Category: Origami

I Love New York In June

Well it’s summertime and the living is easy. The last few weeks the weather has been really pleasant. Since I expanded my patio last fall I’ve started working outside for an hour or so in the afternoons to work on my tan at the same time. I made a shade screen out of cardstock for my laptop that slides onto the edges of the lid. Practical origami skills. I usually go out after I’m done working out (which is usually lunchtime), and I’ve found it’s usually the best part of my workday for deep concentration. I’ve had a run of increasing good workouts since the springtime, and have gone up in weight and distance on my various exercises. Been getting out on my bike too. This week, however, it’s turned brutally hot (96 degrees today) so getting a walk in the early morning, and going outside to move the sprinkler from time to time is enough.

Work has been pretty interesting lately. We’re gearing up for a big new product launch at the end of the summer, a new electronic musical instrument with wifi network capabilities. The project involves hardware and software. As the cloud architect, I’ve been reaching across into our client codebase to work stuff like analytics integration and authentication. Our backend is in Firebase, which works well if your client is a mobile app or web site. And indeed all my end-to-end prototypes so far have run on that stack.

But our clients also include embedded hardware devices and also desktop applications. I’ve been learning our application tech stack built in C++ and JUCE. It’s set up to compile to Mac OS, Windows, iOS or Android. Only problem is, there’s only Firebase SDK for the mobile platforms, even in C++. Of course the Firebase SDK ultimately sends http requests over a REST API, which is documented. So we’ve put some REST libraries into our JUCE app, and got things working that way. Now I’m taking the building blocks and assembling them into reusable components for use in any future app.

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In music world, I bought a new synthesizer from Josh, the piano player in my jazz group. It’s a Nord Stage 3, their current flagship product. It’s pretty cool because it combines a digital stage piano, a dedicated organ simulator, and a synthesizer/sampler unit. All the controls are laid out in a gigantic spread, but it’s very readable, and because each knob or button has a single purpose, there’s no menus to scroll thru, and it’s very friendly to live performance. And it has great sounds and a great-feeling weighted keyboard. Plus it’s red!

I have the the 76-key model, and Josh sold it to me because he’s moving up to the 88-key version. Of course that’s a good deal more expensive, and I’m happy with the deal we worked out. In any event the 76-key version is more portable, in case I ever start gigging again. I did my full piano practice on it the other day to put it thru it’s paces. It’s funny, I only missed the really high and low keys on a couple songs, and they’re all written by piano players: Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Donald Fagen. There’s one Keith Emerson song – Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression – that literally uses every single key. Luckily, it’s not to hard to adjust the voicings to fit in the available range. And hey, it’s still three keys more than I have on my Fender Rhodes.

Now I have an old keyboard I want to get rid of. It’s a nice enough keyboard, a Privia PX-5S, with great sounds and layering, and its own performance-oriented array of knobs and sliders. It’s just that the new board is a serious upgrade. While I’m at it I have an old soprano sax I want to unload as well. I hope I can sell them, or at least give them to a good home.

The new jazz group as been coming along, lots of fun, good chemistry. We do a mix of jazz standards, jazz interpretations of pop and rock tunes, some funk/fusion stuff, and a bunch of my originals. Now that the pandemic is pretty much over, I’m thinking it’s time to get some gigs.

In my recording studio, I was kind of stuck for a while on my song Lift Off. It’s basically a bebop number with some twisting melodies and chord progressions. This being a computer jazz record, I sequenced the drums in midi, but for some reason the groove wasn’t really happening. I worked on different ways to embellish the arrangement with synths and things, but as they say, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing…

So I bought a couple books on jazz drumming, and began to work thru them. One is The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley. In addition to writing out alot of patterns, it gives some good theory about how to play, how to swing, what to listen for when you practice, and how to balance and control the sound. So I adjusted my midi drum pattern following the advice in the book as best I could, lots of subtle changes to the patterns and accents, adding some hi-hat behind the ride cymbal on the backbeat. And it made a huge difference! I mean it still sounds like a sequencer, but it grooves now! It still remains to flesh out the arrangement with accents in the comps, and this includes the other instruments too. But now it’s a matter of closing the distance to get the sound I want.

I was telling Steve, my drummer about all this, and he was giving me advice on things like how to mic a drum kit, and offered to lay down a human drum track to my song. That would change everything, but he’s a really good drummer and he’s set up for recording in his home, so I figured let’s go for it and see how it turns out.

