Most of our family and friends know that Tracie and I are big fans of The Ginger People products. Recently Tracie was putting in an order for various ginger-laden products and asked whether my supply of Ginger Chews and Gin-Gins needed replenishing. I’m down to about one can’s worth of each, so I told her that yes, I would indeed appreciate a restocking of these essentials. We couldn’t remember exactly how much she ordered last time (they’re sold by weight in bulk) and I guessed, based on my memory of the size of the bags, that we had ordered five-pound bags of each, so she placed the order for that quantity.
Category: Uncategorized
General blog stuff.
I Feel Old
I just noticed that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of both Donna Summer/Giorgio Morodoer’s seminal electronic hit “I Feel Love” and Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking electronic album Trans-Europe Express. It’s interesting in itself that these were released in the same year, but mostly I’m blown away that it was that long ago.
I discovered both of these works somewhat after the fact, but they would rank high on the list of recorded works that had the greatest influence on my aesthetic. I did a cover of “I Feel Love” 10 or so years ago; maybe I should dust off the files and remix it for this anniversary year.
New Stuff at Paper Jade
I’m pleased to announce that Paper Jade has five new packages in its signature line of papers. There are two new chiyogami packages, one a sequel to the popular Leaves package called Leaves Two, and the other a new assortment of whimsical prints of birds and animals called Critters. The other three packages are different kinds of papers with subtle and beautiful textures and watermarks. Click here to see the listing of Paper Jade’s most recently added products.
While you’re at the Paper Jade site, you might also want to peruse the new Customer Photo Gallery which currently features a number of boxes folded by Virginia White, one of Paper Jade’s most enthusiastic customers. There are also a few new photos in the older Photo Gallery of a box and two geometric solids folded by yours truly.
Front Mission 4 Paper Model
In my Copious Free Time (hah) I occasionally work on paper models. I recently completed one that I’ve been building off and on for months. It’s from the Front Mission Japanese game series and its name seems to be Zenith. I have no idea what this game series is about, nor have I played any of them, so I don’t know what this model actually is. It could be a mecha, or a powered-armor suit, or a robot, or something else. It was fun to build, whatever it is.
It’s about 22cm tall and (as you can see) a bit too big to fit comfortably in my photo box.
Nice Origami Site
A fellow named Brian Chan has a nice gallery of his original origami works here. It’s quite impressive stuff, and way, way over my head in both design and execution.
Sonic State Gets Cute
There’s a website called Sonic State which covers music-tech news, product releases, stuff like that. They have discussion forums also. I’ve never paid much attention to it but sometimes I watch their videos from trade shows. They tend to do strange things like run press releases for completely insignificant events, particularly things having to do with Roland. On the other hand, they’ve never printed the press releases that Audio Damage has sent to them. We have no idea why; typically news-oriented sites are eager for material to post. Eventually Chris stopped sending them stuff altogether since it seemed to be a waste of effort.
Kami-Robo: Fighting Japanese Paper Robots!
I ran across the Kami-Robo site while googling for paper models. Some fellow makes paper robots and then stages make-believe pro-wrestling-style fights with them. He videotapes the bouts and writes elaborate commentary and back-stories. Quoting from the English version of the site: “At some point in childhood, all of us must have been swept up in the magical world of make-believe while playing alone. We were a special character in a situation known only to us. At the age of 10, Tomohiro Yasui began constructing robots out of paper to give form to his fantasy arena of wrestling robot fighters. Twenty years have passed, and he continues to enjoy and explore this solitary sphere of make-believe.”
Amazing Origami Video
Kamiya Satoshi is one of the top origami artists in the world. Until recently I’d seen only one or two photos of his work; he’s known for folding a nearly unbelievable dragon. It turns out that he has a webpage here and here’s a rather amazing video of him folding a phoenix:
Get Your Lost Stuff Back with StuffBak
I found out about an interesting service recently called StuffBak. It’s a business that helps people return lost items to their owners–sort of a global 21st-century Lost & Found system. The basic idea is that you put their stickers on valuable things you might lose, like cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, portable electronic games, laptop computers, backpacks, flash drives, cameras, eyeware, keychains, briefcases, sports gear, luggage, etc.–anything you move around that you can stick a label on, in short. The labels have a serial number and StuffBak’s phone number and web address. You register the serial number with them and provide your contact info. If you lose the item and someone finds it, they have a way to return it to you. StuffBak makes it even easier for them to do so by providing free services for sending your stuff back to you.
Go To College, Make Robotic Dancing Peeps
There’s a couple of videos here of a dancing robot built by some fellow at Carnegie Mellon. It’s actually a pretty impressive bit of engineering, although the demo with music is more impressive than the demo with the hand tapping the drum. (Click the “Keepon dancing to Spoon” label on the video player to see the music-based demo.) What makes me laugh, though, is that it looks like a dancing Peep to me.
It’s possibly also worth mentioning that the page says that the programming was done in Max/MSP, a product I worked on before founding Audio Damage. It’s amusing to know that my work may contribute to the advancement of dancing yellow blob bots.