| Gallacon Picutres |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:40 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
I recently found some pictures someone had taken at Gallacon, the anime convention at the public library, where I taught origami. There are a few of me and a few of the things I brought. |
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| almost internet famous |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
A few years ago I downloaded a couple of videos of Vincent Floderer's origami from a web site associated with a now-defunct origami convention. A few years later, the web site hosting the videos disappeared. Because I didn't want the information to be lost, I uploaded the videos to youtube so that other people might find them of interest.
This morning a coworker emailed me because she thought I might be interested to know about an origami video that was linked to by makezine, who had found it through boingboing. She didn't realize at the time that it was, in fact, a video that I had uploaded to youtube.
As a result, the linked video got about 10,000 views yesterday, which is about 30% of the total views it has received in the two and a half years since I uploaded it. While I'm glad people are seeing and enjoying it, I am a bit frustrated by the comments on both linking sites that basically say that Floderer's work isn't origami simply because of the arbitrary rules and meaning they have in their heads about what origami means.
In the boingboing comments, oschene and Floderer himself both do a good job of trying to explain that there is no reason to dismiss the work as anything other than origami, but I think some people can be a little thick headed about changing their opinions. I guess it's like any other time when you discover that something that you have "learned" is incorrect or incomplete. It's not always easy to assimilate new information.
oschene has gone on to post his feelings about the issue on his site. I think it's an uphill battle that is probably somewhat lost, but progress is made by lots of little changes and we all have to do our part. |
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| Between the Folds |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|11:11 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
The showing of Between the Folds today went very well. It was nice to see the documentary again, and the turnout was good. There were probably around 40 people at the reception, and I had some of my more-impressive-works-that-I-happened-to-have-on-hand on display.
I taught about 10 people the jumping frog and the crane in the scant half an hour of reception before the screening, and that went quite well, partly thanks to Joelle's help.
There were probably around 100 people who sat for the screening and most of them stayed for the panel after. I wish that had been a bit longer too, but the library opens at 2 and closes at 5 on Sunday, so they have to operate within those constraints. The questions and comments people had were interesting and it was fun to talk about something on which I am the local expert.
We also got 17 people signed up who expressed an interest in joining our origami club meetings. Since we only have three regulars now, even if only a few actually follow through it will be a big expansion.
So, all in all it was a great success. I hope the other showings around the country are met with as much interest and enthusiasm. I really need to pick up a copy of the DVD now. |
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| origami lately |
[May. 29th, 2009|12:13 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Continuing my work on my business card web site, I folded the business card dragon that I found diagrams for on flickr. It's an interesting model. Not too complicated, although it does use box pleating and the card thickness can get a little unwieldy in some places. It also takes 5 cards that have to be glued together.
( dragon photo )
I also folded the pig with diagrams by the same author as the dragon. This one requires some judgment folds and gets very thick. I was only partly happy with my fourth try.
( pig photo )
I tried folding the Penta Flinger model from Wings and Things: Origami That Flies out of light card stock business cards. It worked out okay, but I ended up gluing it for stability, and regular thickness business cards wouldn't work well.
( penta flinger photos )
I also folded another six card orb then revisited the 4 card orb design.
( orb photos )
This is a tessellation based on Nick Robinson's Green Man model, folded from an 11 inch square of Thai mulberry paper with "3-D" dye.
( green man tessellation photos )
And finally a few small Tomoko Fuse boxes.
( box photos ) |
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| business card origami |
[May. 18th, 2009|12:40 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
This weekend I created a flickr pool for business card origami.
I also updated my business card origami page to add some models that I recently became aware of and to embed the images of models I have folded into the page as thumbnails. I should probably work on reverse engineering some of the models I haven't figured out yet. It's been a while since I've messed with that at all. First I want to fold and photograph some of the models that I know how to fold but haven't folded and/or photographed before.
I also recently added a favicon for the site, although it appears for all of the pages on the domain, which isn't exactly what I wanted. The idea is that it is a simple line drawing of a business card cube. Not sure if that really comes across, but at least I've got something going, right? I drew this one pixel by pixel. It could have been worse.
Since I originally created my page (has it really been over five years?), a new business card origami page has appeared. It has some good information that I didn't have before, and it also covers a lot of the same ground (and uses my site as a reference some, too, although they misspelled my name). |
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| orbs |
[May. 16th, 2009|11:29 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
This past week I finally got around to making some business card orbs. They are made from six cards scored with 2 inch circles. I didn't want to buy a $5 template and I couldn't track down a compass, so I just sort of eyeballed one and then cut it to use as a template.
( pictures ) |
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| No.22 The Larch |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|10:42 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Here is the tessellation I folded on Easter. It's No.22, Negative Space Stars from Eric Gjerde's book Origami Tessellations. I folded it from a large (8 inch?) hexagon of elephant hide/wyndstone marble paper. I kind of regret not doing another iteration of precrease divisions, but I was getting tired and it would have been difficult.
