Category: Origami

Everything Going on at Once

This was a really busy weekend. I was sort of stressed and feeling down in the middle of the week, but now I feel great about everything. I’ve probably talked with more different people in the last 48 hours than I sometimes do for weeks on end.

First off, work has been busy. Thursday night into Friday was a big messy snowstorm that cancelled school and made going into the city an epic adventure. We’ve had three releases of our product in three months, all with pretty bug new feature sets. The last of them was last week. On Friday we had a big demo for the new stuff going into the next – as yet unplanned – release. I’ve been spending a good deal of time on refactoring with an eye to improving runtime performance and the architecture. I found a set of bugs where components were slow to initialize or put themselves away, and discovered they’re caused by some object disposal code implemented recently by another developer to try and staunch memory leaks. But his approach is really heavy and creates more problems than it solves. So now I have to rip the whole thing out and do it right. Ah, what fun.

Friday night I went to an open mic. I hadn’t seen my friend Erik in a while and he showed up too, which made it fun. I played Making Miles and Get On Back 2 U. Somewhere along the line my singing just sort of came together and I don’t really have to worry about that anymore. Also I’m getting used the feel of the piano there. Making Miles was written by Martin, but at this point I have my own version of it. The song is not hard to play and it went over well. It always makes me miss him though. GOB2U is one of mine and I know it well, but it’s full of altered jazz chords and prog meter changes, and has a big solo section in the middle. My songs often seem to have a passage where the left hand does some advanced thing, and if I find myself consciously thinking about it it’s too much to handle. So there was a moment when I had to let the left had go for a bar or so, but no one seemed to notice. And then at the big ending I somehow landed on the wrong chord. It fit with the key and I was able to improvise my out of it. So at least I’m getting better at covering my mistakes smoothly.

Saturday I had the time for a nice long piano practice, and actually got to work on some things in depth. Taking apart and reanalyzing some of my songs, and starting to learn a few new songs. In keeping with my policy of trying to perform a new original song every time, next I’m work up It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Day, which as harmonically pretty straight forward (just a few sharp 4’s in there) but is largely in 5/8 time. I’ve also stared looking at the classifieds to see if I can either acquire a rhythm section or join a group that would be into playing my material.

Saturday night was the school’s annual father-daughter dance. This year I took both girls. It was a lot of fun. I know more of the dads and kids than I did last year, and some of the dads brought beer. My friend Mike, who was the piano player for last year’s Cabaret show, told me he’s now doing a lounge piano gig at a neighborhood restaurant/bar on Saturday nights, and what a challenge it is getting together an evening’s worth of standards. I’ll have to go check it out. While the dads hung around and talked the kids had a great time dancing up a storm.

Today I did an origami special session at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Had to get up early with the clock change. I taught my Squid and my Cuttlefish. This British kid from my class is ten years old and already an amazing folder and designer. He brought a box of his own models that looked great. I encouraged him to put together an exhibit for the convention in June. After the class I did a quick cruise thru my favorite parts of the museum – the giant halls of dinosaurs, animals and sea creatures – and then went for a walk around Central Park. It was really warm this weekend and most of the snow has already melted. You can really feel spring is coming soon!

When I got home this afternoon I did the final bit of video for my book, the introduction. For this I’m talking into the camera rather than show closeups of paper on a light stand. It was the perfect day for it, since the kitchen was filled with sunlight.

This evening I worked on Lou’s record. His songs are nice and easy to play. I’m on track to have all the rhythm instruments, plus a midi guide track for the lead vocal done by Easter. Last week I laid down the bass parts and today it was rhythm guitar. (I did the drums and piano a few weeks back.) I’m getting a good sound with a combination of direct inject and mic about 2 or 3 feet in front of the guitar. I got two and a half songs out for done before my fingertips started to get sore. I’ll finish the rest one night this week.

Origami Videos

I’ve been jamming on the videos to go along with my book. I few weeks back I perfected the setup with the lighting and camera, and did a few tests to get up to speed. Now I have eighteen of twenty-two models in the can. Of course the four remaining include three of the hardest in the book. My publisher pointed out that I tend to pick the model up of the table sometimes, when executing complicated 3-D steps, and this makes it hard to see what’s going on. So I may go back and shoot some extra footage to cover these spots. I’m already shooting most models in several parts. I’m thinking I might go ahead and edit together the parts with crossfades, and while I’m at it tighten up the pacing, so I know it’ll come out the way I like it. I’d also like the improve the audio with some dynamic compression and a noise gate.

My problem now is the only video editor I have is iMovie and Quickitme, both of which kind of suck. I used to have Premier and After Effects, but that was years ago, and I don’t want to shell out thousands of bucks for a new video editor. I’m wondering if there’s a decent quality video editor out there for free, like Audacity is for audio. So far nothing has turned up.

