raNdom thoUghts [from an addled mind]

January 28th, 2006 - Baby's New Skills
It's interesting how babies repeatedly practice a new skill once learned. Two days ago, Athena started pushing her butt up into the air while on her tummy. She had never done it before, but on that day, she would keep popping up like an inch worm. It's almost as if once she figures something new out, she thinks, "Wow, this is cool! I can do this now!".

Shortly after her 6 month wellness check, she got it in her head to constantly "blow rasberries" (making the "thpppfftt!" sound with your mouth and lips). Sometimes she would move her head from side to side while spraying us with her baby saliva. Previously, she had blown the occasional rasberry here and there, but suddenly it was a constant action. Even her slightly older cousin started imitating her! Thankfully, she seems to gotten most if it out of her system now.

November 28th, 2005 - Fink vs DarwinPorts
If you're trying to get Unix open source packages to run on your Mac OS machine, you can compile them yourself, or use either Fink or DarwinPorts to help you out. After spending some time trying to find out which was "better", I tried DarwinPorts first. My mistake. I couldn't get it to run correctly and ended up using Fink (which I had no troubles with). The Fink package inludes the Fink Commander which acts as a GUI index to all available "finked" programs. If you don't want to compile them locally, you can just download the binary. Beautiful!

November 9th, 2005 - Eagles and Tigers, Oh My!
I don't have much time to practice nowadays, but one pair of the drills I try to work in when I can are a couple movements I "stole" from xinyi liuhe (心意六合) practice. The "eagle grasping, tiger pouncing" (ying zhuo hu pu, 鷹捉虎撲) movement works on a powerful forward closing down. The "sinking chop, tossing upward" (chen pi tiao ling, 沉劈挑領) works on a powerful downward and upward force. Repetitive practice of these movements should give strong legs and impressive closing and opening forces.

August 29th, 2005 - Seven Swords
    I bought the mainland China DVD release of "Seven Swords" over the weekend. I thought it was a fairly enjoyable flick. I had read some negative comments about the film online - "The action is cut horribly, you can't tell what's going on", "There's no character development", "The music is terrible", so I watched it with a lower expectation level. Happily, I found that none of the criticisms were really valid. While the action does have some quick cuts, there are still plenty of long shots mixed in. It's no where as choppy as say, "The Bride with White Hair 2". And while several of the Seven didn't have any character development at all (or much dialogue for that matter), Tsui Hark has already commented that this film is supposed to be about the origin of being a hero. The main characters (and development) are the two villagers that join the Seven Swords.
   As for the music, it sounded like any other movie soundtrack. Nothing special, but it certainly didn't ruin the movie. I was afraid the music was going to completely clash with the visuals (electronic synthesizers or some such), but it worked fine.
   I'd recommend this film to anyone who enjoys wuxia flicks.   You can buy it at sensasian.com for $6.99 (+ $4 shipping). I got mine at the local Chinese bookstore for $13.95.

July 22nd, 2005 - Randomized schedule?
Everytime I think I've got little Athena's sleep/eat/poop cycle down, she changes it. I wonder if she's got a schedule randomizer built in? Just today I had the wonderful experience of watching her squirt watery poop out her bottom while I was changing her diaper. I'd seen her poop before, but squirting out a large volume of it was loads of fun. Yay for newborns!

June 28th, 2005 - I'm #1!
Somehow I'm #1 on Google again. That is, if you google my name, I'm the first hit. (For some reason, I'd fallen completely off the list for the last month or so). Curiously enough, if you do a link: search on google of my homepage, it doesn't return any results, so I'm puzzled as to how I end up on the top of the stack. Even more curious, no where on my homepage do I actually list my last name, yet I'm the #1 result. Ah, the mysteries of the Internet.
I'm working on a page describing the Wu style 13 push hands drills. Don't know how long it will be before I can get it posted though. I'm also planning on putting up the translation my father did a while ago of Ma Yueliang's treatise on the 13 energies of taijiquan after I get the chance to proofread it carefully.

