Thumping New York

Featured in 'The Ridiculant', Metro paper (1st Oct), we are urged to get reminiscent of the wonderful noise made by the school bike sheds with a lump of wood. Or, the tune of a stick dragged along metal railings - I remember that one. I guess we all thought this were passing childhood fads, but there is now a site dedicated to cataloguing all the things on the streets of New York that make a pleasing sound.

'The Thumping Guide to NYC' allows you to get involved, post your own vids and comments. I haven't given a taster here as I think the site is worth exploring, and I wouldn't want to put anyone off with a poor choice. Bollards, traffic cones, steel fences -strum, slap, crash, bang, wallop!...whatever you want. If anyone uploads, let me know here.

Creased creatures

Sipho Magona folded his first paper plane at just 5 years old, and fifteen years on he ran out of designs and so started to invent his own.

His intricate insects and ceased creatures will now feature in a British exhibition early next year -and they far from qualify in my opinion. Now, 29, this young artist turned his eye to nature and the environment, after winning dozens of design awards for installations and abstract light fittings. All of these can be seen on his personal website, which I have linked on his name at the beginning of this entry.

His incredible fish, insects, birds are so detailed that I'm not afraid to be honest, they literally trick my eye into believing they are real. We are all properly wondering about their worth; these creations pictured here sell for more than a massive £1,500! This is huge, perhaps excessive I think, but if it's any justification, each piece can take up to 20 hours to fold, and, more than 6 months to design.

If you fancy a go, the advice is to start with a single, square sheet of paper. Personally, this evidence of superior origami puts me completely off even having a go. Whatever I make now, I would be forever conscious how inferior it is. I never was good with folding, I don't think I'll start now -better to just sit back and admire on this one.