A fun side effect of doing this video is that Michelle has been watching me, as she likes to take an interest in most of my studio things. Now she’s inspired to get back into origami, and has folded the Octopus and the Narhwal from my book. She wants to do one of my models for OBC this year.

Origami Site Update

Here’s part two of this winter’s updates to my web site. I’ve added two new links to my origami section to view Models By Subject and Models By Year. All the models templates have been updated to fit in with the look I’m using for the rest of the site. I’ve also added five new models and pics of a bunch of others. Some of these pics I took, and some were by Bob Plotkin as part of the photo shoots for my upcoming book.

I haven’t removed to old views yet, because I have yet to update the main origami page. So it’ll remain in a bit of a hybrid state for the time being. There’s other stuff to do too, so there’ll be a second update sometime soonish. I want to update my model templates so show multiple images, and create something like a gallery viewer for the full size images. I also want to create a publications section.

But that will have to wait. I’ve been working hard since new year, and coping with the darkness and the cold. It’s time to take a break and spend some time away from the computer.

New Origami Tessellations

I’ve be working on my origami site, adding new photos, new models, and updating the site templates to create new and improved layouts and to provide new ways to access the models by subject and chronologically. This isn’t done yet but should be along pretty soon.

I took new pictures of many of my tessellations. This is part of my getting-to-know-your-camera-better campaign, and while I was at it I shot some more test video for my book. I think I have a setup worked out now. One important change is I moved from my kitchen down to my studio to avoid having to break down every time it’s time to eat. The reason I was in the kitchen in the first place is that it gets lots of beautiful natural light. But this time of year I’m never even home in the limited daylight hours, so it’s a bit moot.

So now, down in the studio I have the camera on a tripod on the table, pointed straight down, and I have a sheet of light grey marble Wyndstone under the work. This is a nice, clear look. The thing that amazes me is how much light you really need. I opened of the f-stop, lengthened the exposure, and went to a higher (virtual) film speed, but my shots were still coming out dark. I turned on all the lights in the room, and ended up bringing in three 250-watt lights. One was from my living room, so I think I may go out and get a couple studio lamps going forward. Even so, this did the trick and I was able to capture clear, sharp video and stills.

One more thing I have to master with this camera is color balance. I left this on auto and it seemed to skew toward the warm side, as if it thought it was shooting in daylight. Another interesting side effect can be seen in the images here. The background is a neutral grey, but the camera skews it to be a weak complimentary color to the subject, which in this case happen to be strong, single colors. Very interesting.

Update Update

Been working on a bunch of things. Settling into the long winter and trying to be productive. Starting in or continuing on project that will take a while.

First off, my open mic the other night went pretty well. People told me I sounded good at least, and they like my songs. Before I’d played in a duo with Erik, but this was my first time as a completely solo artist. It’s not easy keeping both hands going and singing while no one is backing you up. Plus there’s always things on the stand the you don’t necessarily think about but you have to adjust to ont he spot: the sound and feel of the piano, the placement of the mic, the lighting. And there’s no sound check or warmup, you just go for it. Anyway I think I did pretty well.

I played two originals, Checker Cab and Get On Back 2 U. I’m trying to do one new song (as far as me performing it live is concerned) per show, and Checker Cab was it this time. On Checker Cab the left hand art in the chorus was a bit off one time thru, and I decided to skip the instrumental section in the middle for the safety of the groove. Still the vocals were strong on the groove was swinging the whole time. Get On Back 2 U went fine, no particular problems. I’m more comfortable with it, and maybe I should have opened with it but, ah too late now. When I debuted GoB2U live it was a bit shaky too, but now it’s solid and can focus on delivering a performance rather than worrying about messing up.

I can’t go to the open mic next month cuz of the kids’ school musical, but for the one after that the plan is to debut my version of Making Miles. Also gonna start looking for other open mics and try and find a rhythm section soon.

It looks like I’m mainly over the hump as far as moving into my new computer goes. It’s a Mac workstation with a great big screen, to replace my older mac workstation with a more moderately sized screen. Of course this means have to update all my software and everything. I really only use this computer for two things. One is software development on the days I work from home, and the other is music production on ProTools. The ProTools in particular took a while to migrate because of driver updates, and having to re-register all my plugins. But that seems to have all worked, and I can see lots and lots of channels in the mixer on the new screen. The last big thing remaining is to migrate my old windows partition to my new machine via VMWare. In fact I even started working on music on the new rig, add click tracks and stretching the chords on Lou’s songs. Soon hope to lay in the rhythms sections.

