Year end something or other

Well, I've been doing this carving thing for roughly four months now. Sometimes it seems like I'm not really getting much better, but I guess when you look at it from that perspective I'm doing fine. I don't have any more reflection. It's fun and I do it. Pretty simple really. +/-

The lion is finished, so for now enjoy these pictures. You can see the full set with all your comments in the finished projects section.

Completed lion:

The lion was always for my sister, but thanks to some fortunate timing and manipulation of the rules it was also able to fulfill my secret santa obligation. Of course, I have to make it extra entertaining, so I carefully boxed her gift and wrapped it with some nice Christmas wrapping paper. When she opened it she saw this:


She tends to cry when she's laughing hard. I didn't hurt her this time. She is also insisted on keeping the full block of wood that cost me $14. Couple more of her with the lion(s).


My brother also cheated to get me as his gift receivulator. He got me a sharpening stone for my knives.



The oil is freshly squeezed from my hair. I think it's olive oil.

On the fun riddle front there were really only a couple things this week. Mike sumbitted this guy, which no one actually answered. Are you going to let him win like that?



I gave you these two as well.

As usual, here are some answers.

For the triangle problem, the key is to realize that the two things aren't actually triangles. The red and green triangles in each picture have different slopes, so they don't actually make a straight line when joined up. One line is slightly indented and one bulges slightly. This accounts for the one missing block.

For the pool problem start by figuring out how many pools each pipe can fill or empty in one hour. This comes out to 1/3 and 1/6 filled and 1/9 emptied. Together they fill 1/3 + 1/6 - 1/9 pools in one hour. Multiplying by the .64 hours we want we get .25.

For the pyramid problem the fact that both must have the same mass means that the one with 1/7 density must have 7 times greater volume. While it helps to know the formula for volume of a pyramid, V = (1/3)Bh, it's enough to know that volume has units of some measurement cubed. Since all measurements in a scale model must increase or decrease proportionally, height will increase as a cube root of volume. This means the original height of 6 gets mulitplied my the cube root of 7, giving a final height of 11.48.

I'll be going to Florida for a week on Sunday, so nothing new for at least that long. When I get back I'll update the preview section and start something new. In the mean time feel free to entertain each other in my absence. By that I mean fill this thing up with racial slurs and jokes about moms and faces and what she said.