Category: Origami

Living for Giving the Devil His Due

Things are okay with me these days, but I’ve been pretty tired and burned out this week, with the cold and the dark closing in and all. Still objectively, rah yeah.

The gig last weekend went great. We had over fifty paying guests, so the band made a good chunk of change. More importantly the music was really on. We played all nine songs that are going to be on our next record. It’s just great to do what I think of as a risky song, maybe because it’s challenging to listen to, or has a slow grove, and to look up and see a room full of people totally into it, hanging on every note. Next stop: the recording studio.

This week we also hit a major milestone with the Global Jukebox and CityLore. Whew, man that was a ton of work.

And last night I finally got together with this dude Zeno, the guitarist looking to put together an originals band with prog and pop influences. There was a bass player, Robert, on 5-string fretless. We basically hung out and jammed some riffs and talked about ideas, no actual songs, at least yet. I’d say it was a productive session, worth exploring further. We’re gonna try and get together again when the drummer is available.

Tomorrow we’re headed up to Boston. A much-needed day off. OrigaMIT is on Saturday, so we figured we’d take a day and hang out in the old historic downtown. Michelle has never seen beantown, so it’ll be cool. So this evening I pulled together a bunch of origami, including finally finishing an Oliphaunt and a Turkey with wire and tape on the inside were it doesn’t show. I also folded a couple of Beth’s Stellated Octahedron, one with a color change and one without. The model features a clever twist to accomplish the color change. However, it tends to spring apart so ended up wetfolding them.

The Devil You Know

Fall is proceeding apace. Hallowe’en is just around the corner, time for fun costumes, jack-o-lanterns, lawn decorations, witchcraft, devilry and all.

Things have actually been pretty boring around here recently. Work work work, getting things done. Sunday was a quiet rainy day at home, Hallowe’en devilry aside. There’s been lots of rain this October, which makes up for a dry September, but the weather has been generally pretty warm and mild. I’ve been able to get out skating and for a bike ride every week.

A couple weeks ago I was out for a bike ride in the Nature Study Woods. It was Sunday morning and there was a half marathon going on that included a trail section, with the runners coming the opposite way that I wanted to do. I ended up taking a bunch of trails that I don’t normally travel, just to find the road less taken. By the time I got to the far end of the woods I decided to take the road back rather then the trails. As I was pulling up a long hill I noticed my chain slipping of it’s sprocket into the next gear. Then without warning the chain snapped.

The bike is over twenty years old, and it was the original chain. I bought the bike in California, when Google was still a tiny little startup with their offices above Palo Alto Bicycles. (I actually talked Jeannie out of applying for a job there – worst mistake of my life.) I’ve ridden that bike over tons and roads and trails. So it was not too surprising.

I took it to a place in Pelham called Danny’s Bikes, that used to be Pelham Bicycles. The replaced the chain, which was fine, but I paid for a tune up and told them specifically that the derailleur was out of alignment and need to be adjusted, but they failed to do that. I ended up adjusting it myself, which I’d done plenty of times before, since it was easier that taking back to the shop and complaining. But still.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went on a hike in the Palisades. We’ve done a couple hikes around there, down near the George and up near the Mario. This time we picked a spot midway between the two bridges, right on the NY-Hj border. We got all the way down the cliffs to the river; it was very cool.

The same weekend we saw the famous guitar player Larry Carlton at the Iridium in NYC. We went with my origami friend Marc, who is also a guitar player and into cats like that. It was a great show, and the band consisted of Larry, his son Trevor on bass, who was most excellent, plus a sax, trombone, piano and drums. He played maybe six Steely Dan songs and the rest was his own stuff, sort of bluesy funk fusion. As luck would have it, Steely Dan was playing the same night uptown at the Beacon.