I’ve also been experimenting with recording video for my book. The idea is to demo folding the models. I’ve been learning more about my camera because I can use to shoot video in HD, so I want to try and use that rather than my miniDV camcorder. I’ve hooked it up to the computer and can see the viewfinder image on my monitor. I’ve also left the safety of fully automatic mode and am learning how to independently control the ISO, F-stop, exposure and focus, and started coming up with setups that work. It’s a bit tricky, because I need to be zoomed in pretty tight by still have a large depth of field. Adding more light helps. The next I’m gonna do is change my setup around so that the camera is looking down over my shoulder. For my first go I had the camera opposite me, but this made it harder to explain clearly because the audience POV was opposite my own. Also have to make sure I’m capturing good audio. I might add an external mic.

So look forward to progress on all of that and more in future updates.

Armadillos and Spiders

Last week one day I took the girls and one of their friends to the Museum of Natural History. It was a fun day.

We checked out the Origami Holiday Tree. The theme this year was collective nouns. I had fold a group of armadillos, called a fez of armadillos. There were lots of others: a murder of crows, a barrel of monkeys, a fold of sheep, a galaxy of stars. You get the idea. I think my favorite was the lemurs.

We got to see the dinosaurs and all that, but the for us this time was the Spiders Alive! Well, my daughter Michelle and I were fascinated, by my daughter was repulsed. Ah well. Lots of giant spiders, scorpions, and vinegaroons. I’d never heard of vinegaroons. Plus a great live demo. Did you know scorpions glow blue under black light? Neither did I. Now I’m trying again to design some origami arachnids. I tried for my book but ended up designing a giant squid instead.

Diagramming is Done!

I’ve hit a major milestone on my book. Make that *the* major milestone. All the diagrams are done. Twenty-two models, almost 900 drawings. That’s 123 page without the intro or the photos. Wow and woo-hoo. If I weren’t so tired I’d be all in the mood to party.

It was alot of work and it seemed to take a long time to finish. My publisher was very patient. The last model turned out to require more diagrams than I’d estimated. The American Turkey ended up at almost 100 steps, by far the longest model in the book. I’d figured on 70 or so. But it’s totally worth it. It’s a very popular model; I’ve taught and exhibited it before and it always gets a great response.

And I must say, I’ve gotten alot better and faster at diagramming over the course of working on this book, especially in the last few months.

All that remains now is to write the intro. That should be an easy task by comparison. Soon I’ll be able to get back to working on music, upgrading my we site and a bunch of other origami ideas I have that aren’t part of this book.

M.I.T. Origami Convention

It already seems like ages ago, but just this last weekend I went up to Boston for MIT Origami Convention, a.k.a. OrigaMIT. The conventions was put on by the MIT Origami Club under the leadership of Jason Ku. It was smaller than the OUSA convention in New York, but certainly big enough to be a lot of fun. MIT and the Boston area have some pretty heavy folders, and MIT is a really fun place to hang out.

I drove up Friday night with my friend Marcio. We both work in the city and live in Westchester, so we met a Grand Central and took the train back to my place. We took Jeannie’s car cuz it’s a Prius and gets amazing gas mileage. I actually got 52 mpg on the ride home! The trip up was smooth, except navigating around Boston once we arrived was a bit dicey. We stayed in a hotel not too far from Cambridge.

The convention was held at the MIT Student Union. It was easy to get to and find parking. I was teaching and exhibiting, so I brought diagrams and models. About half of models were brand new, including the Cuttlefish and Giant Squid; some were new-ish including the Armadillo, Turkey and some Tessellations. A few were classics, including my UFO, Rocketship, and War Elephant. The diagrams were the last few from my book that have yet to be test-folded: the Cuttlefish, Giant Squid, and Turkey.

As with most conventions it was organized into sessions that were either classes or seminars. The first session I went to was Erik Demaine, an expert in origami mathematics. He basically showed us slides and talked about his course (http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/). I was familiar with some of the material cuz I’ve read his book, but it was all really fascinating stuff. Afterwards I had a good discussion with him about origami polyhedra design.

At lunchtime I went for a walk along the Charles River by the MIT and Harvard campuses. It was a beautiful fall day, and the riverside walk was full of people strolling, biking and jogging. I hadn’t been to Boston for a few years, although it seems like every time I’m here in end up in Cambridge. Anyway, I’d forgotten how nice it is down by the river and the park. Very Not New York.

After lunch I taught my course. It was cephalopods, the Cuttlefish and the Giant Squid. The class proved to be very popular. I had diagrams for both models, which I passed around at the start. Then I folded both models for anyone who wanted to follow along, which was most of the class. These are both pretty advanced models, somewhat more than I’d expected, but the class did a really good job. I folded the Cuttlefish first. That took close to an hour, and it was a two hour class. A lot of people were not fast in developing the tentacles. That comes near the end but is fairly repetitive. Then we started the Squid but ran out of time, again cuz there’s lots of repetition in developing the tentacles. The good news was everyone was so into it that when class ended, we all went down to the hospitality area to finish. I got good feedback for the diagrams and the models along the way. Mostly they were both very foldable and people really liked the models. As usual there were some minor errors and steps that could do with a bit of clarification.

