Category: Origami

Folding Time

It’s been a while since I wrote a post about origami, but I’ve been pretty busy with origami stuff since I got back from Spain.

First off, going back to the new year, I’ve been doing work for Origami USA, taking over the scheduling function for the annual convention. This involves several activities, the most important being to create the schedule of classes for the convention. This is supported various kinds of software, whose maintenance and authoring I’ve taken over.

On the OUSA web site there’s forms for teachers to put in the class the want to teach, with fields for class level, availability restrictions and lots of other things. Then there’s a app built in MS access to take the teacher input and construct the schedule, with helpful validation. The pipeline is convoluted and idiosyncratic, reflecting a history of changes over many conventions. Serena, the previous Schedulemiester and creator of the Access app, has been very helpful with training and handing things off. Of course now the convention is on hold and surely soon to be cancelled, so in a sense the whole effort is moot.

Of course eventually the plague will run its course and we’ll all be able to play outside again. My first thought when I saw the Access app is that we should convert it to mySql and have it run on the web site. I talked to Robert Lang, our webmaster, about this. He said it’s already on the roadmap for 2021, and if I want to jump in and take the lead on it, I’d be more than welcome. I felt I needed to come up to speed on the existing workflow first, so we came up with a plan to use the current system for the New York convention in June, and try and do the migration in time for the Chicago convention at the end of October.

Along the way, the convention committee started asking for changes in the app to reflect changes in the organization of this year’s convention, so in addition to Serena’s training I started hacking into the guts of the Access app. At this point I’ve pretty much grokked the whole thing, and I might as well reach out to Robert and see about starting the migration.

And if the time is not right, I have another project in the offing … dusting of the Foldinator!

Second, in Spain I learned there’s an active international origami community on Instagram, so I created an Instagram account to follow other artists and promote my origami. My handle is zingorigami. Check it out. I’ve been posting three times a week. Right now I’m going thru my extensive backlog of photos of models I’ve already designed and folded. Hopefully soon I’ll get around to photographing some of my new stuff and posting that.

Third, I’ve been working on a new origami book. It’s going to be Classic Origami from Air and Space. This is sort of a sequel to my last book, which also had a theme around aircraft and spaceships, but was a kit book aimed at a beginner to intermediate audience. The new book will feature mainly advanced models, notably my classic Rocketship, U.F.O., and my newer Blimp, as well as my Hot Air Balloon and a handful of other models. The notion is to sell it as a digital download from the OUSA web site, since everybody sitting at home these days is gonna want new stuff to fold. Mostly OUSA downloads are diagrams for single models, or sometimes a collection. I’m gonna put a bit of production values into mine, with a cover and and intro, good photography and all. Hopefully down the line I can publish it as a print book.

I started a while back by putting my anchor models into InDesign to do the page layouts and figuring out how I wanted to present things. This was basically copying them from the diagrams for the individual models. I realized I had somehow never finished diagramming my Rocketship. I know I taught it some years ago; it must’ve been from a CP. There were just a few steps to go, the part where it’s 3-D. So I started folding one to get up to the point where the diagrams ended. When I went to make it 3-D I discovered an unnecessary fold that was interfering with a new fold I need to make. I ended up redesigning and re-diagramming the whole model, making the paper usage slightly more efficient, the proportions slightly more elegant, and cutting out about ten steps from the folding sequence. Now the Rocketship, U.F.O. and Blimp are all done. It’s just a matter of rounding it out with few more less complex models, doing the photos, and putting it all together. It’ll probably eight to ten models total, 32 t0 40 pages in all.

Stay tuned for future announcements.

Like a Wheel Within a Wheel

Now we get to the trip inside the trip, like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own. We arrived in Zaragoza late Friday night. The train station was sparsely peopled, and we wandered down, thru the concourse, up the other side to exit on the correct side. From there is was was a long pedestrian bridge arcing above a wide highway, whose reticulated walking surface made our luggage rattle out a rhythm as it rolled along. It was colder and windier here than by the seaside, very bracing. Zaragoza is in the desert and the mountains, although often strongly foggy.

