Mamama ritstoh üdi dëhnsi dëhnsai

For a limited time, you can listen to a few streaming tracks of Frost*'s upcoming album Experiments In Mass Appeal on their MySpace page. Nice.

hi ho!

apologies for not being around much - this summer has been busybusycrazy. I dart to and fro like a chipmunk with his nuts in a twist. I'm just back from a two-day hike with Bee through the forest - a real hike with sleeping bags, gas burner and tent action. Man, we had such an amazing time! Being ambushed by a sudden and aggressive thunderstorm on a boggy hill-top was not so awesome, we ran whimpering around and were equally afraid of cowering under the trees and cowering in open spaces. We wound up half drowning ourselves in the bogs... Bee had mud to her knees. We must have made baby Jesus cry from all the cursing and swearing. ;)
The rest of the trip, however, was just perfect. I have some pictures, but mostly I just enjoyed hiking and chatting; the powerful feeling of using my body and feeling fit; amazing scenery; awsome company. Good times. Maybe pictures one day.

Unfortunately, my shoes are utter shit, which totally fucked up my knees and ankles. Me knees are so incredibly swollen and it huuuuurts SO MUCH! You're supposed to heal this kind of injuries by a) not walking much and b) not carrying heavy stuff. This is a big problem, seeing as I'm going to Hong Kong tomorrow... Which means a shitload of WALKING and CARRYING! Arghh. If I'd had a flexible ticket I'd have postponed my flight. But no.

It's so surreal to go back East again. I'm all shades of excited, scared, happy, adventurous, terrified.... The usual stuff. Weird knowing I won't be back in Oslo before it's WINTER!

Wish me luck! :)

Saturday we had a two-hour Kali seminar with Guro John Maidment. He is a certified instructor under Dan Inosanto. The first hour was on defense against someone with a knife and the second hour was some empty hand defense. I think there was around 30 people who came to the seminar, which is a pretty good turnout. They videotaped it and that's the first seminar here I've been to that they have done that. I was in right front of the camera while we practiced, so if I get a copy, I'll see how much I did wrong.

With Kali, they have a numbering system of attacks. 1 is attacking from your right-to-left high in a downward stroke and 2 is left-to-right 3 is right-to-left straight across the belly and 4 is left-to-right. There are more, but that is what we focused on in this seminar. For this system, it doesn't matter if you are holding the blade up, holding in down in a stabbing motion, or holding it down in a slashing motion (for this last one, your thumb is pointing into the motion).

We were told that our main objective is to run away, if possible You can't exactly run if your with someone young/old who can't run or defend themselves. The first non-fleeing bit was avoiding slashes when unarmed. When they are attacking high (1 or 2), step back and bring your head back. For the middle (3 or 4), step back “hollow out” your middle. That is, arching your back to bring you torso back, but without putting your face and arms in closer to the attacker. For thigh attacks, it is simply stepping back.

Next, we looked at when you are against a wall and can't step back. First of all, you shouldn't let the back of your head hit the wall, so there should be a little bit of room to move your head back when you maneuver. Next thing to do is hit their arm to avoid them from hitting you. One thing I kept doing at first is hitting the knife itself with my hand to deflect it. That was retarded and I had to fix that. When you move their arm, you want to either push their arm (1) or flip their arm (2) so that you are crossing their arms. This blocks their other arm from punching you and gives you an opportunity to hit or flee.

When you have a knife, you want to push/reflect with your open hand and slash their forearm with your knife. You also want to follow that up with a strike with the knife. Another thing is to slash their knife hand with a quick wrist motion. Attacking the closest part of their body is a big part of kali.

We also had our partners grab us at the throat and stick our plastic knife at our throats. He is where that tiny bit of space behind our head is important. He also noted that it is good to distract them and to try to do your counter mid-sentence. If possible we want to push their arm so that their knife slashes their forearm that is choking us. At one point, I noted that the blade was turned in the opposite direction, so I pushed the knife the other way. Guro Maidment noted that I should, if possible, still move his arm that way as it blocks their other arm from punching me and their is still the possibility to turn their wrist around in the struggle.

The second hour was empty hand techniques. He has a special name for it, but I didn't catch it. There was around four moves to each set of techniques. However, they changed slightly depending on how his attacker moves.

The first set of techniques went like this: 1. Attacker jabs with their left. Block with your right. 2. Attacker crosses. Block with left and palm them in the face with with right. 3. Knee them with right knee. Step your right foot just outside their left foot and do something with your left hand, like an elbow to their face, to put them out of balance.

