Every now and then something makes me tilt my chair backwards and clap my hands in childish glee. Well, okay, it’s pretty damn often, but today I was shown (via Twitter) a Man in Blue experiment called Cubescape. Its an amazing experiment and the animation looks very cool. Not only is it an epic showing of code, it’s pretty fun.
Without taking too much time, I put this together:
Click to watch the animation, I screwed up the second guy so blew him up in frustration. Like I said, pretty fun 
Why don’t you see what you can come up with?
Okay, I don’t really have a reason for posting this other than to whinge and have an excuse to use my new camera(the scan is a pic I took of it…). Any Perthians may have noticed its getting a little cold these last few days. I don’t usually complain about cold weather, I actually kinda like it. Maybe it cools the rest of my body to to match my icy heart, maybe it cools my fiery temper, or maybe I just don’t like sitting in a pool of my own sweat when I’m not moving at all in summer. What ever is it, with the storms and rain, I just think winter is cool(HAW HAW HAW), but not this time my friends. This time it’s annoying.
As I’m sure everyone has heard me complain about, I had a rather expensive shoulder operation last year. It has been 1 year, 1 month and 22 days, roughly, since I went under the knife. If you have a look at the scan on the right, you can see the shoulder and a white dye flowing around the joint. To give you an idea of what exactly was wrong, that dye shouldn’t have flowed anywhere. The muscles around the joint connect and its meant to have a pocket type effect. So yes, I did in fact, tear myself a new hole. The operation(shoulder stabilisation) involved cutting back muscle and bone, pulling it back together and drilling screws and ties in so it healed in the right spot. I even have the whole thing on DVD(available on request within Perth metro area). The rehab which takes a year started with me learning how to move my arm again. I could lift my arm about 6 inches from my body using its own power in about 2 weeks, which was 2 weeks ahead of schedule. The process got a bit stalled due to my inability to sit around spinning in my chair without getting bored and wanting to go and do stuff. I managed to jump on a cross trainer for around 4 months straight for half an hour a day and dropped roughly 8 kilos off my podgy frame.
The last few days I’ve really noticed the joint hurting in around the range of a metric assload(*cough*). As much as it may surprise some people that I feel pain, it probably surprises more to know that I don’t really like to, you weirdos…. I’m putting it down to the weather. I’ve noticed that when I am wearing a jumper, its fine and/or dandy. Straight tshirt and its aching. So, do I invent a half-vest for the right side? Take some tablets(although im not a fan) or start wearing shoulder armour.
Thoughts?
Okay, pretty much everyone knows I have a gamey-site. I also designed it myself. Even when I hadn’t broken the layout it still looked crappy, but I have been on a bit of a gaming rampage lately and have been blogging on it more. The next step is to give it a new image, I want it to be less…. whats that word the designers use…. “shit” and more “awse”. To do this I have to either do a design myself(hahahahahaha) or download a theme for wordpress.
Wordpress themes aren’t as easy as I was hoping. Trying to find something I am happy with is hard enough, let alone having to put up with someone elses dodgy CSS and mods that break everything. On top of that, all sites pretty much have the same free ones. For easier blogs I’m sure this will be pretty easy to manage, but of course, I like being difficult. Having said that, the site isnt particularly difficult. There are some simple CSS and layout errors that can be fixed but there appears to be code that is extremely hard to track down. The only time I remember to try to reskin the site is either late at night or on a Sunday. Both times, my attention span for this kind of thing is that of a newt. I’m not really sure where to go from here, as I’m not too keen on leaving the site in limbo, but I won’t spend a few hours hacking up a theme I don’t think much of to begin with.
Last year I stumbled across a band called Powerglove. They are an instrumental band that play songs based on old video game themes in the style of power metal. Older video games will always be something that makes me pretty warm and happy inside. Its one of the few things I can remember perfectly from my childhood. For example, The Legend of Zelda came out on a unique gold cartridge in 1987 when I got it(5 years old). I played it as a kid and had the game beaten after a while(not literally, I mean completed). I had probably played it through a few times before I gave up. I bought a Nintendo gameboy for the sole purpose of having that game as a Nintendo Classic about 2-3 years ago and I can remember every secret location, where the labrynths are, how to beat all the enemies and how to go about finishing the game in no time at all. All that and I often forget what day of the week it is and my age.
