMME AN R!
R!
GIMME AN O!
O!
GIMME AN L!
L!
GIMME AM L!
L!
WHAT'S THAT SPELL?
TROLL! TROLL! TROLL!
ATTENTION LEETO SLASHDOT TYPES! URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!
===TRANMISSION #31337 FROM: A. Troll TO: Guillible Geeks===
===TRANSMISSION BEGINS BELOW===
Greetings from the world of Trolls! Consider yourself as having been trolled, as you have responded in all seriousness to a posting of mine! Good job! Keep it up! I have successfully trolled this discussion so thoroughlt that absolutely no meaningful information slipped through! I will destroy Slashdot! I am not a happy troll! I will not stop until RobLimo is run out of town! Heed my very bad words! I will do naughty things to you otherwise! Naughty, very naughty things!
===TRANSMISSION ENDS==
There's a huge one of these at the Liberty Science Center in NJ.. can't find any pictures of it but it's easily 30 feet in diameter when opened fully.
IT would appear that the Americans are rather self important. Yesno? Microsoft wants to come accross as "We're a goodie two-shoes company changing the world by changing Americans". Come on. Give me a break. What about the the rest of the world??????? Apart from being totally off topic, it annoys me to read about a company predicting what they think the world will be like in 10 years time. They are trying to SELL you something (future products).... not trying to instill a patriotic comraderie towards the future by labeling the next generation "i" and saying "We'll be there to see them through". Secondly as a South African theres nothing MORE ANNOYING than an American encyclopedia trying to describe Africa to you... So apart from being off topic, it is saddening to see people blindly subscribing to company/commercial propoganda which eventually serves their ends, regardless of however true those statements may be. My 2c (your US$0.33c)
seriously,
WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
I have a question for you, my troubled friend.
What has this "religious" (I use the term advisedly) got to do with slashdot?
We all get stressed from time to time, which I imagine you are at the moment, and that's why you posted what you did. We all get a bee in our bonnets about certain things from time to time.
I will not answer any of your questions, because they all start from false premises and make false assumptions because they are based on a certain brand of fundamentalist chritian biggotry, and besides, they've all been answered before more comprehensively by more eloquent and knowledgeable people that my self.
Please relax, put on some melow music and try to get some sleep. Maybe read a good book.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
"Satan" is a Jewish/Christian/Islamic (all related and very similar religions) concept.
To claim that athiests are worshippers of your hypothetical "Satan" is quite preposterous.
http://www.catalaw.com/detox/
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Em,
Are you on some kind of fruit break?
Please see a doctor, for your own good.
A concerned friend.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
I don't know if you relise this or not but most people reading this page is not going to be buying toys made for ages 3-12 at least I'm not.
why is there so much crap posted? all these offtopic things like e-sales are doing good and basically news articles out of nowhere and having nothing to do with the topic...is it just lego stories? this hasn't been this bad for the other stories.
copyrighted undistributable open source natalie portman
namtrop eilatan ecruos nepo elbatubirtsidnu dethgirypoc
thank you.
I want to moderate too, so please make my karma a little bit higher. Please???
I would like to present my Great Troll Epic: Troll and Troll Again.
Troll and Troll Again:
Chapter 1: An Unexpected Troll
Part 1
In a thread in Slashdot, there lived a poster. Not an offtopic,
first-post, trollful thread, or a sublime, witty, and funny thread: it
was a humorless, strictly ontopic, karma-whore thread, and that meant
comfort.
It had a perfectly agreeable subject, all open sourced, with a vague
opinion right in the middle on every issue. The thread opened on a
happy discussion: a very comfortable discussion without nay-sayers,
with on-topic, non-petrified replies, and lots of humorless posters.
The thread wound on and on, going fairly, but not quite straight into
the noise--Comments.pl as all the people from many miles around called
it--with many little subjects to chime in the collective voice on. No
thinking for the posters--all of the topics were generated by
Slashdot, and almost all exactly the same. The best posts were all
moderated up, for these were by the only posters with enough
articulation to karma-whore while saying nothing new.
This poster was a very high-karma poster, his name was Signal 11.