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Last topic for this post: this weekend was the Origami USA 2021 Convention. I was a member of the OUSA web and convention committees this year, on account of me having built a new scheduling tool for classes that integrates with our web application, replacing an old offline tool. I built the convention class schedule with the new tool too. So it’s satisfying to be able to say all my hard work has paid off, and everyone else’s too. I must say, before I got involved, I had no idea how much work went into one of these conventions.

This year’s convention was completely virtual and online. Classes were via zoom. We had something like 140 classes being taught in eleven parallel tracks. There was also a virtual hospitality space provided by an app called Gather, and an online exhibition. Of course it’s not as satisfying as the real thing, but I did get the sense of being able to hang with my origami friends, talk about origami and do some folding together.

I taught two classes, which is my favorite part. To run the zooms, there is a tech manager, a host and a Q&A manager (all OUSA volunteers) in addition to class teacher. Jeannie is tech volunteer, doing three five-hour teaching blocks.

I had my phone on a tripod over my shoulder with the camera pointing down at the paper as it’s folded, and my laptop facing me, to speak into. I taught my Martian and Flying Saucer from my recent Air and Space kit book, and Gladys the Platypus, a previously undiagrammed model that I submitted to this year’s annual collection. Both classes went quite well, although for the Platypus we just barely finished in time.

Because I spent so much time writing software and attending committee meetings, I didn’t do as much actual folding this year as I would have liked, so I had very little new stuff to put into the exhibition. I spent a good deal of time this spring work on a single model, but it’s really complex I never quite got it finished. It’s a single-sheet polyhedron, a half-sunken cuboctahedron with an embedded hydrangea tessellation on each square face. Making the grid of hydrangeas was large effort by itself, but the collapsing the model into its 3-D form was something else again. The issue was that there’s just a ton of layers that need to be managed, and they all tend to make the model want to spring apart.

I kept at it, facet by facet, working out the inner hidden geometry. Saturday morning of the convention I finally got it to close. But I wasn’t fully satisfied, so I unfolded it and cut off two corners from the sheet, making the square into a hexagon. This substantially reduced the inner bulk, and made the final close much nicer. Unfortunately, by this time the paper had gotten pretty worn from handling, so it’s not the tightest lock ever. Nothing a bit of tape or glue (gasp!) can’t take care of. Still, it works, and so we can declare victory! It looks great as long as you don’t turn it over.

And now I feel I’ve gotten my origami energy active again to get back into folding. I have several half-finished books, and lots of designs in my head waiting to be worked out. A few people told me they love my work and would really digging seeing a book on this or that theme. That’s pretty motivating.

Signed Sealed Delivered

Things have calmed down and gotten back to normal around here. The weather has been beautiful, and I’ve been watering the new grass every day. Then the weekend turned unusually hot and we had to put in our air conditioners several weeks earlier than usual. Today it got cold again. Go figure.

In all the excitement of the last week I forgot to mention that I’ve been busy doing origami stuff. First off, the Pacific Coast Origami Convention (PCOC) is in San Francisco this year, coming up in the fall. Jeannie and I are planning on going. It’ll be the first in-person origami convention, and the first time we’ve travelled outside of New York State in almost two years. They put out a call for models with a California theme for the convention book, and the deadline was last week. I contributed a California Sea Lion, after the famous denizens of Pier 39. It was a new original model, using the base for my Walrus and Elephant Seal. I finished the diagrams last Monday, the day we got back home. Now I’m thinking of doing a seal with a ball on its nose. I also had some ideas for California Seabirds, the Canvasback, Greater Scaup, and Bufflehead. All have a similar duck-like shape but with interesting and different color-change patterns. I ran out of time to draw up diagrams, but hopefully I’ll be able to exhibit them at the convention.

Meanwhile the OUSA Annual convention is coming up in just about a month. This is an online convention, and I’ve been on the convention committee by virtue of my handling the class schedule. I finally got to use the scheduling software I wrote last winter. I’m happy to say it worked flawlessly, although going through the process for real made me think of a few enhancements I’d like to add to make the workflow faster and smoother. The schedule is complicated compared to other years because each class is a zoom session and requires OUSA people to manage the tech and play host, in addition to the teacher. Also they’re having an empty session after every class to allow for the possibility that it runs over time. So about 100 people signed up to teach about 160 classes. I originally thought I could schedule 125 to 140 or so, so we ranked the classes, giving preference to original, unpublished models, plus some rarer categories like simple, supercomplex and presentation/lectures, as well as aiming to have every teacher teach one model. Then I got the news that a few tech and moderator volunteers dropped out, so there will be fewer classrooms that originally anticipated, and we’ll be lucky to get 120 classes in. Unfortunately, most teachers who signed up to teach multiple models won’t be able to. So I presented a first pass of the schedule to the committee, and explained the constraints. Now everyone has an opinion, and they want to schedule more meetings to discuss it. Ah, committees.