The next set starts off the same, but has the attacker turns CW to avoid the knee to the groin. Here we place our foot between their legs instead of outside their left. Our right hand scoops under their left hand to bring their arm behind their back and push their shoulder to your left. As you are doing this, your right leg is sweeping their left leg out to their left. If they are still standing, knee them in the face with your right knee and place your foot outside their right foot and sweep it towards you.

He noted that a lot of these moves involve distracting the attacker, so these won't work if they are on amphetamines.

The third set of moves starts off the same, but changes after palming their face. You can hit their with your left to distract them here, but you want to push up on their chin and grab the back of their head with left hand. You turn CCW to flip them on their back. Press your left knee into the face. Their right arm should be free, so you can hyper-extend their elbow against your knee.

At one point he jokingly referred to himself as Rampage when talking about pounding on a guy on the ground. He thought for a second and said, except I don't have a huge pick-up truck. That got a big laugh.

I can't say that the Rock Band 2 song list particularly excited me. There are around 7 songs I like. There are a few more I'd wouldn't listen to on the radio if them came on, yet I suspect might be fun to play. While the set list didn't particularly excite me, the Export Disc feature and news that they will have the 500 songs available by the end of the year did. I really thought they wouldn't let us import the songs from Rock Band into Rock Band 2. I'll be able to yet a set together that I actually like to both hear and play.

All the interface changes, the no-fail, the Ion drum set ($300), drum training, and pretty much all the changes they mentioend are exciting as well.

There are still a large number of big artists that surprisingly are not available yet. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Yes, Michael Jackson, and Prince to name a few. (Also Van Halen is exclusive to Guitar Hero unfortunately.)

I guess I need to make the prerequisite wish list of songs for Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour. The songs I want the most don't really fit the way they are doing things. They are focusing on band songs rather than drum solos. I also want 20+ minutes songs, but yet I find the 9 minutes in the game to be too long. I might have to make two lists.

The thing that I keep expecting is a drum solo setlist, but this isn't Drum Hero. If it was Drum Hero rather than Rock Band, there are obvious “drum songs” I would want. For instance, The Rhythm Method, YYX, Wipeout, Toad, and Moby Dick. I would also want some of my favourite drummers featured more, like Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson), Mike Portnoy (Transatlantic, OSI, Neal Morse), Billy Cobham (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Tony Williams (Miles Davis), Carl Palmer (ELP), Neil Peart (Rush), Pip Pyle (Gong, National Health), Pierre Moerlen (Gong), Andy Edwards (Frost*, iQ), Christian Vander (Magma), and Morgan Ågren (Mats/Morgan Band). I'm tempted to list Frank Zappa up as he wrote up the drum solos and I don't want to list only one or two of his drummers. You'd also have to add Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and a host of other jazz, fusion, and post-rock drummers. Hell, they could do Jazz Band along with Rock Band.

For bands, there are the no brainers like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. Maybe I should be thinking in band 12-Packs.

A Bill Bruford pack (including tracks from his book When In Doubt Roll plus some newer stuff like from Upper Extremities) or Yes and King Crimson Packs. Either would be good.

A Frank Zappa pack. Some Montana, Yellow Snow, Peaches, and to be evil Black Page.

While Nick Mason is not a virtuoso, I'd love a Pink Floyd 12-pack.

I'd also like to see some newer prog. Porcupine Tree, Marillion, non-Dream Theater Portnoy, Frost*, iQ, and so on.

Hopefully prog and fusion will be well represented in those 500 songs.

Besides being a way to play Rock Band, it turns out the the Xbox 360 has other uses. The thing we are playing with now is amusing the nieces, nephews, and their friends. The new no-fail feature in Rock Band 2 will be a blessing for their self-esteem when it comes out. But besides that, the various demo are helpful to entertain them and limiting them torturing us.

I was at Future Shop getting my price protection and I noticed that Rayman Raving Rabbids was only $25. Or at least I thought. It was at the wrong spot, so that wasn't the price. I ask a clerk and he said $21. Cool. "Oh wait, that's wrong.... $59.99" Dammit. My nephew is obsessed with Rayman. The thing that entertains him the most is watching videos about the game. He'll go to their website and watch the promo videos for hours. He's been watching those videos for it must a year now. Anyway, I've ordered the game from ebay for $25. They made the mistake of telling him as he wants the game NOW.

I also discovered that entering '360 lot' into ebay gives me a lot of interesting hits and I've made a lot of bids that have eventually were out bidded. Lots of 7, 15, 20, or 28 games are a tempting way to get my collection up. Too bad most of them are filled with sports games that I have no appeal to me. I am getting, however, Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2 with a pad for the nieces. (It would be great for them if I could get the PS2 Disney Channel songs working with it.) Also that Xbox 360 Live Arcade Unplugged pack and Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. Maybe more if I'm not completely out bidded.

