Origami Walrus and Elephant Seal

I just completed a new set of models for this year’s origami tree at the American Museum of Natural History. I’ve been working in the space of arctic marine animals, and designed a Walrus and an Elephant Seal. These animals are featured in dioramas in the museum. Both are new designs and I’m pleased with how they turned out. They’re relatively easy to fold too: less than hour and maybe 20 or 30 steps. I’ve been striving lately to create less complex models that still capture some sculptural essence of the subject and think these are pretty successful in the regard. As a bonus I folded a Rocketship and a UFO. All the models were folded out of 12” (30cm) paper, the marine animals out of Canson and the space vehicles out of Tant. While a was taking photos I also included a balloon I folded recently, also of 12” tant. Next up: origami narwhal.

Buzzy Tonic on iTunes

Face The Heat, the new album from Buzzy Tonic is now on sale on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/face-the-heat/id398782886

My friend John already wrote an excellent review, which includes song-by-song commentary. I’ve never heard Jeannie described as “non-Yoko” before. Ha! Just for the record, on the Who Can Fool Me, the opening riff is stolen from Thelonious Monk and the main groove is inspired by Duke Ellington’s East St. Loius Toodle-oo, but in 7/8 and with a flat 9 in there.

So go over there and buy yourself a copy, and a few to give to your friends. Write some more reviews and help build the buzz. While your at it, go ahead and pick up a copy of Buzzy Tonic’s first disc, The Brothers Zing.

Indian Summer

It’s fall in New York, and Indian summer is upon us. The weather’s been very nice so far, generally warm in the days and cool at night, with a few stormy days. The kids are back in the school groove, and after finishing my record, I’ve been able to start planning the next music project, as well as get back into my origami book. Diagramming the frog this week.

My work situation continues to improve. We got our release finished off a few weeks ago, and it was met with enthusiasm from our customers and managers. Now we’re sort of back to normal as far as the level of pressure and the general vibe. We have a follow-on release coming up in November. Finally getting tot he point where all the well-structured, modular, reusable code I’ve been writing is starting to pay off by actually getting reused. In related news, our corporate overlords did some shuffling of chairs recently. My team lost our nice corner shared office, as it’s going to be converted into a conference room. I got my own office right next door, which is a reasonable tradeoff. View of the Marriott wall, but at least it’s a window. The other guy in the room got sent to cubicle purgatory.

We did get a Prius a few weeks ago after all, and so far we think it’s pretty neat. Good roomy size, good futuristic looks, good handling, reasonable power and of course the hybrid synergy drive is a radical, cool technology. It takes a bit of getting used to. The controls are all electronic. Instead of a gearshift it has a videogame joystick. The car is black and completely silent at low speed, so my friend Erik nicknamed it the Stealth Car. Meanwhile the kids have dubbed it Princess Priia. So far we seem to be getting about 47 mpg. We’re gonna take it on a drive out to country sometime soon for some hiking and pumpkin picking.

Eric Joisel

International origami master Eric Joisel passed away over the weekend. I was a big admirer of his work, truly some of the most detailed and expressive origami ever created. Eric came to paperfolding from a background as a sculptor in clay and wood, had a highly developed style both thematically and aesthetically, and was particularly adept at human figures, faces and characters. You can see some of the best of his work at: ericjoisel.com.

Buzzy Tonic on CD Baby

Face The Heat, the new CD from Buzzy Tonic is now on sale at CD Baby at (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic) So go over there and buy yourself a copy, and a few to give to your friends. If you already have a copy, do me a favor and review the album and help me get some word of mouth going. While your at it, go ahead and pick up a copy of Buzzy Tonic’s first disc, The Brothers Zing (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/brotherszing).

I also update my music pages to link to teaser versions of the songs, just the first minute or too, to give all y’all further incentive to go and buy the CD.

Site Update: Music Pages

I got my CD’s back from the manufacturer the other day and am in the process of getting it set up for internet sale on CD Baby and iTunes. To prepare for my forthcoming album release I updated a few of my web pages:

http://buzzytonic.com – the new home page for Buzzy Tonic, my once and future group.

http://zingman.com/music/facetheheat.php – page for Face the Heat, the new album by Buzzy Tonic

http://zingman.com/music – main music page.

http://zingman.com – main home page.

