OUSA Sights & Sounds

From Jason Ku:

Sunday Funnies

January 10, 2014

It's Begun!

OUSA Convention this weekend:

Careers in Origami

Dr. Robert Lang, via O-List:

Hi all,

OrigamiUSA's online magazine, The Fold, contains both members-only and
open-access content. I recently wrote an article for the current issue on
"Careers in Origami," which is open-access, meaning that you don't need to
be a member of OrigamiUSA to read it. It's here:

https://origamiusa.org/thefold/issue/22

Rebecca Gieseking'sDiagonal Shift Adapted to the Dollar

Folded by PJ Contreras

Long Quach provides a blueprint for adapting Gieseking's design to the dollar.

Newspaper Cap

Jeremy Shafer Spinning Ninja Star

Jeremy Shafer will be in NYC for OUSA this year.

I decided to put off going....again.

Sunday Funnies

Kade Chan's Godzilla

Happy Father's Day!

Sunday Funnies

Happy 91st Birthday!

June 26, 2005 OUSA, NYC

The WOW Factor has a nice interview with the venerable Laura Kruskal:

At the June 27 – 30 OrigamiUSA convention in New York, Laura will present a new “Convention Crown,” as she’s been doing every year for well over twenty years.

Oh, did I mention that my friend Laura Kruskal will be turning 91 years old next Sunday, June 15^th? This post is my way of broadcasting my happy birthday wishes to her.


~~~
Like everyone else who crosses her path, no doubt, I was immediately smitten by her vibrancy (she practically glows), her spontaneity and creativity (she gave some of us on the van an ad hoc lesson in making an origami envelope), and her self-sufficiency (she was traveling cross-country all alone, and planned to do the same on her return trip).

Without intending to, just by being herself, Laura Kruskal manages to shatter all of one’s existing stereotypes about what a woman her age should be or do.

At the time she and I met, I was doing research for a book I was planning on “the fine art of aging.” Laura, having just finished teaching at an origami conference in Albuquerque, wearing a big smile and a rhinestone-studded pin reading “I [HEART] ORIGAMI” looked to me like a glittering godsend. So we quickly made a date to get together as soon as we could so I could interview her.


~~~
“I think it’s very important to stay focused on something you love to do every day,” she said softly, smiling brightly. For her, clearly, that “something” is origami. She strives to create at least one new, original origami fold every day of her life. And, when she’s home in Princeton – where she’s lived in the same house for sixty years and still does her own housework and cooking — she is often called on to teach origami in schools, libraries, retirement homes, at birthday parties, and even in prisons. “I stay busy,” she said. “And origami makes me happy. I love what I do.”

Read the entire piece by Bonnie Lee Black.  Hat tip:  Karen Reeds via Origami-L:

If you're anywhere close to Princeton, New Jersey, this Wednesday evening,
come to the Princeton Public Library Origami Group meeting, for this SNEAK
PREVIEW, Wednesday, June 11, 6:30-8pm: Laura Kruskal will teach her
original model, the 2014 OrigamiUSA Convention Crown!

Paper Drones

Chuck Pell holds a paper plane outfitted with a PowerUp engine. Jack Nicas/The Wall Street Journal

Hat tip Tuttle Publishing:

DURHAM, N.C.—It took Chuck Pell less than a minute to build his drone. 

He folded a piece of paper 11 times, clipped on a battery-powered plastic propeller and rudder, then opened an app on his iPhone. 

Next he flung the aircraft skyward, steering it above the trees with turns of his phone. The plane soared out of sight. 

It's a good technology, according to Mr. Pell, who has suffered plenty of nose dives. It just "needs more pilot training."

Aerial drones have fought in wars, filmed movies and factored into the ambitious plans of high-tech executives who want to supply Internet service from the air. 

Now there is a new but familiar shape to the fast-growing world of unmanned aircraft: the paper airplane.

The PowerUp 3.0, brainchild of former Israeli Air Force pilot Shai Goitein, is a lightweight guidance-and-propulsion system powered by a dime-size battery. It clips onto origami aircraft and connects to iPhones using Bluetooth, transforming them into remote-control drones.

Pocket-size drones like the PowerUp aren't as sophisticated as the devices Jeff Bezos says could one day deliver packages for Amazon.com, or the big solar-powered models being engineered by companies that Google and Facebook recently acquired. 

