Paguro-idea

The job-hunting season approaches here.  In a sense, my classmates and I are outgrowing our old shells, and now need to select and compete for our new shells, our new selves, and, in a sense, our new homes.  But there is nothing new under the sun, and we are simply playing out our pale imitation of what has been, continues, and has yet to pass.

Consider the hermit crab.  It may be as good a metaphor for the modern student as any, choosing some façade in a panic at every new stage, and attempting to persist in it until the next stage of our growth forces us into the open, soft, vulnerable, and malleable, until we can scramble into our next identity.  And nothing is wasted - the old shells are downcycled to our eager successors.

The metaphor only struck me after my design idea, though.  For a while now, I have been extremely interested in the workings of Theo Jansen's walking linkage, and now, I have gained access to a 3-D printer (specifically, a Makerbot Replicator).  Naturally, much of my spare time has been dedicated to considering what I may make with the printer, and the idea of a toy version of the linkage came up.  However, the bare mechanism would not do - it had to have a structure, a context!

Fortunately, I found that in looking at several great animations of this mechanism, ones which, looking at only the front limbs, suggested something skittering about, some sort of arthropod.  At the same time, I was considering the benefits of such legs over wheels, and one advantage I noted was that, for every height of clearance below the axle, the mechanism needed less space above it than in a wheel.  The idea then turned to  a Jansen mechanism under a bowl - with just the legs protruding out - and the rest followed through to hermit crabs.

Now I just needed to give it a purpose.  This brings us to the jumping-off point.  These fairs generally feature  trinkets from each company as it tries to imprint its brand upon its prospective applicants; now, I can turn the process on its head with a toy of my own.