Speaking of origami, the OrigaMIT convention is coming up in just a couple weeks, so I’ve been folding and diagramming, ramping up and trying to finish and perfect some new models. Meanwhile OUSA has asked me to contribute some models to the annual Holiday Tree. The other night I folded one of my Giant Squid out a a 24″ square of some kind of cool paper I bought a while back. It’s over a foot tall. It looks great, very impressive. Just the finals sculpting to go.

In other news, my new recording Sun of the Son is almost done. (I know you’re been wondering since I haven’t talked about it in a while, but yeah I’ve keeping at it.) I’ve actually been working on it since the springtime, and even dusted of my alto sax to play the lead back at the end of the summer. Since then I recorded the synth solo and the piano solo, plus a few backing keyboard parts to pad things out. For the synth solo I had a concept in mind from the start, and was able to dial in the sound I wanted (a layering of several synth tones) and went down pretty smoothly. The piano solo turned out to be a bit more challenging. Since it’s just a piano you can’t rely on fancy patches or effects, it’s all down to the lines you play.

I had in mind a jazzy, bluesy solo something like Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea might do. But it turns out I can’t really play like those guys. Whatever I did came out sounding like a deranged mashup of Thelonious Monk and Keith Emerson. I guess that makes sense since I have studied those guys pretty deeply and have a fair amount of their pet riffs in my bag. So I decided to roll with it. Even so, I ended up stitching the solo together from multiple takes and it took a fair amount of effort to make if flow.

Now the tracking is done and next up was rendering out all the midi files (mainly the drums and keyboards) to audio for mixing. I finished that this weekend and began applying effects to the drum kit, mainly EQ’s and compressors. I have a default set of effects I use on my drum kit, but it always takes a fair amount of tweaking to make the drums sit right and really groove. Right now I’m honing in on the kick and snare. I want them to be present without being overpowering. The song has a fair amount of dynamics, and it has to sound good soft, loud, and in between. Almost there, then it’s on to the bass.

In the rock world, I’ve been keeping an eye out for new opportunities. One ad on craigslist caught my eye recently. It’s a drummer and guitarist starting up a originals project, looking for a creative keyboardist. The cited among their influences King Crimson, Tame Impala and the Delfonics. Well this seemed weird enough, and Crimso is one of my all-time favorite bands, so I got in touch. Now he’s putting together some audio demos and wants to schedule a rehearsal/audition. Meanwhile I sent him a few of my tracks, and learned how to play In the Court of the Crimson King. We’ll see how it turns out.

Also a reminder my jazz group, Haven Street is playing Saturday November 2 at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, eight o’clock downbeat. Hope to see you there.

A Bustle in Your Hedgerow

As much as I’d love to keep on reliving our vacation, we’ve been back home a week and there’s lots going on here. We’re mostly unpacked but we got a pretty good amount of souvenirs, some of them still need a home. Which predictably kicks of a whole defragging the house project.

Things are busy at work all of a sudden, even though alot of people are still out on vacation. We’re converting our whole product to run on Docker containers so everyone has to get up to speed. Lots of training sessions.

I gave Michelle her first driving lesson the other day. Laps around to parking lot of the local high school, and pulling in an out of parking spaces. She did great.

The weather has been really hot this summer, but also there’s been a good amount of rain. So the yard is like a jungle, everything growing like crazy. I mowed the lawn the day we left for our trip and it was overdue by the day we got back. I’ve spent four major sessions in the last few weeks trimming and weeding and pruning and edging, on top of the usual routine. And due to the extreme heat it’s not fun to stay outside for even a half hour, let alone doing hard physical work in the full heat of the day for hours on end. Been trying to do more in the mornings and evenings.

The neighbors behind us have a willow tree that’s gotten pretty big and is hanging down over our hedgerow and into our yard. I bought a tool that’s basically a mini chainsaw on a ten-foot pole in the spring to help prune back the tree. And then from the next neighbor’s yard up sprang a vine that was growing up into the tree. There are several trees in the neighborhood being choked to death by out of control weeds, so I didn’t want to let this go. So another major effort. This was back in July. But the willow grows so fast it’ll need it again soon.

