Robyn and I had a great weekend. I think this past 4 days have been some of the most relaxing “vacation” time I’ve had in quite some time. Since we’ve had something to do pretty much every weekend since Memorial Day, this was some welcome down time.

On Friday we went down to Red Bank to see [url=http://www.stephenlynch.com/]Stephen Lynch[/url]. You may have heard of him – he’s part musician, part comedian and writes some very funny songs about some pretty sick subjects. Robyn really likes his stuff, so I had gotten tickets for her birthday and we went down on Friday and saw the show. We had a great time – both at the show and watching all the people who were attending the show.

After I taught class on Saturday, we went to Chris and Toni’s and hung out with several friends and had some great “weekend food”. Chris grilled up some tasty burgers!

On Monday we slept in and then hung around in the morning and afternoon. Around 4, we went to my brother-in-law’s place for some more holiday festivities. We both ate waaaay too much, but we had fun.

Yesterday, we both took the day off from work and we decided to go to Lake Hopatcong to chill out. Since it’s after Labor Day, we didn’t have to pay to get in, but we couldn’t swim. Luckily, there were very few people there (it was a weekday afterall!) so we set out a blanket and just read and watched the boats and the few people who were there. It was really nice. The weather’s been absolutely gorgeous, so it was the perfect day. After that we went home, made some dinner and watched “Million Dollar Baby” with Clint Eastwood, Hillary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Not a bad film. I must admit that it was a bit predictable at times and sort of depressing.

[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/don_southpark.jpg[/img]

Make your own with [url=http://spstudio.linda.hosting-friends.de/spstudio.html]the South Park Character Generator[/url]

Just wanted to post a couple of quotes that I’ve run across recently or that I’ve had sitting in my Clipcache.

The first is a quote from [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805076476/bujinkanmartia0b/]Fight Club[/url] by [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&rank=relevancerank&field-author-exact=Chuck%20Palahniuk/103-8312451-6499012]Chuck Palahniuk[/url]. I remember hearing the line while watching the film and I loved it because of the mental image that it provokes:

[i]In the world I see — you’re stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You will wear leather clothes that last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist- thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You will see tiny figures pounding corn and laying-strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway.[/i]

Here’s the full quote from the book:

[i]Picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You’ll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We’ll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what’s left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.

Imagine stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you’ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles.[/i]

Here’s a quote from Boromir of The Lord of the Rings trilogy – I think it’s from The Return of the King, but I’m not sure. And no, it wasn’t in any of the movies!

[i]War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend….[/i]

And one last one. This is one from one of the articles written by [url=http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/5560/essays.html]Hino sensei[/url] about Hatsumi sensei and the Bujinkan. Hino sensei was asking Hatsumi sensei how, if it’s so difficult for his students to understand his techniques, would the art continue on to future generations. Souke replied:

[i]That

On Saturday, I attended the Larry Turner seminar at Jeff Christian’s [url=http://www.muzosa.com]Muzosa Dojo[/url] in Queens. It had a great time and it was a well-attended event. Josh came all the way out from [url=http://www.bujinkanomahashibu.com]Nebraska[/url] to attend the event, so I was looking forward to seeing and training with him again.

The day started out well as I had done my homework and researched a better way to get to Queens using [url=http://maps.google.com]Google Maps[/url]. With my good planning and printed maps, I was able to cut the frustration down significantly from my last trip out there!

Anyway, I got to the dojo on time and we started training around 10:30 or so. It was really interesting to see Larry teach because he had a bit of that “old style” from the Shadows of Iga days while his movement was certainly more akin to what we see from senior Bujinkan folks these days. Still, it really reminded me of when I first began training.

Larry referred to himself as a “simple guy” who’s only kamae is ichimonji and that’s how we started the day. We began with an uke nagashi movement against a punch into what started out as onikudaki. Within 15 minutes, the technique as shown by Larry had become more of an exercise in taking the uke’s balance without attacking the arm. The day continued in that vein with Larry demonstrating a movement and then working on refining it. We covered about 4 techniques prior to lunch and another 3 or 4 after we returned.

At the end of the day, Jeff presented Larry with a beautiful calligraphy from Soke that read ???? ???????? “shinki fudou” to celebrate his 25th year of training in the Bujinkan. Jeff and Loren explained that the Japanese people who they had asked to take a look at the painting had said this was a very deep concept in that the two parts of the phrase are a bit of a contradiction. It was a fitting and moving tribute to Larry’s accomplishment.

After training ended, I thank Larry and Jeff for a great seminar and introduced myself to Kevin Schneider (who had a lot of input throughout the seminar) and a few other folks. Josh and I chatted for some time until he had to get ready to go to the banquet that was taking place later that evening.