Hello City

Spring continues to warm and grow. All the trees around here are budding and flowering. Lots of lovely sunny weather, and some heavy rainy days as well. Project dirt is nearing completion. I’m up to fifty-four wheelbarrow loads, getting to final low spots in the front yard. There’s grass coming already in on the areas I filled in earlier on.

I’ve been into Manhattan not once but twice last week. The first was a trip to the MoMA, keeping with our tradition of spring break museum outings. I haven’t been to the MoMA in years. Parts of the joint are kinda funky these days, with the main floor being filled with stacked up furniture taken from around the museum as a pandemic precaution, in lieu of an actual exhibit, and the nearby galleries filled with things of dubious artistic merit, such as jars of bodily fluids. The upper floors were better, with lots of impressionist, early modernist, and classic modern art. I seem to recall there used to be an extensive industrial design collection, but it appears that it’s been scaled back a good amount. The famous Ferrari was not on display. Still, most of what there was to see was pretty cool, and it was an enjoyable day out of the house, and stepping back into a hopefully soon-to-be post-pandemic world.

My other trip was for a lunch with the Association for Cultural Equity gang, to celebrate the recent launch of the Global Jukebox 2.1, as well as the new Alan Lomax Digital Archive. This was most excellent. It was great to see Anna and Kiki face to face again, and meet her current grad fellows and some ACE board members. It was a beautiful day in Greenwich Village and they picked a place with great food and drinks, and breezily open to the outside. Afterwards I walked around my old neighborhood for a while, seeing how things had changed. Driving into the city on a weekday in daytime remains a strange and epic adventure, not to be repeated too often.

Now that my song Mo’bility is in the can, I’ve turned my attention back to Lift Off. I’ve come to the conclusion that on the computer it’s never going to sound the way it does in my head, which is alot like classic bebop recorded live by great players full of extroverted virtuosity and expressive spontaneity. So it’s time to get a bit more creative about the sound and the arrangement. First thing is to see if I can put together a really smokin’ sax part from the takes I did, or if I need to keep on woodshedding. Meanwhile I’ve begun working on the last song for the record Bluezebub (The Devil You Don’t Know). It’s a sort of Crimso Mahavishnu Mancini supernatural spy jazz vibe, in 5/4 time, with an uptempo middle section and unison riff break in there somewhere too.

In the spirit of new awakenings, I’ve started to get back into doing origami again. A little over a year ago I took an awesome trip to Spain for CFC2, the second Conference for Creators in origami. I folded a bunch of new stuff for the exhibition, and met alot of great folders from Europe, and good number of old friends too. When I got home I was really fired up to do some new stuff. But then the pandemic happened, and all the conventions were cancelled, and anyway I was busy writing software for OUSA. I sort of lost my creative fire and didn’t really fold anything for a year.

Then a week ago was Fold Fest, sponsored by Origami USA. It was an online event, and the first one I attended since OUSA’s Un-Convention last June. I attended a few classes and connected wit some friends and had a good time. And a bunch of ideas I’ve been working on in the back of my head for a while came to the fore. So I’ve been folding like a madman in my spare time the last week or so. Hopefully I’ll have something to show soon. For now let’s just say I’m combining flowers, tessellations and single-sheet polyhedra. Meanwhile, it makes the time go by faster when you’re stuck in boring meetings.

Hippity Hoppity

Spring continues. The days are getting longer faster, and the nice weather appears more often than not. More and more people I know have gotten the vaccine and getting hopeful about life returning to normal soon.

We didn’t have much of a spring break this year, but it was enjoyable. Busy with work and stuff. Jeannie and I both took a long weekend off from work, and Lizzy came home for the weekend. Hard to believe she’s graduating college in just a month or so. We had family game night Friday night, which was lots of fun. On Sunday we went down to Queens to visit Jeannie’s parents, and Lou and my neblings came over too. It was good to see everyone in person, even if it was pretty low key.

We normally try to go to a museum or day trip this time of year. We haven’t picked a place yet, but we’re looking at next weekend. Most places are running at limited capacity and you have to get tickets in advance. Michelle has asked that we go Washington D.C, this summer to visit a few more museums. That might happen. We might even get back to Ohio for the Centerfold origami convention, and swing my the National Air Force Museum while we’re out that way.

