Growing Up

Posted on by

I was thinking of getting a couch or something for my room, somewhere for guests to lounge around.

Fuck new couches. I now have a ball pit in my room.

I talked a little bit to Mike Machenry, who built a ball pit last year after reading my comic about it. The big problem with ball pits is that they’re expensive. Filling a room costs on the order of $4000, give or take. You can use this calculator (set up by relsqui of #xkcd) to find the cost for a given room. I’d use 64% for the packing efficiency — that’s about what I’ve found.

So given the expense, I didn’t fill my whole room — just an area the size of the bed, to a depth of a couple feet — and even that cost as much as a reasonable couch. The cost was as high as it was largely because Mike strongly recommended crush-proof balls, which allows for a lot more roughhousing but cost about twice as much as regular ones on eBay.

But it was totally worth it. After seeing how much fun it is to lounge around in it, we’ve decided to get together and build a larger one in the living room and throw parties there (though we want to solve the cleaning problem first in a scalable way). The day we put it up, we spent probably twelve hours, on and off, lounging around throwing plastic balls at each other. It’s totally worth it, and everyone’s excited about expanding it. It’s wonderful to be able to wake up and roll sideways, blanket and all, into a ball pit, and sink slowly down to the bottom. I’ve padded it with pillows and blankets to make it more fun to, uhh, wallow, or whatever the appropriate verb is for ball pits.

And before you jump to comment — over the last 24 hours we’ve completely exhausted all the balls-related innuendo, so you needn’t bother.

Here are some more pictures:

Abby, on the left, descends slowly into the balls. We never did find her again.

As Mike discovered, you can sort the balls pretty quickly by throwing only certain colors away from yourself.

Everyone I know seems to use Fujitsu Lifebooks. <3 ultraportables.

To the above situation, we can only say:

514 thoughts on “Growing Up”

  1. ThemePark Says:

    November 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
    jeszjesz, I think that is due to this:

    ?And before you jump to comment ? over the last 24 hours we?ve completely exhausted all the balls-related innuendo, so you needn?t bother.?

    I’m crushed. But hey, at least my balls are OK. (Couldn’t help it)

  2. Pingback: Peter Westwood » ballpit

  3. Pingback: .: GuySmiley.ca :. » Blog Archive » When I Grow Up…

  4. Its a natural reaction that can be scientifically explained, why would any creator make this part of your brain, and then expect you not to use it?

    I’ve heard God is also fond of Freeze Tag and Hopscotch.

  6. Risk assessment.

    Average height of a person in United States: Male: 178cm Female: 163cm
    Now the height to submerge ones knees (if you are of average height) would be 2 ft, providing ample joy and hysterical fits of giggling.

    HOWEVER!!!

    At average, a person’s palm sits approximately 2.5 feet off the floor. You would think now, that it would be safe to swing your arms freely and not inadvertently throw balls at breakable objects.

    Insert risk.

    Nintendo Wii controller:
    Profile: Approx.
    6 inches length.
    Hard.
    Weighty.
    Devastatingly brutal ability to launch a plastic ball.

    This extension of the hand, although partially overlapped by the hand, reduces the gap between safety and mayhem to a mere 3 inches!!!

    People, we have a risk potential here of property damage, assault charges, insurance fraud, and worse.

    Methods of reducing that risk include:
    1. Not having 25000 plastic balls in your apartment (drastic option only to be employed by court order).
    2. Grow 3 inches. Naturally, platforms, or a book. It doesn’t matter.
    3. Hire a man with a velociraptor to roam the halls of your apartment block whereby all people curious to know why they are being assaulted by brightly coloured balls become more intrigued by why they are being eaten by an extinct lizard.

    The choice is yours.
    Choose wisely.

  8. Oh god, where am I? How did I get here? What blog linked me here? What’s going on? What…oooo, ball pits!
    Best blag ever.
    Best idea ever.
    Best gift ever?

  9. Glad to see I’m not the only one spouting off the virtues of the Fujitsu Ultra portable. I’ve had my Lifebook 7010D for a few years now and still no complaints, other that the tricky hinge it’s had since I dropped it :D .

  12. After reading some of the comments here, I suggest you resolve the “how to clean the ball pit” question BEFORE you resolve the question of “what is it like to have sex in a ball pit?”

  13. Pingback: ssaidoor.com » Blog Archive » Oh Noes, a Meme!

  14. Just don’t let any little kids in there…because what they do in ball pits is just disturbing. Love that net idea someone posted for cleaning. Also handy if someone drops their car keys. Happy New Year, by the way!

  18. You sound like my mind twin, with a better education.

    If you’re ever in Glasgow, I’m the one who walks in the rain with my face turned to the wind.

  20. Sorry I didn’t make it through all the comments, so if someone beat me to the nitpicking correction of the physics observation….

    The balls returning to chaotic order is exactly what’s expected. If they’d stayed sorted through sex, a party, repeated falling out of bed or washing–THAT would confound the second thermo principle; unless a bunch of little ball wallowing demon’s (named Max?) continually wallowed and threw particular colors away from them.

    And somewhere Tom Pynchon is probably yelling, “&#$^@!!! They stole the key theme of my next novel!!”

  21. My Hovse at Caltech actually made a very large ballpit several years ago, entirely funded by two guys’ participation in psych experiments. Unfortunately, the original balls are being depleted quickly–especially, for unknown reasons, the purples. So thanks for the link to the crush-proof balls!

  26. Awesome idea XD It sounds like a much better replacement for a sofa.

    I’ll consider this as a future plan for my house ;)

  27. This is where my next $1000 will be going. I always wanted one, and now I know where I can buy the balls.

    Awesome work

  28. I had a plan a while ago to fill my linnen closet with ball pit balls with the intention of tricking people who hadnt been over to open it.
    I somehow managed to get 400-500 from friends who for what ever reason had balls they were throwing out.
    They are awesome fun manny a ball fight brokeout, unfrotunately I never got near the 2 or 3 thousand I’d need to fill the closet.

  29. Pingback: This is Omar’s blog » Blog Archive » Because we’re grown ups…

  31. Hi i am a teen from NJ and i am a senior this year and my school is not very big so for out senior prank my class mates and i wanted to turn the 9th and 10th grade locker area into a 2 foot deep ball pit we determined it would be like an area that is 14 feet wide and 27 feet long it i a ton of balls i know we dont know where to go to try to get this many do u have any idea for me to start looking

  34. Pingback: Do we have the balls to do something like this? | tsoosayLabs

  35. Pingback: Office Ball Pit

  36. Looks like mad fun, but also–could this be the most ergonomic laptop working environ ever? I mean, you could shift around and support yourself and orient your screen and keyboard everywhichway. Or no? Carpal tunnel sufferers want an excuse to justify ball-pit cost!

  37. Pingback: How to pick up women

  38. Pingback: How to pick up women

  39. Pingback: Things You Can Do With Lots of Balls « TGAW

  41. There is a lot to be said about geeky people (grownups actually) enacting childhood dreams…all of which I will not say here.

  44. Pingback: Matts Blog » Sofa

  47. Pingback: Paris Hilton Sex Tape Video 2 - Paris Hilton Exposed *HOT*

  48. Pingback: plastic tub

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>