The hotel was one building past the conference center. The whole neighborhood was built for some kind of Expo about twelve years ago, and it had that kind of vibe, all modernist right angles. The hotel was nice, stark yet cozy, modern and European. There were some friendly faces in the lobby, our the conference organizers and our hosts. I knew a few of them who had been to origami conventions in the states, and everyone was warm and friendly.

Next day up bright and early for breakfast. I met a few fellow folders including Robert Lang, David Brill and Jared Needle and Matt Green. More bacon and eggs and croissants and cappuccinos. Yum!

Over at the conference center I set up my exhibit. This was first international exhibit, most of ’em here had never seen my work before. I brought a box a small suitcase as carry-on luggage, about fifteen models. The idea was sort of a greatest hits collection.

The evening before our flight to Spain I went around the house and picked out my favorite models and set them on the table to see how they went together. There’s some air and space ships, a set of single-sheet polyhedra, a series of big animals and one of small animals. The big animals include my Elephant and Dragon, but they were a bit too small for the others in that series, the Oliphaunt and Moose.

So I started folding a new one of each. I ended spending most of the next day folding Dragons and Elephants, and my exhibit was the last thing I packed, just before leaving for the airport. It was totally worth it, both models turned out great. For the Elephant i found a 12″ square of scrapbook paper, mainly white with bright paint splatter design, evoking a circus. I didn’t know how well the paper would fold but it ended up being perfect for the model, not too thin, not too thick, not too soft and not too stiff. It came out quite well, nicely sculptured, and was one of my most admired models in the exhibit.

For the dragon I used so-called shiny paper from the Origami Shop, which is an excellent paper, thin an crisp, and sort of sparkly on one side. I started folding a blue dragon from a 16″ square, but once I got the base finished it was clear it would not be bit enough. I went up to a 24″ green square. Probably a 20″ square would have been perfect, but I didn’t have one. Still it worked well at that size, and was compatible with the Oliphaunt, just a slightly more ancient dragon than I had in mind.

Once my stuff was set up I took a look around. There was tons of fantastic stuff there. The exhibit space was nice, bright and well-lit, and got a good amount of traffic over the weekend, not just from the convention but from the public at large.

I knew about half the artists there. There was so much great origami, and (unlike OUSA where I see many of the same people every year) alot of it was new to me. It’s impossible to try and describe it all, you’ll have to wait for the pictures. One thing I’ll say is there was alot of interesting stuff with tessellations. I had kinda thought tessellations were pretty much played out, but here was alot of new, expressive work. One artist named Roman particularly caught my eye with a 2-d interpretation of a 4-d Torus. Wow.

The conference opened with remarks by Ilan, the conference chair. The organizers were mostly French, Spanish and Israeli. The format was much like a Monday at OUSA, with seminars and discussion, no teaching models and not alot of actual folding. Everybody there was a world-class origami artist because CFC2, a.k.a The Conference for Creators, was invitation only. It was an honor to have been invited, and It was really amazing to be among such high-level artists. I missed the first CFC, in Lyon, France in the summer of 2017 because I was ill. So making it to this one was extra special for me.

The topics included aspects of the creative process, hand vs. computer diagraming, photography and photo diagramming, spontaneous public origami exhibits, preparing papers for exhibiting, traditional handmade papers, how to social media, and connections between origami and other creative disciplines. There were also several roundtable discussions. Very inspirational.

The pacing was pretty leisurely. There was breakfast, a couple talks, coffee break, another talk or two, another break, more talks, then dinner and/or evening activities. It stretched out so dinner wasn’t until 8 or 9 o’clock. This left lots of time for socializing and hanging out. The attendees included Spaniards, French, Americans, Brits, Germans, a couple from Poland and another from Austria, a few Italians, a few Israelis, a friendly guy from Denmark, and another sharp friendly guy and from Belarus whose English was so good at first I thought he was Scottish, a lady from Switzerland, and several people from South America. Maybe seventy or eighty people total.

