Leopard unleashed!
Apple has unleashed Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) last week. It’s an awesome operating system beating all other OS flat out! New features such as time machine, desktop space, interoperability with Apple Mail and many more.
Time Machine is a repository with version control system to keep track all the changes to your files and directories. When you plug in a FireWire hard disk, Leopard will automatically version all your files and directories onto the external hard disk. You are able to go back in time to look for a file (or directory), which you have deleted or modified, and to restore them.
Desktop Space gives you more desktop spaces to organize your works on the screen. It makes switching from task to task simple and easy with a click of the mouse.
It will be a nice upgrade but if you are developing software with Ada, unfortunately, you have to wait for a while. Ada does not come with xcode yet. The folks at MacAda is still working on a stable and working version of Ada compiler.
I signed up for PPP!
I signed up for PPP (Pay Per Post) a few months ago after reading a few blogs and decided to give it a try. I have been dormant for a while until recently in September, I was offered to write about a website. I took the offer and I got paid! That was it. I like to blog and I can make money by blogging. So I started to look deeper into PPP services and after some reading, I began blogging.
One specific opportunity offered by PPP was a drug rehabilitation website. I was required to blog about their drug or alcohol rehabilitation program. That reminds me of an old-time friend whom we spent many after office hours at pub having happy hours. He became alcoholic and gradually withdrew himself from work and society. The last thing I know is that he is doing great now with a family. I took that opportunity to write about withdrawal symptoms and rehabilitation program and hopefully, people in need of it can find the program easily.
Although blogging can easily make money by just writing about the products or services of the advertisers, bloggers are urged to adhere to blog ethics. Honesty is the most important element for your blog readers to stick around with your blog. If blogger has been dishonest or found to be dishonest by readers, the blog will be deserted and no one will ever come back again. So, it is very important to be honest to your reader.
Another benefits of PPP is that I can learn to blog about products and services. This will improve my writing skill and as well as online marketing skill by blogging a product review or introduction.
The posts tagged under Marketing category are mostly sponsored. I would rather prefer to tag it under Marketing as I find it more appropriate and easy for me to keep track and organize these sponsored posts.
When I started blogging, my site is PR 3 and now, it is PR 4! The higher my PR, the more popular my site will be.
Are you interested to earn money while blogging? Start looking at Pay Per Post now.
If you would like to hire me to blog about your company, website, products or services, please click here.
A needle can save the life of a stroke patient
After I posted an entry about new sign of stroke here, I could remember another friend of mine, chongky, sent me an email about emergency first aid for stroke victim. I dug out this over a year old email from my archive.
This method is based on Chinese traditional method, blood letting. The idea is to let the blood out to reduce the blood pressure. There is no western medical study to confirm the effectiveness of this method. If someone could verify this, please let me know.
Warning: This is not a medical advice. It is something someone shared with me and I want to share it here. Seek immediate medical assistance after the blood letting if you have decided to give it a try. Try at your own risk. Do NOT sue me!
Dear All
A friend sent me this interesting article. I was told about the same treatment by a tai chi friend a couple of years ago. His father who had a stroke was treated using the same method and recovered (though he was not as agile as before).
A NEEDLE CAN SAVE THE LIFE OF A STROKE PATIENT-From a Chinese professor
Keep a syringe or needle in your home to do this… It’s amazing and an unconventional way of recovering from stroke, read it through it can help somebody one day.
This is amazing. Please keep this very handy.. Excellent tips. Do take a minute to read this. You’ll never know. One’s life may depend on you.
“My father was paralyzed and later died from the result of a stroke. I wish I knew about this first aid before. When stroke strikes, the capillaries in the brain will gradually burst.”(Irene Liu)
When a stroke occurs, stay calm. No matter where the victim is,do not
Move him/her. Because, if moved, the capillaries will burst. Help the victim to sit up where he is to prevent him from falling over again, and then the bloodletting can begin. If you have in your home an injection syringe that would be the best, otherwise, a sewing needle or a straight pin will do.
- Place the needle/pin over fire or clean the tip with cotton wool soaked in spirit to sterilize it, and then use it to prick the tip of all 10 fingers.
- There are no specific acupuncture points, just prick about a mm from the fingernail.
- Prick till blood comes out.
- If blood does not start to drip, then squeeze with your fingers.
- When all 10 digits is bleeding, wait a few minutes then the victim will regain consciousness.
- If the victim’s mouth is crooked, then pull on his ears until they are red.
