I built a Mobile Suit Gundam Model, And Here's Why You Should Too. And More!
Warning: Pieces may fly up and disappear... Speaking from experience đ
TL;DR:
Gunpla is your next fun model kit building hobby!
A man decides to create his own toll road without Government approval⌠And gets away with it?
The Library of Babel, where everything that has been or will ever be written, is writtenâŚ
What is Gunpla?
You may [or may not] have heard of Mobile Suit Gundam (MSG). MSG is an Anime from the 1970âs, with new shows still coming out until today. It is somewhat relatable to Star Wars, but certainly different, where Earth has evolved to live in pods that orbit other planets in our solar system that offers everything Earth can, sort of like biospheres. Governments clash and wars break out. A main military tool that is used are these monstrously sized mobile suits, which are giant robots controlled by a human inside them. I donât want to spoil much of the show, but it is a really unique story and very enjoyable to watch.
So where does the name Gunpla come from?
Gunpla stands for Gundam Model Kit. The model kits allow you to create your own mobile suit characters from the Anime. These are an absolute blast to build! I recently built one myself and hope you choose to look into getting into it for yourself, I highly recommend it.
Sounds interesting! So how do I get started?
To start, pick a kit. You can find many on Amazon here. Once you find one you like, check some reviews on YouTube or in the Amazon reviews on the one youâre looking at, to see what other peopleâs experience was building it.
There are certain âgradesâ, or tiers of kits, which range in complexity and size. For your first kit, I would recommend a High Grade for a simple but fun build, and a Master Grade if youâre looking to have a longer experience building it. I went with the Wing Gundam Zero 1:100 Master Grade kit, and it was a lot of fun building, and took about 6 hours.
Next youâll need some tools. Since you need to cut each piece from the runners, which are injection molded boards that contain all of the pieces, so to do that youâll firstly need a pair of nippers / clippers. Most fans of the hobby recommend the GodHand nippers. I went with these and they were only about $14, and they worked perfectly for my build.
You might also want an X-Acto knife, which will allow you to remove any piece of plastic that came from the runner, to make the pieces look flush and more realistic. But be careful! Theyâre quite sharp.
Lastly you might find a cutting mat can help you stay organized and allow you to not ruin any surface youâre going to be cutting or working on. I went with this one and it worked really well.
OK I got my first kit, but how do I read the instructions? Itâs all in Japanese!
Thankfully, even though these kits are made in Japan, and are for the Japanese market, the instructions are actually easy to understand once you know what to do. So on the runners, youâll find a letter defining each runner. So runner A, runner B, etc. Then on each piece thatâs on a runner will have itâs own number. So C12 means go to runner C, and find piece #12, and cut it out. Look closely at the instructions on how they orient the pieces and where the arrows show how they connect, and follow step by step, as you put together your kit. If you have any trouble, check on YouTube to learn a bit more about how the instructions are formatted. I recommend this video by Otaku ME. But remember, you do not need to know any Japanese, donât worry! đ
Oh, and have fun! Once youâre done, youâll have an amazing character with complex joints that allow you to show off your character in a unique fighting pose. Enjoy!
Hereâs a video of Adam Savage of MythBusters building his first kit:
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A Man Builds His Own Toll Road Without Government Approval
So a man decided to build a toll road. The government wasnât happy, but he didnât break the law! Smart fellow.
Check out one of Tom Scottâs videos explaining how the man did it here:
The Library of Babel, Where Everything That Has Been, or Will Be Written, Is Written
The Library of Babel is a website that contains every single piece of text that ever was, is, or will ever be written or spoken. Seriously. How?
So the way the Library of Babel is designed is actually based upon math. By using algorithms to generate "seedsâ of pages from Binary all the way to Base 29 [for all 26 letters plus the comma, period, and space characters], you can end up with any piece of 3,200 character text that will ever exist inside the Library. There is a search bar, which you can type in anything youâd like⌠yes, literally anything, and it will take you to the page that contains your phrase.
The Library is organized in hexagon rooms, with bookshelves, 5 shelves per bookshelf, books on the shelf, and pages in the books. You can browse through the rooms, click on any book shelf, and open any book, and you most certainly will find⌠gibberish. Yep, nearly the entire Library pretty much contains a bunch of gibberish. But, in there, somewhere, contains every single thing that has ever been spoken or written. Itâs massive. But what humans find to be valuable phrases and words are miniscule in comparison to the vast amount of combinations of words that can exist using 29 text characters.
Let me break down how it works a bit easier: Say we make a Library of abc. Thatâs it, just the letters a, b and c. And we use an algorithm to create every single combination of 3 word characters using just those letters. aaa, aab, aac⌠Etc. all the way to ccc. In there, you will end up with words like cab, or baa, and so on but the rest of it will be words that donât apply to the English language. So the Library of Babel created the same thing, but with all 29 characters, and told it to make 3,200 character combinations using all 29 of those characters. And there you go. Anything that can fit into 3,200 characters, not to mention searching for the next part of a book, speech, or phrase past those 3,200 character limit to find the entire thing all exists inside the Library of Babel. Give it a try! Click here to begin exploring The Library of Babel, and maybe youâll stumble upon something that has never been spoken, or written, to then call your own.
Hereâs a video where Michael from Vsauce explains a bit more on how it works (video starts at 17:11):
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