The Return of Special Sessions

This weekend I participated in a favorite origami event, a Special Folding Session at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  These used to happen on Sundays a few times a year, and it’s a good opportunity to learn some new folds and hang out with origami people, as well as see the museum.  But there hasn’t been one since before the pandemic, so it’s good that they brought it back.

I taught my Halloween Spider, which I invented and developed last fall at the CoCon and OrgamiMIT conventions, and contributed one of ’em to the Origami Holiday Tree at the museum this year as well.  The students in my class turned out to be middle-school-age kids, but already advanced folders.  Meanwhile the adults there all took simpler classes.

This was first time I taught it so I was eager to see how it came across.  When I designed it, my hope was to have an intermediate level model, but it turns out it’s pretty complex and technically demanding.  In particular, there’s the sink of doom, probably around step 30 if I diagrammed the model.  It’s the kind of fold where you just let the paper do it’s thing, and it usually just works out, but if you don’t see it in your mind it can be hard to understand.  The students all got thru it, and did a pretty nice job, but not to the point where they could do the final sculpting to make the model look the model look truly great, spooky and terrifying.  

I fell like if I spent some time unfolding the model and tweaking the proportions, and maybe adding a prefold or two, I could make the sink of doom much more intuitive and easier to execute.  I’ll try and work on that before the next time I teach it.

After my class was over Jeannie and did a tour of the museum.  I haven’t been to the AMNH in at least five years, so it was nice to be back.  In some sense it feels like my “home” museum, since OUSA is headquartered there and I’ve been to visit so many times over the years.  Alot of things haven’t changed.  The dinosaur and megafauna fossil collection remains world-class, and the halls of African Animals, North American Mammals, and Marine Life, with their evocative dioramas, remain must-see classics.  Even the overall Teddy-Roosevelt-era vibe and architecture feel warm and welcoming.

We saw a few new things.  One was the revamped and newly re-opened hall of rocks, minerals and gems, which was quite impressive.  Another was a show at the planetarium about the planets of the solar system.  This was preceded by a short film in the waiting area about the history of the planetarium itself.  The was also an excellent Imax film about the Serengeti in Africa, very informative and with great photography, but kid-friendly in that they didn’t actually show and zebras or wildebeests being slain and devoured by lions or crocodiles.

Permission Slip by Consumer Reports Nominated for a Webby Award

For the second time in my career, my project has been nominated for a Webby Award. The first time was back in 2008, when the internet was still cool, and I worked at Nick.com, where I helped build groundbreaking apps such as Nicktropolis and Turbonick. Our main competition that year was canihazacheezeburger.com, and believe it or not we won.

This year the project is Permission Slip (https://permissionslipcr.com), a mobile app to help people take back control of their personal data online, inspired by California’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CCPA) which defines compliance measures a company must undertake when a consumer requests the exercise of their privacy rights.

As lead engineer on the project and of the Innovation Lab at Consumer Reports, I’m especially gratified that we’re nominated in the category of Technical Achievement. Of course I’m part of a pretty large, and very intelligent, creative, knowledgeable and otherwise awesome team. And sometimes it feels like a large part of my job is just going to meetings and telling everyone my opinions. But I guess that actually is an important job.

Anyway, you can vote here, until the end of the week:

Vote now for: Apps & Software – Technical Achievement (https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2023/apps-dapps-and-software/app-features/technical-achievement)

Vote now for: Apps & Software – Public Service & Activism (https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2023/apps-dapps-and-software/general-apps/public-service-activism)

Bunny Hop

We just got back from a fun trip upstate, a mini vacation to visit friends and family for Easter.  Our first stop was in Watkins Glen to do some hiking.  We drove up the night before and stayed right on the lake.  I’d never been there before, and it was a cool hike and a gorgeous gorge full of waterfalls.  Unfortunately, the trial that goes right up the bottom of the gorge was not yet open for the season; I guess they have to make sure it’s in good repair after the snow melts and there’s no danger of falling rocks.  So we stayed on the rim trails, which still provided plenty of views and scenic overlooks, a few bridges and the occasional side path down into the gorge. Still we want to go back in season when the gorge trail is open cuz it’s pretty spectacular.

