Gisoku Budo - musings of an amputee martial artist » Blogs

Giving the blog a facelift

Sean — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:18:04 +0000

I’ve been toying with the idea for a little while now about giving the blog a facelift and incorporate a few new tricks I’ve picked up over the last couple of months toying with a bit of ASP, implementing some jQuery scripts and picking up a few advanced-ish CSS tricks at work…

And yes, I know that WordPress uses PHP as its main scripting language, but some of the principles behind scripting within ASP (though to be honest, I actually cut my teeth on XSLT, and everything’s been a bit easier to understand since then!) can still be applied to PHP – a scripting language is a scripting language, you learn some of the principles and apply it to the situation, and sometimes your code works, sometimes (more often since I’m still learning!) it kinda breaks everything Or is that just me? I guess that’s the problem when you’re a bit of a self-taught backyarder when it comes to coding

Anywho, I’ll probably start toying with some ideas for design changes and some new functions/features soon-ish. If anyone knows of any really progressive and stylish blogs or blog designs (self-promotion is fine ), let me know in the comments. I don’t know when I’ll put time aside to start fleshing out some new ideas and compile some new toys for the blog, but I figured if I actually post about it, it might encourage me to actually do something about it instead of just thinking about it Plus I haven’t built a local testbed since re-installing my O/S a while back, so I’ll have to get off my behind and get onto that too!

I’m a bad blogger

Sean — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:21:33 +0000

I was just thinking that I’ve been pretty slack with catching up on my usual round of martial arts bloggers on my side panel, and wanted to quickly post up a “I still think you’re all awesome ” comment on my blog acknowledging that I blame it on a busy work schedule and my almost-obsessive fussing over my arcade cabinet. I might break down and post some nerd images in a few weeks as I’ve tracked down a couple of ace fighting games, which in my mind is still remotely connected to the martial arts side of this blog. I don’t think the vast majority of my readership will care (though you’re welcome to surprise me!), but I don’t mind shouting into the void every now and again

Crazy prosthetics technology – the i-LIMB

Sean — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:40:04 +0000

Was doing some random Googling and found this awesome blog – The Adventures of the i-LIMB. The blog’s author, Darin, has had his left arm amputated from just below the elbow from what I can see in the videos he’s posted, and he’s documented a daily journal of his experiences with his i-LIMB, an awesome piece of crazy cybertechnology (i.e. his prosthesis ). There are plenty of videos documenting what he’s been up to and stacks of content – regardless of your background, check out his site and read up on his experiences.

Oh, and check out the vids, the technology is awesome to see in action I’ll be adding a link to his blog in my side bar, so if you forget where his blog is, you’ll be able to easily get to it regardless of where you are on my site.

New link – Prosthetic Center of Excellence

Sean — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:44:42 +0000

Just a quick post – added a link to a blog on Blogspot for the Prosthetic Center of Excellence. The blog’s a run-down of stories posted by other news sources and looks like its repeated verbatim, so could be a great way to keep up with what’s happening at least in the US on issues to do with amputees.

One more for today!

Sean — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:10:06 +0000

I thought I was finished up, but I forgot to mention a cool little post from Patrick of Mokuren Dojo from a couple of weeks back. He’s compiled a listing of various posts from his blog discussing martial arts and people with disabilities or special needs. Apart from mentioning yours truly in there (thanks Patrick!), he has posts on martial artists in wheelchairs, with visual impairments and the elderly. Makes for very convenient reading! To get to the post directly, click here.

Excellent 2 part interview with Hanshi Patrick McCarthy @ Ikigai Way

Congrats on the milestone Jesse!

Sean — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:27:26 +0000

I’ve finally started catching up on my blogs from the last couple of weeks, and I noticed on Jesse Crouch’s blog, The Martial Explorer, that he’s recently hit the 2-month mark for his blog. I’ve referenced Jesse’s blog a couple of times already – he provided the stimulus for the post I did on prosthesis technology, as well as offering some encouraging advice on achieving strength without necessarily increasing the bulk, which I blogged about here.

His site is currently in the links section locked into the right-hand side of my blog, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, please go and have a look – there’s plenty of content and is updated frequently. You can also click from the link I posted at the start of this blog if you can’t be bothered pressing the scroll button