- Then prick each ear lobe twice until two drops of blood comes from each ear lobe. After a few minutes the victim should regain consciousness.
Wait till the victim regain his normal state without any abnormal symptoms then take him to the hospital, otherwise, if he was taken in the ambulance in a hurry to the hospital, the bumpy trip will cause all the capillaries in his brain to burst. If he could save his life, barely managing to walk, then it is by the grace of his ancestors.
” I learned about letting blood to save life from Chinese traditional doctor Ha Bu-Ting who lives in Sun-Juke. Furthermore, I had practical experience with it. Therefore I can say this method is 100% effective.In 1979, I was teaching in Fung-Gaap College in Tai-Chung. One afternoon I was teaching class when another teacher came running to my class room and said in panting, “Ms. Liu, come quick, our supervisor has had a stroke!”
I immediately went to the 3rd floor. When I saw our supervisor, Mr.Chen Fu-Tien, his color was off, his speech was slurred, his mouth was crooked-all the symptoms of a stroke. I immediately asked one of the practicum students to go to the pharmacy outside the school to buy a syringe, which I used to prick Mr. Chen’s 10 fingers tips. When all 10 fingers were bleeding (each with a pea-sized drop of blood), after a few minutes, Mr. Chen’s face regained its color and his eyes’ spirit returned, too. But his mouth was still crooked. So I pulled on his ears to fill them with blood. When his ears became red, I pricked his right earlobe twice to let out 2 drops of blood. When both earlobes had two drops of blood each, a miracle happened. Within 3-5 minutes the shape of his mouth returned to normal and his speech became clear. We let him rest for a while and have a cup of hot tea, then we helped him go down the stairs, drove him to Wei-Wah Hospital . He rested one night and was released the next day to return to school to teach.
Everything worked normally. There were no ill after-effects. On the other hand, the usual stroke victim usually suffers irreparable bursting of the brain capillaries on the way to the hospital. As a result, these victims never recover.- ” (Irene Liu)
Therefore stroke is the second cause of death. The lucky ones will stay alive but can remain paralyzed for life. It is such a horrible thing to happen in one’s life. If we can all remember this bloodletting method and start the life-saving process immediately, in a short time, the victim will be revived and regain 100% normality.
If possible, please forward this tip to others after reading it. You never know that it may help save a life. This procedure must be done immediately after the stroke strikes the patient, not some hours later. No harm is done if the patient does not recover after applying the procedure on him, but why miss the chance of not doing it?
Metal cabinet storage
One of the things I hate most about having wooden storage cabinets in the kitchen. When water or oil is splashed onto the wooden finishing surface, it will soak into the wood. After some time, the finishing will peel off and in worst case, the wooden part will expand and starting become crooked and peeling off too. I always disagree installing wooden cabinets in the kitchen where food, oil and water are the common items we work with in the kitchen.
I’ve look a few cabinets and found some metal cabinets made of high grade stainless steel. It is easy to clean and maintain if compared to wooden cabinets. And it lasts longer too. I think it will be the time to give a facelift to the kitchen.
MySQL server down
I’ve recently experienced a frequent downtime of MySQL server at my WHP. It was down twice in a day yesterday and thrice in this month. Apparently, I think some processes had overloaded the server and brought it down.
I contacted the tech support of my WHP and they were able to bring the server up in less than 15 minutes. They have done a great job.
Yesterday, I wrote a message to Fathi Said, CEO of IX Web Hosting informing of the downtime I have experienced and my concerns. This morning, I received a call from Chris Bingham, the Customers Relation Manager. He offered me to move my hosting account to another server hopefully that will solve the problem while their technical support will fox out what has been overloading my current server. So, expect my sites will be down for a few hours during the moving exercise.
This is the greatest support I ever had amongst the WHP I had hosted with. I will recommend IX Web Hosting if you are looking for a web host.
Looking for a home based business?
Have you noticed your neighbor and your friend’s husband do not need to go out to work? Do you ever admire them having their own home based business? Well, if you do and you don’t know how to get started, here’s a good tip for starting your first home based business.
The Internet has opened up a whole new dimension in our lives. We are able to communicate face to face looking at each other across continents, able to share information with a click of the mouse and etc. Many people has turn home based in this century to conserve earth resources like gas, time and to reduce company expenses. Many businesses also go home based to minimized operating expenditure.
Many people like to have home based business because of minimal capital involvement, flexible working hours, don’t need to meet clients, business across countries’ borders, and you are the boss! Just to name a few. The benefits of having your own Internet home based business have no limits. It is time to discover yourself the benefits of home based business.
What kind of business is good to start you off?
How about phone card affiliate program? USPrepaid.com offers you an attractive package to start you off with a website of your own domain name. Sign up is very simple:
- Think of a catchy unique .COM domain name.
- Sign up at USPrepaid.com.
- Setup your website.
- USPrepaid will provide you some training.
- Market your site.
USPrepaid offers over 850 phone card brands with commissions up to 50% but mostly about 22%. Your operating expenses are the $74.95 one-time setup fee and monthly subscription fee of $19.95. There is minimum risk as you don’t have to pay a huge capital upfront. When you have made some sales, your commissions will be paid with cheque. But if you are not residing in the U.S., your commissions will be paid in the form of traveler’s cheque (in U.S. Dollar) via Fedex.
USPrepaid will provide you training for setting up your site, checking inventory, sales and profit; selecting products and setting up prices and all you need to run your Internet home based business. USPrepaid will also design your website and it will be up within 72 hours!
If you are thinking of starting up a low cost home based business with minimum risk, USPrepaid’s phone card affiliate program will be a good start for you.
Nicotine may ease Parkinson’s symptoms?
In my previous post, Sparring – The Medical Implication – Part 2, I mention about the potential risk of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) from head injuries. I came across an article about Nicotine may help ease Parkinson’s symptoms. I re-post the full article and the original article can be found here.
Nicotine may ease Parkinson’s symptoms: U.S. study
Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:21am IST
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nicotine may help ease some of the debilitating and uncontrollable tremors and twitches caused by Parkinson’s disease and its treatment, researchers said on Wednesday.
Monkeys given a nicotine-laced drink before drug treatment for Parkinson’s showed a 50 percent reduction in movements associated with the treatment. They showed a 35 percent drop in the movements, known as dyskinesias, when given the drink after treatments.
The finding, to be published in the Annals of Neurology, suggests it may be possible to improve the lives of patients who have very limited options.
“It may be the only drug that is useful for reducing dyskinesias without making Parkinson’s disease worse,” Maryka Quik of the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, California, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
Parkinson’s disease, which affects more than 1 million patients in the United States, is marked by the death of brain cells that produce dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, or message-carrying chemical, associated with movement. Drugs can delay symptoms for a while but there is no good treatment and no cure.
The main treatment, levodopa or L-dopa, itself causes the abnormal involuntary movements after a time.
For years, researchers had noted that people who smoke and who drink coffee seemed to have a lower risk of Parkinson’s, and some research has suggested that nicotine might protect brain cells and nerves in some way.
Quik said her team’s findings appear to uncover a separate effect of nicotine.
The researchers caused Parkinson’s in rats and then in monkeys by damaging the area of the brain where dopamine is made. They gave them a soft drink with nicotine before and after administering levodopa.
“Not only is nicotine neuroprotective, it protects against L-dopa-induced dyskinesias. The two effects are exclusive,” Quik said. Nicotine did not appear to interfere with the beneficial effects of L-dopa.
Her team is now working with companies that make nicotine-like drugs to work up a trial in people.
The key is probably chemical doorways into brain cells called nicotinic receptors, Quik said. Drugs that work to affect these more precisely than nicotine does might also work better and more safely in people.
Nicotine patches are available over-the-counter for people who want to stop smoking but Quik did not advise that Parkinson’s patients try them.
“It is very important to work out the proper conditions and the proper dose,” she said.
© Reuters2007All rights reserved
This does not mean smoking cigarettes is good for health. The study suggest that, Nicotine, one of the chemical content in tobacco may help to relieve Parkinson’s symptom and the study has yet to confirm its effectiveness. Let’s wait and see. I hope it really can help those who have been suffering from PD.
HP 810C DeskJet Cartridge
I have an old Hewlett Packard (HP) 810C DeskJet which I have not been using for a long time. Recently, I was seeing a need to print some color name cards so I took out the printer and connected it to my Apple Mac Mini. It still works but two colors have dried up. I called a few vendors but could not find the cartridges for it.
I came to Cartridge Finder and found the cartridges for HP 810C DeskJet without any effort. CartridgeFinder.com’s user friendly interface lets you easily figuring out which cartridges are required for more than 10,000 different models of printer, copier, and fax machines.
