Month of Thanksgiving 2018, Day 15

Today Mr. Sean is thankful for

Origami Paper

In reality, any paper can be origami paper, but what I'm thankful for regarding origami is that to some people, it is inspiring, while to other people that it is cool. Whether I'm folding 1000 cranes or some crazy modular origami project, folding paper in different shapes is fun especially considering the nearly infinite number of possibilities for how one can do origami. Earlier this year, a sudden realization hit me, I've been doing origami quite regularly for the past eight years. It has not felt all that long, but the evidence I've sent to friends or posted on the web says otherwise. I've not much reason to stop, but I will need to find a new goal to keep me going, which should be easy with a calendar from 2010 that I've kept and a wealth of online resources.

Tiny Origami Update

Apologies to everybody for the relative lack of blog posts in 2018. The end of an era in my life happened and there was a lot of change involved. This post though shows one of the more regular parts of my life: origami. I made a challenge to myself to fold 1000 tiny origami swans and 1000 tiny origami cranes by the end of 2018 but the current standings do not inspire confidence in completion. I've folded only 130 tiny swans so far and a paltry 18 tiny cranes. The most tedious part is mostly out of the way as I have plenty of 3 cm by 3 cm paper to fold the tiny birds with that were cut from sheets of 15 cm by 15 cm paper. I can definitely say that swans are much easier to fold than cranes.

Big Swan is not happy that his brethren are being recycled into tiny versions of himself

Big Crane on the other hand doesn't have to worry about his brethren being recycled into tiny cranes.

What has Mr. Sean been up to recently?

Francis Ow sure had some cool ideas for Origami models.

Sorry for the silence on my blog in the past two months. I just have not been inspired to write a blog post until now. I figured that at least a few people would appreciate knowing what I'm up to anymore. I figured I'd try to leave out the more boring parts of my summer as they would bore me even more. Anyways I can say that my goal of reading the entire Bible in 2018 is going along quite nicely, even though I did have to catch up because I was not diligent enough some days or there were exams to worry about earlier. The hard part is seeing that I'm making progress in terms of days the Bible was read while seeing how few books I have read so far. I've also been writing daily Haiku except these are only haiku in syllabic form, that is the first and last line comprising of five syllables and the middle line seven. Some of my Facebook friends with memories as good as or better than mine will remember that I tried to accomplish these goals in 2017 but failed after a few months. This year I decided I'll be less of a failure to myself.  I've also been sporadically active in origami, more so in re-creating modular models than anything else. I may write up a few posts on origami I've folded previously under the guise of Throwback Thursday. Though my ultimate goal for the year is to fold 1000 tiny swans and 1000 tiny cranes. Each crane and swan will be folded from paper that is 3 centimeters by 3 centimeters. In the world of math, I probably should not be working on Khan Academy math, but I figured it would be good for me to refresh some of the older skills I have learned, though I should focus more on reviewing calculus as it is very relevant to meteorology. I've also recently been working on solving problems from Project Euler. Project Euler is a website that has hundreds of math problems that people are encouraged to write computer programs to solve. I'll admit that I've only solved 11 problems so far out of the nearly 630. So far I've been using Python to good results in under a minute.

Anyways, I'll try to set for myself more deadlines for writing up posts and try to be less boring than I currently am at the moment. If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to hear from me, let me know!

2017 Year in Review, May

A First Friday Fiesta

First Friday is an event in Lancaster where the arts flourish on the first Friday of every month in Lancaster. I was out and about in Lancaster for First Friday in May, which so happened to fall on el Cinco de Mayo. I don't celebrate it correctly as I'm not from Puebla and didn't defeat the French in 1862, but I couldn't help but eat at Robburitos to feel a little more festive. They've got good burritos and some great BBQ sauces.

A farewell to some of my friends, but with delicious food to eat

The Thursday of finals week, the Asian and Friends Affiliation had one last farewell event. We went to the Himalayan Curry and Grill in downtown Lancaster and we had a great time feasting on Indian and Nepali dishes. I got the Chicken Tikka Masala with medium heat. It was perfect for me, but apparently too much heat for other people. Kianna, Hayley, Kianna and Hayley's friends, and I had a great time feasting then going for cupcakes at Lancaster Cupcake.

The start of an improved me, or maybe improved handwriting

Right after I got home from college after eight semesters down, I opened my package from Amazon and took out the thing I really wanted, a Leuchtturm 1917 dotted ruled journal. I was watching a video from a German YouTuber named Trixi and she was showing off her bullet journal and inspired me to try making and using my own bullet journal. So far, after about 7 months of use, I could do better, but it has been a good help to me in organizing my life and recording my life in hard copy.

Pusheen, but with sushi!

One day while going around the local mall, something caught my eye. It was a Pusheen plush eating sushi! I know that Pusheen loves to eat food (like me!) but most of the other plushes were of regular food such as chips and pizza, I knew I had to get one that better represented me, so I got the sushi Pusheen and named him Susheen (yes I know Pusheen is a she, but I decided for Susheen to be similar to me, that Susheen is a he). Susheen should really only steal my glasses if he wants to do my hard work.

Giant Spiky Origami Ball of Doom

After having folded 1000 cranes in 2016, I was on the hunt for new origami challenges. I found one in the idea of modular origami. The premise was simple, fold one sheet into a shape, then fold more sheets into the same shape with pockets and tips and put the origami shapes together to create something more than the sum of the parts. This photo shows a 30 unit Sonobe Stellated Icosahedron, but I like to call it the Giant Spiky Origami Ball of Doom.

Tiny Origami

Recently, as I've been doing more and more origami, I've been pondering how to expand my repertoire of origami skills. I figured tiny origami would be more challenging than origami with regular sized paper. So far I've found it a good challenge, though my wish of a braided wreath origami using 3x3 cm paper has not been granted so far, the pockets vs tips struggle is real with smaller paper. On the other hand, 4x4 cm paper works for making a wreath and I made a tiny crane with 3x3 cm paper.