It doesn't really make sense to buy more games for myself as I have barely touched GTA4, Halo3, and Gears Of War. It's been mostly Rock Band (where I'm slowly going through hard). If anyone has any game recommendations either for me or the kids (ranging from 4 to 13), feel free to add them to the comments.

This journal is on indefinite hiatus. Everything is fine - I just haven't had the time to keep up - today was the first time I looked at my friends' posts in months. I am not going to cancel it - if you need to get in touch, email me at the address in my profile.

What, friends list? More touristy shots? okay!
















I like clouds.

I think the Jo (4-foot staff) is the kobudo weapon for me. We were doing weapon sparring this week with Tonfas going against Jos. My tonfa skills weren't all that hot and once I switched I got a lot of surprised positive comments from the peanut gallery. Sensei Toth (Sensei's wife) added "You can tell he's done this before" and "It's interesting how more comfortable some weapons are with people".

When I graded for Blue Belt, one of the Black Belts noted that I looked significantly more comfortable with the Tonfa rather than the Bo and Tonbo. Now they are telling me that my Jo is signicantly better that my Tonfa skills.

We don't often work with the Jo, so I should keep it up on my own. I need to remind myself when I grade for Black Belt to pick a Jo kata for my personal weapons kata. (On the other hand, this also shows that I need to spend considerably more time on the other weapons.)

The thing I like about the Jo is that it's in the middle, so I can use it as a light Bo or a long solid Tonbo. Use it one-handed or two-handed. Do those fancy twirlly things. If there are any good telescoping Jos out there that looks like an umbrella, it might be a good self-defence weapon.

It's impossible to even begin to capture the immensity and remoteness of Innerdalen with a camera in the first place, let alone with my camera, which is standing with one leg in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Still, here's a few snapshots for you to enjoy if you're a nature buff and can ignore the funky colours and blurry perspective.

I didn't really mean to go on a big hike that day; I had only missed my train home and had a day to kill. I started walking around to "stretch my legs" and eventually stretched them all the way over the hills and into the valley beyond. Amazingly desolate and wild and awesome.


You can't really tell, but the mountain lake is waaaaaaaay down there; those pebbles and scrubs by the lakeside are infact huge trees and boulders.





( bandwidth murder under the cut )



walking through the hills in sandals only is ... not convenient.

If anyone is watching CBC's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, one of the four final girls Jenna is a friend of my sister. They were in The Last Resort together last year. Another friend of the family Stacy was in it as well, but she got her shoulder padded in the first episode (yes, that only makes sense if you saw it).

Everyone from my sister's dinner theater show in Niagara Falls went to see the live show on Sunday. One of the clips from a previous episode shown in that episode included the line "You sing like you're in a dinner theater show.... in Niagara Falls". Ouch.

(Since you are probably not watching it, I'll note that one of the judges is Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood.)

I was fined for the first time in my life!! ..for taking this picture!!

The St Petersburg Metro is infamous for being a hotspot for getting pickpocketed, robbed and murdered and god knows what, and yet I never saw a single cop near the metro. I know at least five people who were robbed there during a span of four days. Now one day, as I was gallivanting about in some remote corner of the city, I saw this amazing mosaic by the metro entrance and snapped a photo - and within five seconds I was pulled into a police office to be fined for my offense. I was more excited than frightened, especially when I found out the price of my offense was a measly 100 rubles... like 4 US$. That was when I realized I wouldn't be hauled off to the gas chamber, so I entertained myself by arguing how you couldn't possibly count that as the actual metro, etc.
I was happy to observe that I managed to successfully employ my entire Russian vocabulary and we spent a surprisingly long time engaging in jolly banter as I reclined in their impossibly uncomfortable chair twiddling my thumbs. They seemed amused by this and apparently took the entire process just as seriously as I did, which was fuck-all. ;) (I wanted to ask if I could take a picture with them in their office but decided that would be pushing my luck ;))

It's a weird country where this transaction was markedly more amusing than trying to buy bread off the vile bitches at the supermarket.

Tenting down South with two middle-aged lesbians and a cat is not for everyone, but it sure worked wonders with me! It's wonderful how picking stones by the seashore for a few days can cleanse away a lot of brain-slime soul-grime.
I jumped on a train to the town where I grew up and went to a friends' house party, had a fantastic time! This party might have been held ten years ago: The exact same people, the exact same debauchery, the same conversations, everything. Seeing as my life ten years ago was quite at its apex, and I've been trying to emulate those times ever after, it was glorious to be able to relive those times just a little bit.
Today: Barefoot and pleasantly hung over, I walked around the whole area for hours, in the sun, remembering. I felt young and fresh.