My Wushu Blog

Dead Man’s Shoes I like how IMDB now uses tags on categorizing a movie. And not just “Drama” or “Comedy”, cause it has those as well (and this movie is not a Comedy or a Drama), but it has plot keywords like “Revenge”, or “Shot in the Leg”, or whatever else pertains to the movie’s story. Very cool, it now helps me find movies that are similar to ones that I already like without limiting myself to the director or the writer.

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For the 3 that read my AnD blog, I’ve re-setup my blog import from http://www.mywushublog.com/ I finally finished re-copying the entries I lost when my server died. Letting AnD import my blog is a very nice way to keep a backup, and share with the HK community.

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Michele and I don’t get to the movies all that much, and when we do it’s not like we decide on a movie and then find a babysitter, a babysitter presents themselves and we panic for a while trying to figure out what to do with our precious spare time. This is where I can always catch Michele at a disadvantage. I tend to know whats in theaters at the moment and what I would probably like to see.

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I put up two new gallaries on my main site http://m87-blackhole.org/photos/ One is of the server rebuild and the other is of the family (mostly Owen). Both Owen and Caralyne keep michele and I very busy. For instance, right now I’m typing this up as Owen is taking a short nap and Caralyne us playing a computer game. I may try and workout, but the little guy is already stirring and Michele wanted to take a nap so I don’t have any coverage.

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Thankfully it’s back down to the tolerable 80’s, but the triple digit weather in antioch pushed me to shut off my server this last week until things cooled down a bit. It stays stupid hot in that garage, close to 100f even at 10pm. Hopefully it wont get that bad again, but if it does I’m shutting it down again.

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It’s been a looong time since Mark has been in charge of a class, maybe 2005 or so, right before he moved to Shanghai. I had forgotten how relentless he is, even though over the past few years Pierre and I have threatened younger students, “Oh you think this is tough? Wait till Mark gets back!” or “If you don’t stop talking, we’re calling Mark and flying him back here to make you do burpee’s!

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A friend of mine got my the coolest birthday present I think I’ve ever recieved, and that was a bunch of new and super kick ass hardware. This will soon replace my current server, which is in such bad shape it cannot compile java code, or perl from source. Before I replace it, I wanted to play around with ZFS that comes with FreeBSD 7.0. Here is a quick rundown of it all:

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For me, wushu hasn’t always been kick ass and fun. I’ve gone through periods where I hated going to class, and I either wouldn’t have gone at all had it not been for my strong habitual nature ( I run on auto-pilot on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I just show up to class no matter what) or lately I would have found any work excuse to not go. Somewhere along the line, I stopped being excited about wushu, I stopped dreaming about learning cool styles like bagua, fanzi, longfist, etc…

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Let’s back it up a bit and go on record for exactly how I got the nickname, and the insane amount of flexibility in my left leg. I began learning the newer longfist compulsory with Isao. Stephanie was teaching us the first section. I remember it was towards the end of class and I was exhausted and hungry, probably dehydrated too. We got to the part where you do the jumping inside-kick and land into the splits where I faltered.

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Okay, ham-ish title, and it’s not like it Wushu West is bad now, just me and my motivation. As I explained before, the first year or so of wushu I was a wushu craving lunatic. I spent a lot of spare time at work searching for clips, which at the time were hosted on furiousg.com and then moved to wushucentral.com. I’m not sure why I don’t watch random wushu clips now, maybe its because youtube has taken all the work out of finding something, but I really take for granted how easy it is today to find any style you want.

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