Okay, it’s 2020 now I guess. I’ve been making Golden Mean Calipers for about 10 years now. In 2019 I wrote 2 blog posts… that’s not enough to achieve the various purposes of writing blog posts, among which are: – to learn what you think – to show people you’re still alive – to show google (et al) you’re still alive – to maybe (hopefully) make the world a more interesting place So I kindof need to do this… but I can’t just carry on “finding things that look like examples of the Golden Mean, then writing about them”. I can’t do that for over 10 years. Need to do something different. So Instead of writing about The Golden Mean I’m going to write about art, and things that I find interesting. This time round, it’s for curiosity, which always was (I guess) my first love. I’ll also try to…

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I thought it might be useful for people to be able to compare all the calipers on the one page, so I made a comparison chart. Caliper Description Smallest measurement Largest measurement Price (USD) Most often used by Small Calipers 120mm or 4.5″ high – smallest of the 3-armed calipers 9.5mm or .37″ 189mm or 7.5″ $65 Beauticians Artists working with detail, or smaller pieces Dentists (working with photos or screens) Craftspeople Medium Calipers 180mm or 7.2″ high – the original design. Also available as a heavy-duty 2mm thick version (ask if you’d like these) 13.4mm or .57″ 320mm or 12.8″ $85 Artists Luthiers Farriers Teachers / Education Dentists (working with photos or screens) Craftspeople Large Calipers 320mm or 12.8″ high – These are the largest calipers I make – just over a foot long. People usually buy these as a set of three… because that way you get the…

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Over the years, I’ve built up a collection of Golden Ratio Calipers… and I decided it might be quite useful for people if I made a video comparing them. Some of them are really good – some terrible. So I set up my camera… and found that my video-space looked a bit bare… needed a painting. So I decided to make a video of me painting a painting – to demonstrate how the golden ratio works with artistic composition. It was a semi-controlled crash from start to finish with things going wrong almost immediately: But it turned out ok in the end. I was using the large (320mm (just over 1 foot)) calipers available here There is a far far better video from Stephen Silver describing how the golden ratio can be used with composition here: He’s a proper graphic-artist though – I’m an engineer/musician, so struggle with the practicalities…

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Fairly amazing video going into the maths of why flowers (and pine-cones, relative leaf positions etc) are so often based fibonacci numbers. And it’s fairly amazing because I actually understood it. It’s been a loooong time since I tangled with quadratic equations, but (on the 2nd watch) this did actually make sense to me. I always thought that with seeds and sun-flowers etc, the fibonacci sequence came first (because it (magically) gives the minimal elastic-tension between seeds), and the golden-ratio came as a result of that. This video gives a fairly cogent explanation as to why it’s actually the golden ratio that comes first… to minimise radial “spoking”… and therefore tension between seeds, or leaves shading each other. Which is a relief in a way, because I prefer maths to “mystery”… although as far as I am concerned it is still magic. Mathematics is magic that actually works fairly reliably.…

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I was tinkering with these colours a while back… and then someone with exceptional taste and style made a big order for a whole range of coloured ones… and every one was all “ooh!!!” So I made some for the local art gallery – and they all sold as well. So I made enquiries about getting a lot more of that type of acrylic… and most of it is either in fairly limited supply, or sold out completely. My normal acrylic suppliers just laughed. New Zealand is one of those countries that “runs out of things”. The screws and the magnets for example… I quite often have search in Australia to find them. Acrylic (weirdly enough) is quite heavy… so costs a lot to ship, so doesn’t tend to come in to the country unless someone’s buying an entire shipping container all at the same time – and the rest…

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