Modular Dice

Discussing Cycling Board games with Alyson.

Deconstrucable dice parts, the "1" side is made into the cube and the 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's are scattered around.

A few of the cubes 

The "1" dice close up.

Cad detail of "6".

Hi

Last Friday, I visited a friend Alyson, and she interviewed me for a chapter of a new edition of my bike book.  We were talking about my cycling board game and the very first version of the game I had envisaged and had a go at making.  This used alternatively numbered dice to give different bike types advantages in different races in a series of 6, where ultimately advantages average out over 6 races. Anyway, the game wasn't silly and given that I've made other game pieces, the whole concept seems worth pursuing again.

So anyway, here is the deconstructable dice I made when I got home. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out and when I get time (I have some study and a few other projects on) will incorporate the dice into a game,

If a regular dice is an atom, then this is muons and quarks. Or maybe just not-so-sexy protons and electrons. Interested to hear your comments, regards

26/12/2019: Update, I have put the files on thingiverse.  Eventually I will write them into a cycling boardgame. Here is the link. 

Steve Nurse

The Kids are Allright

Palm Beach Accommodatation

Bus to Gold Coast City

Bus to Gold Coast City

Walking to buy tickets to Bus to Gold Coast City

Cic, Jarrod, Richard, Lost Palms Brewery

Lost Palms Brewery, Cic drives the Lost Palms Brewery Van

Faser & Abby

Making Stock

Abby, Cic, Fraser

Cic, Fraser

Rich, Abby

Abby

Me!

Rich, Abby, a bicycle I fixed up (a bit)

Hi

A few weeks ago I spent a few days at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. My brother Richard was visiting from England, and two of his adult children live near the Queensland. New South Wales border, Cicely in Palm Beach and Fraser in Yamba. Anyway, Richard was flying up to the Goldie (Gold Coast) to visit them, and I decided to go along.

I rode to Mum and Dad's place on a Sunday morning, and we got a taxi from there to the Airport and a bit of a wait around for the flight. Cicely met us at the Goldie airport in her van, and we chugged down to Palm Beach and checked in to our accommodation then went on to Cicely's boyfriends work: a pub and brewery a bit closer to Gold Coast city. A bit later back at Palm Beach, Fraser and Abby turned up. They had driven an hour and a half or so from Yamba after their work and we got Pizza for dinner.

The next morning I went for a swim in the ocean which wasn't bad but I was a bit unused to the shallow sandbank and managed to bong my head on the sandbank and get a graze. Could have been much worse! We all went up to the Gold Coast city by bus and tram after that.  Both buses and trams were very efficient and we never had to wait too long. 

Schoolies, or "Year 12 breakup week" was on, and the city was slightly overrun by school leavers with "Schoolies" dog tags around their neck, and a large section of beach was being set up for a schoolies party. We had a coffee and an op-shop visit, and then we got back on the tram and bus to Burleigh Heads. Mercifully, this was beyond schoolies territory, and we did another caf and op-shop.

Cicely knew all the op shops in Palm beach and I visited all 3 of them when we got back to Palmy. Quite liked Palm Beach, it's not a very developed part of the Goldie and has all the shops and restaurants you might need within walking or cycling distance.  The whole Goldie is quite flat and there's a pretty relaxed attitude to bikes (lots of cruisers) and helmets (only worn about half the time despite them being compulsory).

We went round to Cice's the next night, had a few beers, and Fraser cooked a boned chicken (all the kids work in Hospo (Hospitality). It was a good night.  Next day after a swim, one of our mates from Melbourne (Jic) came around and we went out for a coffee but that was cut short, I had a call from a friend in Melbourne to say I was needed there because my wife Christine had had a fall.

Back at the accommodation I bought forward my flight back by 24 hours and caught a bus to catch an afternoon flight back to Melbourne, catching a bus to the city then a train home.  It was a nice short trip and the photos came out well so I thought I'd share them.

Best Wishes Steve Nurse

Audax Bling Display

Birth of the bling, after 1997 Around the Bay in a Day Ride  on my first reasonably capable recumbent.  My son Ewan is wearing bling collected on the day, seen.....

on display here (top row 2nd from right and bottom row, 2nd from left) for the first time in ages.

2 additions to the tower of bling as they come off the printer. This is an initial check for size.

The Audax 100 is a recent arrival from a Wagga Wagga ride. All the support material that is made along with the actual 3d prints is peeled away and recycled before the parts are used.

Early version of tower with skewers.

15!  I settled on bike spokes to hold the tower together (see left and right of pic, there are internal spokes as well ), they are free for me and relate to what is in the display.

Hi

Stop press, March 27, 2020

I have just uploaded 11 of the files to make badge mounts to the Thingiverse website, here is the link.  The badge set is up to date, I earned 2020 to 2023 French and Australian medals this year on Round the Bay and Great Ocean Road 200k rides.