Then in the other corner of my hedgerow were more vines coming from the neighbors on the other side. When I went to take these out I discovered a wasp nest under the eave of my neighbor’s garage, right at the corner of my property, and got stung up. I swear, these hedges use to be so well maintained but my neighbors are letting theirs get all overgrown. Someday I’m going to have to tear mine out and replace it with a fence.

To top it all off there’s a new species of weeds I’ve never seen before, that gives my fingers blisters when I pull it. On the plus side our sunflowers and tomatoes are doing great.

OUSA 2019

Ah, I finally have a day to catch up on things. The rock band played a gig last night and we have another tonight. But for now the topic is annual Origami USA Convention, which was last weekend.

What to say? I’ve been going to these conventions for 18 years or so. They still remain alot of fun, and it’s good to hang with my origami friends and see what people are up to. John Montroll was back this year and he has a new book out called Origami Symphony #1. He’s got two more books in the works, Symphony #2 and #3. The concept for each is that it’s subdivided into four movements, which contain a series of models related by subject and/or folding style. It’s a cool concept: it enables him to cover more territory than a single-subject book, to get into some depth in each movement, and to draw connections among the movements. They’re all very cool, as John’s style continues to get more refined and essential. Perhaps my favorite is #3, whose movements include Dinosaurs, Birds, Polyhedra and Dragons.

My exhibit this year included some new models, mainly boats. I have a new model Catamaran and another Powerboat, both on display. I also brought out some classics not seen in a while including my big blue Elephant. I did get a little further folding my Champion Oliphaunt but is was still not quite ready for the exhibit. Still have the final sculpting to go, and it’ll need some kind of internal frame or wire.

I talked to my publisher Jon. Apparently my first book has been selling constantly well and is on the cusp of entering the pantheon of classic origami books. Meanwhile the new Air and Space kit book is selling well too, and it’s time to start thinking of a third book. I had been thinking of a Sea and Shore theme, and maybe another kit book. But now Jon says the success of my first book is making them rethink if they want to get back in to that kind of thing. I hope so cuz that format is more inserting to me. At his point I have quite a few models diagrammed and could pull together any number of books.

The special guests this year were Satoshi Kamiya and Dása Severova. Satoshi of course is known for his supercomplex models such as his Ancient Dragon, and was quite a hit, particularly since he doesn’t come to the States that often. Dash does geometric stuff, mainly with polar symmetry, such as stars and flowers. She’s also quite friendly.

As usual I taught a few courses. First was my Catamaran which I designed back in February at Origami Heaven and diagrammed a few weeks ago. This was a one-hour class but the model didn’t take and hour, so I brought along diagrams for my Flying Fish, having recently completed those as well. Both models went well and I spotted a couple opportunities to improve the diagrams. My other class was my Blimp, which I invented exactly a year ago. I taught it last fall at OrigaMIT and everyone had trouble with the third-to-last step. So I updated the diagrams to show that sequence in more detail and everyone was able to do it just fine.

There’s not alot of dinner options in outer Queens in walking distance from the St. John’s campus where the convention is held, but this year we discovered an excellent Chinese dumplings place.

Sunday night my friend Marc asked me and Jeannie to be judges in the giant paper folding contest. The contest is all in good fun and everyone gets a prize so the judging mostly involves thinking up clever categories appropriate to the various entries. Of course there’s always a few really excellent standouts that should be acknowledged. This year there were several dragons, and the best one was folded by a team of 12-year-old kids. It was an action model and an original design, and they were very earnest. So naturally that team won Best in Show with several honorable mentions.

Monday I spent a good part of the day talking to Robby Kraft and Robert Lang about origami software. Robby is making an origami simulation and diagramming application called Rabbit Ear, which is not to far from the vision of my Foldinator software. So I showed and explained that to him and we discussed how we might collaborate. Only problem is I’m pretty busy now with other things, so I have to find the time!

