I’ve been meaning to post a brief rant about how Apple has a lot of cheek to go on about worry-free upgrades in their current advertising, given my recent and not-so-recent experiences with Apple’s botched upgrades. However, there are numerous other things vying for my time and attention so that rant will have to wait for another day. So instead here’s a photo of the iris that are currently blooming in our back yard.

The world probably needs photos of iris more than it needs rants about computers anyway. read more

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. read more

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. read more

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. read more

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.

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.” read more

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: