The other day, my good friend M. gave me a present, just for being me. And as if that wasn’t fantastic enough, it was even something I liked! Well, something I adore to death would be more precise. Here it is:

Neocube

It’s called a Neocube. What you’re looking at is 216 small, individual but devilishly magnetic balls that have here been arranged to form a cube. Getting it to look like that is quite a feat, since the balls just do their own thing most of the time, but after some practice it gets much easier. Here’s a funky video of some other stuff this sucker can do:

And it seems like more people are quick on the uptake: here is the neocube, pictured with other cube presents I have received in the past year:

What are my friends trying to tell me? Here they are again, after Phil and I had created art out of them with the addition of a tuning fork:

Art

Ah, the life of a freelance translator. And of course, this wouldn’t be a Brentusfirmus post on geometry without the appearance of a snub disphenoid or two. And on the train on the way back from Berlin last Monday, I discovered that 216 balls is exactly enough to make two of them. Here they are, nestled quietly on a copy of Eugene Onegin in Dutch:

And one more picture of the neocube, this time incognito beside an exquisite deep-fried Dutch bitterbal: