Well, we had a huge wushu lesson on Sunday – Grandmaster Liu Jing Ru came to teach us Liu He Tong Long (Six Harmony Praying Mantis) and his own style of bagua. It was great fun, and certainly worth the time and money. Five or so hours of training have meant that I’ve been feeling a bit old the last couple of days, though. I’m certainly looking forward to getting warmed up and stretching everything back out properly, and also to practicing the forms we learnt. Mega thanks go out to Sifu Julianna, Will, Amanda, Murray and Eric, who all contributed to making the day as successful as it was.

I got a bonus from work! Yay! It’s reasonably big, which lessons somewhat my money stress about going to America at the end of November for Ly’s wedding. I also bought myself a present:

256M of mp3s in a fits-in-your-palm package. It’s excellent. Now I just need to get my playlist right…

Well, it’s been a very busy week. After the power outage, there was plenty of running around fixing things to be done, a whole lot of documentation added to my ‘to be written’ pile, and a whole lot of running around. Things seem to have calmed down a bit now, so I guess it’s going to be document, document, document for me in the next little while.

I actually was given a day off as a result how happy everyone was with how we dealt with the power outage, and I took it yesterday. Mal and I set up our computers at Rommel’s place, and Jason’s as well. With Tats and his laptop, we had a nice little 5-PC LAN setup for our gaming amusement. The only problem was that poor Mal’s PC was being really flaky – crashing all the time. Oh well. Hopefully he’ll work it out soon.

So, it’s been two years since some guys blew up some buildings with some planes. Personally, I’m inclined to say:

Big.
Fucking.
Deal.

The US has borrowed heavily on the goodwill it had after September 11, 2001, and I think that, now that some payments are due, they’re finding that the interest rate on the loan was a bit higher than it anticipated. The shit that the US government has pulled in the last two years is unbelievable. I find it hard to be impressed by the tragedy of 3000 people dying when the US has more than likely killed ten to a hundred times that amount over the past two years with its blind belligerence and foolish manichean world-view. (For the non-historically minded: Manichean = dualistic, ‘you’re with us or against us’ style philosophy.)

Hoo boy. It’s been a crazy one today. The power went out at work last night at about 6pm, and didn’t come back on until about 4pm this afternoon. Given that Leveraged is a financial company that has to settle trades each day, this was bad. And led to me running around a lot sorting stuff out. The rest of the week is going to be busy as well, recovering from this.

But, on the plus side, the Wushu nationals were EXCELLENT! It was great to see the how good everyone else is, particularly in the division I was in. I was very happy with my performance, but, unfortunately for me, everyone else in my divisino was better. D’oh. Amanda, Kevin, and Andrew all won medals (huge congrats to them), but I think that we all did our forms really well and came away with a weekend of worthwhile experience under our belts.

Plus, meeting all the wushu folks from Melbourne was great fun.

Well, I’m back from my first trip to Melbourne for August. Manifest was excellent, better than last year. I’ve uploaded the first batch of photos to the new gallery – just follow the link on the left. As nerdy as it makes me sound, cosplaying was heaps of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing it again.

It was really, really good to get home and see Trang, though. It’s surprising the difference being in another city can make. Oops, better shut up before I embarass myself (further).

Life moves along – I’m perennially surprised by how much work piles up while I’m away. Even for two days!

Wushu is going OK. I don’t have any fitness issues about getting through the whole form anymore, but now I just have to figure out how to get myself into the right frame of mind before I begin. Ah well, it’s a grand journey.

OK. I’ve been collecting interesting links for a while without posting, so it’s time to get my lazy arse into gear and empty my blog bookmark folder.

Seen that cool Rube Goldberg Honda ad? There’s a flash version here.

Hyperbole aside, this site is a good primer on the Project for a New American Century and how this moderately shadowy thinktank is influencing American policy. It’s basically a bunch of neocons looking to create a Pax Americana.

Here’s one for the cat lovers: the Messybeast Cat Resource Archive. If you need info about cats, look here. They even have info about people who breed kangaroo cats, hairless cats, and other strange types.

‘Umgogo waku isfebe’! That’s one of the many useful phrases I found at the Insultmonger How to swear in 113 languages page.

Continuing in the foreign-language vein, here‘s a version of the Lord’s prayer in Ebonics.

On a more martial note, here are some scans of Bruce Lee’s notes on Jeet Kune Do.

The Seamless Map Project of the USGS makes available topographic, orthographic, and other map-type info on the US available online. It’s really, really cool being able to zoom from the whole world level down to a resolution of less than 1 metre per pixel.

Here‘s an interesting collection of Chinese propaganda posters. They speak for themselves, really.

This page tempted me. In particular, I was sorely tempted by this fine product. But I don’t have the money, and even if I did, would be reluctant to spend ~$800 on a coat.

Really worried about your disaster recovery plan? Then put your DR site on the moon.

What’s more insane than skydiving? Being a birdman.

Now this one is worthy of a bit more description. A father-son team in Seattle has built a hybrid car that can do 80 miles per recharge, and has a top speed of 130mph! It’s also made to only carry two people plus cargo. They are proposing it as a solution to many traffic problems. More power to them, I say.

Want a collection of the most humourous ways to put down a film? For starters, there’s Bad Review Revue. Movie Poop Shoot also has some amusing movie posters created using actual quotes about the movies. My favourite: ‘Burn your money instead’ – in a review of Dumb and Dumberer.

In a a more historical vein, there’s the Moving Here archive – an online museum of UK immigration history. Very cool indeed.

There’s also a NYT feature on 100 years of the prototypical metropolis.

Last but not least, regular readers of this site might be familiar with my exasperation with people’s misunderstanding of statistics. Here‘s a great entry from the BBC h2g2 site that’s a basic guide to statistics and the questions you need to ask yourself when thinking about them.

Well, I’ve bludged a bit today and have set up comments on my blog. It works for archive posts as well! Yay me! So now you can tell me what you think, when you think it.

New musing is available.

News:
I’ve been training hard for the nationals. I can see that I’m improving, but it seems liek I’ve got such a long way to go… It can be a bit disheartening at times. But, overall, things are well.

Congratulations to Trang’s sister Ly on her engagement to Tim! Trang has more info.

I bought a PS2! In the end of financial year sales, for $289. Now I just have to find some time to play it..

I’m looking into building a pair of arcade joysticks for the PS2 from arcade-quality parts. Rom, Tats and Jason are going to help with the finances. It’s looking pretty good at the moment – should end up costing around $60-$70 a stick, which is a good $40 cheaper than buying one, and we’ll end up with better quality too.

Musings:
This article by Margo Kingston in the ‘Web Diary section of the SMH has started some lively discussion. Its’ title: “Howard’s roads to absolute power”. It’s about the many changes Howard has brought about since gaining power, and how some of them, when added together, draw lines in the direction of a very different Australia than what we know. One without a health care safety net, without free higher education, where conglomerates with strong links to the government control our media. Sounds like a paranoiac’s fantasy, but as she points out, it’s already on the way.

Scary.

Things have calmed down a bit at work – so now I can write a bit.

Firstly, I am going to the wushu nationals in Melbourne at the end of August. Excited and nervous about it, but it’s serving as a useful prod to get myself down to the gym and to practice outside class times. I’m going to be doing Xing Yi (or Hsing I), which is good in a way, because it means I don’t have to push my body to more than in can handle, as Xing Yi is an internal martial art. This means no jumpkicks, cartwheels and so on.

Secondly, the link roundup:
Poseidon.co.jp sells models of guns. Models of guns from anime, to be precise. Now, who wouldn’t want to own a set of Ebony and Ivory (from Devil May Cry). Well, maybe many people I guess, but I’m not one of them.

Something that may be more interesting for many of this site’s readers: The American Apology Shirt. See for yourself.

For more than you every wanted to know about irony -’The final irony‘ from the Guardian.

For far, far more than you ever wanted to know about Looney Tunes cartoons: Looney Laughs, Lists, and Lyrics.

Well, my blogs have finally been migrated to the new version of Blogger – thus the new Title field.

I have news:

I’m going to the wushu nationals! Woohoo!

More later – extremely busy at work atm.