Ian Benedict

I’m not normally one to post content more than once per day, but I wouldn’t exactly classify the previous post as “content”. Here’s a beautiful little video I found on Digg that holds some meaning for me.

I was going to do it eventually… and I happened to find some time this morning. Nothing should be noticeably different on the main site, I think. Although I get treated to a pretty new interface when I log in now. Fun fun.

The school semester is slowly drawing to a close. Sadly though, the snow isn’t.

I’m really happy with my guitar playing. All those days of chord progressions and scales are finally starting to pay off. I’ve been practicing this one particular song which happens to be from Megaman 2 (Yeah yeah I know, it’s a good lick though), and can pretty much play it thoroughly. In addition to the recommendation I made last time for beginner guitarists, I’d also recommend checking out the Metal Method series of instructional dvds. They’re made for the absolute beginner to around intermediate/advanced players. Here’s a video of the song I’ve been practicing (But it’s not me that’s playing, obviously).

In this next section, I’d like to take a bit to talk about a couple of web applications.

First up is Mozilla Firefox, a web browser. Yes I do realize this isn’t something new, however there was a beta released recently for the upcoming Firefox 3. I just installed this yesterday on my home Vista laptop, and so I wanted to talk about it a bit. The biggest feature here has to be the huge cut in memory usage. There have been reports that it uses around 60% less memory as you keep the browser open. This is a huge deal for me because I sometimes leave my browser on overnight and it can just be downright unusable in the morning. That and the fact that I haven’t had the need to use the task manager to kill its process yet is what sold me.

Finally, the other application I wanted to talk about is the not so well-known IM client known as Digsby. What makes it better than the standard MSN or Trillian clients? Well, not only does it support a plethora of IM protocols, it also can track your different email accounts as well as social networking applications! That’s right, this client offers a more connected experience to your social networking platforms like Facebook, for those of you who aren’t already addicted enough as it is. I’ve only just set this client up yesterday on my Vista laptop and it tracks my MSN, GMail, and Facebook accounts. So for example, if someone posts on my wall or sends me a message via Facebook, I’d get a little notification on the bottom right corner of my screen much in the same way as MSN. This client offers just about the closest experience I can get to Adium on OSX (Which I am in love with) while offering features that even Adium doesn’t have. It is currently in beta and only available on Windows so far, however Mac OSX and Linux versions are in the works.

Well, midterms are finally over and I have a bit of free time at last.

Kendo has been going well so far. I’ve been a bit disappointed with my lack of stamina during the last couple of practices, but I intend to rectify it quickly with a lot of cardiovascular exercise. As well, the skin has started peeling from under my feet, so I guess my initiation into Kendo is slowly beginning. Other than that, practices have been pretty fun so far. I’ve been contemplating whether to look into getting my Gi and Hakama around now or wait till the end of the semester.

Guitar practice is slowly coming along as well. I’ve decided to stop randomly playing riffs from different songs and work on mastering the basic techniques. Some of the techniques I’m working on include things like vibrato, legato, palm muting, etc. For the record, if you’re looking into learning to play the guitar, I highly recommend John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD. It’s very good at putting you on the right track to becoming an expert guitar player.

In other news, it seems that Nine Inch Nails has released a new album called Ghosts I-IV. Now, I haven’t really heard much from them in the past but I’m fairly interested in this release. More specifically, I’m interested in how they’re releasing the album. They’ve decided that they’re going to release the first of the 4 CD set, which contains 9 tracks, for free for people to download and enjoy. If you are interested in buying the album, you can pay $5 and download all 4 discs containing 36 tracks in total. Both downloads come complete with album artwork and some extras like wallpapers and avatars. NIN isn’t the first to try this method of content delivery, with Radiohead being the innovators here with their album In Rainbows where they let you pay whatever you felt the album was worth, even if it meant you paid nothing. Personally, I think $5 is a steal for a full album and that NIN is definitely on the right track to finding the right balance for the cost of music.

I made mention of the video in my last post, so here it is. If you’re not sure what this is all about, check out my last post regarding the Armageddon wings. Much thanks to Vadim Sverdlov for taping it and doing a good job editing it.