I re-struck relationships with people I hadn’t seen in years and made some new friends. I was happy to discover alot of people were familiar with my work and hold it in high regard. Some cited my models as points of inspiration or reference for their own work. That’s a huge compliment from artists you admire.

The French people were telling us to come the French convention next year, the Spanish said to come to the Spanish convention, and the Germans said to come to the German one. This last one sounds pretty tempting cuz it’s one of the larger conventions in Europe, and I seemed to hit it off comfortably with the Germans and Austrians. But everyone said: you gotta go to the Italian convention, it’s a great time and a huge party.

Zaragoza has a very active folding community and many of them are connected with IMOZ (Escuela Museo Origami Zaragoza), the world’s largest permanent museum for origami. Spain has it’s own origami tradition independent of Japan’s, dating back to the 7th century when paper was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors. We took a tour there the first evening. It’s quite impressive and includes quite a few works by Yoshizawa and Erik Joisel, and a variety of other stuff, historical and modern, Spanish and international.

We walked around the old downtown for a while, to eventually arrive a restaurant for the convention banquet, which was mainly standing like a cocktail hour, as were the lunches, to promote mingling. The other nights’ dinner was at the hotel, and seated. One night Jeannie and I sat a table full of Germans and Austrians, the other was Spaniards and an Argentinean. More socializing, ham, seafood and fine red wine.

Sunday was the last day of the conference and in the evening, after the official end, were more tourist activities. We went to a place called the Tower of Water, built for the Expo. It was a funny building, a glass and scaffold skyscraper maybe twenty stories high, enclosing a large interior space in which hung a giant sculpture of a splashing water droplet frozen in time. We took an elevator up then spiraled around a continuously ramping balcony back to the lobby. The building had no current use, but at working electricity. One of our hosts had a key to get in.

We wandered thru the Expo grounds, which was broad pedestrian avenues, curvy concrete bridges, and the aforementioned cubist buildings. Parts of the complex, like the conference center (the Etopia Center for Arts and Technology) and the hotel were in active use. Some of the buildings seemed to be offices or apartments. But alot of it was just empty. Not run down or abandoned, just unused. Kinda reminded me of planet Miranda in the movie Serenity, but, you know, not all creepifying. Apparently there was a plan to convert the buildings to other purposes after the Expo, but then the housing bust happened and the money vanished. We ended up at the Aquarium, which was pretty cool. The focus was on the major rivers of the world, so they had alot of fish and reptiles that you don’t normally see.

Bit by bit, over the course of the weekend, people started to get out packs of paper and do some actual folding. I’ve been working on a Human Figure base, derived from my Astronaut, since my nephew Matthew asked me at Christmastime if I could design a Golem. So I folded lots and lots of variations, looking for expressive possibilities, and for different way to approach the neck and shoulders, which is the key to any animal model, human figures included.

Finally Sunday night was the inevitable late-night folding. A bunch of us, under the direction of one of the EMOZ curators, folded a giant corrugation, about three meters square. We didn’t get much sleep that night, but still got up before sunrise to take the train back to Barcelona and on to Montserrat.

There’s lots more happening in the origami world these days, but that will have to wait for another post.

Well I Never Been to Spain, Parts I & III

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Spain to attend an origami conference, the CFC or Conference for Creators in Zaragoza. I took Jeannie with me, and along the way we spend a few days in Barcelona, a beautiful city.

We flew out on the redeye Tuesday night and landed in Barcelona Wednesday morning. The first thing we wanted to see was the famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí. It was a nice walk from our hotel.