I finished diagramming my Platypus model, called Gladys the Platypus, for the Origami USA 2021 Convention Collection. This is my first new diagram in some time, and hopefully I’ll get back into the groove with that. I hadn’t been that motivated to do much origami during the pandemic, cuz all the conventions were cancelled, and I don’t enjoy the online ones that much. But I’ve been involved in planning and setting up the 2021 OUSA, that includes a virtual gallery, and there may even be some live, in-person conventions later this year. So I’m starting to get back into folding again.

Project dirt continues. I’m up to thirty wheelbarrows of dirt, and have gotten maybe two-thirds of the way around the yard. I filled in one really big low spot on the north side of my house that took four loads by itself. It’s good to spend some time outside, and it’ll be really nice when it’s finished. I made a pretty good dent in my neighbor’s dirt pile, but he has a whole swimming pool’s worth, so there’ll be plenty left.

Spring Into Action

It looks like winter is finally at an end and spring has emerged. It took a while but all the snow on the ground finally melted and we started having some nice days. A week ago on the weekend I started spending time outside to work on the yard, beginning with scraping up all the leaves and debris from the flowerbeds. Also, we finally admitted ski season is over and we wouldn’t get a second day skiing in this year, so we went for a hike instead. We went up to the Palisades in New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River across from Hastings and Yonkers.

This last weekend on Saturday I took the Mustang out for a drive for the first time. Happy to say the engine turned over right away and everything seems in great shape. On Sunday I went for the first bike ride of the year, up to my local Nature Study Woods. Since I was tuning up my bike, Jeannie asked me if I’d get hers ready to ride too. It’s been a couple seasons since she did any biking, but she wants to get back into it. I’d like to get my rollerblades on sometime soon too, but the snowplows tore up our street so badly this winter I’ll have to find another place to go skate.

The yard work continued as well. Last fall after I expanded my patio, I had some leftover dirt that I used to fill in a few low spots in my yard. Once I got into it I realized there were quite a few lumpy areas and wouldn’t it be nice to have some more dirt. Well last fall my neighbor across the street put in a new swimming pool, and now he has a great big pile of dirt, that until recently looked like a sledding hill. He invited me to come over and take away as much as I wanted. So far I’ve take eight wheelbarrow loads, about a cubic yard. I’m probably about twenty percent done. So more next weekend. I’d like to get it down and covered with grass seed in time for things to really start growing.

In other news, I demoed the scheduling tool that I wrote for scheduling classes for conventions to the Origami USA convention committee today. It went over well. Still a few details before we can take it live, but it’s basically there. Thanks to Robert Lang for all his help.

Now I’m starting to think about designing and folding some new models for the convention in June. I have some ideas, but haven’t really been folding much since the pandemic began.

I’ve found some new and interesting stuff to practice on piano. One source was from out continuing movie nights on Saturdays. We recently watched a few classic scifi films including Start Trek IV and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t seen either in many years and 2001 was particularly inspiring. Among the composers whose works Kubric lifted when he put together the soundtrack, beyond the famous Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss and Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss, was Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem by the Hungarian modernist Gyögy Ligeti.

The Ligeti stuff was some intense, crazy music, and so I decided to check out more of it. This eventually led my to his Musica Ricercata, a series of pieces for piano that are mostly not crazy but express a variety of moods and styles and are notable for progressively building from simple to complex. The first one uses just one note. His approach to modernism reminds me a bit of how Monk approaches jazz, often unexpectedly humorous in the way it plays with conventions of form and genre, while remaining very self-consistent.

Another series of piano pieces in a similar vein is Mikrokosmos Béla Bartók, which starts with both hands doubling the same figure using the pentatonic scale and a limited range, and progresses to the complex and bizarre.

The third piece of sheet music came from my trying to find a chart for one of my songs I’m introducing to my jazz group. On the way I came across a cache of old sheet music someone gave me once that I didn’t even know I had. In there was a book of Art Tatum transcriptions. Art Tatum is one of my all-time favorite piano players with a unique and virtuosic stride-based swinging style that influence Keith Emerson and Eddie Van Halen, as well as countless jazz carts. I doubt I’ll be able to play these pieces at speed any time soon, but they’re worth studying for his approach to voicings and rhythm, particularly in the left hand, as well as where and how he inserts embellishments while maintaining the flow of the tune.

Long December

Well 2021 is here, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. Our holidays were pretty laid back, but we made the most of things. Michelle and Jeannie were both off the week of Christmas and were working/schooling from home the week before that. We went up to Buffalo to visit my parents. We went up a few days earlier than usual, because we’d been isolating, and spent Xmas day there. Lizzy came and joined us, and we all came back downstate together. I must say it’s great to still be able to visit my parents after all these years, and fantastic that they’re doing well. My Mum cooked up an amazing feast and my Dad was out shoveling a good foot of show two days in a row.

On the downside we didn’t get to see alot of people we usually see over the holidays, including Martin, Denis, Larry, Nick and their families. And we didn’t really go out or go anywhere. We did manage to have Mary and her Family, along with Jeannie’s parents, come up for an afternoon last week when it was reasonably warm. We hung out in the backyard and built a fire in our firepit.

That night we watched the Bills game. The Bills are pretty hot this year and Lizzy is a huge fan. For me their Super Bowl run from 30 years ago is etched upon my mind, so it’s nice to daydream of victory. We’ve also been playing alot of board games. Ticket to Ride has become a family favorite, and both Jeannie and Michelle have been playing against the computer to improve their strategy. We also got a new game Azul for Xmas.

Now we’re all back at work and school. I’m finishing off some last loose ends for the Jukebox in preparation for a push to live. It’s down to syncing the song metadata and doing a round of QA. We’ll see how things shape up for the new year.

My project to build a scheduling tool for Origami USA has been coming along. I’m pretty close to having a working prototype, or minimum viable product. I’ve been working closely with Robert Lang, who built and the web site, and (not to surprisingly I guess) is an expert software engineer in addition to being a world class origami artist. I’ve been pulled into the committees for the OUSA web site and convention planning. Mostly it’s a fun hang. There’s a good number of people who’ve been there a while and know how to run things, and a few newbies like myself. All pretty friendly but with enough different opinions to keep things lively. Robert is like Mycroft Holmes, running everything on the tech side behind the scenes and handling a million details.

I’ve also started a consulting gig for a company that makes fun (but but very sophisticated) electronic musical instruments, which they want to to connect up into a social media platform. So far they seem like really great people. This could really be alot of fun, right in my wheelhouse. More info as the situation unfolds.

Party on the Patio

As sometimes happens, I’m in the middle of a number of things, all of which are at a point where there’s obstacles to moving forward.

Fall is here, the days are getting shorter and nights are turning colder. Soon the season for biking and rollerblading will be over. We ran the heat for the first time yesterday morning. Jeannie is back to commuting into the city, at least for the next few weeks. Michelle has started school. Last week she attended classes online; this week she’s going into the the school. She’s pretty happy and excited about that. I’m picking her up in the afternoons, since we don’t want her taking the bus or train under the current circumstances. I have the house to myself in the daytime for the first time since March. I’ve started getting up early again.

I narrowed down the number of songs I’m actively recording to three. They’re all coming along. This is the most satisfying thing I’m doing at the moment. Mostly it just takes time, but it’s fun to spend time on it. Doing creative work of any kind means a certain amount of thinking and exploring, which to an outsider can look an awful lot like doing nothing, and of course there’s always has the risk of coming up empty, or with an unsatisfactory result. So one must keep trying or move on to something else. Then, once in a while and idea comes together and way forward is clear, at least until the next obstacle.

For Why Not Zed? the chords and song structure came together pretty quickly and I’ve laid down a basic track with midi bass and drums. I’m practicing the bass and guitar parts to lay down fairly soon. It’s a fairly heavy, rocking uptempo number. I originally envisioned it as something like They Might Be Giants might come up with, but it’s leaning more toward Crimso Astronomy Domine with a pop-punk edge.

Heavy Water is also coming along nicely. I have the song structure, the piano part, a synth bass, and a sketch of the melody, which will weave between the sax and synthesizer. Also practicing the bass guitar part, which I’m gonna lay down at the same time as Why Not Zed?

Autumn Eyes (a.k.a. Wolf Whisper) is further along. The main thing it needs is the sax part, which I’m gonna record when I do the sax for Heavy Water. I took my midi drum part and sliced up up so I can control the level of the different elements of the drum kit, but the drums are pretty minimal on this one. I’m thinking of recording some live drums on it too, to get sounds I can’t get from a drum machine, like brushes.

Plague of Frogs and the others are on the back burner for now. I’ll continue to work on the arrangements while I track these three.

I’m improving playing the drums. I can do a roll now, although there’s room for greater speed and evenness. Working on that and a handful of other rudiments. I can play more and more beats with more solidity and consistency at different tempos. Working on solid kick drum and building up endurance, especially for double and triple hits. In addition to the grooves I’m reading out of books, I’m putting together a few in 5/8 and 7/8 time with different feels.

And – this is potentially exciting – I’ve put together a new jazz group. I think I mentioned I started playing back in July at Lagond, with Mike O. and Rich F. and a new version of the old jazz circle. I haven’t played with them for over a year, so it’s good to be back and nice the group is finding it’s sound and seems to be hitting pretty strong. We’re doing an interesting mix of material, some of which is new to me.