Warning: The following video contains profanity, as well as scenes of epic burning in the mouth.

Quite a contrast on today’s menu. This past week I’ve had the luxury of trying out a couple of fairly exotic (in their own rights) dishes.

First up are the Japanese pancakes called Okonomiyaki. Basically, they are pancakes with batter made with cabbage, flour and a variety of other ingredients, as well as different condiments on top of them. For example, I had one with beef, onions and some other vegetables all topped off with sauce and a bit of mayonnaise on it. It ended up leaving me pretty full after and cost me around $6, so the value is fairly good. I’d say if you’re looking for an alternative to regular fast food, give okonomiyaki a chance.

Next up is the Armageddon wings. Simply put, they are the hottest wings served at All Star’s Wings and Ribs and they are absolutely no joke. In fact, you are forced to sign a waiver before you even attempt to eat them. On the more scientific side of things, the “hotness” of the wings is supposedly rated at around 1 million Scoville units, which is right up there with the world’s hottest pepper. So there was a challenge involving eating these wings: eat 10 of them within 30 minutes with water as your only drink, and you get your picture up on the wall as well as a t-shirt. There were a few more intricate rules to make sure people don’t cheat, but I’m not going to list all of them. The three of us (Jean, Zohar and yours truly) decided to take on the challenge.

While the wings were being brought out, you could definitely smell them from a distance. Having a good look at them when they arrived, they were a really dark brown colour and seemed to have spices caked on them. The first bite was probably the worst, I coughed a little with the amount of spice on the outside of the wing. Finishing the first wing, I then started on the second one fairly quickly. This is where I made the big mistake: having a sip of water. To the uninitiated, drinking water while doing a challenge like this is an absolute no-no because it only gives you instant relief but intensifies the heat after. After finishing the third wing, my mouth and lips were on fire and I wasn’t sure if I could keep going. From this point onward, I can’t remember much except that I just kept willing myself to stuff my face with wings until I eventually couldn’t stop drinking water and had to give up. The final tally was as follows: Zohar had 1, Jean had 4, and I had 6 for a combined total of 11 wings. This challenge finally came to an end…. or so I thought. Submerging my burning lips in water constantly for about ten minutes had pretty much no effect. As well the… err… “after-effects” certainly interrupt my night’s sleep. Let’s just say Kendo practice the next morning was really interesting.

So did I learn anything from the ordeal? Undoubtedly. Next time, I’ll just take the semi-hot wings and enjoy them with the others, thank you very much.

PS. There is a video of the whole thing, which I will post if I can find a way to.

Yes, I’ve migrated to WordPress from Drupal. As a result, some of the content on my previous blog won’t make it to this new one (although I do have it backed up). If you are interested in any previous posts, I might mine through the database and find a way to post it back up here.

The long and excruciating semester continues. However, I have managed to take some of my free time and dedicate it to a new interest which I’ve always wanted to pursue, Kendo.

First off, let me go into a little bit into Kendo. Kendo is a Japanese martial art. It is a fencing art, where each kendoka (Kendo practitioner) wields a shinai (bamboo sword) and attempts to strike the opposing kendoka in one of four target areas. These targets include the men (head), do (body), kote (hands) and tsuki (throat). They also wear the bogu (protective armour). Here is an image of what a standard kendoka looks like with the bogu and shinai, as well as the target areas which are marked off. This fencing style isn’t exactly the way samurai wield katanas in battle, rather it is a derived “sport” form from the actual technique known as Kenjutsu (much like how the sport of fencing was derived from older fencing techniques).

So how do Kendo competitions work? In a shiai (competition), the first kendoka to reach two ippon (points) is considered the winner. An ippon is awarded by not only a valid cut to one of the target areas, but also by a kendoka’s display of intention and control during the cut.

I’ve signed up to my university’s Kendo club for the semester to try it out and see if it’s something I’d like to pursue. So far I am enjoying the training and the drills. I even went so far as to buy a practice shinai of my own after the second class because I was so enamoured with it.

Well, other than Kendo, I’ve been up to pretty much nothing else but studying and strength training. I’m considering getting back into tennis, but that will have to wait for now. I’ll leave you now with a nice video that pretty much sums up Kendo.