Anyway, point is, the theme tunes remind me of games, games make me happy. Metal also makes me happy so combining the two was just my equivalent of putting Iced Magic on ice-cream, which I was never allowed to have back then. I thought, okay, these are just a few guys screwing around till I heard from Kay that they were hand picked by Herman Li of Dragonforce. You might already know, I fucking love Dragonforce. I dont know another more epic sounding band that can play guitars that fast. Their last show pretty much blew my mind and I haven’t been the same since. To be chosen by a pretty big band like Dragonforce is damn impressive. Herman Li is also known for a few of the video game effects used in his songs so to see them both signing on together is great.
Now all I need to do is get them to Perth.
PS - There is another game-metal band I am aware of called Megadriver but I haven’t heard much.
Okay, my first jQuery example was very noob, and anyone that might know what they were doing(or paid more attention than I did) might have noticed there was an infinite amount of JS errors on the slide. I have no idea why. I was working on a submenu sliding in from the left. I tried to use interface again but got the infinite error problem again.
Having a look around I was playing around with the animate effect. From what I gather you can just move things wherever, and animate will make it look slidey. So all I had to do was have it off screen via a margin and animate to add a margin left, then it slides out with no problems. Here's what I mean:
$('#akuma').click(function() {
$('#akuma').removeClass("ready");
$('#akuma').addClass("active");
$('#hadouken').animate({ marginLeft: 300, opacity: 'show'}, "slow", function(){
$('#akuma').removeClass("active");
$('#akuma').addClass("ready"); $('#hadouken').hide();
$('#hadouken').animate({ marginLeft: 0});
});
return false;
});
})
Its that easy. On clicking, the first animate it starts to pull the hadouken id back to position 0. It then hides, so we dont see it sliding back. Because it’s a split second it just looks like its disappearing. When it’s back, it ‘fires’ again 300 pixels. And it slides out using the animate function. There is a callback function to reset Akuma properly, thanks to Ben Kroll.
Like before, I have put this all into a video game based example.
Seriously…
PS this is not a cheap shot at my lovely gf
Okay, I just wanted to get back to this. Even though I am back on the CLF wagon it won’t diminish my interest in other arts. Submission grappling isn’t a specific term for an art, its more encompassing moves and styles. Submissions can range from grabbing a limb, pulling it or the joint the way it shouldn’t be going, but only using enough force to cause unbelievable pain, not to snap the limb. It can go that far, but it’s not the point of it in competitions. Submissions are used extensively in Aikido, Jiu Jitsu and Brazillian Jiu Jitsu and can be seen all the time in competitions such as the UFC.
Submission fighting can also involve pressure point fighting or chokes. Pressure point fighting is usually thrown in with Dim Mak and Chin Na which isn’t exactly true as pressure point fighting is more of an aspect of the 2 styles. Choke submissions are just designed to restrict the oxygen and blood to the brain, causing you to pass out. It is a ’somewhat’ safe method to subdue people and is the preferred method of law enforcement due to there being no physical damage or risks(unless you count the change of the chokee wetting their pants a risk).
Personally, I believe that it’s always handy to know a few joint locks and choke holds because ‘fixing’ a situation via brawling can land all martial artists into a hurt amount of legal pain. I can say that I can vouch for the effectiveness of chokes and locks, having being shown a few things by various teachers and having been ‘put to sleep’ on more than one occasion. As for training it can be very dangerous when trying with another novice, hyper-extensions and passing out can occur, the basic idea is the moment it starts to hurt, don’t be a hero and try to tough it out, you just tap on your opponent or the floor and thats it. People will often train to get in these holds and reverse them into others, but it takes a high level of skill, and a careful opponent to pull these off safely.
Sleeper Holds
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This morning, or last night… I dunno, someone tagged me for this meme, and much like the song lyrics, cartoon quotes or 80s sitcom references Myles throws out, I will take the bait on this too.