But that’s just a rehearsal band. So in addition, back in August I hooked up with a piano player named Steve, who was looking to get together and jam. I invited Ken on bass and Steve on drums (it seems there’s always two guys with the same name) and we had a quartet. In addition to jazz standards we’re doing some fusion things like Metheny, Joco, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea and Weather Report. Well dig prog rock too. We’ve gotten together three or four times. So far it’s pretty fun, sounds good, and it seems like everyone is on the same wavelength. Too early to really tell, but it may have legs. Or wings. On the downside, the piano player seems to have to travel alot for his job, so that may make it hard to get a weekly thing going.

Alas, the original-oriented rock group remains grounded for want of a guitar player, even though Ken and Steve are into it.

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In other news, my origami book got to be far enough along that I’ve begun looking into publishing options. I have diagrams and page layouts done for nine models, and was working on the table of contents and planning out how many photos I’d need and of what models. The book was looking to be around sixty to sixty-four pages. I reached out to my friend John M and Marc K, who have a lot more experience publishing than I do, and they both had some good advice.

The main thing is I’ve decided to bring my book up to 120 to 128 pages or so, because that seems to be more commercially viable sweet spot. This of course means adding more models. In addition to the nine I already completed, I have five more diagrammed and ready to go; I just need to do the page layouts. Then I have three of four more designed and partially diagrammed, and another five or so that are partially designed but not yet fully worked out or diagrammed. So we’re looking at a few months at least. In the meantime I’ve decided I’m going to take some of the models and put them together in groups, essentially like a chapter of the book, and sell them as digital downloads on the Origami USA web site. So watch this space for that.

Speaking of the OUSA web site, I’ve signed on to create a new scheduling app for conventions and such, and began actively working on it in July. I’ve been working with Robert L., our webmaster, to get up to speed. The level of software to install and configure is pretty heavy. There’s Drupal, Drush, CiviCRM, PHP, a bunch of custom scripts, and whole host of other technologies on the stack. I’m the first person Robert ever tried to onboard, so we worked our thru issue after issue until I finally have the whole web site running on my local machine. Whew, it only took about six weeks.

Now I’m starting in the actual design and development. So far that’s been reading the existing code, the Drupal User’s Guide and Developer’s Guide and discussing thins with Robert. I’ve never written a Drupal module before, and the requirements are only partly clear. Ah fun.

Elsewhere in software development, the Global Jukebox proceeds apace. We’re looking to do another push to live in a few weeks, so it’ll be all shiny for the school kids using the classroom module. I recently put in a new piece of UX/UI to browse the new world taxonomy. It’s called the New Wheel, and unlike the Old Wheel, which radiates out from the center, but became too dense wit the introduction of the new Taxonomy, this one winds inward like the tumblers on a combination lock. It’s built entirely out of javascript, svgs and css and features cool animations. Very informative, intuitive and beautiful, plus the code itself is really quite good if I say so myself. After my last job at that chaotic startup, it’s so nice to able to have control over the codebase and actually write high-quality, well thought-out and well structured code.

Now we’re in the long tail of of random little bug fixes and usability issues, plus we want to get in a couple more minor features. I spent the last few days tweaking icons and going back’n’forth with Anna and Kiki about what everything things looks good and communicates the right idea.

Meanwhile Martin’s been looking at the backend, where our creaky old django/python app is in danger of being made obsolete due a pressing need to upgrade to a newer version of linux on our servers, in order to fix a timekeeping issue. Long story, big headache. Anyway he’s been doing alot and we’ll get there.

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And lastly, the topic that was the point of this whole post, the Patio Project. Well this is actually Patio Project part II. Back when Michelle was a baby and our house was new I built a stone path around the side of the house and patio in the back yard. My dad came down and helped me with the patio part. It’s made of bluestone flagstones on a bed of compacted sand over crushed stone. It took us five days if I recall, and one of those days was making a concrete step.

Well now I want to enlarge the patio to go deeper into the yard, so I’m adding an extension of 4′ x 20′. There have been a few delays getting going on this project. I first started thinking seriously about it last summer, but it was too hot to work on it then. The fall came and went I was too busy with other stuff. Then I figured I’d do it in the spring, but then it was the pandemic and the lockdown, and suddenly building supplies were scarce and I was sick for a month anyway. Then it was summer and too hot again. But at least I made a plan and figured out what materials I’d need.