Origami Dual Color Stellated Octahedron Revisited

A few years back I published a crease pattern for my Origami Dual Color Stellated Octahedron on this very blog. Being a single sheet polyhedron with a color change, the layout is kinda complicated, with two superimposed grids. In order to make the folding easier I slightly fudged the relationship between the two, so one could start by folding a 13×13 grid and develop the other grid in the middle at on offset angle.

The other day I got an email from Akira Terao. He not only developed a method for folding a mathematically perfect layout, but he also published an article about it on the origamidraw blog. Very cool. His method is developed from first principles very elegant, and his article is very clear and explains it well. You can read it here:

origamidraw.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/drawing-a-cp-with-unknown-references-part-3

I hadn’t heard of Origami Draw before. It’s an app for making crease patterns. It has a lot of origami geometric logic embedded in it. From their web site (origamidraw.wordpress.com):

With Origami Draw, you can:
– Perform all folds possible with the 7 Huzita-Hatori/Justin axioms
– Divide segments and angles in any number from 2 to 8
– Compose with building blocks from rabbit ear to frog base
– Propagate new folds across existing folds, alternating mountain and valley folds (or not)
– Instantly find the missing fold to flatten the paper around a node
– Find and retain all references needed to replicate your model exactly
– Verify its flat-foldability, with clear indications if anything is missing
– Keep all your CPs in one place
– Create different versions as your design evolves or to show a folding sequence
– E-mail your CP to your desktop computer as an Oripa file

Very cool!

Pink Elephant

My friend Gina, the singer in my rock band, asked me to make an origami elephant for her, with the trunk up for good luck and fortune. A little while back, at Origami Heaven I came across the perfect piece of paper – a 12″ sheet of pink stardream. Stardream is really fun paper, thick like marble wyndstone, and very workable, but with a pearlescent sparkly finish. I’m very happy with the way the model came out, especially since it required no wetfolding. And like I said, perfect for Gina.

Just Like Heaven

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…

Boston and Brooklyn

It’s been another busy week. The change of the seasons is arriving with rapid fury. First off they changed the local timezone settings last weekend. It’s been getting darker and darker but now it’s nighttime before five o’clock. Still getting used to that. I did get the Mustang out one last time, but today we had our first snowstorm. Got maybe 5 inches of wet heavy snow, enough to seriously mess up traffic. Now it’s raining and it’s all supposed to melt. Hopefully the morning won’t be too bad.

We went up MIT last weekend for their annual origami convention. I taught my Dirigible and it went over well. The class was very full and there were a couple people in the class who weren’t quite at the level required, so that slowed things down a bit. Despite my providing diagrams everyone didn’t quite get to the end of the model. I also see I need to explain the collapsing of the nose better in the diagrams.

The other model I folded was my Platypus. I haven’t folded one of these in a while, and it’s not diagrammed, so I did it entirely from memory. It went just fine, and we even finished on time.

This is the most technical of the origami conferences that I regularly attend. Alot of these people were at BOS and 7OSME in Oxford at the end of the summer, and now I kinda wish I could have gone. Ah well.

I did reconnect with Robby from rabbitear.org, who is writing origami software in javascript. I want to find a way to collaborate and contribute to the project, despite my being busy with so many other things. Also Adrianne Sack gave a lecture on the parallels between origami tessellations and certain kinds of fabric and textile pleating and folding techniques. Very cool. Of course Jason taught his crazy complex dragon, and despite it being a four-hour class he had to finish up during the evening free-folding.

I saw alot of my origami friends, and it was a good hang, and a bunch of people gave me good advice about planning our trip to Japan next year. Still, these things are always over too soon.