Regards  Steve Nurse

For a while I have been visiting bike events, doing Audax rides like this recent one and Round the Bay in a Day rides like this.  And I often have ticked the box for, or just been handed, or plain and simple just bought the medals, bling and other trinkets on offer. And mostly they have been shoved in a small tin box to collect dust with their mates and a bucketload of brevet cards.

Anyway, that was up till a few weeks ago. I loaned out one surfing trophy to a friend and sent a few others minus their small plaques to the op shop and got rid of a few other bits and pieces like ribbons attached to medals.

So then the poolroom shelf was not quite so full and I set about designing a display for all the badges etc.  Modular seemed like the way to go, so I designed a basic skewered - or spoked together shape, then made cutouts to clip the badges into.  The design did not come out of the blue, its really an application for a kit design I've worked on before, and long ago I put a whole lot of New Zealand one dollar coins together in a rectangular frame. And the 3d printed things work, bringing all my hard won trinkets out on display for the first time ever really.

If you are interested in me making a similar set of badge or coin holders for you let me know.  Costs will be $12.00 per badge plus $50.00 per hour design time if you need new designs, plus postage. Maximum badge size is 58mm round.  You would need to drop me the badges you want mounted so I could measure them to make the right mount. To answer an obvious question, "can you make other colours?" the answer is "Yes, lots but I only have orange in stock.  Choose from this lot, you would have to pay the $23.00 cost of the filament roll plus about $10.00 delivery."

Best Wishes

Steve Nurse

Spinning Top and Roller Kit

Hi, I have added a CD hub to my 3d printing STL thingiverse download files.  Besides anything else you can do with it, the hub turns an old CD into a spinning top or rolling thing.  Here is the video showing the spinning top and a roller. 

The background for this design was working on clocks incorporating a CD to mount the face numbers. I am still working on that, but this design occurred to me along the way.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Tactile Tours at Fringe Furniture

Training with (Left to Right) Tom, Brigit, Amber, Karli and trainer Nilgun.

Kicking off the tour. This outdoor set of chairs was a great way to start.

Inside

Amber (centre) shows off her piece which is a metal / fibre tapestry in the form of a fly.

Talking and listening session after the tour which was universally well received and voted better than other tactile tours on offer in Melbourne. "Nothing was out of bounds" was a great feature of the tour. Despite conducting tours for 6 years, Nilgun is taking a prodigious set of notes. How can it be better next time? How was the transport? How could this approach be exported to other events?

More listening.

and more listening.

Hi

Over the last week I've had the pleasure of taking part in Fringe Furniture Tactile Tours.

These are billed as

"Get up close and personal with some of the most extraordinary objects on display at Fringe Furniture. Designed especially for people who are blind or vision impaired, an experienced accessibility guide will take you on an audio described tour - piece-by-piece - into every nook, cranny, curve and corner that these playful works boast."

Nilgun led both the training session and tour I attended and both were great. It is interesting to explore works from a tactile, non-sighted perspective and I was able to talk and hands-on touch visitors through the Ta-Da unveiler.  Everyone on the tour enjoyed themselves and provided great feedback. Next tour is Saturday September 28 when Tom Dempster will be speaking.

Regards  Steve Nurse

Fringe Furniture Talks

This chair from Holmesglen tafe students is brilliant, the whole thing made from one component, a boomerang shaped piece of ply, and ........

here is its blurb. Their Topographical table was shown in this recent post.

Tom Dempster's.........

retracting table was a hit at the show and here is Tom holding forth about it with exhibition organiser Brigit.

Lucas's blurb

about his CROBO seat.  Upcycled timber, formed into letters, formed into a chair.

Christine Nurse with Giorgia Pisano and Freddy Marta Mendoza. Georgria and Freddy chilling out on the Brandon Chair,.....

They exhibited this piece......

and talked about it (the hanging boards) at a Sunday afternoon session,

and here is their blurb.

Kenton Rogers is a regular volunteer and serial-offending artist at fringe Furniture. Here he is talking to Bridget about his lamp and

...... here is his blurb.

A few more of the Sunday afternoon talks,  this one by a group of collaborating designers from Habio.....

and this blue stool is by Richardson Waite, a design pairing from 2 fnal year RMIT students, here is their insta account.

Hi

As mentioned previously, some of my work is at Fringe Furniture 33.  Its a fun exhibition with lots of interesting designs and designers around, so its nice to visit.  For the last 2 Sundays Christine and I have been to the artist tours (Next and last is 3pm Sunday, September 9, 3pm, Rosina Hall, Abbotsford convent). So here are a few pics from recent talks and other visits.