Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 4/25/09

Aikidokas: Jeff and Trey.

Ukemi: Did my usual set.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: with Trey. They were interrupted by the arrival of Sensei's wife.

Jeff arrived shortly thereafter and we started working on some sensitivity drills that he'd been taught at a recent Nick Lowry clinic.

The first one was walking with a partner side-by-side and trying to feel when their foot landed and when their weight transferred.

Another one was walking face-to-face, sideways, with one person grabbing both of the other person's wrists. Tori then can attempt to do several things. Flare out his thumbs, which will cause uke to move toward tori. 2 - Slowly move away from uke, attempting to draw uke to him with being noticed. 3 - Slowly move in front of uke, cutting off his line

A third one was to start of at large distance. As uke approaches make half tankan step, then another and then a full tenkan step. This will cause uke to face the direction he was coming from. At that point tori can move toward uke and cause uke to fall.

Weird stuff.

We also played with reactions and directions, but my mind did not completely grasp them.


Aftermath: None of note.

Aikido Friday Night - 4/24/09

Aikidokas: Trey. Sensei Tim was in the hospital, so I had to run class.

Ukemi: Did my usual set.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: with Trey. We spent a fair amount of time on them tonight. We felt no rush.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

We worked on shomen-ate, Aigamae-ate and Gyakugamae-ate. It's been a while since Trey and I have had an opportunity to just work on things. We spent the evening giving each other plenty of feedback.

Aftermath: None of note.

Stained glass project

The project is finished. I finished it last weekend, finally putting the patina on. I'm 95% pleased with it. I should have put a little more thought into some of the colors to achieve a little more depth. but, I am pleased with it.

I'm putting up the pattern I created to make it. The picture of the pattern is horrible, I just had it laying on my desk so the lines are not straight. The final piece will be displayed once it's in Melanie's hands.

Volleyball, 2-1

Lordy did we stink the first game. We played horribly.

We then proceeded to play well the second and third games and come out on top.

Instacon 8

I went to a local conrunner's con over the weekend. It was over on the southwest side of town, so it was pretty convenient.

I was on two panels. One was a demonstration of my Art Show Database website. It went decently well. A couple of folks in the audience. I got a number of suggestions and found some bugs in it while demonstrating. Some of the folks might be interested in using it. We'll have to see.

My second panel was bright and early Sunday morning. "Art Shows at SFF Cons." Essentially a discussion on all aspects of Art Shows. We discussed reasons why some cons did things the way they did and tried to come up with some areas that folks might not have thought about.

A good con and good company.

Aikido Friday Night - 4/17/09

Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, and Tom.

Ukemi: Did my usual set.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: with Tom.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

Did some work with Tom on Shomen-ate and Aigamae-ate. We're making progress. Trying to eliminate the right shoulder moving forward.

Owaza Ju Pon

No work on this today

Koryu Dai San No Kata

Did somw work on 1, 2, 3 and 4. It was strange working on this in an hakama. I'll get used to it at some point

Aftermath: Tweaked a toe doing suwari waza, but nothing major.

Stained glass project

7.5 of the 8 steps are complete.

All of the foiling is done. Half of the soldering is done. I ran out of solder, or I would have finished that completely.

Today was Easter, so no places were open to get the solder. Tomorrow's Monday, the day the supply shop is usually closed. I'll stop by and get solder on Tuesday, but I've got volleyball Tuesday night, so I likely won't have any time to work on it.

Maybe Wednesday will have this project complete. Then I have to figure out when to drive it up to Dallas.

Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 4/11/09

Aikidokas: Tim, Richard, Trey and Seth.

Ukemi: Light set of ukemi.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: None today.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

Worked with Trey on:

1-5 of the Kata. His ankle was giving him fits and blew his ability to think well, consistently.

Maeotoshi - We did some playing around with the initial approach int this one. Sometimes we take this as a failed Shihonage, sometimes we start directly into mae-otoshi.

Owaza Ju Pon

Did some work on #1, #2, and #6.

Spent some time concentrating on the timing on all of them.

For #2, Tim suggested a knife hand approach instead of the open hand I was using. That's an important bit to remember

Shihonage - Take uke off of his 4th toe on the initial off-balance while retreating. Do not lower your arms as you make the transition from first off-balance to second off-balance.

Koryu Dai San No Kata

Nowork on this today

Aftermath: We saved a little bit of time at the end for Tim to throw me about with some high falls. Trey took some pictures. I was in my hakama again and wanted to get some pictures to use for the dojo.

Aikido Friday Night - 4/10/09

Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Brad, Tom and Seth.

Ukemi: Watched over Tom and Seth.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: None.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

Did some work with Tom and Brad on Shomen-ate. We working working on the final step in the technique. We're trying to eliminate any shot-putting and poor posture.

Did some work with Trey on the first 5 of Ju Nana Hon Kata. It'd been so long since I'd done on work on them that it was embarrassing. I did improve, thankfully.

Owaza Ju Pon

No work on this today

Koryu Dai San No Kata

No work on this today

Aftermath: I wore a hakama for the first time. It was pretty interesting. More heat. Lots of folks managed to step on it during techniques. I still need to work on folding it well. Lining up the pleats is not easy. I need to wear it more often to be able to remember how to put it on.

Stained glass project

6.5 of the 8 steps are complete.

All of the grinding is done. Half of the foiling is done. I might finish the foiling tonight. 50+ grapes are left to foil.

