Really?

Heard while waiting at A traffic light on federal highway here in Florida: "That car is too small, wouldn't be safe in an accident." A not uncommon unsolicited comment while driving the smart car. But first time from a helmetless motorcyclist to his helmetless rider.

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My Son had Brain Surgery today

Actually no. It was saturday morning; but the hours and days have blurred to become one. Exhausted to the point of dizziness.  Unable to feel having used up all feelings. Wondering what will come next.

--//--

25 years ago he had his first bout of brain surgery. The first occurred within hours of his birth. It evacuated a Posterior fossa bleed that was killing him and saved his life.

The second took place right in the NICU when a temporary shunt was placed to relieve pressure on the brain. It failed since his spinal fluid was was thick with blood and coagulated in the shunt.

Twice daily lumbar punctures to relieve the pressure and monitor the fluid went on for weeks.

The third surgery placed a VP shunt. He was 6 weeks old.

This Saturday morning a surgeon at MGH replaced it...from the ventricles to the abdomen.

He's been lucky, actually. 25 years without a failure or infection is an extraordinary run for a shunt.

When I started writing this I was flooded with things to say. I had a few minutes away from the hospital, I sat, I wrote the intro, and woke up an hour later....not sure where to take it.

About the raw emotion?

About the wonderful nurses?

About the ones who were not?

About the whirlwind that was the 8 hours from arrival to surgery?

About the weeks of hospital stays and other illnesses that predates this?

About the disparate payments between what insurance pays local hospitals versus MGH?

About my sons experience with the medical system over the last 25 years?

About the times it's done well by him? The times it has not?

About him and his life?

About the quote we just received for a new power chair?

About the politics of health care?

About the fever?

And as I sit here by his side,  I still don't know what to write, but that, My son had brain surgery.

(originally posted at Daily Kos)

Book return

The library asked for
The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today - Ted Conover back before I finished it. Either I've A: been to tired from returning to work to read...or B: it's not holding my attemtion.

I expect its a bit of both.

I will need to create a new book list - started, not finished. The Routes of Man: How Roads will be in good company, I can add it to GEB

What he said

Krugman

Books

Picked up a couple of new books recently. The first while on a road trip to Rhode Island:
The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
I've read several pages From it in a wonderful independent bookstore while waiting for Martha and this book definitely has promise....looking forward to reading it; I think it may keep me from finishing "The Routes Of Man - Ted Conover" before I have to return it to the library.

The other book:
The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number

Haven't cracked this one yet. picked it up at a local borders that was closing as a present to myself to celebrate my new hip.  290 pages on the  graphic that serves as this blog header has to be a good thing.

Lang on origami - math, insects, space telescopes and the power of dead people

I seldom if ever visit YouTube land, but somehow the iPad has increased the amount of time I cruise the intertubes. Hopefully not entirely time wasted.

Today I found this 18 minute Video Lang made at TED. Art, Math, Origami, insects, Space telescopes and "dead people".

(edit....for those who are not origami enthusiasts Dr Lang is a pre-eminent origami artist whose background is that of a physicist and engineer among others things...)

Rehab transitions....Road Trip

The origami rehab project seems to be phasing out - that is, now that I'm able to go out and am attempting to return to my old routine, origami projects have lagged.

But reading has increased and road trips as well.

Yesterday we went on a great trip to the Green Mountain Spinnery. For those who visit from Ravelry no explanation is needed , but for the rest of you the Spinnery creates yarn and my wife is a consummate knitter. I love to drive, she loves to look for just the right yarn and hence we love trips to places like the Spinnery. I can usually read a chapter or two while we visit as well...

I wish I brought a camera because unlike any other yarn store we visit the Spinnery manufacture their yarn on site. In fact the store is tiny - the yarn making machinery takes up the bulk of the building. Did I mention I love old machinery lately? We didn't realize the Spinnery allowed visitor to tour the place or that they used old equipment so it was a great treat and surprise when we arrived and were shown each machine and given an explanation for it's purpose.

