OrigaMIT Spring 2022

 I don't really feel like breaking these up into multiple posts, and it's not like I compiled it in a timely manner anyways. I also kind of wanted to include some stuff that's a little less formal.

In early January I was working on Pegasus (Kamiya) from Mulberry:

I think the basic result is ok.

I've always wanted to make stands for displaying my origami. With some help from Elijah, I learned enough basic CAD to scrape by and make a simple clip design. He helped me make stand to hold the clip up, and I had a nice stand for Pegasus!

Next up. I ended up taking [most of] MIT's geometric computing (6.850) class, which was a mix of various algorithms for processing geometric data. I found some of it to be very cool and straightforward enough to be applicable (kd-trees, voronoi, etc.) but a good chunk of it just left me bored at how much setup was required to create a useless algorithm:

But the real reason I took it was because I was hoping to get some useful ideas at how to approach geometric simulations and some practice with any good tools I might want to use to make visual simulations, so that I could ultimately try to recreate something like Oripa from scratch. And that is something I am happy to say that I did learn.

Also Erik Demaine gave a guest lecture on many random things, which was both "cool" and "wow TCS is not for me" at the same time.

I've also really wanted to revisit Bahamut since I folded it [mostly] from CP two-ish years ago (wow so long). Kamiya has an unofficial leg variation which he used in a youtube video that I think fixes a lot of the aesthetic issues with Bahamut 1.0. I've always wanted to try it but only recently figured out that you have to do the Ancient Dragon toe-trick to get the alternate legs.

I used a 24 inch sheet of Unryu. I think the base was incredibly clean whooooo.

Shaping the legs was really hard, but somehow I got it done. I think I did a good job with the whole thing (feat. messy room and many funny things which do not belong to me)

I think the fingers came out really nicely. I actually sat down with Andy and learned how to fold them correctly from a giant piece of kami since the diagrams are pretty messy on those steps.

I never took very fancy pictures of this one either.

To break up the monotony, here's something not just paper related - walking around MIT with OrigaMIT member and fellow recovering chemist John Zhou.

it took him a long to realize this was not a life-size fire escape

Anyways, we've been trying to get a better book organization system at the OrigaMIT office. We finally got a nice shelf and set it up. Looks good!

Late night folding at the office with Ian.

Another random thing I did this semester was watch movies in theaters with Ani and Omkar. Licorice Pizza was good. I also took a film studies class which I liked a lot more than my other classes this semester.

I blinked.

I didn't fold much after the beginning of the semester, besides some basic administrative duties for OrigaMIT. But I did design this dragon head with eyes. It's simple and I like it but I'm not good enough at designing complex 22.5 things to put it onto anything.

Two more late night walks with CKF and Amani since I forgot to sleep near the end of the semester and had the time to feel very nostalgic thanks to a very relaxed finals schedule.

At the very end of the semester the OrigaMIT officers all got together to eat sushi together. Because we're very questionable we bought some of the most touristy things on the menu.

I think taking pictures of people taking pictures of things is very funny.