Despite considerable strides since adolescence, I remain a fairly impatient person.
I do all right most of the time; waiting quietly is a necessary skill in a civilized society, after all. But some of the things that people choose to do with their spare time, energy, and income boggle my mind. I’m never going to be a paint-the-tiny-lead-miniature or build-the-clipper-ship-from-matchsticks kind of guy, okay?
In that vein, I recently stumbled across a site of people who build custom twisting/turning puzzles (the sort of which Rubik’s Cube is the original example) for fun, and encountered something so far beyond my patience threshold that I can’t scan the other side. Behold the Petaminx:
This is “a face turning dodecahedral puzzle with 4 slices per face,” designed by Andrew Cormier. See the black lines? The puzzle turns on every single one of them.
The Petaminx contains 975 individual parts and 1,212 stickers. Builder Jason Smith did all of the manufacturing and assembly in about 75 hours.
Bravo, sir. I couldn’t do it in five years.
He took a lot of photographs at each stage, too. Check it out.
You might also like:
- Choosing joy
David preached on choosing joy yesterday. Wow, how obnoxious, right? “Choose joy!” Ah. Yeah, I’ll ge… - Is online social networking killing the class reunion?
Recently I read an article examining Facebook’s role in class reunions. I found particularly interes… - Women, marriage, and sex: six refreshers for men
My work is never done here, it seems. Guys, set just a spell with me and let’s go over some things a… - Weekend notes
We’re waiting for what looks to be at least another inch of rain. I hope it hits right when I put my… - Of course you can wear an undershirt with a polo
I wear polo shirts most days. They work with slacks, jeans, or shorts. They’re comfortable, inexpens…
All that work (and it IS impressive) and I’d bet he sells 20 of ’em. My grandfather would have tried to solve that, but I can’t think of a single other person who would give up enough of their time to work on something that complicated in our ever more distracting world.
During the craze my Dad tried to explain to me how you could solve the Rubik’s Cube mathematically. Let’s just say, I’m not that smart…
Man, even in Huntsville, that guy would be King Geek. It’d be a cat toy in my house. My old office mate used to be pretty good at the Rubik’s Cube, but explained that it’s basically the same three turns over and over. He was also awfully good at Guitar Hero. If he wasn’t such a cool guy, I would have buried him in a shallow grave.
Cheryl: I think my grandfather would have enjoyed it too.
Lea: You have plenty enough mental horsepower to get it; you just don’t want to. I’m right there with you. I am thankful there are people with both the ability and motivation to understand higher mathematics, ’cause we’d be screwed if it were up to me.
BamaDan: I will sheepishly and publicly admit that I never learned to solve a Rubik’s Cube.