When we were done our hike we drove the rest of the way up to Buffalo.  We stayed with my mum and dad, and Lizzy and Michelle came down for dinner and to hang out.  Played some board games, drank some wine, did some story telling.  Next day we went to see the Sabres play.  I hadn’t been to a hockey game in many years, and it was alot of fun.  Our friends Larry and Jackie met us as the arena, and just by coincidence their son and some of his friends had seats in the row behind us.  It was a good game, fast and exciting, and the Sabres won by one goal.  Now they’re hanging on to playoff hopes if they win more than two or their last few games. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a local craft brewery, which was alot of fun.  I hadn’t been walking around that part of downtown Buffalo in a long time, and it’s good to see it all cleaned up and full of restaurants and other businesses.

Sunday was Easter.  Jeannie and I went for a long walk around my parent’s neighborhood in the morning.  We ran into Lizzy, who is training to run a half marathon and came over early to do a run around the ‘hood as well. My uncle Ron and aunt Emöke came over for Easter dinner.  I hadn’t seen them since my dad’s ninetieth birthday party before the pandemic, so that was really nice.  Lots more storytelling and wine, and finding out what all my numerous relations are up to.

Now we’re home and the weather here is just gorgeous. Even got out on my bike today for a short ride. Hoping to have a chance to do some yardwork before the weekend.

Good Day Sunshine

Early spring continues to get springier.  Last Friday I finished up raking the yard, filling up three more big bags of leaves and debris.  This morning the town came and picked it all up, so it’s on to the next task.

Sunday morning I took my ’67 Mustang out for the first drive of the season.  I’m happy to say it started right up, and sounded and felt good on the highway.  Woo-hoo!

Then Sunday afternoon Jeannie and I went for a bike ride.  Last summer we started doing bike rides on local trails around the area, but we only did a few.  This year, I figured since we had such a good ski season, I want to do something athletic the rest of the year too.  So we’re starting early in the spring (just two weeks ago we were still on our skis) and hope to get a regular pattern going.  This one was just over ten kilometers, in about an hour.  Nothing too huge, but not bad for the first time out. 

I also finished a longstanding software development project, adding some sort functionality to the class scheduling tool for conventions on the Origami USA web site.  This was a rather drawn out endeavor because it’s built in PHP on an old version of Drupal, and the whole dev environment is an enormous pain in the neck.   The overhead of keeping the site running locally is non trivial:  updates from the git repo, managing the dependencies, updating the scripts to sync the database and media assets, it’s all a major headache and time suck, and there are breaking changes from time to time.  All this is before one can even start writing code.  So I’m pretty happy it’s done with.  Well, maybe one more tiny change.  Robert Lang, who is OUSA’s web master and the only person who really understands how the site works, helped me drag it over the finish line, so thanks to him for that.

Meanwhile, my origami stellated icosahedron is coming along.  I’ve finished pre-creasing on the smaller one, and on the larger on I collapsed it halfway, then unfolded to reinforce the valance of all the existing creases to make it hold its shape better, and refolded it.  All that’s left is to fold the lock.  I’m thinking I’m going to wetfold this one when it’s done, since it’s folded from Elephant Hide and it will hold its shape amazingly after that.

In other news Nicolas Terry has started selling Elephant Hide paper in large sheets of previously unavailable colors on his web site, so I ordered a whole bunch.

Finally, my new song, In the Purple Circus is almost finished.  It’s basically a prog metal song, so naturally I added a tenor sax part.  It came out totally wailing, channeling some Michael Brecker energy, screeching and growling in the high altissimo rang, up to the fourth C#.  The next day I added a bari sax way down low to reinforce the tenor, and blend with the overtones of the subsonic bass synthesizer.  Now it’s pretty much down to the final mix, which I hope to share soon.

Big Wheel Keep On Movin’ Along

Spring weather has finally arrived.  Ah, lovely. At least some days, others are stormy, windy and rainy.  Ah well.  Michelle was home for spring break last week, which was fun, but pretty low key.  She went out with her friends a few times, did some homework and studying, and did some baking.  We had game night a couple times, and watched Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part II, which was pretty funny and held up to the tradition of the original.  Probably the funniest bit was when Jesus thinks he’s John Lennon.

The season was well begun by spending time outside.  I raked up half the yard and filled up my available cans.  Need to get some yard bags so I can finish the job.  Also got the Pilot washed waxed and vacuumed on the inside, cleaned all the mud and salt off from the winter.  