Soldering is next on the list.

Maybe I ought to add two more steps: cleaning and putting on the patina.

Nah, not now. Maybe for future projects.

Volleyball, 1-2

Grrr. We played well enough to win all 3 games, but we didn't. I think the ref stole the second game from us. The third game we let them get too much of an early lead.

Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 4/4/09

Aikidokas: Tim, Trey

Ukemi: Light set of ukemi.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: None today.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

Worked with Trey on:

Shihonage - The only technique from his last demo that needs much work. We're doing some tweaking on when to lock the wrist (later rather than earlier for uke's safety).

Maeotoshi - I did some work as uke and tori on this one. My usual habits of almost not letting go of uke and not getting enough of a "Randy knuckle" showed up. Trey did well for pretty much his first time with the technique. A bigger mass (mine) makes the technique a little easier.

Sumi-otoshi (we actually do an uke-otoshi) - He got a couple of falls on this from me. Just needs more reps.

Owaza Ju Pon

No work on this today

Koryu Dai San No Kata

Worked on the first four for a bit with Trey as uke.

1) Oshi Taoshi - Need to open and not pivot. Get the standing oshi-taoshi arm position and, as we go "over the mountain", go off-line to provide an additional off-balance.

2) Gyakugamae Ate - We skipped it. Using the time elsewhere.

3) Kote Gaeshi - I need to stop using Jeff's suggestion of a sweeping arm and replace it with moving my center as uke is flying through the air.

Aftermath: Blister just before the first knuckle of the left big toe. I probably did not have "live toes" at some point.

Aikido Friday Night - 4/3/09

Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Kim, and Tom.

Ukemi: Just watched over Tom.

The Walk: As usual.

Releases: Worked with Tom. Noticed a few points where he was using some muscle. He noticed them as well as they tended to be on the side of his slightly bum shoulder.

Techniques:

Ju Nana Hon Kata

Did some work with Tom on Shomen-ate. We worked on putting the whole thing together and it's coming along amazingly well.

Did some work with Tom in Aigamae-ate. We were doing step by step work and I made a mistake on when to do the hip switch. There needs to be another step by uke after the initial off-balance and, when that happens, then it's time for the hip switch.

Owaza Ju Pon

No work on this today

Koryu Dai San No Kata

No work on this today

Aftermath: None of note.

Volleyball, 3-0

Our first wins of the season. They came against the other team that had not won any games, but they were wins nonetheless.

We played decently. We were able to take advantage of a couple of weak players in their lineup.

The next few weeks we play against the weaker teams. the last game of the season is against the number one team. There's no way to know how we'll end up.

Aggiecon 40

I've gone to this convention since 1984, I think. Most of the past years I've flown this convention solo. This year both K. and I made it. It was our first convention together in a number of years. We also brought several friends from Friendswood with us.

It was a weak convention, and appears to have some life-threatening wounds, but it still can be saved. It will take a lot of education of Cepheid members to save the con. There is plenty of knowledge in the ranks of former Cepheids. There was a Cepheid Muster during the con, but since I was never a Cepheid, I can't report on what was said/not said.

The panels were weak. There was about 1.5 tracks worth of programming. It shut down at 7 pm on Friday and had very little going on late Saturday.

The guest list was very limited. They did a very poor job with the guest, I think. The main media guest was probably wondering why she came, although the friend we brought up with us was interested in listening to her.

The dealer's room was a vast wasteland with not a book dealer to be seen. The middle of the dealer's room was used for gaming tables. Willie may have missed his first Aggiecon ever.

The Art Show was good by Aggiecon standards. I think sales were relatively good. There were actually some I thought of purchasing.

I would really like for former students to take over running the con. That doesn't accomplish a goal of educating new conrunners, but it would keep the con running. It might also make the con tougher to run since it might not be possible to use the MSC as the venue.

I will continue to go to Aggiecon as long as they hold it. It is my main excuse to go back to A&M at least once a year. It's an opportunity to see vast fields of bluebonnets and to eat at Los Nortenos.

I wish they'd quit selling only black t-shirts. It's been a long time since I've wanted to buy an Aggiecon t-shirt. Maybe 15 years?

K. came up with an idea for a website that I might try to implement. The below pictures are part of the inspiration:

The week in Denver

My new job sent me out to Denver last week with a number of colleagues to chat with some folks we work with out there. We had a fairly productive week, and got to drive out to Breckenridge one afternoon to look around.

The big event of the week was a severe snowstorm that dropped from 10 to 18 inches of snow on the Denver area. This happened on Thursday morning. Wednesday afternoon I'd asked one of the folks we were visiting how often they closed the schools. His reply was "very rarely." When I woke up Thursday morning the first thing I saw on the TV was a scrolling list of school closures. Not much snow was on the ground yet, but more was expected by the end of the day.

I needed to get into the office and talk with one of the guys there. The rest of the folks from Houston were iffy about driving the short distance to get there, but they were willing to since I needed to go.

We got to the office, got some work done and decided that the snow was piling up too deep. The snow was about 6 inches deep on a power transformer outside one of the windows. We left for the hotel. We spent about 20 minutes getting the minivan out of its parking spot and then 30 minutes driving to the hotel.

We watched snow fall for the rest of the day, and a bit of Friday morning. Thankfully, the snow slowed down enough, and the plows got rid of enough of the now on the roads that we were able to make our flight out of town that afternoon.

Below are pictures from the trip from my cell phone.