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.