Three building tricks from umamen

One thing this blog hasn't covered very much is building techniques. Flickr user umamen (whose General Grievous figure we recently blogged) has recently posted a trio of useful building tricks that I think the rest of us would benefit from seeing. 

First off, here's how to make a "rounded cube" or "ball" using a little SNOT and some nice use of flower elements: 

Next, here's a simple yet effective angling technique using the new(ish) skeleton arms: 

umamen has put both the above techniques to good use in this little robot:

Finally, this is probably the technique that the most of our readers already know about, but it's a great one to know if you don't already. If you separate the two parts of LEGO's lever/joystick element, you can stick the skinny part inside a 1x2 grille tile, which has several useful applications, as seen here:

We'll try to feature a bit more "building tips and tricks" content here on The Brick Bucket, even just by pointing out interesting ones we see in MOCs we blog.