Irrelevance Glorified

I always cringe when I see an interview done via satellite, because there is often some sort of time delay. And this time delay always makes the interviewee look like an idiot. Always. They look like they’re slow, grinning or looking at the camera, listening intently, when there’s silence on the air. This interview is no exception; Howard Dean looks like an idiot. When he grins, he kinda reminds me of Phil Hartman’s Frankenstein. But there’s something different here. One, he actually acknowledges the time delay. And second, he absolutely makes the best response I’ve ever heard. Awesome ad lib.

Week 20, May 12 – May 16

Mangled Owl

This owl has seen better days. I had an epic, three round battle with this square piece of paper. It was a split decision. I won’t say in who’s favor — I’ll let you decide that. Let’s just make up a story…this owl had a rough day, so he went to a local bar. One drink let to another ten, and before he knew it, he was picking a fight with a turkey buzzard over a bowl of nuts. He found himself tossed unceremoniously out into the street, where he was run over by a truck.

Baby Monkey

Fresh off that owl, I had quite a bit of frustration left in me. So this monkey probably isn’t all that it could be. Still, you have to admit, that monkey has a boyish quality to it.

Ostrich

Before you mock this, let me ask you — if I told you this was a bird, what bird would you guess it to be? Oh, a crane? Well, yeah, I guess it could be a crane, but most cranes in origami are flying, so there. An emu? Oh, screw you.

Flapping Crane

You know, this whole week was frustrating. The flapping of this crane during the video pretty much destroyed it, because once again, this was a pretty complicated origami that lends itself to material fatigue. Don’t blame me, blame the unresilient nature of paper fibers.

Tato

According to Everything2, a tato is an origami that is a flat container. So, there you go. You learned something today.

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.

I’ve been using G-mail for a number of years as my primary non-work e-mail address. Although I first signed up for the nerd cred of having an invite only e-mail address from Google (thanks Rob!), I’ve always been impressed with its features. In particular, it seems to have a really good spam filter. There are rare false positives and, uh, true negatives. But I still check the spam list every day or so, just to make sure. Most of the items in there have subjects that are intended to seduce me into opening the message, and following whatever nefarious links are within. They might tell me how to, uh, enhance myself, or tell me that there is an important message from my bank, or maybe even convince me that a hot girl has sent me a message and wants to talk to me. Fortunately, I am not so easily fooled. Wait, what’s this?

Oh, it’s on! No one tells me that I have a stupid face here except for my closest friends. They tell me that all the time, I don’t need to hear it from Anonymous Internet Bully. You know what? I’m gonna reply to this Ivar guy and give him a piece of my mind. He’ll know he can’t just push me around. Let’s see…well, in order to prove that I’m the person that he claimed had a stupid face, I better include my social security number and bank account information. I wouldn’t want him to think I’m some random person on the internet. I’ll let you guys know how it turns out.

Week 18, April 28th – May 2nd

Butterfly

I’d like to see an origami hurricane.

Chinese Frog

Based on this origami, I can only assume that frogs in China have no arms.

Baby’s Onesie

Maybe it’s just because a few of my friends recently became fathers, but I really enjoyed this origami. It’s cute and it looks sharp. Why pay for clothes your kid is just going to grow out of, when you can just use paper? It’s also disposable, in case there are…accidents. This origami is

Flower Bud

Yet another flower. Maybe a Lily?

Tote Bag

Once again, thanks to Domokun for offering to model for me. This tote bag couldn’t really hold anything, but it sure does look stylish.

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.

Week 19, May 5th – May 9th

Sombrero

I’m a bit confused by this one. This really isn’t quite what I think of when I think of a sombrero. I think of something more like this:

The origami is more like a sombrero worn by a Mexican witch. Or perhaps a Mexican pilgrim who has misplaced the buckle.

Masu Box

This was my first three-dayer of the year. One for the box, one for the lid, and one for the compartmentalizer in the box, dividing it into four parts. This was pretty cool because it was actually sorta useful.

Picture Frame

I really wish I had a picture awesome enough to put in this picture frame, because it would have to be pretty spectacular to overpower the loudness of this frame.

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.