Im meant to say 8 things that I don’t “think” anyone will know, and tag 8 people with it. However, I don’t think I know that many people and I can be something of a talkative drunk so nothing might surprise anyone. Having said that, here we go:
- I have never set foot in IKEA, and I don’t intend to anything soon. I don’t get the fascination, and although the rest of the world tries to convince me of its awesomeness, I’m just not that into furniture. As long as it holds stuff then it does its job. I don’t have an appreciative eye for design or colours in the majority of things.
- I have difficulty with colours. My eyes have trouble registering shades and often primary colours so it takes me a while to figure things out. I have never really considered it a disadvantage and it has never really bothered me apart from a 5 minute stint of trying Call of Duty 4 where I couldn’t tell the teams apart so I just started shooting anything that moved. Of course, since they were all wearing camo gear it was too subtle for me to notice anyway.
- Although I don’t usually talk about, or show them off, I have 5 tattoos, each one has a very deep and significant meaning to me. I had actually planned 4 of them when I was about 12, and the 5th only a few years ago. I also very rarely tell anyone the whole story behind each one and what it signifies…….. this time will not be any different. I have to be drunk enough for you to get it out of me, yet not drunk to a point where I can’t be bothered. It’s essentially a 3-5 second period.
- When I first injured my shoulder I didn’t realise it was dislocated for a full week. When I tore it soon after popping it back, it took 3 years for me to realise that it wasn’t meant to be hurting all the time and I got it checked.
- Despite my ‘angry ninja’ reputation I have never been in a fight since starting martial arts, know how to meditate, practice chi kung and do believe in the spiritual side of things
- This one has shades of Myles, as a kid I was never allowed to watch morning cartoons. I now have the entire Dragonball, DragonBall Z and DragonBall GT saga on DVD, have seen the majority of the Pokemon series and know most of the stories of cartoons shown in the last 10 years.
- The first game I ever bought on a console that was mine(as in not family property) was Mortal Kombat 2 on Sega Megadrive/Genesis. I paid $135.00 for it and took a day off school to go and get it. I saved for about a year.
- I really like keeping pets. When I was really young I had a dog named Scooby that we had to get rid of because it was aggressive towards everyone but me. I now have about 13/14 fish and the ones I can tell apart are all named after video game characters.
I think that’s 8. I hope you don’t think any less of me cos I don’t like IKEA. As for tags:
and, because they crack me so consistently, up
Choy Lay Fut is the kung fu style I have trained in since around 2003. When I started I weighed in at a monstrous 110kgs. Within the first year I hit 97. I missed a full year of training from tearing my shoulder apart(literally) via a spinning backfist in the end of 2006. I have had it fixed and sat through the rehab period and have signed back on for 3 years. I am aiming to get into the school to do some work this weekend, or if not next week after work. I will pretty much have to relearn how to swing my right arm properly all over again. I now also weigh a fair bit less. This is both an advantage and disadvantage.
Choy Lay Fut, like most kung fu styles rely on speed and your ‘core’ rather than arm strength. This applies to most other styles but is not usually noticed. Even boxers and wrestlers, who spend hours building up their ‘guns’ fall back to their cores for power. In boxing, the hips twist, the heel lifts and the torso spins around to generate power. In Choy Lay Fut in particular, there is a saying, ‘an extra inch is an extra inch of power’. This refers to the cumulative amount of power you can draw if you have full extension of your arm. The signature punch of Choy Lay Fut is the ‘charp chui’(sound familiar?). Literally translated it means ’straight leopard fist’. It is held in such a way that the 3 middle knuckles of your hand are the striking area. This might sound like it could break your hand easily, and well… it could, thats why kung fu practitioners do Iron Palm training, but more on that another time. Charps are also flat so they can move quickly and deliver a hell of a lot of force into a small area rather than hitting a larger area with impact spread everywhere(think a sniper rifle versus a shotgun).
To the untrained eye, Choy Lay Fut looks like a wild flurry of huge haymaker type punches. This isn’t the case. (more…)
