trackback
June 10, 2005I’ve added trackback to this blog, courtesy of Haloscan.
Creativity vs Pragmatism
June 10, 2005Just read Will Weaten’s blog. I must confess that his blog was not in my list of feeds, but I know of other people who regularly read his blog. I found this post to be extremely open and honest and very compelling. He lays bear quite a bit of personal stuff, which takes an enourmous amount of courage. I guess it struck a chord with me, given my similar thoughts and experiences around creativity vs pragmatism.
His own reflections on why he blogs, and the types of material he blogs about — whilst almost a sidebar — is also interesting to a relative newbie like me.
No Comment!
June 8, 2005Non-”Blogger” users should now be able to add comments! Maintaining this blog is certainly reinforcing to me that things are always a “work in progress”.
Black Belt exam
June 7, 2005I just found out that my Black Belt grading is on Sunday, 26th June — only a couple of weeks away!
As part of the assessment, I have to comlete a take-home written exam (of sorts). A component of this exam asks …
Write approximately 100 words, describing how Taekwondo has benefited you personally, and what your goals are for your future involvement in Taekwondo?”
I thought that it might make for an intersting blog post? (and that it wouldn’t seem so much like a chore!).
When I was young, I loved playing sport — of all kinds. During my youth, at one time or another, I played competitive Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Soccer and Aussie Rules. This often meant that my entire weekend was spent playing sport, whilst a large proportion of the week was spent practising. However, at the age of 15, I was diagnosed with patello femoral syndrome or acute patellar tendonitis (jumper’s knee), which is an inflammation of the patellar tendon. After a weekend consisting of Basketball and two games of cricket (Junior and Senior), my knees took a terrible pounding and resulted in pain and agony for the 24hrs. On medical advice, I gave up all forms of competitive sport. I was told to ’swim’ to build the strength in my knees, but ball sports were out. Whilst I still flirted with school footy on soft grounds in the winter, effectively my playing days were over.
Since then, I have had little involvement in sport. I guess I turned my attention to other persuits, mostly academic. That was until I decided to take up Taekwondo in January ‘03. My daughter Madelyn had been doing Ninja classes for nearly twelve months before I got involved. She loved it so much, and it seemed like fun, so I thought I’d give it a go. I was also going through a difficult time personally, and thought that punching and kicking the hell out of something might help!
At around the same time, the guys at work decided that a lunchtime game of soccer would be good for morale, and so I joined them once or twice a week for a kick. This really made me realise how much I’d missed playing soccer, which was my first choice as a kid. What chance did I have? — I was born in the U.K. and remember watching Kevin Keegan play for Liverpool. I’m still getting out for a kick when I can, and really enjoy it.
When the teachers at school used to say that sport was good because — a healthy body promotes a healthy mind — I used to think that this was absolute crap. Oh boy, do we live and learn!
Bringing back sport into my life has been really positive in a number of ways. The most obvious is fitness. I’m certainly a lot fitter now than I was two and a half years ago. I haven’t dropped a lot of weight, but have managed to stay consistent and have toned up quite a bit. There has also been a noticeable difference with other aspects of life such as the ability to mangage and deal with stress and anxiety. It and has also helped a lot with self-confidence and doubt.
I will definitely continue to be involved in Taekwondo. I will at the very least continue as encouragement for Madelyn to achieve her black belt next year. As I near my own black-belt milestone it is probably a good time to re-evaluate my goals, but I do understand that it has a direct benefit in motivating me and providing me with the right mental attitude to get what I want, and to keep it.
NB: Ooops, looks like more than 100 words. I will have to edit it down.
Podcasting to be mainstream
June 7, 2005Steve Jobs just delivered his Keynote speech to the WWDC2005. Whilst the ‘big” item of his presentation was revealing (or confirming rumours) that Macs will run Intel chips, his address also highlighted his perception of Podcasting being the “next big thing”. I know that he’s only confirming what many of us already knew, but this sort of exposure by such a renowned innovator and trend setter not only confirms it, but ensures it!
Here’s a summary of the Podcast stuff in the keynote from Macnn…
Podcasting is exploding. “TiVo for Radio.” “Wayne’s World for radio.” Hottest thing going for Radio. Over 8,000 podcasts right now and growing very fast. Apple will build in Podcasting support into iTunes. Easy/quick listing of Podcasts right into iTunes. Subscribe podcasts, download old podcasts. Jobs demos Adam Curry podcast. Jobs said that new iTunes would take podcasting mainstream.