Week 17, April 21st – April 25th

Newspaper Boat

I actually had to steal some old newspapers from work to do this one. I think that the San Jose Mercury News is of non-standard length, though, because it didn’t quite come out right. Anyways, I remember doing origami designs like this way back in grade school, so this does not exactly rate a high degree of difficulty.

Recycled Newspaper Hat

I’d like to thank my helpful assistant Domokun for modeling the hat for me. This was lame, purely because this is literally one step away from being a boat. But it would be useful in a rainstorm.

Nesting Bird

Not much to say here. I should have made a nest for it, to demonstrate the likeness.

Carnation Blossom & Stem

This was a two-dayer, with the blossom on one day, and the stem on the other. To be honest, I don’t see a lot of difference between any of the flowers that I make. Is this is an accurate representation of a carnation? You be the judge.

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.

Note: this post describes events that took place on or about the last week of April

So, as I’ve intimated before, the traffic here really annoys and frustrates me. I can think of few things that are as soul-draining as sitting in my car, waiting at a red light. Nothing good comes of it. So I’ve started biking in (so now I am sitting on my bicycle, waiting at red lights). I’ve even worked out a route that’s moderately safe, with a bike lane and everything. However, there’s one development which has me quite embarrassed – I am really slow. Like, slow enough that I wonder if something is wrong with the bike. Slow enough that ten-year olds are passing me on their way to school. The way I see it, I can blame it on the double-edged sword of being out of shape and fat. I mean, since I’m out of shape, I just can’t pedal very fast for very long. And because I’m fat, it just means I’ve got more mass to move. It’s really a lose-lose. But, thanks to lots of hippies and recreationists around, there’s quite a lot of bike paths around. In fact, there’s an initiative to create new paths and connect up exiting ones so that there is a continuous path around the entire bay.
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I, in general, possess a lot of empathy. I can look at situations, or issues, and see how other people think and why they support the positions they do. Unlike some of the unwashed masses, I can see why olympic events such as synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics do showcase talent and are worthy of our adulation.

Not so much with synchronized diving.

I’ve been watching the Olympics the last few nights, and really, synchronized diving seems pretty worthless. It seems that you perform exactly the same dives as you would in individual diving….but you just copy someone else as well. There’s really nothing special about it, and frankly I’m just stunned that it’s a medal worthy sport when, say, cricket isn’t.

The only nice thing about synchronized diving that I can think of is that it’s fairly steroid and cheater proof, unless someone out there uses Siamese Twins or something.

Week 16, April 14th – April 18th

Wallet

For scale, I added some money to the wallet. It has the capacity to hold about three bills, probably, tightly folded up. They should have made the wallet out of the bills itself. I bet I just blew your mind.

Coinpurse

I’m pretty sure you couldn’t fit even a dollar in change in here….so it’s probably just a good place to put your gold coins.

Pecking Chicken

Given the author’s love of puns, I wonder if this is supposed to be a play on Peking Chicken. Which I’m not sure exists, and might be a play on Peking Duck. Also, I apparently have an “Origami Voice”, because I’m pretty sure I don’t normally sound like that.

Basketball Hoop

This actually…seems very sad. But for all you kids out there whose parents won’t get you a real basketball hoop, you can make a poor simulation of the real thing; all you need is a ridiculously large piece of paper.

Dollar Ring

This is a supremely awesome way to flaunt your riches. The only shame is that $100 is the largest unit of currency in America. Just think what you could do with this:

(image shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.

Week 15, April 7th – April 11th

Piggy

Now that we’re into April, we’ve moved into a green paper motif. You know, symbolizing the vibrancy of spring or something. However, I really like this pig. It’s cute, it’s accurate, and it stands up on it’s own.

Building

This one is sort of a boondoggle…There is really only angle where this building looks close to right. But, you know, from this angle, it looks sort of rustic.

Sheepdog

I was kinda embarassed when I took this picture….I forgot which end was the head. Which, actually, is kinda like a real sheepdog.

Proud Rooster

You might wonder what makes this rooster proud. He probably just saved a lot of money on his car insurance.

Proud Hen

Why is this hen proud? Well, who could blame her? Her husband just saved them a lot of money on their car insurance! This is another one where I couldn’t quite remember which way was up. I think I got this right.

As always, these origami designs were found in the Origami Page-A-Day Desk Calendar.