Back at home the next day we were back in Brooklyn, to see Kamasi Washington and his band play at a place called Brooklyn Steel. You may recall we saw Kamasi at the Montreal Jazz Festival back in June and it totally floored me. Well this time we came in knowing what to expect. The show was excellent. And restored my streak: now 8 of the last 9 shows we’ve seen have had a trombone. I think they’ve been touring pretty much continually since the last time we saw them. They did about half the same songs and half different. And some of the songs have evolved. The opening band, Butcher Brown were good too. Only downside was the venue was a cavernous warehouse space suitable for raves, with no seating and the acoustics could have been better, and the drinks very very expensive. Still it was a great concert and a fun time. I even got a t-shirt.

Peak Fall

Driving to work the last few days it’s been peak time for the leaves turning color around here. The local parkways run thru hills of oak and maple forest. Combined with leaden grey clouds and heavy skies the whole landscape was one of striking, eerie beauty. Totally surreal.

Sunday it was a mild a sunny day with bright blue skies, so Jeannie and I went for a hike along the Palisades near the Tappan Zee Bridge (a.k.a. The Mario). Great views of the river, the trees and the surrounding countryside, and we saw lots of hawks and even a family of giant Turkey Vultures hanging out on the cliffs. Way cool.

Last weekend was the first (and last) weekend in a while where we didn’t have a gig with the jazz or rock band, a show to see, or travel plans. But there’s plenty of other stuff going on.

For one thing, over the last several weekends Michelle and I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. I saw this show out of the corner of my eye with the sound down when it was originally on the air, cuz I worked at Nickelodeon at the time. But watching it for real, well it was just excellent. So much going on, such great characters and conflicts, and such an imaginative story world. I’m still blown away that, like Doctor Markoh from Full Metal Alchemist, the Dragon of the West Iroh has a silent “h” at the end of his name.

For another we finally got the contract signed to get solar power on our roof. This was a big research project and it took a long time to work out all the details. Hopefully we can get the installation finished before the snow comes, but right now we’re waiting on permits from the city.

I’ve been busy with origami. A couple weeks back I made a pair of Cuttlefish for the Origami USA Holiday Tree at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. This project came and went so fast I didn’t even take pictures! But had a similar pair already folded, shown here. The twist is that the cuttlefish is an animal (not really fish, BTW) that changes it’s body color to blend in with its surroundings, to express it’s emotions and to imitidate other life forms with vibrant displays of color and pattern. To simulate the different moods I folded on out a plain beige sheet, as if blending in on a sandy seafloor. The other I made out of the loudest psychedelic fractal paisley pattern I could find, and posed the tentacles spread as if ready for attack. Way cool!

My other recent origami project was to diagram my Dirigible. I’ll be teaching this at the upcoming OrigaMIT convention, and wanted to submit it for the convention collection. It turned out to be a bit longer than I expected. I had estimated about 30 or 40 steps, but it ended up at 51. Still it’s a great model and well worth getting down. I plan on using it in an upcoming book.

What Keeps the Planet Spinning

Been busy. A week ago we went upstate to visit my parents, and also Lizzy at college. It was a fun trip, and Lizzy is doing well and having a good semester. While we were up there we took a trip to my uncle Ron in Welland and celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving along with that side of the family, including my cousin Tom, whom I haven’t seen in years.

We all caught Lizzy’s cold on the trip and been trying to shake it off ever since. Meanwhile back home Gina caught cold too, so we had to cancel our gig last weekend. We also had to kick out our guitarist, so now we’re looking for a new guitar player again. We don’t have any gigs for about six weeks, then it’s a run of four gigs in a row in late November thru mid December. Hopefully we’ll find someone.

The weather is turning cooler and it’s dark in the morning when we get up and in the evening by suppertime. We finally took out the air conditioners and had to start running the heat in the morning. And there’s been a ton or rain. At least Sunday was nice and clear. I took the Mustang out and Jeannie and went for a hike, first up around Kensico Dam and then a woods nearby called Cranberry Preserve, which has a stone quarry that looks to be where they got the stones to make the dam.

OrigamMIT is fast approaching. I’ve been diagramming my new Blimp, which I’m going to teach there and contribute to their collection, and is going to go in a future book.