So, here’s a video of me doing a Destreza thrusting form with one of my teachers, Maestro Puck Curtis:
Understand, this is a form, not free-fencing. (It’s a little bit harder for me to hit Puck when it’s not a form.) 
Click here for a description of the form, explaining what is going on here.
And here’s another video, showing Provost Kevin Murakoshi going through the same form with Maestro Curtis:
Enjoy!
This is a cool finger exercise for guitarists that helps with alternate picking. Here’s the first part of the pattern in tab:
Now, here’s part two, which includes a little bit of string-skipping:
A couple of notes to keep in mind:
If you have any thoughts about this, please leave a comment – I’d love to know whether this was helpful (or a waste of time). I’m hoping to post more guitar exercises over time.
By the way, the tabs are drawn on the back of giraffe-pattern napkins. I’ll leave you with a shot of the front of the napkin:
1) A sword blade is both a lever and a ramp – strong leverage but a bad ramp will quickly turn into weak leverage.
2) If your opponent parries you weakly, stay strong and hit them. If they parry you strongly, yield to their parry and either do a conclusion or hit them with a stramazzone.
3) There are at least three strengths one blade can have against another: using a part of your blade closer to your hilt against a part of their blade closer to the tip (Destreza authors called this “greater degrees of strength”); from above (in Aristotelian terms: natural motion against violent motion), that is to say, pushing down while they are pushing up; and using the true edge instead of the flats or the false edge.
Link One: Flavors of heartache.
Link Two: Making the Grade: Why the Cheapest Maple Syrup Tastes Best
The first link is one post from one of my favorite webcomics: Indexed. Jessica Hagy posts all these hilarious and/or thought-provoking graphs and charts on index cards. Check it out.
The second link is an article from The Atlantic that will not only teach you some things about maple syrup, but about food labeling in general. Worth a read.
Link One: SureFire’s (Nearly Indestructible) Pens Review
Link Two: Llama font – say it in llama
I think I want a SureFire EWP-02 – the $90 price tag will slow me down a little, but I’ve broken two pens in my pocket in the last two weeks. (Didn’t get ink anywhere, just cracked the cases.) I like the idea of an überpen, ready to go anywhere or do anything, tough, rugged, ready for the world. Won’t break in my pants pocket when I plop on the couch.
Link two is one of those awesome things that the Internet was made for – it’s just goofy fun. Go try it out.
I say “you’re a blessing”
and it’s true
but you are so much more:
A perfect jewel
endlessly beautiful
reflecting God’s light
in countless ways
my own dear Silmaril
delighting eyes heart mind soul
Even the flaws
(impossible to see
without a loupe)
do not detract
they merely add
detail and texture
Polished surface
prismatic depths
beauty
upon beauty
upon beauty
Rock guitarists can be a pretty insular lot. Ask one about their top ten favorite musicians, and you’ll probably get a list of ten rock guitarists. (If they’re adventurous you may get a jazz or fusion guitarist on the list.) Ask the same guitarist to talk about one of their favorite songs, and they’ll most likely talk about the guitar parts. This makes sense – they love this instrument enough to want to play it. Then, as they’re learning, it’s one of the main things they think about, and one of the main things they’ll hear in a song.
That’s all probably fine if your goal is to be a guitarist.
But if your goal is to be a musician, there’s a lot you can learn from other instruments. (I should point out here that I consider voice to be an instrument.) One of the reasons I specified “rock guitarists” instead of just “guitarists” here is that I’ve noticed that jazz and classical guitarists tend to be much more open to influences from other instruments. I think that’s pretty awesome, and us rockers can learn from that.
So here’s a couple of cross-training exercises for rock guitarists:
Link One: Bloom Like an Artist
Link Two: Dunning–Kruger effect
Link one is a brilliant webcomic at Jellyvampire. Really highly recommend you read all the way through this – it’s a vertical scroller, but it’s not that long, and well worth it. It’s about pursuing your passion, even when it seems unrealistic.
Link two is the Wikipedia article about the Dunning–Kruger effect – which is a documented issue where incompetent people tend to think they’re better than they really are, and competent people tend to think that they’re worse than they really are.
Link One: Eye Candy: Porcelain Fighting Figures Dropped And Photographed The Moment Of Shattering
Link Two: The Rules of Sagefight
The first link is pretty well described in the title – but you have to look at the pictures to see how dang cool it looks. Very interesting photography project.
The second link is for a game that looks like fun – I haven’t played this, but it actually looks like it would be a fun challenge for a martial artist, thinking about tactics and balance, leaving strength and speed out of it. I don’t know, maybe not, but I’d like to try this with a few of my training partners at some point.
A murder of crows
the color of void
wheeling against a white sky
black branches, barely budded
a grid to track their flight
below, all is green
with splashes of
white yellow pink red
A murder of crows
omen of battle
noisy and social
low-class cousins of
lonely and noble ravens
thinking of death and hunger
(but mostly death)
your death, mine
the dog across the street
crows dream of death
even in springtime