But enthusiasts are embracing these minidrones as a cheap, souped-up way to get high. 

In less than a year, Estes-Cox Corp., a Colorado maker of model rockets, has sold more than 500,000 versions of its remote-controlled nanodrone, which is 1.8 inches square and retails for $40. French company Parrot SA, PARRO.FR -0.62% one of the largest drone makers, is launching a minidrone with detachable wheels that allow it to land and immediately start driving—even up walls.

Harvard University researchers have developed a still tinier drone, the RoboBee, which has insectlike wings that span the diameter of a half dollar. The whole machine weighs less than a third of a penny. 

The researchers say the potential uses of tiny drones range from pollinating crops to military surveillance to traffic monitoring.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal (includes video).

Martis' 1st Sunday for June

Designed by Alexandr Pak

I'm posting this a week late.

Knowing Ron Fujioka would be present, I came prepared to revisit Alexandr Pak's Kawasaki rose in a pot, out of money.  I hadn't attempted another since the last meeting.  This time, after folding a regular Kawasaki and studying the closing method on the bottom, I was able to figure out the bottom close and locking method for the Pak rose. 

Fujioka has since been folding them successfully, as well.


Andrew described his encounter with Eric Joisel:

I regret never having met Joisel.  I did have a brief email correspondence with him around 2003 or 2004 (I sought his permission to fold and sell his rat on a small scale- a permission he gave). 

Photo from Hisako Tanji's camera (taken by Hank Morris)

More photos here.

A paper cut that feels oh, so good? Really?1

This is pretty cool, if legit:

Half of what makes a paper cut so annoying and awful is that it comes from a seemingly safe and innocuous material. But designer Nadeem Haidary wants to change your opinion on the much hated accidental paper cut by harnessing it for good through an origami razor that can purportedly shave faces.

Made from waterproof paper so they won't disintegrate when you rinse away shaving cream, these razors could even be sold flat-packed, requiring the user to perform a few simple origami folds to assemble them. 

And because they're made from paper, they'd be truly disposable since the paper razors could just be tossed in a recycling bin after they're used.

So the design has eco-friendliness, ease-of-use, and even cost going for it—but could a paper razor lacking metal blades actually handle even the shortest of stubble?

 Nadeem Haidary's Paper Cut Razor:

Paper cuts are universally hated. What if we put them to good use?
This project uses that everyday mishap as inspiration for an everyday task. Paper Cut Razor takes a seemingly outrageous idea and makes it real. It’s a disposable razor made entirely out of paper. It’s a fictional product that playfully challenges two notions: that paper cuts are inherently evil, and that current disposable razors are truly disposable.

Hat tip:  Ada Tsang via O-List

Folded: the Origami Art of Robert J. Lang

 From the NYTimes:

The discipline of origami may seem quaint, but modern folders are pushing the edge — none more than Robert Lang, a former physicist with hundreds of paper designs to his name. His exhibition in Pasadena goes way beyond cranes: There are a moose, a chameleon and a scorpion, a tiny hummingbird sipping on a paper honeysuckle, even a praying mantis biting off the head of her mate, folded from a single square. Dr. Lang has scaled up, with 60 life-size koi fish, and down, collaborating with scientists to build an origami bird, from a tiny purple sheet of self-folding polymer, that requires a microscope to view.

At the Williamson Gallery in Pasadena CA:



Exhibition:  June 17- Aug 20th

Opening reception:  Thursday June 19th, 7pm-9pm.

Sunday Funnies

A number of people seem to have caught on to this one last week:

Hat tip:  Hans Dybkjær on the O-List

Origami Dollar Horse 3

This might well be my favorite dollar origami horse:

Source

Source

Check out some of Ken Hmoob's other dollar folds, too.  Like this one:

Website

YouTube channel

Person on a Balance Beam

6-2-2014
Person on a Balance Beam
Designed by Jeremy Shafer
Folded by Michael Sanders
10" x 10" square of American foil paper

Diagrams: BARF Fall 2005 and OUSA Convention book 2006

Photo of the Day

Hat tip:  Takashi IWAMOTO

Have paper? Will always travel and entertain others!

Last minute decision to arrange for some team bonding yesterday.  So while waiting for the movie and others to arrive, some cheap entertainment:

Sunday Funnies

Hat tip source:  CHRUMIGAMI

NOA #466 June Issue Review