Friday: Wedding rehearsal for my niece
Saturday: Pick up my sister at the airport and then off to the wedding
Sunday: Brunch at my other sister's and then "The Soloist"
Monday: Spent a lot of time working on "Art Show Helper", a web-based program for convention art shows to use. "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" on DVD
The weekend was filled with wedding stuff (my niece's) and out-of-town relatives. there was no chance for me to get to the dojo. I hope class went ok without me, as Trey had to run both days, afaik.
Fantastic Four and the Rise of the Silver Surfer: 2
K. and I saw this on DVD the other night. It was a fun movie, but would have been a disappointment in the theatre. The best part was probably Stan Lee's cameo.
There was at least one issue with editing that I noticed. Human Torch hugs Thing after HT has been altered by the Silver Surfer and they immediately cut away. HT and Thing should have swapped powers, but they didn't.
Also, the amount of damage done to the earth prior to Galactus arriving would have been enough to doom the planet, I think.
The Soloist: 3
A good movie chronicling a newspaper columnist's attempt to aid and befriend a mentally-disturbed cellist. Jamie Foxx did a good job as the cellist. Robert Downey, Jr. did an ok job as the columnist.
Parts of the film tried to allow the audience to experience, I think, synesthesia. It was a decent attempt.
At one point during the movie I thought we were watching a John Woo flick. We were following the flight of two pigeons across the city of L.A. Now, JW uses doves, so it wasn't quite the same.
I got a good chuckle out of the scene in the bar after RDJ was beaten up by JF and a Neil Diamond song was on the juke box.
I'm not certain what point was being made by the coyote urine sub-plot.
Star Trek: 3
I saw this on opening weekend and am just getting around to reporting on it. I enjoyed the casting and the premise of a complete reboot of the series.
I'm not so happy with the story. Time travel is a well-worn crutch and should be used carefully. The fact that the villain just sat around plotting his revenge instead of saving his planet, was annoying. I can see the need for time travel if they wanted to get Old Spock into the cast. They should have done something better with it, though.
The animal on the ice planet was not well integrated into the area. Why had it not attacked the Federation installation?
The fact that Kirk landed very close to where Spock was hiding was just too pat.
Friday: aikido
Saturday: Mowed the lawn, aikido, the Preakness, dinner with K. at Durango's
Sunday: edged the lawn, watched the Rockets get trashed, roast for dinner with the in-laws.
Aikidokas: Trey and Tom.
Ukemi: Watched over Tom.
The Walk: As usual. Some minor corrections needed to be made on the first pivot step.
Releases: Round-robin releases.
Techniques:
We did a round-robin on the releases as well. I uke'd for Trey on 1-10 and we both uke'd for Tom on Shomen-ate. He is improving, reducing the number of times he shot puts.
Aftermath: I think I need to get to the orthopedist about my arm. We'll see.
Aikidokas: Trey, Brad and Tom.
Ukemi: Watched over Brad and Tom.
The Walk: As usual.
Releases: with Brad.
Techniques:
I worked with Brad on Shomen-ate, Aigamae-ate, Gyakugamae-ate and Ushiro-ate. I want to continue working on these techniques as much as possible. I want to see him "get" them.
Trey worked with Tom on releases and anti-shot put drills.
Aftermath: None of note.
Aikidokas: Brad. I was getting ready to run through a bunch of repetitions of the walk by myself when Brad arrived. His arrival saved me from doing the walk backward and with the right-foot first.
Ukemi: Watched over Brad.
The Walk: As usual. Made a couple of suggestions on hand position and timing.
Releases: None.
Techniques:
We started off with the anti-shot put drill and then moved on to techniques. We worked on Shomen-ate, Aigamae-ate, and Gyakugamae-ate.
He did really well. I hope we get to work on them some more this coming week.
Aftermath: None of note.
Aikidokas: Trey and Jason.
Ukemi: Watched over Jason.
The Walk: As usual. We then spent a good portion of the evening going over the steps to the Walk. 2 on 1 is a good approach to teaching the Walk: one showing, one kibbitzing.
Techniques:
We then spent some time working on timing and getting off-line. Jason picked up on the drill and the timing very quickly.
Trey and I uke'd for each other on some techniques and interspersed that with attacking Jason and having him get off-line.
Aftermath: None of note.
Aikidokas: Trey, Tom, and Jason (a new student).
Ukemi: Watched over Jason.
The Walk: As usual.
Releases: with Tom. We spent a fair amount of time on them tonight.
Techniques:
Ju Nana Hon Kata
We did some work with a drill to eliminate shot puts from the finish of techniques.
We worked on Gedan-ate, Ushiro-ate, and Oshi taoshi. Wanted to give Trey some time at the end of class to work on things.
Aftermath: None of note.
Aikidokas: Trey and Brad. Sensei Tim was in the hospital. It looks like I may be running things for a number of weeks or months.
Ukemi: Watched over Brad.
The Walk: As usual.
Releases: with Brad. We spent the entire night on them. We worked on the relases and how to uke for the releases.
Aftermath: None of note.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