And, I had some time to continue with origami.  I completed a model called Dimpled Dodecahedron II, which resembles a soccer ball, and made good progress on my stellated icosahedron. I had done a few studies on that one, but the paper I chose was too small or too soft.  Now I’m doing a nice large one out of elephant hide and medium sized on out of skytone paper.

Fotoz 2022

Well ski season is officially over.  We went one last time last Friday up to Catamount.  There was lots of recent snow, but it had turned warm, so the consistency of the snow was like wet cement, particularly where it hadn’t been groomed.  Then toward the end it started to rain, so that was the end of that.  We did meet up with our friends Seth and Cathy, who have a place nearby, and it was good to catch up and hang out.

Next comes the big push for big springtime, getting the yard in shape, getting the cars serviced, getting the mustang out on the road, and getting on our bikes.  More on that as it develops.

I did manage to get one task done before the end of the winter, and that was to create photo albums for 2022.  You can see them here:

https://zingman.com/fotooz/

https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-01/
https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-02/ https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-03/ https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-04/ https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-05/ https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-06/ https://zingman.com/fotooz/2022/2022-07/

As usual, this site is password protected. Please contact me if you need credentials.

The Epic

Just got back from a ski trip up to Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks.  A month ago it looked like we might not even have a ski season this year, but this was our fourth trip, and our first to a big mountain in many years.  I’ve never been to Gore before.  It’s very nice, on the level of places I’ve skied in Vermont.  It’s a big mountain with lots of terrain and lots of lifts, and the snow conditions were excellent, with fresh powder on top a groomed base of several significant recent snowfalls.  Good as any snow I’ve skied on the last few years.  

The mountain is owed and run by New York State, which is nice in that it’s not all overdeveloped with condos.  However, that means there’s not a lot of places to stay nearby, and it’s a four-hour drive from our house.  So we drove up Friday night and stayed in Lake George, about a half hour away.  The hotel had a nice dinner and a bar featuring maple-bacon old fashions, and a basic breakfast of coffee and muffins.  

Fresh snow was falling Saturday morning, on top of a large snowfall earlier in the week.  We met our friends Mark and Kelly at the base lodge; they came down from the high peaks area to the north.  It was a great day skiing.  I’d finally gotten comfortable on my new skis, and it was great to be able to go all out on good conditions.  The mountain was too big to keep count of how many runs we did, and the runs were much longer than a place like Catamount anyway.  It felt like we went all over the mountain, but we really only explored one quadrant.  We mainly did blue runs, and spent alot of time in a zone served by the North Lift, where there was a good set interconnected trails, all of which were very beautiful.  The lift didn’t have long lines because you had to take several trails and lifts to get there.  We skied for about three hours then tool a break for lunch at a lodge up on the mountain, then went out for another hour and a half until we were exhausted.  The last few runs we went all the way up and down again, over 2,000 feet vertical.

Afterwards we went back to Mark and Kelly’s, about and hour and half further north.  Mark built a fire and made us an excellent dinner and we talked and sipped whiskey until late into the night.  Kelly turned me on the records of Alice Coltrane.

I would definitely go back to Gore for a weekend again.  But not this season cuz it’s an overnight trip.  Still, there’s a big snowstorm on the way upstate, even though it’s rain down in New York City, and we get yet get in one more ski trip before spring arrives.

New Origami

We ended up not going skiing this last weekend, which means I finally had time to follow up and develop some origami ideas I started exploring in Bogota.  I’ve been doing a series of single-sheet polyhedra based on an icosahedron from a sheet of hexagon paper, using a triangle grid. The first step was to figure out how to lay the faces of the finished form into the unfolded sheet so that you’d end up with the right amount of paper at the edges to form a good lock.  Then I tried folding a few times, trying out a few variations to get good at it.  The most successful so far is a Dimpled Icosahedron.  This is a fascinating shape, and a good, strong model that holds together well and can even stand being thrown around.  More coming soon, so watch this space!

Mr. Gone

It is with a mix of sadness and admiration that I note the passing of Wayne Shorter, one of the great sax players of all time, a legendary improviser and innovator, one of the all-time great jazz composers, one of my musical heroes, and just a giant in the world of jazz.  His influence, legacy and spirit will long endure.