Signal 11 lived in the neighborhood of Slashdot for time out of mind,
and people considered him very agreeable, not only because he had no
new opinions, but also because he never posted any petrified,
first-post, trollish posts: you could tell what Signal 11 would say on
any question without the bother of asking him. This is the story of
how Signal 11 had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying
things altogether trollish. He may have lost the other Slashdot
Karma-whores' respect, but he gained--well, you will see whether he
gained anything in the end.
-- J.R.R Trollkien, son of Troll, son of Trall
WHOA THATS MESSED UP
IS THAT LITTLE GIRL TRAPPED IN THERE
WHY IS SHE SMILING?!?!
THOSE TRIANGLES SOUND PRETTY COOL THOUGH
TRANSLUCENT BLUE YOU COULD MAKE YOUR OWN IMAC!!!
I LEFT MY CELL FONE IN PRISON! KAN U HELP???
Does this mean Chuck Hoberman is going to sue me for unfolding things? This is horrible - IANAL, but is there any evidence that he might not have invented unfolding? Someone should set up a legal defense fund for people being accused of intellectual property theft by unfolding stuff. I'd say EFF or someone should get involveed, but I guess this isn't really an electronic domain...
Also, is folding still public domain? If so, you better be careful, because once you fold something, you're stuck unless you want to break a few laws! I hope someone puts up a FAQ on unfolding, to get the word out to the community - I'll even mirror it myself, putting me at risk for the same legal problems people are having with DeCSS. What we need now is someone to crack the unfolding scheme, or else come up with something even better.
Although I've always been more of a fan of crumpling and uncrumpling rather than fold/unfold, it does have its uses, and I don't want to be paying royalties every time I do my laundry. We need to fight this!
http://www.stileproject.com/linux_chick.j pg .jpg
http://www.stileproject.com/linux_chick2
That's funny. I've taken a fairly stock IRIX installation - without any other licenses or anything - and installed the gcc package from freeware.sgi.com on it. Then, I built my own gcc with it. Everything works smashingly. Judging by your post, I'd guess you left the old CAPS LOCK key on and were surprised to find that GCC, AS, and LD aren't on your system. SGI makes great stuff overall; I guess you just can't appreciate it. Enjoy your overclocked linux-powered 800 MHz gamez box, d00d.
You're too dim witted to even understand the possibilities of a way to contruct convex hull containers of arbitrary interesting shapes
Bright minds like Corrinne's are what enabled you to post your trolls.
I can't believe I responded to this.
Bleh!
Nice. I'd pay for those. There was something I had years ago called "Tensegritoy", which consisted of small dowels with slots in each end, loops of bungie/elastic cord, and little plastic caps to hold the cord in the slots...you could make all kinds of nifty squishable shapes with that. Don't know if it still exists or not though. I think you could get them in pretty large sets, too. They scaled better than the Hoberman thing looks like it would.
And speaking of nifty things to be done with polygonal shapes (yeah, it's offtopic. sorry)...can we have Prey, please? I've been waiting a long time, and I don't know that I'm a representative sample of your target audience, but I'd certainly rather have Prey than Duke Nukem Forever...
Pancakes is the better part of valor.
Pardon me for not remembering the title of the movie, but it has to do with "mind gymnastic" or somekind of "brain olympic", in which a young boy, supposingly a GENUINE GENIUS, was brought into the world of the "mind gymnastic" but he was surrounded by "genius wannabes" and in the competition, the little boy got bored and took some pencils and rubber band and he made an elastic skeletal globe that looks very similar to the picture I saw in the website.
Can anyone confirm that the thing the movie has shown (pencil and rubberband) is the same thing as the one this discussion thread is focused on?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
How I wish I had "toys" like this one when I was a small kid. Instead of "killer robots" figures or mind-numbling nintendos or lame "games" the kindy teachers had devised and forced us to participate in.
I rather spent my time with toys that encourage me to explore and think and investigate and learn, rather than "I kill you, my robot is better than your robot, MUAHAHAHAHA !" or "Barbie, meet Ken, let's have lunch".
When I have kids, I rather they play pokers and chess and toys like the ones we are discussing, including Legos, than lame games that shut the brain down.
Kids of today and tomorrow are blessed with so many good and useful toys. My only hope is parents will start use more of their time to pick toys that encourage development of the brains than giving their kids toys that encourages violences and/or vogue.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thanks again !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> things. And so on. Any kind of toy which had screws in it.
