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Wow, you guys should see the rain outside my window right now.

But instead, I'm going to take you on a tour of Sam's Chicago Week! That's right...time for a PHOTO POST. PREPARE FOR SHINY ROCKS!

( The Lizzadro Museum of Shiny Things, plus some posters. )

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I have been reasonably good about doing origami this week, but not so much about posting it. Ergo, you get two photo posts in one day!

( A slew of origami behind the cut... )

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My Sugru arrived today!

cat63 recommended this stuff to me. It comes out of the package like soft plasticene and hardens into flexible silicon -- I haven't had it long enough to road test its cured state yet, though the smaller project I did is already hardened and seems to be fine. I bought a six-mini-pack envelope and have so far fixed a problem with my headphone caddy (sealed the gap the cord kept slipping out of) and set to work to build a fitted plug for my bathtub, which for reasons I don't even want to talk about won't take a standard plug.

I figured I wouldn't have all that much use for this stuff, so I didn't buy very much, but now that I have it I want to go through my flat finding ways to use it. I've been paging through the gallery of "hacks" -- Sugru's motto is "Hack Things Better" -- and it's an interesting mixture of repairs, art, and quite a bit of accessibility/accomodation stuff: pads on crochet hooks and scissor handles, customised grips on phones, extended props for laptop computers, extended bases to keep cups from tipping over (I'm planning to build a base my hourglass can sit on) and one hack that marked which lightswitch was which in the bathroom. Some people have enlarged key heads by wrapping Sugru around them, which looks pretty cool.

Point is, I suppose, that I haven't fully road-tested the stuff yet, but I'm reasonably sure it's not a rip-off, and it's a really cool product for do-it-yourselfers, plus those of you with dexterity and hand-strength issues may want to look into Sugru as an accessibility aid. It's not cheap -- twelve mini-packs is $18-$20 -- and you have to use it within six months or it goes bad. But if you scroll to the bottom of the purchase page they have a teeny tiny link you can click to buy a six-mini-pack envelope for $12 instead, to try it out.

SAM STARBUCK: PLAYING WITH FIRE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. :D

(no subject)

I've just been actually catching up on the news about the Oslo bombings and the youth camp shooting that were reported earlier, and -- I don't really know what to say. One must say something.

I think really the only thing to be said is that Norway is a nation in mourning and we see and acknowledge your pain and (I can only imagine) your fear and loss. I know we have some Norwegian readers here on the journal and I want to say I'm sorry, that what happened today is terrible almost to the point of incomprehensibility. I don't think there's any help I or the Cafe at large can offer, but if there is I trust you won't hesitate to ask. You are in our thoughts.

And that's all there really is to say, I think.