Shortly after Labor Day looked up the place where I got the stones and other supplies for the original patio. But they’re out of business, and the lot is now a parking lot for school busses. So this weekend I researched where else I might get stones and sand and all that. I found three places within a reasonable distance and sent them each an email describing the project, listing the materials I think I need, and asking for a quote. Two of them got back to me and were both helpful, although one forgot to actually attach the quote to his reply.

In any event, it looks like it’s on! Hopefully this week I’ll go to one of these places and pick out the actual stones and arrange the delivery. I figure it’ll be three or four full days of work on my own, all though I’m more likely to break it into several sessions of a few hours each spread out over a few weeks. I figure I should get done pretty easily by the end of October.

Some Like It Hot

This has got to be the hottest July I can remember. It’s been above ninety pretty much every day the whole month, and alot of days above ninety-five. I usually like the heat but this is a bit much even for me. It’s not even enjoyable to be be outside except in the morning and the evening. No end in sight.

We took a mini pretend beach vacation this weekend. Saturday we went out to Jones Beach on Long Island to swim in the ocean and enjoy the scene. It was very nice. The water was warm and as calm as gets. Lots of fun swimming and floating. It was less crowded than usual because the parking lots were only allowing parking in every second space. We had originally intended to go to Robert Moses Beach but the parking there filled up before 10 am.

Sunday we went to an outdoor restaurant at Rye Beach, on the opposite end of the beach from the Tiki Bar and Playland amusement park, and enjoyed the sunset, some yummy seafood, and some live music with a sax player, percussionist, and a guy with a laptop computer playing loops and tracks. I’d never been to this place before but since the Tiki Bar is closed this summer we went exploring. Perfect chill vibe.

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In origami land, I’m drawing ever closer to finishing my book. The diagrams have been basically done for a while, but then I went back and picked out a harmonious color palette, with different colors for model with different themes, and re-rendered all the steps. Along the way I made a few improvements to the folding sequences and page layouts. I’m really going for a good-looking and high-quality book. Next step is model menu/TOC and then test folding and photography. Too bad it’s so hot. I might have to put in the air conditioner in my studio downstairs.

Also in origami land, I’ve resumed my scheduling project for Origami USA. If you recall, back in the winter, before the pandemic, I’d taken on managing the scheduling tool and the actual scheduling for the OUSA Conventions. The tool itself was an MS Access Database with a bunch of custom views and lots of macros. The plan was to use it for this year’s convention to get up the learning curve on the whole scheduling workflow, and then design and build a new tool in time for the new Chicago convention in the fall.

Well the OUSA June convention was replaced by the Un-Convention, which was a great success but had no need of scheduling. The Chicago convention is not happening either. But we figured we might as well go ahead and build the new scheduling tool, and hope the world is back to normal for the 2021 convention. So now I’m underway with that. First step is to install Drupal and a suite of plugins, since the what drives the OUSA web site. Next is to identify the points of integration and then come up with a design and a tech spec. Should be fun.

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Since I’m doing these blog updates rather infrequently these days, I might as well cover all the bases. We did a surprise soft launch The Global Jukebox at the end of June, for the benefit of our partner/sponsor CityLore, with whom we created an education section and interactive Musical Roots experience for use in New York City (and other) schools. However, there were a few loose ends in the app we didn’t have time to properly address. We’re just about finished with them and are preparing for the official Global Jukebox 2.0 release to live. Coming soon, very exciting. Watch this space for a future announcement.

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In the world of music, I’ve been going to the jazz jam sessions the last few weeks. All is cool so far, and it’s good to making music with other people. At first I felt pretty rusty, but now that I’ve shaken off the cobwebs I’m realizing my playing is reaching a higher level than before.

It still remains to get the new rock band off the ground, but there’s signs of hope.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing on working on a new batch of originals in my studio. Did I mention it’s really hot? The song I’ve zeroed in on is a medium-slow jazz number called Winter Wolf Whisper (although I’ll probably change the name) that we used to do in the Haven Street Quintet. Of course doing it on the computer requires changing the feel, so working thru that. One big thing is drums. I’m torn between making sound more natural and human, versus more electronic and machine-like. I’ve always been fascinated by bands with two drummers, or with a percussion section, so I’ll probably try combining both approached.

Still, I feel like I’ve gone as far as can with my current approach to drums. So I decided to buy a drum set. Something to practice on, and potentially record. Actually having drums has been on my list for a long, long time, and they’ll also come in handy if I ever have band rehearsals at my house again. I was pretty amaze at the kind of deals you can get these days on a new kit, complete with cymbals, stands and a throne. It should be here on Thursday, so mare on that soon.