Check ‘em out. This will be your last chance to listen to the full versions of the songs before they are behind a paywall.

Colored Lights Can Hypnotize

My friend Leo Villareal is an artist who works in the medium of flashing LED’s. I’ve known him since grad school when he was just getting started with this stuff, and I did some programming on one of his light shows a while back. Yesterday CNET ran an article about him and his work, including an new exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. Leo’s a brilliant and kind guy, and it’s good to see him getting to this level of success and recognition.

Long May You Run

Jeannie’s car died over the weekend. The timing belt broke and caused a bunch of collateral damage to the engine. Our mechanic tried valiantly to fix it, but once it became clear we’d need to remove the head, which would mean pulling the engine, it was the end. The car had a good run and it’s time had come. It was a ’93 Subaru Legacy that was past 176,000 miles. We bought it in ’97 shortly after we moved to California and put about 125k of those mile on the car. Too bad though, because it has a full tank of gas and we just had it washed.

We’re gonna replace it with a Prius. Jeannie wants a 4-door hatchback or wagon, and we’ve looked around and there’s not alot of other small-to-midsize cars out there that we like. We have several friends who drive Priuses (Prii?) and they’re all very happy with them. I think its a pretty cool looking car too, at least in some of the colors. And the 50mpg thing is like a superpower from the future. No other car out there even comes close. They’re not even super expensive if you avoid the trim packages with all the silly electronic superflua. So we’ve been running around to Toyota dealers all week looking to find one in stock in a color we like (blue, tan, red or black). We’ll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile we’ve been sharing a car. Yesterday I brought my rollerblades into work, planning on skating home so Jeannie wouldn’t have come pick me up at the train station. But just before I left work there was a freak thunderstorm. I cam back to my office from a meeting at the end of that day, and the sky was black like nighttime. The storm hit the building like a wave crashing against a ship, and the building swayed and rocked. A half hour later it was clear and the sun came out. I found out later a tornado touched down on Queens, causing massive damage, mainly from trees falling down. We’ve had a few big windstorms up in our neck of the woods over the last few years, so I was glad that this time it missed us. Brought my skates again today; gonna try again. Right now at least the sun is out.

California Pics

Okay, here you go. Five galleries of pics of our trip to California, plus a few upfront to whet you appetite. As always the family and friends fotoz are password protected, so contact me if you need the password. Enjoy!

http://zingman.com/fotooz/2010-01/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2010-02/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2010-03/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2010-04/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2010-05/index.html

Back To School

Another summer vacation has come to a close. Tomorrow the kids go back to school. They’re all packed and prepped and off to bed.

We spent the long weekend at the beach, as has become our custom, and had a mainly excellent time. Hurricane Earl didn’t bother us much, mostly wind and big surf. At one point it was raining sea foam, which was pretty weird. It came in quickly Thursday night and left just a quickly Friday afternoon. We had to stay out of the ocean for a day and all the rides were closed. But it was just as well cuz I was really tired and got a chance to catch up my rest. The hotel had a pool and game room, and we went for a big walk down the beach and around the island as the storm cleared. The rest was pretty much the usual: amusement pier, water park, beach and ocean. We went for a great nature hike at Asseteague and saw lots of blue crabs, shellfish, fish, birds, tadpoles and turtles, and some cool shells and stuff. Pictures coming sometime, maybe soon.

Lizzy got a pet hamster today and named her Delilah. She’s very excited. For a while she considered getting a pet turtle instead, but the cuteness factor won out.

Work has sort of stabilized. Our first release candidate went to QA, where a few minor bugs turned up. I’m going to build release candidate 2 tomorrow. I impressed everyone in my project by seemingly fixing a bug before it was discovered. Actually what happened was I discovered and fixed it last week before I went on my trip, but the bug tracking system was down that day, so our QA guy opened the ticket for me while I was away.

Had a chance to get caught up on a number of random tasks between all our travels. I even did some more work on my book this weekend. One thing on my mind now is upgrading my studio. I have a lot of options, each with pros and cons. But with my new record done, I really want to get into making more music, not mucking around with technology. More on that in the weeks ahead.