- monthly subscription or
- one time payment
- cancelable any time
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
The wild ramblings of an avid
chemistry student, computer savvy geek, fine purveyor of steampunk,
self-deploring fangirl, photographer, writer and creator of Sir
Persnickety "Snick" Tumblebug.
Warnings are listed in parenthesise after the name of the site.
Starfield (Motion sickness)
TouchEffects (Motion sickness)
Voronoi (Flashing/Phototsensitivity warning)
Coca Cola Dominos (Has audio)
Tumbler (Has audio)
Patatap (Flashing/Phototsensitivity warning)
Broken Self (Has audio)
Thisissand (Has audio)
Sphere (Motion Sickness)
This is the sort of music video that will make sense to Australians currently dying of heatstroke bECAUSE IT’S CURRENTLY 45-FUCKING-DEGREES.
This post is a variation on the tried-and-true balloon flour stress balls. These fidgets are made from water bomb balloons, which means they’re smaller, and more discreet – hopefully ideal for classes, lectures, or at work The fidgets are also filled with different materials – not just flour! This means that you can have half a dozen or more fidgets of different textures.
Materials
For this post, I’ve used kinetic sand, quinoa, play dough, and flour (pictured from left to right in the image below), but you can use practically anything. You might like to try legumes, water beads, marbles, silly putty, ordinary sand or clay. Go wild!
You’ll also need some small water balloons or water bombs.
All the materials I’ve used I either purchased at a junk shop, or in a supermarket.
Method
1. Place the filling material in a small dish or bowl.
2. Use your fingers to carefully stretch the neck of the balloon open (demonstrated in the gif below). Depending on what sort of water balloons you have, it can be very easy to pierce the latex with your finger nails.
3a. Scoop and the filling material into the balloon – I’ve used my free fingers (demonstrated in the gif below), but if dexterity is an issue for you, or you’re worried about making a mess, you might need another person to fill the balloons with a teaspoon.
3b. To fill the balloons with play dough, roll the dough into small balls that will fit through the neck of the balloon (demonstrated below). I also added a bit of water to mine, to try and prolong the life of the fidget - I’ve noticed that the play dough has a tendency to dry out over time.
4. When the balloon is full, remove your fingers and squish the air out of the balloon (shown in the gif below). Take care to do this gently, or the contents might squeeze out everywhere (this is especially true for flour). The more you compress the contents of the balloon, the firmer the texture will be.
5. Make sure all of the filling is in the body of the balloon, by pinching off, stretching the neck of the balloon, and working any material caught in the neck down with your fingers (See the image below).
6. Tie the neck of the balloon in a tight neat overhand knot, just as you would with any other balloon (as demonstrated below), and cut off the excess neck with a pair of sharp scissor. If your water balloons are especially thin, you might like to put the stuffed balloon inside another balloon, before tying it off.
And you’re done!
Go forth and fidget!
Notes
It’s worth mentioning that because the balloons are made from latex, they will perish over time. I’ve found that the kinetic sand I used perished the balloons faster than normal, but that might depend on what brand you buy. The balloons also don’t mix well oils – I have kept a vial of essential oil with my first set of finger fidgets, and the latex perished when the vial leaked.
If you’re allergic to latex, you might like to try using nitrile gloves. Nitrile doesn’t stretch as much as latex, but if you cut the fingers off the gloves, you’ll have a wider neck than a balloon, so you shouldn’t need to stretch it open as much anyway. Just fill it and tie it of the same as I’ve described above.
If you have limited mobility, dexterity or strength in your hands and fingers, you might have some success in using tweezers or pliers to hold the balloon open, just be careful not to nick or pierce the balloon. You might have more success getting someone else to hold the neck of the balloon open, while you fill it with your chosen contents.
There is also a method where you put the filling into an empty bottle and blow up the balloon. You then twist the neck of the balloon to keep the air in and stretch it over the neck of the bottle. When you turn the bottle upside down you can shake the filling into the balloon.
This means you can make larger fidgets, and can avoid touching the contents directly. Try looking for instructions for balloon DIY juggling balls. I’ve done them with lentils and flour.
If latex/other materials are a problem because of allergy disposable gloves or condoms can be a good source as they have more information on contents (non lubricated advised!).
Or look at their flour ball instructions, not checked them yet :)
(Prue from ActuallyADHD here)
This is a good point. I did know about the inflate and bottle method (in fact I saw it here, when exploring different ideas for the fidget toy post), and I made a few larger fidgets this way, but it’s almost impossible to find a bottle with an opening small enough for the little water balloons, and it’s really easy to tear them, whilst trying to stretch them over the neck of the bottle (believe me, I tried).
I was initially going to cover larger fidgets in this method, but the post was long enough as it was, and there is lots of information on that out there already.
Condoms are also a really brilliant suggestion, and one that I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years, so thanks.
YOU KNOW WHAT I’M MOST EXCITED ABOUT THIS ELECTION?
NOT HAVING TO MARK EVERY SINGLE FUCKING BOX BELOW THE LINE ON THE SENATE PAPER, JUST TO MAKE SURE ARSEHOLES DON’T GET IN ON MY VOTE, AFTER PREFERENCES.
HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH.
I don’t know if someone has already done this, but learning AUSLAN is on my list of things to do, so I though I’d compile a list of resources.
The Auslan Signbank provides a dictionary and videos of Auslan signs, as well as links to classes
Sign Planet has a whole bunch of work sheets, flash cards, games all based around Auslan, although some areas appear to require a subscription. It also has resources for NZSL, BSL and ASL.