Origami USA Unconvention

This weekend is usually the Origami USA Convention, four days of fun and folding, and reconnecting with my origami friends, sharing great origami and learning new stuff. It’s always a super-intense experience.

This year of course we didn’t have a convention due to the pandemic. So we did what we could. OUSA organized an unconvention, an online, virtual convention. It was two days instead of four, and had a single stream of classes. Robert Land, Beth Johnson, Michael LaFosse and a few others taught over Zoom video conferences. Wendy acted as host and led some sessions such as the opening and closing, the awards and the annual meeting.

All in all it was really good, given the limitations. Technically and presentation-wise, it came of smoothly and without a hitch. I learned a few cool new models and got to connect with my origami friends, and it kept the feeling of the convention alive.

Perhaps the best part of all is Adrienne Sack and Jared Needle organized a late-night folding and hangout session. There were only 20 or 30 people (over 1200 attended the main unconvention), but they were largely the ones I’d have hung out with late night anyway, so it definitely hit the the social folding vibe. I even taught a model. It was an international crowd with some CFC people there too like Ilan and Dascha. On Saturday night five continents were represented. I ended up staying up until after 3 am both nights.

There was talk at the annual meeting about whether the fall convention in Chicago would be happening, and the criteria they’re using to make that determination. If it’s on I can back to rewriting the scheduling tool. If it’s not I guess and could anyway. We’ll see what they say.

In other new my new book is lurching towards completion. I redesigned my Martian for inclusion. I’m renaming him Wise Martian rather than, says, Martian Mark II. I improved the folding sequence and the sculptural aspect of the face, as well as the stability of the standing pose and the lock. Now it’s down to finishing updating the layouts of diagrams for the last two models.

Sea of Tranquility

We’re now into week seven. Not too much going on. Or should I say everything that’s happening is happening slowly. Spring has been pretty cold and rainy so far. I mowed the lawn last week for the first time.

I’ve finished the style redesign on the Global Jukebox, and now I’m doing data work, updating the model for the cultures tree, and adding in 700 pop songs. We should be going live before too long.

In music land, I’ve been working my way thru Patterns for Jazz on the sax, I’m up to pattern 78 now, getting into flat thirds and fifths. I’ve also been working thru the Real Book, sight-reading every head and running down the changes, doing a few every day. If there’s a song that’s interesting I’ll take a few days and study it and try and memorize it. So far all the Charlie Parker songs have been interesting in that way. Right now I’m up to Blues for Alice, and the next few songs after that are Bluesette, Boplicty and Bright Size Life, so that’s a fun place to hang out for a while.

I ordered the Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb. I studied the thru whole book back in high school, but in Eb on alto. I always thought playing Bird songs on tenor was kinda weird, cuz they don’t lay on the horn as well. They tend to wrap around the octave in funny ways and are often either too high or too low, since Bird made use of the full range of the horn. And his tunes are hard enough to begin with. But now I’m thinking it’s worth it to try and get some of his riffs in my bag.

On piano I’m also working my way thru the Real Book, but at a much slower pace, picking and choosing songs to work up as solo piano pieces. Mainly ballads, with alot of emphasis on voicings. I’ve finally gotten pretty good at Body and Soul, and I’ve been playing ‘Round Midnight for ages. Next tune I’m gonna woodshed is either My Romance by Rogers and Hart, or Naima by John Coltrane, or maybe both.

It also occurs to me I know literally hundreds and hundreds of rock and pop songs on piano and voice, and there’s many more I kinda know, but I rarely play more than a handful of them. So I’ve started putting together a notebook of all the charts so I can rotate them in and out of my practice and keep them fresh.

In the recording realm, I’ve finished my sax and synthesizer parts on The Story Lies and Who Speaks on Your Behalf (actually only WSoYB had synths), so now we’re up to the vocals, and then it’s just the mixdown. At the start of the year I was hoping these songs would be done by end of June. Together they’re about 10 minutes, which would put me on track for 20 minutes of produced music for the year. Now it’s looking like they’ll be done in early May, and with luck it’ll be more like 30 minutes of music this year. Woo-hoo!

In origami land, I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I settled on eight or maybe nine models, somewhere between 50 and 60 pages. I have six of the models done with new diagrams and layouts complete. The others are mostly done: the diagrams are finished and I have a draft of the layouts. That is, except for one model. The Martian appeared my previous kit book, and although it’s a great idea I was never really satisfied with the final design. So now I’m redoing that model without the constraint of having to keep it to an intermediate level with a low step count. Changing the body proportions, adding more detail to the head, everything. It’ll be substantially a new model in the end.