Flex mad

Yes, indeed. At almost 65 years of age I have become a flex maniac.

The thing is, I recently read Richard Feynman's book Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman. I was so fascinated with Feynman that I searched out a biography of the man and found one written by James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.

In this biography, brief mention is made of the discovery of the flexagon by Arthur Stone, a British colleague of Feynman's at Princeton University. Other students at the university became so fascinated with this apparently simple construction, made out of nothing more than a folded strip of paper, that they set up a committee to study the flexagon in its various configurations. One of the members was, needless to say, Richard Feynman.

Research into this interesting but apparently frivolous topic came to a halt with the war effort (Feynman went on to work on the development of the first atomic bomb, for example) and little more was heard of flexagons until Martin Gardner published an article about them in a 1956 edition of Scientific American.

Well, I've always liked paper-folding and have a sort of unfulfilled interest in maths (largely destroyed through conventional teaching methods), so flexagons sounded like something I needed to know more about. And, thanks to the Internet, that's a goal that is easy enough to achieve nowadays.

You might well enjoy making and playing with flexagons yourself, so here are some of the best sites that I have found. They range from simple starter sites to rather more complex ones that go into the theory behind these fascinating objects.

Jill Britton's Let's Make a Flexagon site is a good place to start if you've never made a flexagon before and want an easy introduction to see what it's all about. She shows you how to make a trihexaflexagon (one with six sides and three faces), including a video on how to fold it (folding is called flexing in flexagon-speak), and a full-sized template to print out. (The image accompanying this entry shows one of the faces of this flexagon.)

Aunt Annie's Crafts offers a good page for beginners, too. The first page presents numerous patterns and templates for trihexaflexagons and a sort of hidden link takes you to a second page with patterns and templates for hexahexaflexagons. (And there's another links for tritetraflexagons, those with three faces and four sides).

Keith Enevoldsen's Think Zone includes a page about flexagons that presents a very good looking example of a hexahexaflexagon (six sides and six faces) that Keith designed himself. Full instructions and templates are provided in a linked PDF. Excellent stuff.

Scott Sherman's Flexagon site is about as comprehensive as you'll find, with models ranging from the very simple to the very complex. Video instructions and demonstrations accompany plenty of templates that can be printed out for cutting and folding. Superb.

Flexagon.net also offers a wide selection of fascination flexagons. The site is perhaps more technical than Scott's and not as pleasant to navigate, but you'll still find plenty of variation and lots of templates.

Gathering for Gardner offers plenty of everything to do with flexagons, including a full collection of Vi Hart videos about the creatures and several excellent templates.

I am sure that there are many, many more resources out there, but I think that's enough to be getting along with. So from now on you have no excuse for being bored or having nothing to do. Get folding and flexing!

A New Arrival!

The first sign that a new arrival was on its way came at about nine o'clock in the morning when the phone rang and we were informed that a delivery was on its way and would be arriving in some fifteen minutes!


About twenty minutes later we were taking care of what was clearly a very precious package.

 A 10 cm dilation revealed the first signs of the precious contents. The excitement was so great that I just had to go to the toilet!












With some gentle persuasion and the odd push or two, the package was guided carefully out of the opening. It was covered with a white shroud.











With the shroud removed, the newborn could be seen, though it was still in the foetal position. Another gentle tug and it was released from its afterbirth and umbilical cord.















Then it opened up to reveal its true glory: an Apple MacBook Air, 13" screen, with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD.

Vital statistics:

• Height: from 0,3 to 1,7 cm
• Width: 32,5 cm
• Depth: 22,7 cm
• Weight: 1,35 kg

Let's Have a Ball

Elise wanted some basil the other day. Not he of Fawlty Towers fame, but the herb: she adds it to tomatoes, pasta, and various other concoctions.

She likes to use fresh basil, so I had to take her to one of the local garden centres, Naturplant, to buy a plant. And a very nice plant it was, too (actually, she bought two).

While we were at the garden centre, we also took a look at the cacti. They usually have a good selection of small cacti and now was no exception. This time, however, they clearly had recently had a delivery of larger cacti. Elise called me over to see on, a beautiful Echinocactus grusonii.

Well, we hadn't intended to buy a cactus, but this was an excellent specimen and the price was also right, so it didn't take us long to decide to purchase it.

