I’ve been putting in a ton of effort recently for the Global Jukebox, for an upcoming push to live and a designing and spec’ing a subsequent new feature set for education that we’re planning to deliver this summer. I’ve also finally had the time circle back and properly learn the keyboard parts for a bunch of tunes that we’ve recently added to the rock band set list, and practicing vocals too.
But the main event for this post is that I just got back from Origami Heaven in Stonybrook Long Island. This is a regional origami convention that his been more fun and interesting for me every year. Unfortunately, it sounds like this will be the last year because it’s alot of work for the organizers. Thank you Shri and Rachel for putting on a great convention all this time.
I spent most of my time hanging out with Ryan Charpentier and Paul Frasco. Plus there was a group of people from L.A. and Pennsylvania who turned out to be interesting and alot of fun and coming from the ComiCon scene.
I taught two classes. One was my blimp. This time I took a two-hour session and it worked out well. The class was smallish and there were a few non-expert level folders, but I was able to give everyone enough instruction that they all ended up folding a nice model. The other model was my Platypus, which also went over well.
Saturday night a few of us were hanging out at the hotel bar, and the chef who was preparing the dinner came out and asked us to fold a couple models for him. One was a dinner plate, for which I came up with a new, nice design.
A few of us stayed up talking and folding well into the night. I created another new model, a Catamaran, inspired by our recent sailing adventures in the Caribbean.
An aside — by coincidence, the night before Jeannie and I and Jay from my jazz group wen to see T. S. Monk at a place called the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown. They’ve been open about a year and I’ve heard it’s a great place. Jay does a better job than I do of keeping up with what music acts are coming to town, so he often invites me to shows. The T. S. Monk band was great, and featured a lineup of three horns, a tenor and alto sax, and a trumpet, plus a rhythm section, and they brought out a vocalist who could scat like Ella. T. S. himself plays the drums, and they did alot of tunes by his father famed piano genius Thelonious Monk. The piano player in the band had a very unMonklike style, smooth and lyrical rather than angular and percussive. It fit the music very well.
Anyway on the way out of the venue we ran into my friend Bob who was waiting to get in for the late show. It turns out Bob, who is big into sailing, had just got back from a trip to the Caribbean too. He was sailing for two weeks on a 40′ Catamaran that he hired with several other couples. He described it as “an RV with sails”.
So I had sailing on my mind, and was vaguely toying with the idea of making an Origami Sun and Sea book to follow up my Origami Air and Space book. I’m very happy with the way this came out. I can be folded in less than ten minutes and works with all kinds of paper.
Michelle joined us Sunday morning and at lunchtime we walked around the Stonybrook campus, to the weird torus mandala sculpture. She had a robot competition Saturday, and her team qualified for the nation finals. They would need some kind of (probably corporate) sponsorship to get there, to pay for transportation and lodging. I think I’ll ask my boss if the company is interested.
Meanwhile the ComiCon people asked me if I was interested in design an origami model for the Funco Pop figures. I guess one of them works there. That might be interesting…