La Sagrada Família is well nigh indescribable. It’s been under construction for over 130 years and still not finished. Giant, ambitious, architecture as high art, at once deeply traditional and fiercely, playfully radical. Completely mind blowing. I mean, we’ve seen some of great European cathedrals, and I get to whole thing with the totality of symbolism, faith and grace made stone. But this takes it to whole ‘nuther level. For one thing it’s huge. When it’s finished it will be the tallest building in the city and the tallest church in the world. The outside is a riot of sculpture and symbolism and crazy spires and multiple, conflicting styles. So busy it almost makes you queasy. Inside is a maybe the largest room I’ve ever been in, and even though there’s alot going on visually it’s minimalistic compared to the façades, grandly ordered and strangely tranquil, like being a forest of giant redwoods made of stone. I could go on but words really do not convey the experience.

We walked down to the marina district near our hotel, where lots of yachts were parked, and got our first close up look at the Mediterranean Sea. There was a sort of boardwalk there where lots of people came to jog and bike and just hang out. We watched the sun go down and then headed back to the hotel for dinner of yummy Spanish food.

Next day we got up and had breakfast in the hotel. It seems Spain is big on thinly sliced smoked ham and thick sliced meaty bacon, and also lots of fish and seafood. And I gotta say the bacon, with farm fresh eggs, is totally awesome for breakfast. Also local cheeses and of course cappuccino and croissants.

Our first destination Thursday was the Picasso Museum. On the walk over we passed thru a really cool park full of gardens and fountains and statues and a sort of grand structure like an open air art deco temple. I also noticed they have giant ducks in Spain that we don’t have at home.

The Picasso Museum itself was really cool. It’s in a old neighborhood of winding street too narrow for cars, although that doesn’t stop all of them. The building used to be some sort of old palace or mansion for some noble; parts of it are hundreds of years old and it’s been modified at least a few time over the centuries. The bottom level is full of interlocking courtyards and long, vaulted concourses. The galleries are all upstairs. Most of it was plain white walls, but one room was kept in it’s original (?) condition, so ornately rococo it looked like it belonged in Schloss Schönbrunn.

Picasso went to art school in Barcelona, and the museum has alot of his early work. He was a master of the realist style and did quite a few landscapes and portraits, and dabbled in a few different takes on surrealism before he really came into the style he’s famous for. So it was cool to see that development unfold. I also noticed in some photographs he had a crooked nose, and I wonder if his whole style grew out of an inability to be at peace with that. His antigeometric faces began with just a bit of asymmetry around the nose and eyes, and took off from there.

We wandered around the city some more, and made our way to the beach, which was not too far. I stuck my hand in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and Jeannie got her feet wet.

There was a tram nearby the went over the harbor and up to Montjuïc, a hill in the heart of the city and a meter higher than the Gaudi basilica. Up on top was nice views of the city and place for lunch, chicken croquets and local beer. Lots of food prepared with tomatoes too. Jeannie had a memory the the Olympic diving pool from the ’92 games was up there somewhere so we hiked around to try and find it, but didn’t know exactly were to look.

Later on, back at the beach we had dinner at at Barcelona’s idea of an American style beach bar. I had a burger that of course had bacon and fried egg on top. Jeannie got a seafood dish, a plate of fried whole prawns, heads and all. Maybe it was just the drink menu that was American style, with things like Long Island Iced Tea and Cosmopolitans.

In the evening we got on the train to take us to the origami conference in Zaragoza. It’s about 4 hours away by car, but the train goes 300 km/hr, so it’s only about an hour and half.

…

Monday morning were on the train again, coming back from Zaragoza, and on to a monastery called Montserrat, in the mountains outside of town. The train to Montserrat was part of the local subway system, although it was mostly above ground once it got out of the city center. At the base of the mountain we transferred to a cog railroad that took us halfway up the mountain to where the monastery is.

The mountains themselves are really weird looking, all puffy and cartoonish with lots of bizarre peaks and mounds, cliff faces and deeply cleft valleys. Close up the stone is unusual, soft sandstone full of rocks ranging from pebbles to good sized stones, so it almost looks like concrete. The range is not long, but it’s pretty high, a dramatic local upthrust.