The Spinnerys web site has a nice virtual tour which includes all the steps involved in creating the yarn; the history about each machine is also nicely documented. perhaps next time we go I'll get images; till then enjoy their site.

Administrivia

I've made some changes to the blog this week which hopefully are improvements.
One was I standardized the links for the books. Amazon makes it extremely easy to link to their pages if you join the affiliate program and the results, I think, are good.

I wanted to be able to present an image for each book from a location where it could be bought and the links now consistantly do that. I had planned to go with borders but they don't have tools to make it simple - and seeing I don't expect to spending alot of time maintaining this blog simple is good.

I don't expect to make anything from the links, but on the off chance you find one of the books I've read interesting by all means click thru and buy!

Adding the slideshow was an attempt to make images posted long ago and forgotten in the archives come alive again.

Now I just need to get back to posting about rehab and origami

Duh!

After months of linking to this blog I noticed this week that if I entered it's name 123581321 I couldn't get to it. Hmmmmm. But if I googled it along with the word blog it was found.

Whats up with that?

What's up with that is that when I created the blog I left out (or blogger helpfully suggested a URL without) the 5. I do recall thinking it was astounding that no one had taken 123581321 when I started. So the dilemma is whether to leave the screw up which sort of defeats the point or leaving it as is so the thousands (hundreds, dozens?) of followers I have accumulated don't have to change their links.

Hmmm

guess I'll leave it as it is...

Almost Origami

SunBurst

This is not the creation promised in previous posts - those thirty components are still waiting to be assembled.

This is a design from "A kids Guide to Origami"  - it required tape though, which seems to make it more of a paper craft then true origami. And its big, the largest model made to date. Each "ray" of the sunburst is made up of three sheets, two 6x6 and one 3x3. each "ray"of sun is taped to the adjacent one. So each individual ray would pass as origami.

This would look much better with solid colors but i didn't have enough of the correct colors to make it - hence the patterned paper. It actually will look good in the living room though - the colors work with our decor.

So far so good

So the Origami portion of this blog started shortly after i had my left hip replaced and this week was the follow up visit.  The xrays looked good! The image to the right is my new hip...all metal and cement-less.

The manufacturer product page has the details on the hip including details of the tools and methods used to install it. Pretty fascinating stuff.

I'll return to origami posts once I get the next model  finished, I still have those 30 components to assemble.

Modular Origami

When I started folding I was hoping to do geometric shapes.  I discovered that meant making multiple identical components, in some cases as many as 30 or more. Even though the components were not complicated the idea of creating many identical ones gave me pause ...and I  moved on to single sheet designs.

Well this weekend  I revisited the component origami designs and created a  couple using  "sonobe" components. Both of these cubes are made with identical components although the final folds are subtly different. The larger cube uses 12 component pieces, the smaller 6.  The diagonal pattern of the smaller cube is more pleasing to my eye- and if i was to reassemble the larger cube I'd reverse it - at the moment the diagonals are visible inside the cube - it was an aha! moment when i realized that the hidden interior was going to mirror (more or less) the smaller cube.

Another discovery was that my color selection  is becoming limited - I've burned through a fair amount of paper while rehab'ing my hip and my preferred colors have been used up!


I've made 30 sonobe components using some patterned paper and plan to attempt assembling a more complex Icoshedral Model

A vase of Lillys

A vase of lillies from this diagram.  While making these I thought I was not folding them correctly since i kept ending with the exposed white side as a stripe. It wasn't until I looked at them from a distance that i realized that it actually looked like a natural stripe of color.  I think most Lilys that are striped this way would actually be light colored with the stripe being the dark color - but no matter I like the result.

Flowers

This is a fun project. I had seen flowers on lots of sites and stayed away since they looked complex. While it may not have seemed an ideal first project it turned out not that difficult. The stem is very simple. The flower itself   has no difficult folds and as bonus you actually inflate it in the next to last step. I think the hardest step is getting the flower to balance on the stem!

The diagrams I used for the tulip and the stem were on the origami USA site. I used Aitoh Origami paper which has nice solid colors.