( pictures ) |
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| off the deep end |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|11:01 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Famous Blue Raincoat | ] |
So, I've apparently gone off the deep end and decided to try to organize an origami group in the Nashville area. I know most of you peeps won't care, but if you live in middle TN and might be interested, join the yahoo group I have created for that purpose. |
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| MTAC Ninja - 5 origami panels |
[Apr. 5th, 2009|09:06 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
For some reason, I apparently thought it would be a good idea to run not one, not two, not three or four, but five different origami panels at MTAC Ninja. I had a couple of fellow folders I work with help for most of the panels, and it all went really well. The turnout was much better than I expected.
For the beginner classes there were 50-70 people. For the advanced and open folding sessions there were 20-30 people. I expected 50-75% of that, so we ran out of handouts and almost out of paper, but we managed. I have some good ideas for what to do next year, if they decide to have me back.
I had a lot of fun, but it wore me out.
( pictures ) |
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| a day in the life |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|11:40 pm] |
Yesterday, blessed_lunatic had an appointment so I went with her to keep Ouida Mae occupied for an hour and a half. We were in Brentwood so first I stopped by Hobby-Lobby International (not to be confused with Hobby Lobby) just to see what exactly they had. Apparently they are all Radio Controlled all the time, and mostly planes. If I were still 12 years old, it would have been like heaven.
Ouida and I looked around a bit and then headed over to Radnor Lake. First we checked out the snakes in the visitor center then we walked the spillway trail, across the dam, then back to the parking lot. Not a long hike, but we were taking a leisurely stroll and I was taking some pictures as well. There were a fair number of people about, several with dogs, a few with children, and one couple with a camera (SLR). I find it interesting that people with children almost always want to stop and point out the baby to their child.
Given more time I might have gone for the lake trail and south lake trail loop, but I didn't quite feel up for doing it in less than an hour with 13 extra pounds strapped to my chest.
( Randor Lake pictures )
In the after noon we went to the Nashville Smial meeting to discuss Lord of the Rings book 2 (of 6). It was enjoyable although we only got to stay for two thirds of the discussion before Ouida got a little on the sleepy side and we decided to depart before she got really fussy. A couple of times lately she has taken to screaming a bit when she get really tired. I'm looking forward to her figuring out that sleep makes the tired feeling go away without any fussing required.
During the discussion I finished one tessellation and worked on another.
( tessellation pictures )
As a bonus, here is a cute picture of Ouida Mae's feet. I was experimenting with a coffee filter flash diffuser. Not perfect, but not as bad as the bare flash.
Today I spent some time working on back coating some paper for a few projects. I have so many to work on... Oh, and my elephant hide paper I ordered came in on Friday, so I need to work on some stuff with that soon, too. And MTAC is coming up in two weeks, and I'll be teaching a few classes there that I need to finish getting ready for. Too much to do.
There was also a post on the SCADASEC group today about a news story titled "Power Grid Is Found Susceptible to Cyberattack". My first thought was of Power Grid the board game, so I couldn't resist posting the news to BGG. |
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| more tessellations? really? |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|12:32 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
So, at some point you might wonder if I do anything besides fold tessellations...
No.10 Square Weave from Eric Gjerde's book Origami Tessellations, folded from a 6 inch square of glassine. I don't really care for models that require trimming after prefolding, so I didn't bother to cut off the 16th row.
  
No.12 Rhombus Weave from Eric Gjerde's book origami tessellations. Folded from a rectangle of glassine which was around 4x6 inches.
  
Based on No.13 Star Twist in Eric Gjerde's book origami tessellations. Folded from a hexagon of glassine cut from a 6 inch square. The finished model is about 2 inches across on the short axis. That's my thumb on the bottom corner. I really should fold these things from larger paper the first time through. I made one mistake that was too annoying to fix, although it's not too obvious. Things also got off a little bit on a couple of the corners.
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| Origami Lessons |
[Feb. 22nd, 2009|11:49 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
I'm trying something new and I have listed myself as available to teach origami lessons on craigslist. I don't expect much in the way of response. In the past day I have only gotten one inquiry and I don't think I should respond to it. It just talks about tutoring a guy's son in math, chemistry, physics, guitar, and piano. I suspect it is probably a scammer fishing for replies. |
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| origami culture |
[Feb. 8th, 2009|11:12 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Oschene brought up some interesting points about origami in recent post on The Fitful Flog
And what has this to do with origami? Well, origami comes with all sorts of cultural baggage: the foreign name, the missionary zeal of its adherents, the Sadako mythology, the seemingly endless number of penguin models…and there’s the internal culture, as well. Modern origami has developed all sorts of cultural norms and squirrelly values in the past few decades, things you don’t find out about until after you’ve been converted by the zealous missionaries: the square thing, the no-cuts/no glue thing, the cult of the creative genius, the antiquarian reverence for diagrams, and most of all, the hegemony of the power of 2.
Some of this speaks to and reflects the problems I have with the origami forum, but it's also an interest introspective view of the weirdness of origami subculture. Now I just need to figure out how to break that culture, I guess. |
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| tessellation book |
[Jan. 27th, 2009|11:31 pm] |
Today my copy of Origami Tessellations by Eric Gjerde came. It's quite nice. I've folded several of the models before, based on diagrams and pictures I've seen online and my own explorations, but it's very nice to have a reference book with diagrams and some new inspiration. |
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