The monastery is nestled right in the side of the mountain. There’s a whole complex there with a beautiful gothic church, a courtyard, shops and restaurants, an art museum with some really cool stuff including a bunch of medieval religious art, presumably from the monastery’s past, and alot of famous painters and sculptors, spanning from classical to modern, mostly Spanish but also French, Italian, Dutch and others.

From there you can take the funicular up to the top of the mountain. We hiked along the trails to the various peaks. To the south you can see Barcelona and the sea. To the north the snow-capped Pyrenees near the French border. To the east it’s hills and to the west high plains and desert. There’s even a shrine to Sant Joan up there.

There’s also some interesting plants and birds. There’s a very distinctive black and white bird I’ve never seen before. About the size of a crow, but much prettier. There’s also a variety of cyprus tree that grows around there, tall and thin and very dense so it looks like it’s been pruned. They tend to grow in clumps or rows. Almost certainly the inspiration for Guidi’s Nativity Façade. There’s also palm trees (not so much on the mountaintop, but all over town), and pine trees and cacti and other succulents. In fact it’s alot like California. Even the weather is similar, very mild and often foggy.

Then we caught the same set of trains in reverse order and were back in Barcelona. Our hotel the first leg of the trip was out near the beach, but this time were in the middle of downtown, right near one of the main train stations. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the hotel, but luckily there was a row of restaurants right across the street. We found a great Lebanese place that serves shawarma and things like that.

I didn’t have a problem with the language. I didn’t really study up on Spanish like I did with German and Hungarian for the last trip. Still I was able to read the signs and understand a bit of conversation. Alot of people spoke english, but when they didn’t I found I could still communicate well enough to order food and that kind of thing. However I found myself wanting to say “danke” instead of “gracias” all the time.

Tuesday was the last day of the trip. We spent the morning walking around the neighborhood. Right next to our hotel was another funky park, and past that another picturesque old neighborhood. We made our way to Montjuïc from the opposite side, happened upon some castle, and past that the big Catalonia art museum. Spain seems to have alot of great artists and holds them in high regard. Although we didn’t have time to go inside, the grounds around it were pretty impressive, as was the architecture.

Then it was back the airport and home. Cold and rainy New York City.

The Devil Is in the Details

We had a great weekend in Boston and OrigaMIT. We went up a day early, on Friday to take in the sights in downtown Boston. Michelle had never been there and it had been a long time for Jeannie and me. We started with the famous historical sailing ship U.S.S. Constitution, A.K.A. “Old Ironsides”. I’d never seen it before and it was pretty cool. Turns out in addition to famously surviving numerous battles on the high seas in the early to mid 19th century, the ship was actually the first vessel built by or for the United States Navy, one of six for America’s freshman fleet, back in the 1790’s in the Washington administration. As you’d expect the ship was full of lots of cannons and sailing rigging, technology from another era. And predictably ceilings and doorways were low, and got lower the further belowdecks you went.

One cool thing was the ship is still on active duty after 222 years. The museum is in fact an active Navy Yard, and the tour guides on the boat were sailors serving as the ship’s crew. They kept on referring to events from hundreds of years ago in the second person, as in “We won that battle…” At first this reminded me of sports fans rooting for their team, but I realized as American Navy Sailors they’re perfectly entitled to talk that way because the the continuity is real.

We had lunch in a nearby pub that was built in the 1700’s, where Paul Revere used to hang out. The food was great, enjoyed the chowdah. After lunch we walked over the bridge where Magnus Chase got killed and sent to Valhalla and into the old historic town. It was pretty cold and windy, below freezing, actually, for the first time after a mild fall so far. We saw the Old North Church, the slightly-less-old Catholic North Church, Paul Revere’s House and Quincy Market. We ended up taking a ferry across the harbor back to our starting point as the sun was setting. All in all a very nice day.

OrigaMIT, a.k.a the M.I.T Origami convention, itself was great. I always feel like I don’t have enough new stuff in my exhibit, and I hadn’t really done much folding since June, but in the last week or so I managed to jam out a few longstanding unfinished projects.

First was Two Intersecting Tetrahedra (a.k.a. Stellated Octahedron) w/ Color Change. This was a subject I had tackled several times in the past but was never satisfied with the result. So ended up going with a someone else’s idea. Beth Johnson has a model of this shape and was kind enough to send me her CP. Beth is not generally known for her single-sheet color-change complex polyhedra but her approach is great, with a clever twist fold to form the pyramids that augment the primary faces along with a hexagonal layout to accomplish the color change reasonably efficiently. I can’t help but think there’s a more efficient layout out there, maybe from a square, but so far I haven’t been able to improve on her design. Folding from the CP it was a bit of a puzzle, but once you understand it goes together nicely. Like alot of models of this ilk it tends to spring apart, but wetfolded out of the right paper it holds together quite well. I’m pleased I was a able to fold an exhibit quality model. Thank you Beth!

Next up, my Oliphaunt. This is one of my most complex models, barely foldable at all. You need to pick the right paper cuz it can get really thick, and you need to start with a large (50cm or more) sheet. A while back I found a really nice piece of paper, perfect for the subject. Only problem was that it was kind of soft, so I laminated to a sheet of gold foil for a stiffer backing. I got ninety percent of the way finished for OUSA last June. But it turned out the foil was not stiff enough to overcome the softness of the paper, and it was not wetfoldable either. So I had to set it aside.

Now alot of guys who do supercomplex models (everyone from Robert Lang, Brian Chan and Jason Ku on down) put glue and tape and metal armatures inside their models all the time. I’ve always resisted this even for common problems like countering the tendency for the legs to splay out (the issue with my Oliphaunt) or making a bird or other biped balance on two legs. I’ve always preferred to try and fix the issue in the design. But you know, sometimes you need a little help to get by. I ended up making a simple inverted U-shaped armature of out of an old handle for a Chinese food box, and taped it inside, and it was just the thing.

While I was at it, I had a nearly complete rendition of my American Turkey hanging around that suffered from the same problem. I taped a wire inside that and had another excellent exhibit-quality model.

So suddenly I had three great new models. Woo-hoo!

And, I almost forgot to mention I made a Giant Squid for the OUSA Holiday Tree at the Museum of Natural History. I made it from a semi-glossy sheet of dark red paper with a silvery backing. It looks perfect. The finished model is over a foot long. Talo says he’s gone set it up fighting a blue whale.

I taught two classes this year, teaching three of my models. Two of the models were new: my Catamaran and Speedboat. I designed the Catamaran last February at Origami Heaven after returning from a sailing trip in the Bahamas. I designed the speedboat sometime around OUSA in June. For this convention I diagrammed both. I had thought of them as both high intermediate cuz they only take 10 or 20 minutes each to fold, but the repertoire of folds and the 3D-ness probably lands them in the complex realm. In any event the class was full and went quite well, although it’s apparent that the Speedboat is not quite perfected: finishing it so it holds together is fussier that it ought to be. So there will another round of diagrams for that one in the offing.

The other class I taught was my Medieval Dragon III. This is a very old model. In fact, the original version of it was my first truly successful original design and dates back to the 1980’s. The base is half blintzed bird base and half blintzed frog base with a little preliminary base grafted onto one corner, borrowed from John Montroll’s Pegasus from his Origami for the Enthusiast book. Sometime in the early 2000’s I revisited it and enlarged the graft to allow for improved detail in the head and claws on the wings. Even though the folding style is dated, it has a great, classic look and is lots of fun to hold. To this day it’s one of the better dragons out there. The class was two hours and it was quite popular and everyone in it finished the model and did a great job.

In between teaching was alot of hanging out with origami friends: Adrianne, Robby, Anne, Michael and Richard, Talo, Brian, Jason, Robert, Mark and some new faces. All in all a long, exhausting but very fun weekend.

Next up: pictures!!!

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.