[url=http://www.10mph.com/]10 M.P.H.[/url]

Looks intriguing.

I was looking through the referral logs for my website today. Oddly enough, the search string that resulted in the most hits back to my personal site was “a man with a paper asshole”. This links in [url=http://www.google.com]Google[/url] back to one of my [url=http://don.oninohana.com/hs/four.htm]High School Doodles[/url] pages.

I never knew this was such a popular search term! And just what is a man with a paper asshole, anyway?

It seems that it’s finally exciting to be involved in web development again. Five years or so ago when every web-based company was worth billions of dollars and new web-centric technologies were being developed like crazy, it was hard to stay up with the pace of change. Then the DotCom crash happened and the number of new technologies dropped dramatically. For a while we were stuck in a bit of a holding pattern. Sure every business continued to update their web presence and blogs became the hot new thing, but the overall usability of the Internet did not increase dramatically.

Finally, in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, we are seeing some really useful bleeding edge web development taking place. Here’s a couple of sites that show promising use of existing technology to enhance our on-line lives.

[list]
[*][url=http://maps.google.com]Google Maps[/url] – I no longer use MapQuest. The use of JavaScript, XHTML, CSS and DOM ([url=http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php]AJAX[/url] – Get to know it. Live it.) makes Google’s foray into geogpraphy a success. Try out their “Satellite” view for a bird’s eye view of your neighborhood. I’m sure this application will be the basis for many useful tools now that Google has released an API to allow developers to build on Google’s base.
[*][url=http://www.flickr.com]Flickr[/url] – This is not just another picture viewing site. Yahoo released Flickr into beta quite some time ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized what all the fuss is about. [url=http://flickr.com/photos/tags/]Go ahead[/url], check it out…I’ll be patient. Welcome back. It’s addicting isn’t it? The ability to search by keywords through your own and others’ photos is great. Sign up for an account and enjoy their AJAX (see link above) based Organizr.
[/list]

Back again with another update to my reading list! I’m sure you can’t wait.

While in Punta Cana (which was beautiful, by the way) I read [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060938455/bujinkanmartia0b/]Fast Food Nation[/url]. This was a real eye opener as to what the fast food industry is all about in this country and abroad. It’s certainly made me think twice about going to all those fast food and chain restaurants on a regular basis. One of the most disturbing parts of the book was the discussion of the conditions in the meat processing plants and slaughterhouses in this country – inhumane to the animals and the human workers alike!

Just before our trip, I finished the [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452284694/bujinkanmartia0b/]first book[/url] in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Since the series finished up recently, I didn’t mind starting it now. There are too many multi-volume series that I get into at the beginning and the author just keeps writing and writing and writing (ala Robert Jordan). Now that I know there’s an end to the Dark Tower story, I’ll take it on.

Since I was reading some Stephen King, I thought my next read would be Salems Lot. This was the first full length King novel that I read back in the summer between sixth and seventh grade and it started me on a path of voracious reading. Like most his short stories that I had read previously, Salems Lot was a page turner. I finished the book in about 5 sweltering days in July, 1983. I recall laying on my bed in front of my open window one night, trying to get to the end of a chapter and catch a cool breeze when a moth crashed into the screen and nearly made me shit myself. I finished the story the night that my mom took my grandmother and me to see the 4th of July fireworks in Webster.

I’ve seen the last Star Wars film.

It was good.

Based on all the movies I’ve seen, I would give it an 8 out of 10. There was only one cringe moment through the entire story. It’s towards the end and it didn’t take me out of the story, so I can forgive it a bit.

Right now, I would rate all 6 Star Wars films in this order:

1. A New Hope
2/3. The Empire Strikes Back / Revenge of the Sith (I gotta say, I’m on the fence about these two!)
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Attack of the Clones
6. The Phantom Menace

RotS had a lot of great stuff in it and more ships landing and taking off than we’ve ever seen in a Star Wars film! Those Jedi really get around the galaxy.

This is the first time a Star Wars film actually made me feel anything other than “Whoah! That was cool!” – although there are plenty of special effects-inspired “whoas!”, too. Without going into any heavy spoilers, there are parts of this film that unsettled me. There were specific shots that paralleled real events in our own world as well as major plot points that reflected some political happenings over the last few years. That’s a first for a SW movie.

I think my favorite part of the final film was seeing the two aspects of the Jedi made so clear for the audience. On one hand, we have these mystical protectors of the Republic who can harness the Force to achieve incredible feats. On the other hand, they are constricted by their own Code and unable to see, never mind act to stop the larger overall picture of what’s happening right beneath their noses.

So, there you have it. My Episode III review.