After that I sat in on Michael Lafosse’s class. This was the perfect compliment to Erik’s class. Michael is a master folder and designer and has some beautiful complex models, and quite a few books too. He also runs a paper making studio for making high-end origami paper. One more thing he’s known for is his butterflies. He’s got lots and lots of butterfly variations, and this class was about that. These are intermediate level models, so the focus was much more on the artistic side than the technical side. Most complex models have a sculpting/finishing phase at the end, and this class was all about exploring that for butterflies. Toward the end I remembered a butterfly design I was working on, and dusted it off and began to get back into refining it. For me the major challenge was developing the points for the legs. I realized if I changed the geometry at step 3 it’s open up more paper.

After classes was dinner and hanging out folding. Some there asked me about the tessellations in my exhibit, so I ended up teach a group how to fold one. These seemed like such a simple idea to me at the time, that you could work out how to fold it jut my looking at it. But people seem to really like it, and it turns out (since it doesn’t use a square grid) there’s a bit of mystery involved. People keep asking me about the tessellations. I’ll keep them in mind for the next book.

I also had my Turkey diagrams test folded by a fellow folder named Mark. Even though the diagrams are not complete, we got thru to the end, and I showed him how to finish. This is definitely the most complex model in the book. We were hanging out and talking the whole time, bit it took three hours to fold. Still, I’m happy Mark got thru it. It’s a worthy model and I got good feedback.

As Saturday turned into Saturday Night lots of students were meeting at the student center dressed up for Halloween going out hit the bars. Rule 63 Guy Fawkes. Ah college life.

Sunday Marcio and drove home, trying to beat the storm. The wind was picking up already, and we passed several convoys of utility trucks heading east. Jason was supposed to fly back to Japan Sunday. I hope he got out okay.

The big goal for this weekend is to finish my book, which basically means finishing the Turkey diagrams. Oh, and cleaning up my yard. I’m really looking forward to being done with diagramming and getting back working on other things like music.

More of the Same

Am I in a groove, or in a rut? Who knows? On the book front, all the photos have been cropped, color balanced, edited, retouched, mastered and delivered to the publisher. 140 pictures, 12 GB upload. Thank you Bob! My last two diagrams are the Giant Squid and the Turkey. I’m to step 50 on the Squid, which is the tricky part. It looks like it’ll be about 65 steps. I hope I can finish it tonight. I’m up to step 65 on the Turkey, and I’m estimating 80 steps and hope to finish that within the week. These are the two most complex models in the book, but the light is at the end of the tunnel.

But even though I’ve been working hard, other interesting stuff is in the offing. The fall weather has been beautiful. Been getting to spend some time outside, although it’s getting light late and dark early already. The kids are alright. Work is mellow at the moment, and I’ve been working out and my health has been better again lately.

I’m planning on going to the MIT Origami Conference later this month. It should be a great time. I’m teaching and exhibiting, and it’ll be great to see the MIT origami people. Got to work out the travel logistics, which really means finding a hotel room.

Been working on learning some new songs. I’ve taken a break from writing and recording until my book is done, but I’ve been practicing. I can now sing and play eight of my own originals on piano. Recently added “Fine Red Wine” and “Angel or Alien” to the repertoire. Plus a couple new covers: “Stepping Out” by Joe Jackson and “Thunder Road” by The Boss. At least a few of them are pretty hard songs to play but I’ve gotten to the point where I know them well and continue to sharpen the arrangements and performance.

More Origami

I’m getting to the home stretch on my book. I have all the models (22) designed and folded and all the photography done. I came up with three new models for the book in the last few weeks. Two were the Cuttlefish and Giant Squid, to create a Cephalopod group along with my Octopus. I tried and tried to design a spider but never came up with anything I liked.

For my last model I designed a Lean-To, to go with the Canoe and Adirondack Chair. I really wanted one more intermediate model. This one clocks in at 34 steps, but most of it is pre-folding and it only takes 10 or 15 minutes to fold. And I got the diagrams done in two evenings! I guess I’m finally getting faster.

I went over to Bob’s one night last week to finish up the pictures, and they came out great. I have only two more diagrams to finish now, the Squid and the Turkey. They’re both more than halfway done but they’re complex models, so they have a lot of steps. After the last drawings, all that remains is writing the intro and the basic steps.

In other news, our big Q4 release of my software at work is in QA now. Really looking forward to taking a break.

Went up and saw Martin and Kathleen yesterday and picked pumpkins and apples and grapes. This seems to have become something of a fall tradition.

The weather has been really warm thru the end of September, to the point where we still have our air conditioners in. But there’s also been a lot of rain. Warm and humid. Until yesterday, when it got cold all of a sudden. Now it’s only getting up to the 50’s and we’ve had to turn on the heat.