fluffybrain

The UTS in Bristol was really good fun – a grand total of 14 hours of training over the two days. I got to meet a number of really nice people – hello to Keith and Sarah from Glasgow, Gemma from Southampton, and Nikki and Richard from Bristol. It was nice to meet you!
I passed my grading, as did everyone else from the dojo who tried, so I’m now a mean lean yellow belt (or something).

Training this evening was fun also – Rupert started us off with a number of new techniques. It’s good to start learning new things – the run up to the grading last weekend meant that we mostly spent the preceding month making sure we had our form for the grading techniques correct, and so there wasn’t much variety.

This coming weekend (22-23rd Feb) we’re all off to the University Training Seminar in Bristol for a weekend of training, drinking and (hopefully) sleeping.
In particular, we’re grading, so should everything go according to plan I’ll be wearing a yellow belt post-weekend.

Danny has convinced us (somehow – surprisingly it didn’t involve beating us with a large stick) to do a Dantai Embu – kind of a choreographed performance of multiple techniques, with everyone of us doing the same thing at the same time.
His intention is for us to perform it at the UTS – ever so slighly scary – lots of students watching. Unfortunately, out of 6 of us, 3 are white belts, so it could be interesting to watch. *cringe*
It’s all very impressive though, with lots of shouting and stuff. Dave took a video of our practice on Arthur’s funky new digicam; not sure if we’ll get to see it though.

Practice today was fun, with lots of practice of the aforementioned embu, and a fair bit of Goho practice for the grading. We trained with “do”s – kind of a chest armour piece – so we could kick each other properly. It still hurts a bit when you’re on the receiving end though!

Anyway, I’ve got to look through some SWT examples for my individual project so I can start figuring out how to code the damn thing (unsurprisingly, I still haven’t started).

My good friend eclipse has kindly created a couple of more relevant replacement graphics for the top of the site. I’m a little picky (understatement of the year) when it comes to these things, so he’s done a really good job. Thanks Alisdair! eclipse’s site can be accessed through the links section – he’s got some good graphics skills this guy.

I feel truly awful. I’ve caught Rob’s cold off him, and, after prolonged exposure to the snow a few days back (London Transport doesn’t work), I’m now feeling horrid.

Hopefully I’ll be more energetic in a few days’ time, though somehow I managed to get through Kempo yesterday (this involved imbibing about 6 Strepsils during the session – constituting a x6 overdose, but I lived).

The coursework’s building up now – I’ve got to hash out some project work for my meeting with Krysia on Wednesday, and there’s a Graphics coursework due on Friday. That and Law on Monday.

Buh.

On the plus side, I’ve done a couple of Kempo related pages, added another photo and another drawing to the gallery, and created a Links page. All very productive, I’m sure you’ll agree.