I've been experimenting with doughnuts of different dimension. I think I'm going to go for one with a slightly larger ring in the centre than the one here. That'll be tomorrow as I'm taking #1 son out to the theatre so we can play with the lights. Should be fun!

I had written a post yesterday about the mathematics of the torus design - but managed to loose it. If you follow me on twitter you proabably heard that I posted it- multiple times! I'll have another go at uploading it, the maths behind the model is really interesting and it is good to share!

If you receive the blog posts email you'll have noticed the <!--break--> tag in the middle of the text. It was trying to get rid of that that killed the maths post. I have a couple of other solutions so fingers crossed the stray tag should be gone soon.

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Last touches to the updated website. I've being making and photographing a logo today

I've cut out a set of letters to make the logo. Arranged them with the paperrob model and photographed them. I've then trimmed round the picture in PhotoShop and added a clean white background. I've finished it off by adding a shadow to anchor it to the ground and a tag line in a script type face (Handwriting-Dakota).

Good eh!?

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I received the by now traditional Simpson socks for Father's day and as you would imagine, this got me thinking about doughnuts. A quick search on google turned up nothing by way of toroid nets. Time to get the brain into gear. I had a vague memory of a toroid shape made up of sections in an advert for Mathematica, but how to design the section?

Each section is a kind of circular wedge. The net for that would have a sine wave edge. So, create sine wave, sample 360 degree section of same, stretch to appropriate size.

I then flipped over a copy, added evenly spaced vertical sections (8 of them) and created the net for a single section complete with tabs that you see above.

It worked surprisingly well! Notice that even though the edge is based on a curve it sits nice and flat on the work surface. Lovely.

There is a certain amount of guess work involved here. How steep should the angle of the wedge be? How many sections will I need? These two numbers are connected but I'm not sure how. Time to cut out and try.

I glued six sections together and created this shape which looks like it is just short of half a doughnut.

Too save time and cutting, here is the same shape held up to a mirror. Two more sections I reckon, making fourteen in total. I'm really not sure how I'm going to glue the last piece into place!

Fourteen seemed like a lot of parts so I tried the same again but with much thicker wedges. The result is in the square photo at the top. Looks like seven wedges for a complete shape . Looking at it, though, I think the fourteen wedges are worth the extra effort.

Colour and sprinkles next!

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I've added the file with the parts as they are so far if you want a try. Member's download below.

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I've completed a new model. Its going to be part of the new robives.com logo for the upcoming website. Its available for you to download and make at the bottom of this post. You are a member, right?

Check out the YouTube video here:

You will need a pair of scissors, some glue and a glue spreader. The best type of glue to use is white school glue  (PVA.) A pair of tweezers will also be useful.
Print out the parts sheets onto thin card. Note that the first sheet parts is front and back. Print out the front, flip the card over and print the back. Leave the ink to dry completely before continuing.
Before cutting anything out, score along all the dotted lines. This job is easier to do on full sheets of paper.
Dashed lines are hill folds, dotted lines are valley folds. Cut along the solid lines. Grey areas show where to glue.

The nose is a very small part - careful you don't loose it! Glue the nose edges to the front of the face lining up with the white line. Use only a very small amount of glue. Tweezers and a cocktail stick are useful for this job.

Thread the shoulders through the holes in the body from the back and glue them into place.

Fold round and glue together the the two arms. For each arm glue the push rod into place as shown above right. Line up the end of the push rod with the crease (arrowed)

Fold round and glue together the body inner and body outer.

Thread the push rods through the holes in the body and glue the arm tab to the shoulder.

The arm push rod will look like this from the back.

Glue the body tab to the grey area on the body outer. Thread the body inner into place so that the black leg line is lined up front to back.

Roll the body round and glue it down as shown above left. Glue the arm pushrods to the bottom of the legs. Glue on the glasses, thread on the hands and glue on the feet.

That's it! Once the glue is dry pull the body up and down and watch the arms flap!

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My apologies for the temporary absence of the flying pig website. It'll be back up again shortly. My ISP tells me that it is locked due to 'abuse' That usually means that it has been used to send spam. As readers of my newsletter will know, I use Google Feedburner to send out newsletters so I'm pretty certain that any spam isn't coming from me. It is possible that the site has been hacked.

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I'm just uploading a new video to my YouTube channel showing the construction of a paper character. I've just started the upload, it says it'll be another two hours so I can't put direct the link up until the morning. Just check the channel, it'll be there!

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I've been making good progress with the updated website. Just finishing off the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which control how the website is displayed. Should be done mid next week then time for a new model.

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I've uploaded a new video to YouTube showing the Dodo model in action. Its added it to the Dodo page. Hope you enjoy it!

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Another day of website development - it really does suck up the time! Very satisfying though. When I was a student I used to pull all-nighters writing computer programs to draw fractal crystals in C on my z80 based Amstrad PCW. Can't seem to do that anymore - I think familiy life uses more energy than student life :-) Either that or I get up somewhat earlier than I did when I was a student.

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I received an email from the other side of the world this morning. Someone had downloaded the equatorial sundial kit and found that it didn't work in the southern hemisphere!

I should have thought of that when I was making the model, the model is effectively flipped over relative to the sun once it crosses the equator. This means that the shadow will track across the dial from right to left rather than left to right.

Luckily it was a straight forward job to add a second dial for use in southern regions. Same as a before but with the number order reversed. The update model with updated instructions is available to download on the sundial page. If you are a member/subscriber or have purchased the model before it'll be available for free.

Useful Links:
Equatorial Sundial
Membership

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