The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children has an app, which includes 150 of the most common key phrases in Auslan, as well as videos on how to form the signs. It’s available for iOS here and Android here.
The RIDBC also has a more comprehensive Tutor app, which is $20 for Android, and $39.99 for iOS
If anyone wants to reblog and add more Auslan resources, that’s cool.
To the anon who sent me an ask two days ago (you know who you are):
Forgive me for not actually replying to you ask, but I don’t know how Tumblr’s search algorithms work anymore, and I really don’t have the spoons to accidentally start something right now.
I just wanted to say thank you.
Keep do you, Anon.
And thanks.
Waruu, one final question for you then. In Aboriginal storytelling, sometimes referred to as Dreamtime, is it true that fathers would warn their children not to leave camp, for fear of what the Hairypeople might do?
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Radar O'Reilly, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, Mentions of Trapper McIntyre, Mentions of Henry Blake, Mentions of Choon Hi
Additional Tags: Ace!Radar, Queer MASH, Queer Themes, Heteroromantic Asexual Radar, Period Typical Euphemisms, Asexuality, Light Angst, Squick free, ace friendly
Series: Part 2 of Queer Mash
Summary:
I have a long standing headcanon that Radar is so heteroromantic ace it’s not funny. So I took that scene from The Chosen People (S2E19) where Hawkeye confronts Radar about why he tried to take responsibility for a kid that wasn’t his, fleshed it out, and made it compatible with Ace!Radar.
Malcolm Turnbull. Head Boy.
For more than a decade, musical comedy group Axis of Awesome have sold out shows in Australia, Europe and the United States. Best known for ‘Four Chord Song’, they’ve released six albums and clocked over 120 million hits online.
But for a band with such a high profile, their singer, Jordan Raskopoulos had been keeping a secret for 32 years.
A month ago, after a year away from the touring circuit, Jordan uploaded a video to the band’s YouTube channel in response to fans questioning what had happened to the signature facial hair.
“The truth of the matter is there’s a very good reason for why I got rid of my beard,” read Jordan. “I am transgender. No shit. I’m a girl.”
YOU GUYS, I HAVE WATCHED THIS THREE TIMES SINCE IT AIRED LAST NIGHT AND IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!
THEY PERFORMED BIRDPLANE AND SHE CRIED AND I NEARLY CRIED (TWICE) AND I NEVER CRY.
WATCH IT.
When you’re doing group work, and your peers have this NT expectation that you’ll be able to have your part of the assignment done by the end of the week and you’re just like “ahhhh, no.”
Hey guys! Some of you may have noticed this blogs’ icon. It was made by the super talented and always wonderful Boots (@bootsssss), who also made my awesome kinkyasexuals icon. He’s graciously allowing me to share these designs with all of you, in case you want to share them with others or use them as an avatar or something. He just said he thinks it’s awesome when people like and want to use his designs, but I’m personally telling you that if you guys repost this or take credit away from him I will come and haunt you with the ghost of Jacob Marley, capisce?
These are awesome, but I have a natural bias towards green and purple and brains, so yeah.
I’M SORRY BUT CAN WE JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO APPRECIATED THAT THERE’S A TRAIN ON THE CITYRAIL NETWORK WHICH IS RUNNING 119 MINUTES EARLY?
I know we all rag on CityRail for the trains running late, but you guys!! They did a thing!! They made a train run so early, that if you went to the station to catch it, you’d be TWO HOURS too late.
That’s impressive.
So there’s been a lot of… shall we say, contention over the last day or so, but I would like to bring our attention back to what’s truly important (aside from whether geologists really do all those things with rocks): Fluffy Science Critters.
I don’t own a cat, but I do have a science rabbit, complete with #beakers and shit, which she promptly flicked off her mat the moment I had taken this photo.
look at this adorable science bun!
“Complete with beakers and shit”
Me: *goes to lab supply store*
Me: Do you have like… beakers and shit?
…
If i ever open up a lab supply and reagents store i am definitely calling it Beakers and Shit. I call dibs on it. It’s gonna be the next Sigma-Aldrich I am certain of that.
I would buy my lab gear at Beakers and Shit over Sigma-Aldrich any day.
Thank you for supporting “Beakers and Shit ©”
As a small private business we rely on your support and feedback. We are happy you chose our businesses for your science and lab needs supply. You can support us further by dropping by our blog @beakersandshit and following.
With best regards,
Mr. Rudescience,
CEO.The fact that my throw away tag for like, pictures of beakers has spawned a more elaborately joke about lab supplies is wild
Well. We started with some plastic shot glass beakers, a temperamental rabbit, and a hashtag, and look where we are now.
So my Functional Proteins and Genes lecturer dealing with oligosaccharides formats all of his slides like this:
But all I can think of is:
This reminds me of that marketing campaign NIB Insurance ran with a couple of years ago (it was a shocker):
On the topic of retro powerpoint themes, however, I’ll contribute these:
When giving this presentation, the lecturer actually commented “This kinda brings me back to when I was a student, and I thought this was the greatest, prettiest powerpoint theme that was around. Really trendy at the time. At least it’s not comic sans?”
As a side note, an abnormally high proportion of my lecturers seem to prefer dated electric blue gradients over other themes, apparently? I’ve only included the best two here, but I found at least 5 or 6 different examples from 5 or 6 different lecturers! Is it a generational thing? Who the fuck even knows!
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
"Basically the price of a night on the town!"
"I'd love to help kickstart continued development! And 0 EUR/month really does make fiscal sense too... maybe I'll even get a shirt?" (there will be limited edition shirts for two and other goodies for each supporter as soon as we sold the 200)