Animals

Penguin

The penguin came from an ipad app I tried out. On one hand it came out really well and the app looked really slick - on the other hand the apps steps didn't really define the angles or locations of the folds in a definitive way. Maybe my past life as a draftsman makes me picky about that kind of thing , but I like the diagrams which are specific, allowing you to use geometry be accurate as you fold.

Crane

I guess the crane is probably the most classic origami model I've done. I used a diagram from the origami club for the one pictured above.

Giraffe

Giraffe

Mouse

Mouse

The book where i found the above mouse instructions, Genuine Origami: 43 Mathematically-Based Models, From Simple to Complex   listed it as simple - in fact its the first one in the book.... I guess its all relative but other models, even in the same book are easier.  But regardless it was a fun fold,  next time i'll have to use a realistic color.

The Giraffe above is also from the same book as is the squirrel below. 

Squirel

Squirel

Early Projects - geometric shapes

A Box

This is "A Box 3" from this diagram at the Origami Club.  I particularly like taking a square sheet of paper and turning it into a open container. This is one of the papers Martha picked up for me - "Miyabi Chiyogami Komon, Washi Chiyogami". Its textured, most obviously on the white side, and the printed side retains its pattern well at the folds.

Star Basket

 This is a traditional "Star Basket" from this diagram at origami USA  I used Aitoh Origami paper which is the other kind Martha picked up at Michael's... unlike the other paper which  this one has solid colors and little or no texture. The paper and color holds up well at the folds though.   This is one of my favorites, a neat container that looks cool.

I'd provide a pointer to the diagram, but for the life of me i can't find the source I used for this one. Its my first attempt at a simple square box. I used the Aitoh paper for this final model. Unlike the star box folding this one wasn't as much fun -I've made many star boxes, but I don't expect I'll do this one again.

A few more....

Open Pyramid Container

The "truncated" Pyramid above is a fun container to fold and relatively simple, The site i found the diagram on appears broken now - but the same diagram can be found here in a slightly funky format.

Tetrahedron

This is the tetrahedron which i had trouble with originally. This model is completed with Miyabi paper. I've concluded the paper that came with the original "kit" was of poor quality and the diagrams contained subtle errors which only are obvious now that I've done a fair number models. Perhaps I'm still reading it wrong but the example above is impossible if you faithfully follow the diagram!

Cube

Same as the tetrahedron above this is cube which didn't fold well originally. In this case the diagram was OK - but the finished models just didn't look as good as when done with Aitoh paper as shown. At some point I'll find a diagram on line and create new models of the tetrahedron and cube and provide the links.

I particularly liked making  this box -  the contrast in color and (relatively) crisp lines are visually interesting. The Aitoh paper has some nice solid colors. Secondly the folding is fun too - pretty simple with only nine steps. The initial steps create a series creases but leave the sheet flat....then in single step you create the box...and finally you fold the flaps down creating the contrasting color and locking the shape in place. Like the pyramid the site i found the diagram on appears broken - but i found the authors own site with it here

Origami Rehab

With time on my hands I decided to try origami as a way to pass the time while my hip rehabs.

I started by attempting to fold models from a kit i had purchased at the MIT museum store a week or so before surgery.  The kit was of "Geometric Origami" and I quickly found even the most basic cube and tetrahedrons were not folding well. I decided either I didn't understand what I was doing or the instructions in the booklet were poor.....so i searched the intertubes for traditional origami to both practice folding and learn from a source other then the booklet that came with the geometric kit.

Over the last couple of weeks I've spent hours folding traditional Origami - starting with boxes and then moving on to flowers and animals, returning to the cube and tetrahedron that i had been unable to do originally.  As it turns out my first attempts were failing both because of my ineptitude and the poor quality paper in the kit. Martha picked up some origami paper at michael's  (the Paper Store didn't have any - go figure) and that made a huge difference.

The following posts include most of the models I've made - in some cases it took many practice models to get to one good example - others just folded up fine the first time.