And now, what do you play with? Yourself?
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
Well, since I could not moderate the story...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
My kids have some of these expanable play houses from PlayHut. These are too cool! - toss the bag into the truck, and head for the beach! After folding, it stores easily on the closet shelf.
Edges are for leadin' not bleedin'
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
Some poor dumbass with a lot of time on his hands and a senseless grudge against somebody he's probably never even met. Get a life, stupid.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
This is going to be excellent. The Hoberman sphere is very cool and looks good hanging in the living room, but doesn't allow for much interaction. This should be both interesting to look at and fun to play with. Also makes a great learning tool for geometric designs.
Too bad you can't order direct from the site. But I know a science store in my neighborhood that will likely carry them.
I'm excited. I haven't played with anything prebuilt like this for 20 years. Does anyone remember a set of translucent blue plastic triangles that snapped together to form pyramids and other multi-sided shapes? I wish I still had those.
"I have a cunning plan..."
Re: The following are some toys I would enjoy.
You forgot the BFG9000 and pocket version of global thermonuclear war. (Both being the only proper way to `squish a geometric form`.)
-eddy
Grow the fuck up and stop playing with toys
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
The MFC maybe?
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"My 2c (your US$0.33c)" Yes, unfortunately I think you've hit upon one of the reasons without meaning to. I think the intent was that the entire world would benefit from the technology [see the African "Ring of Fire"]. Many technologies were created in the United States and/or countries with the resources. This in no way makes the US "better" than any other country. It is simply the country that supplied the technology. It is interesting to note that many of the developing countries in Africa are the quickest to adopt the newer technologies because there was no previous infrastructure to be a support or hindrance. Microsoft has the largest share of the desktop market at the moment, and is the likely source of the insensitivity perceived by you I would think. However, let's not forget that the internationally developed Linux is designed to run on the same hardware. The release of the Crusoe chip from Transmeta [oh dear, North Americans again] could push it further out into the world. Mr. Gates is going to encounter many new ideas in his push to the world outside of the US's borders. So what would you do to improve South Africa? Does it need to be improved? Am I to believe that South Africa possesses a more correct world view? Would I want to visit your country? Would I be welcome? What do you think about Hoberman Spheres [so we don't get moderated out of existence]?
The party's over
Really. With all your billions, don't you have anything better to do than take an hour out of your day to troll on /.?
hmmm yes thats just what my world is missing!
how soon could we get them and could i get mine gift ( giped ) rapped?
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Is this really important enough for its own story?
.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
Hoberman spheres rock. There's this glow in the dark one that is a fantastic club toy :).
Hoberman's dream of the hoberman sphere plaything is some thing far more intersting than the expandagon sets he has right now.
The idea is that the toy in it's compacted shape would be a playset for something along the lines of GI-Joes or something like that. The playset could then be expanded into a large fort that is very similar to the playset that the child could play in himself.
Pretty neat, but still far off
They look complicated, which I guess is the idea since they are for children (or the child in all of us). Personally, I'll stick to my legos. Its my OCD that makes me want to stick to rigid squares.
"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." ~ Emo Phillips
The book on the "next generation" you want to name yourself has already been written and they're called Gen13. So's the book.
Esperandi
I got one of these last summer. It wasn't fun.
By the way, this is an unusally high number of Troll\Offtopic posts for a solitary Slashdot article. Is it just me, or do we need a "comments.pl?sid=post_troll_and_offtopic_here" for in between articles?
--
Is it just me, or is that post really contradicting?
The guy is quoting the bible, yet look at the sig...
-- Dr. E --
What the hell??
/dev/urandom and then copied it over he'd get like a 4 or 5
First post... "informative"
Second post... "interesting"
Damn
I guess if he just catted
Here's to the crazy ones
in my childhood i used to play alot with LEGO and had full shelves of LEGO in my room. i didnt know till now there's something newer than LEGO, i saw one of those balls long ago, but i didnt know that they are ajustable and buildable and you can design new shapes with them. anyways, after browsing a little their website, i find the folding thing cool, but still LEGO will be my favorite toy, with all the pumps, motors, wheels, heh, LEGO rocks, but it's refreshing to see things like those Hoberman construction toys.
Dan.
Actually, I agree with you. I think it's neat, but I think it really belongs as a "quickie". This isn't as appealing as... say... bashing the CCA/MPAA or putting borg hardware on ol' Bill...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Kids could build a little expandable playhouse, and then just pull on the blocks to make it big enough to fit in! Then, you could toss it in the back of your truck, and they could bring it to a friend's house! My cousin's kids would probably get a super kick out of it.
If you really wanted to extrapolate on this, you could use the same mechanics to make dollhouses that kids could expand big enough to fit in.
Eh...
Just one note on Encarta ... In one of the first versions of encarta (think it was '95) My hometown (Örebro in Sweden) had an entry stating that the main industry was shoe-making and shipping minerals.
Ok, so I was quite impressed that "we" had an article at all, but the info in it was true approx 100 years ago. Since then, I've always tried to get an second opinion ... =)
Btw .. Shouldn't that be "Generation Z" ? (I know I'm generation Y anyway)
return -ENOSIG;
I would like a mindstorm <--> hoberman mix
RetroCool
I used to work in The Gadjet Shop in Leeds, UK during the christmas of 1997. In that shop we sold a whole range of wierd and wonderfull stuff. One of those things that we sold however was the Hoberman Sphere. It was a jumble of plastic construction that expanded from about 10 inches in diameter, to over a meter and a half in diameter. The holes in the structure were easily big enough to put your head in, and I remember 1 member of staff being able to ware it! It was priced at $78.74 equivalent and had no apparent use.
We had customers coming too us on a regular basis to ask us what it was, and having no documentation either with it, or provided by head office we basically didn't have a clue.
However, one evening I was trawling the internet search engines that I finially found out exactly what the Hoberman Sphere actually was designed for (mobile constuction purpouses for quick deplovment, i.e. A Marquee with a solid structure that could be brought in and deployed from the back of a lorry and removed just as easily)
My point is, what is the point in yet another useless craze, for a product that has no use whatsoever in short term efects. Is it me or is the whole world gone crazy. At least lego and Yoyo's have use, but I personally think that it's all going crazy!
The Well Known Fat Bloke
Tell me DeBeers doesn't do the same thing. Basically telling you that you can only show true love by spending 2 months salary on a diamond. Who the hell came up with that? Second, here in America, corporations like to have what is know as "good will" associated with their name. I know this must be a foreign concept in South Africa where a few wealthy elite get rich exploiting peasent labor, so how the community views a business doesn't matter. In america, the people who own and run the company often live in the same communities as the people who work for the company. So, you see, they actually want to see the community do well. We don't let our workers live in "shanty towns" that nobody cares about. Americans help other americans, and civic duty is still an honorable thing here.
I'm not supposed to be moderated up.
-- J.R.R Trollkien, son of Troll, son of Trall
I dont go to a club in NYC/Philly without mine : ) Except I have a cool blue wire I put in mine I love being 5 again : ) hehe
Nothing lasts forever.
Time is always slipping by and I rather spent my 4 hours LEARNING something than waste it in something that is unproductive.
Who knows, maybe the things I learn in that 4 hours may one day, 20 years later, give me an insight that may worth a whole lot more than the 4 hours time I've "invested"?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Then if you put a little more thought into it, you sometimes see interesting ways around the limitations.
Regular solids work well. More complex things don't expand and contract so well.
Unless one puts a little more thought into building them.
If you get the little set, you think, gosh I can make some cool things with the big set. You need the big set to see that you can only build things so large before they just don't work at all.
Until you realize that you've been looking at it wrong.
There are also little playability issues with the extra swivel joints. They are hard to get together.
Sometimes, true.
Sometimes when taking things apart, they come apart in the wrong places.
Only if you're not patient enough.
If you really like construction toys like Lego Technics, assume you'll get 4 to 8 hours of fun out these things. Then it will sit on the shelf.
Then, if you come back and put some more thought into it, you'll get even more fun out of it. Especially if you don't play with it by youself but with a couple of other geeks and/or kids.
