Author Archives: GingerNinja

iSad

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R.I.P Steve Jobs

My first Mac was a MacBook Black, so I felt it fitting that I adapted the image that is everywhere on the web right now and made it glow slightly just like the back on my MacBook did. RIP Steve and thanks for giving me the tools to work, rest and play in techie style.

Woke this morning to the news that Steve Jobs had passed away during the night. Felt numb as if I’d been told an old friend had died. Despite having an iPod since the iPod Video came out in 2004/5/6, I’ve only really been a full-on Apple fanboy since I got my first Mac, a MacBook Black, off of eBay in 2008. I’ve since found with the iPhone and iPad, and to a lesser extent with my MacBook Pro, that Apple kit is a ubiquitous part of my life. I guess that Steve’s passing has saddened me because he’s given me so much. What other CEO and mega-rich businessman could prompt such a worldwide reaction of grief. God bless you, Steve, and rest in peace.

Considering migrating domains

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I’ve been thinking about this for some time and I’m considering migrating off of gingerninja.net.  WHY!?!? I hear you all cry.  Well, Twitter started it, not me!

For some time now, I’ve been getting @gingerninja messages on Twitter for a Danish band called…wait for it….Ginger Ninja.  Oooo, look.  They have a SPACE.  I don’t.  By that I mean a space between Ginger and Ninja.  Not a MySpace space.  I have one of those.  It’s over at http://www.myspace.com/gingerninjanet and that’s part of the problem:  GingerNinja is too popular a nickname.

When I first started this blog and grabbed the domain name, I found that GingerNinja was already in fairly common usage.  So where I couldn’t grab “GingerNinja” for something, I would grab “GingerNinjaNet” instead.  Problem is that that has led to much confusion and a lot of muckaroundiness in some places.  Then Game Centre happened.

I jailbroke my iPhone 3G in order to add some functionality I wanted – LockInfo calendar notifications on the home screen and biteSMS allowing me to reply or send texts within apps without quitting – which meant that I delayed upgrading to 4.1 or 4.3 until a JB version was available.  This was a delay of a month or so and by the time I got on there, “GingerNinja” was gone.  On a whim, I chose “GeekDad3″ (which I have as an alternative gmail account and a test blogger blog).  It snowballed from there with the culmination of the purchase of geekdad3.com yesterday.

Maybe it’s a maturity thing as I’m not the same gamer guy I was when I registered the domain back in the ’90s.  Maybe it’s a convergence thing as I have geekdad3 accounts on Apple Game Centre, gmail, blogger, twitter, wordpress.com and now tumblr (which handles mini-blogs status updates which are automagically sent to Facebook and Twitter).  Could be the new me?  Well, just in case, I now own geekdad3.com and I’ve even come up with a logo that I like:

Notes from Senior Class

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I don’t often post about my own karate progress but I’ve decided to start including notes on my blog about Senior Class when it has been really good. I was honestly expecting to not enjoy it tonight as I’ve had trouble getting the pattern for Seiunchin into my head over the past week so the thought of spending an entire class proving how useless I was at it wasn’t particularly appealing. Instead of kata though we went through some blocking and kicking drills which were brilliant and will form the basis of my class this week as it is all fresh in my mind. The last twenty minutes or so were then spent on kata and surprisingly I have about 75% or more of it in my head. Needless to say, I left the class feeling most buoyant.  I suppose I should quickly cover off on what we covered during the class:

Blocking

We covered combinations based on 3 styles:

  • Traditional GKR – stay in heiko dachi with soto uke as a parry, uchi uke as you drop into shiko dachi, then using your hips to rotate into zen kutsu dachi with a reverse punch.
  • Shotokan - parry to side with the reverse arm as per the opening move of Saifa, then step backwards into kokutsu dachi with shuto uke, repeat to the other side, then using your hips to rotate into zen kutsu dachi with a reverse punch.
  • Goju - (my personal favourite) perform kake uke but use the reverse arm which is normally vertical to parry the attack rather than remaining static. As you begin the block proper, drop back into neko ashi dachi, perform a snap kick to the groin (kin geri), then moving off the back leg into zen kutsu dachi with a reverse punch.

Kicking

  • Snap & Thrust drill – front leg performs a kin geri (rather than a snap mae geri) and back leg performs a thrust kekomi kick.
  • round kick from sumo drill
  • kansetsu geri stomping kick drill

Partner Drills

  • Snap & Thrust partner work – same but defender doubles over on snap & shuffles back then takes the kick and moves.
  • defensive kick partner work – attacker comes in quick, close fence defence & rapid blocks, drop into sumo, wait for them to back off and round kick.
  • stomping kick partner work – added to GKR blocks instead of the punch. Attacker punches in kiba dachi to prevent injury.

iCloud, iOS and all that

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I’m really excited by the iCloud, iOS 5 and OS X Lion announcements from Apple. This synchronisation of my data has always been a goal of mine and is one of the reasons I am so vocal about Dropbox to my friends but I have multiple accounts to handle it all and still sync my contacts via the cable and my Mac because Google’s handling of it is a bit pants and removes some of the fields. Finally I can also stop bitching about it and with iCloud have it just work. I’m a big fan of digital convergence and Apple are way ahead of everyone else. I’m smitten.

On the theme of convergence for blogs and social networks, I’ve started using Tumblr. This not only allows me to have a mini-blog running alongside bigger articles like this one, but my Tumblr posts are now also my Tweets and my Facebook status updates. This allows me to post once centrally and have multiple social networks updated, something I have long desired. I’ve also back tracked and decided to stick with a self hosted WordPress install for now as I couldn’t get along with Blogger. I have migrated my comments to the brilliant Disqus though.

Tired but happier

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Most people who know me, know that when I’m not sparring (kumite) that I say I hate sparring. When asked why my main reasons are because I’m not good at it and I don’t like getting hit – a lag-over from childhood bullying coupled with a couple of shiners picked up from an overzealous instructor when I was a student thrown in for good measure. Anyway, the marble of this post is that last night’s Senior class was all kumite and, despite some knocks, I really enjoyed myself. I’m improving and storing combinations that seem to work for me in my repertoire so much so that I scored some points. My mentor & Sensei gave some key points which spoke volumes to me persinally in order to up my game so we’ll see what happens. Amusingly, I have had a GKR Essex Dragons t-shirt for some time with “Train Hard, Fight Easy” on the front. Maybe I should wear it more often….?