June 27th, 2005 - Into the Family
Two Thursdays ago, I dropped by Mr Hong's class again. Much to my surprise, he finally asked me if I wanted to "go into the Wu family". Naturally, I replied, "Sure!". Unfortunately, he said we need to go to Shanghai to go through the ceremony. Since my first child is due any time now, that probably won't happen for another year or two.
I wonder if I'll have to perform the various forms and push hands in front of members of the Wu family and the Association? I'd better continue to practice diligently so I don't embarass myself (or Mr Hong)!

May 23rd, 2005 - Star Wars!
    I caught the "Revenge of the Sith" movie on opening night, May 19th. The 12:01am showing actually. I took a couple pics and vids that you can find here. There weren't many people dressed up in costume, much to my disappointment.   Only two costumes were noteworthy. The first was a woman in a wookie suit sans mask. The amusing thing was that her hair matched the wookie fur covering the rest of her body! The second was the Darth Maulette that I took a couple pics of. Turns out she knew one of my co-workers whom I went to the movie with.
    What did I think of the movie? I enjoyed it, but it had it's usual Lucas directed Star Wars flaws. Bad acting, bad directing, some cheesey scenes. But overall, it was quite entertaining.   Lots of what you go to see Star Wars movies for - crazy space battles, light saber fights, etc.   This one's a lot darker than the others though. More limb amputations than all the other movies put together.   Definitely deserves the PG-13 rating.
    I started reading the movie novelizations again. I figure they're the story that Lucas wanted to tell, but didn't quite have the skill to put up on the screen.   According to Mathew Stover (the author of the "Revenge of the Sith" novelization), Lucas provided a line-by-line edit, so there's no doubt it's the story he wanted to tell.   I'm currently reading the Episode 2 novel (which is pretty entertaining too) until the Episode 3 novel is available from the library. I've already given enough money to Lucas! I'm not going to buy the novels too!

May 4th, 2005 - Sleeeeepppyyy
I've been feeling very sleepy all the time ever since I did my two week on-call stint (which I finished a week ago). I don't know how much of it is due to lack of sleep and how much is due to subconscious worry about my first child's pending birth. Consciously, I'm not particularly worried, but I've learned before that I'm pretty good at burying things into my subconscious. I've started changing my morning exercise to focus more on xingyi in the hopes that will wake me up better than my previous taiji-centric practice.

April 10th, 2005 - 進退連環
"Within advancing is retreating, and within retreating is advancing." I've decided to translate some of the 形意拳術大全 book relating to the forms (individual and paired) that I practice. Most likely I'll toss in some of my own comments and observations as well to prevent the text from just becoming vague generalities. But even the simple phrase listed above has already enriched my practice. The "One Horse Three Arrows" (一馬三箭) movement is lots of fun as a quick three bengs while using advancing and retreating footwork. It acts as a great counter point to the continual forward pressure of the standard half step bengquan.

April 6th, 2005 - Active While Passive
During practice this morning, I realized that the soreness I've been feeling in my chest the last couple days could have been prevented. All I need to do is "inflate" (i.e. 'fill with qi') the contact point when I let people practice pushing on me. While I want to remain passive, not neutralizing the incoming force, to let people practice pushing, I shouldn't be completely inactive, letting the force "inside". Even when you need to be passive, you must keep some activeness inside.

On a strictly push hands note, this also gives another reason for 'giving the demonstrator something to push on'. Not only does it make the demo more impressive, it saves your insides from getting mashed up too much.

April 5th, 2005 - Nerd!
Now I know I'm a true Star Wars nerd. On Friday night, Corrina and I went to the Toys R Us Star Wars Midnight Madness event. I only bought a couple toys, but everyone else there had loaded up shopping carts and cardboard boxes with the new Episode 3 action figures. When I got to the register, the cashier asked, "Is that all you're getting? Are you sure you don't want to buy anything else?". So you see, I'm only a partial nerd. :)