I've never had one, but those things always intrigued me because I thought it was so neat how they could "grow" like they do. I never stopped to analyze the mechanism, however. It's a nifty invention, as we all know, and kudos to them for expanding (yes, a pun) this to other shapes. yee ha!
Insert mind here.
These things are cool, but Legos will always be the best...they've survived longer than all sorts of cool building toys, and they're still going strong. If I had my legos here in my dorm room I would still drag them out from time to time...but I had to leave them at home. D'oh!
:)
People like to talk about how building blocks and things of that sort encourage kids to learn, and so on...sometimes you wonder how much truth there really is in that. If a little kid is creative enough to build lots of stuff from legos, they're probably going to go build things (cities in the dirt, and the like) regardless of whether they have a lego set.
It would be kinda cool to see something like Mindstorms for other building blocks, like these Expandagons...nothing like more expensive toys to play with
These things look kinda like K'Nex on crack...and those things were pretty fun.
I find it interesting that 2 out of the 5 stores you can purchase these things from are Amazon and Etoys, stores that we are "supposed to be boycotting". With the current rate of patent idiocy and general corporate rudeness on the internet, how long before there are no places left for us to buy from because they all inspire moral objections? Just a thought...
God Fucking Damnit
but then we started building things. an hour later, we were very bored: theres not much one can build with the small set, but its a large subset of the set of all things that can be built with them: simple polyhedra. blah.
on the other hand, weve found that those little 'x-connectors' (the orange pieces) can be put together a number of ways, just by themselves, to come up with little nervous-energy trippy toys that are fun to manipulate whilst bored...
my opinion, then: over-rated. sadly. =(
Is it eventually very wise to let kids meddle
with shapeless things that can be converted
into anything? First somebody should make sure
that they work only in three spatial dimensions.
And then there's the name of Dagon, which
children will have to say aloud always when
talking about these objects.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
Go on - flame me, but I think The Amateur Scientist article series from Scientific American can provide you with more interesting cool things to play with.
Not to mention Klein Bottle.
Regards,
January
P.S. Yes, I used to play with Lego. And chemicals. Rockets. And old radios. Transistors. Repairing things. And so on. Any kind of toy which had screws in it.
"...is made of preassembled parts that allow it to expand and contract. This means that you can build very complex expanding shapes easily, using only a few building blocks."
Sound like any Microsoft products we know of?
Connah
Connah
"Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for this change to take effect."
Hoberman Sphere at Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, NJ
The way they came up with this idea was from marshmellows! They just came up with a more technical term and use for them. I bet I could build anything that you can with my marshmellows and a cup of water!
Life comes not from the heart, but from the women around you.
They have them at the Store of Knowledge and similar places.
Basic set is $20... Advanced is 40 and Expert is 60. Here is the product info for the three sets.
I am a coder, not a toy-maker. So if the following suggestsions are dorky to professional toy-makers I apologize.
:)
The following are some toys I would enjoy.
1. Toys that allow me to squish a geometric form into its dual, and back to its dual.
2. Toys that allow me to build viral crystal building blocks, and visualize how viral crystals stack.
3. Toys composed simply of 1 gadget, an octet truss, or an isotropic vector matrix.
http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/chaos0.html
4. Polyhedron truncation. Things that allow me to make new polyhedron by truncating corners. And then allows me to make new polyhedron by un-truncating corners.
5. Packing toys. i.e., spheres of arbitrary sizes, pyramids of aribitrary sizes, and then a way to contruct convex hull containers of arbitrary interesting shapes. Then I can build the convex hull, throw spheres or pyramids into them, shake them around (thus, applying physical real-life stochastic simulated annealing to find local min bounds), and see what I get.
If any of the above are dorkily impractical toy suggestions, my apologies.
P.S. I know we can write code to simulate all the above. But there is something fun to "touch things with your hands."
Regular solids work well. More complex things don't expand and contract so well.
If you get the little set, you think, gosh I can make some cool things with the big set. You need the big set to see that you can only build things so large before they just don't work at all.
There are also little playability issues with the extra swivel joints. They are hard to get together. Sometimes when taking things apart, they come apart in the wrong places.
If you really like construction toys like Lego Technics, assume you'll get 4 to 8 hours of fun out these things. Then it will sit on the shelf.
What is 4 hours of construction fun worth to you?