The Echinocactus grusonii has a diameter of just about 55 cm. and a circumference of about 170 cm., so it's quite a size. The person who delivered it estimated it to weigh at least 40 Kg. I estimate it to be between thirty and forty years old.

Popular names for Echinocactus grusonii include Golden Barrel Cactus, Golden Ball, or, my favourite, Mother-in-Law's Cushion.

If you'd like to learn more about the care of Echinocactus grusonii, the best site I've found is this one.

A while ago we visited Cactus d'Algar, a wonderful botanical garden at Callosa d'en Sarrià (inland from Benidorm, close to the Fuentes del Algar) devoted to cacti. There we saw this huge field of Echinocactus grusonii:

Elise will have to buy a lot more basil for us to reach that stage!

Now, about the repotting…

All Quiet on The Belgian Front

We were back in the hospital today to have a chat with the surgeon who performed the operation on Elise last week and then to have the staples removed. All fine; no complaints.

We had a cup of coffee there after having had Elise de-stapled and cleaned up. The packet of sugar came with a good message again: "El que quiere hacer algo encuentra un mediao, el que no, una excusa."

That translates to "He who wishes to achieve something will find a way; he who doesn't will find an excuse."

Makes me think of all the foreigners here who still can't speak Spanish after having been here for several years: they, too, find plenty of excuses. Agreed, it is difficult to learn a foreign language when you are not actually living in a country in which that language is spoken, but when you are surrounded by millions of native speakers…

Anyway, to eliminate all possible excuses, there's a great new free way to learn Spanish, wherever you are in the world. It's called Say Something In Spanish. Of course, it's not a miracle course and some effort will still be required, but it's by far the best way that I know of learning a language without actually immersing yourself in the language.

If you understand Welsh and you'd prefer to learn through a Welsh medium, simply go to Say Something In Spanish Cymraeg and you'll be in your element. (This is also a great way to practise your Welsh, of course!)

Oh, and if you want to learn Welsh, then try Say Something in Welsh. Ardderchog!

Sweet thoughts

We received a call from the hospital last Wednesday to tell us that Elise could go in for her hiatus hernia operation on Thursday, instead of Friday. As a result we were up far too early on Thursday morning in order to be at the hospital by seven-thirty and by eight-thirty Elise was in a bed, being wheeled in the direction of the operating theatre.

All went very well. Amazing, really, just five small cuts, three of about half a centimetre and to of about a centimetre. Elise was walking around on Thursday afternoon and we were back home by Friday evening.

I stayed at the hospital, too, and whilst there I ate at the restaurant. Excellent food and excellent coffee. The sugar that comes with the coffee is provided in paper sachets and each sachet carries a little piece of wisdom. The one shown here reads, "Más vale ser un loco feliz, que ser normal y amargado." This translates to "It is better to be a happy fool than normal and bitter."

Very true.

46 (más o menos…)

Here's the international version:

Penblwydd hapus i ti
Joyeux anniversaire
Happy birthday, Elise
Cumpleaños feliz


Ah, yes, another year has passed, and so SWMBO celebrates her 46th birthday (with apologies to Eric Morecambe, they are all the right digits, but not necessarily in the right order).

The event was duly noted a few days ago with a trip to El Corte Inglés in Elche, one of Elise's favourite hideaways, where she bought numerous items to soften the blow, including yet another handbag to add to the collection.

To celebrate even further (is there no stopping?), she goes into hospital on Friday for a hiatus hernia operation. Hopefully, she will be back home by Saturday evening and all will once again be well with the inner workings.

Gelukkige verjaardag, Elise!

A Couple of Shakes

We live in a reasonably active area, at least as far as seismic activity is concerned. And earthquakes have no respect for a good night's rest, so at about twenty past five this morning, we were shaken awake by quite a good rumble. The epicentre of this nocturnal motion (if you'll pardon the expression) was literally just up the road form us, as can be seen in the map to the left (click on it for a larger image), provided by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional. The maximum magnitude was 2.8 and here in El Raso it was probably about 2.7. Not bad for a night's work.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, this afternoon, at about twenty-five past three, there was a nasty little blip, which felt as if it was just below us. This time the epicentre was first reported by the Instituto to have been just off the coast, next to the lake at the bottom of El Raso, but that information was later corrected, to place the epicentre to the north-west of Guardamar, as can be seen in the following map:

This rumble had a magnitude of 3.2.

Who knows? There might be more to come, so batten down the hatches; make everything ship-shape and Bristol-fashion.