This site also searches PriceGrabber.com’s merchant listings to find you the best deals to save you time and money.
Kazehakase – The Web Browser
Kazehakase (風博士) is a web browser created for Unix-liked system with Gtk+2 libraries and is heavily based on Gecko rendering engine.
It supports multiple tabs, RSS and periodical auto update which is useful for monitoring come websites without AJAX.
The web browser is named after the short story Kazehakase by Japanese author Sakaguchi Ango.
Amusement Theme Park
The Blackpool Pleasure Beach Amusement Park is the oldest and largest theme park in UK. It is approximately 4 hours drive from London, between Lancester and Liverpool. It was founded in 1896 by Alderman William George Bean. Over 6.2 millions visitors have travelled to this Britain’s No. 1 Resort Theme Park every year.
In 2000, Blackpool Pleasure Beach invested its largest investment of £15 million when Pleasure Beach, Blackpool opened, Valhalla on June 14th 2000. The park has got many fun rides such as Pepsi Max Big One, Infusion, Big Dipper and including the £1million white knuckle ride Spin Doctor with riders spinning 360 degrees through the air to heights of 120 feet at speeds of over 60 mph. There are also Family Rides for your whole family.
Besides the rides, it also hosts indoor attraction such as the 4-D cinema where you can experience stunning 3-D projection with innovative 4-D technology. It has also put up many shows to entertain your family. If you are hungry, there are restaurant and fast food outlet serving exquisite cuisines to sandwiches, burgers and a lot more to satisfy your appetite. The White Tower offers fine dining at this award-winning penthouse restaurant with panoramic ocean views, stylish and romantic atmosphere, often favoured by celebrities.
The Big Blue Hotel offers standard rooms, unique family rooms, executive rooms, club rooms and luxury suite.
The Blackpool Pleasure Beach Amusement Park is the best holiday destination in UK for your family. Are you taking your family for a ride?
New Sign of Stroke
A friend of mine, her mother suffered a stroke since last year. Her mother was bed ridden since the first stroke (I couldn’t remember exact date) and she passed away last week.
I received an email from Benji a moment ago about observing a possible stroke attack by looking at the victim’s tongue. I don’t know if this is true. Can anyone out there confirm this? This could save lives!
STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters…. S.T.R.
My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I agree. If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks. Seriously.. Please read:STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall – she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) …..she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital – (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don’t die…. they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.It only takes a minute to read this…
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke… totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.
RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Thank God for the sense to remember the “3″ steps, STR .. Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S : Ask the individual to SMILE.
T : Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE(Coherently) ( I.e. It is sunny out today)
R : Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.NOTE: Another ’sign’ of a stroke is this: Ask the person to ’stick’ out his tongue. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an indication of a stroke.
If he or she has trouble with anyone of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.
A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.
Stroke Warning Signs
The American Stroke Association says these are the warning signs of stroke:
- Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
- Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
- Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
- Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
- Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
So, send this link to everyone. If this is confirmed to be true, it will save lives!
Uechi-Ryu Zankai – My Anamnesis – Part 4
Previously, I mentioned about some training philosophy of Uechi-Ryu Zankai, how the organic training enhances our health and strengthening our body. In this episode, I am going to dissect the basic foundation of all techniques which we can find in the kata Sanchin using natural phenomenon, ocean waves. I am not going to write the length and breadth of every techniques, but I am going to particularly focus on Wa-uke or circular block.
The old-style Uechi-Ryu (Zankai) is a defensive style and deploys different approach compare to most modern style Uechi-Ryu. So I am not talking about modern style but my focus is the old-style.
Wa-uke is the most important and the only blocking technique used throughout every kata. It is the most misunderstood blocking technique in Uechi-Ryu. Many people, including some of my students, have misunderstood wa-uke. Some say it is slow. Some say it is ineffective. Some say it is less defensive compare to other blocking techniques in other style of karate. Some say how can one blocking technique be applied to all kind of attacks.
Yes, Wa-uke is one blocking technique that applies to all kind of attacks including grappling. Thus, the old-style Uechi-Ryu is a CQC (Close Quarter Combat) system but still remains as effective for long range combat. This misunderstanding is due to lack of in-depth study and understanding of the technique itself and the application (bunkai) and philosophy of Uechi-Ryu kata.
As the name implies, wa-uke or circular block, travel in a circular or elliptic motion. Uechi-Ryu is not a linear system, rather, it is circular. To understand the underlying concepts and philosophy, you have to think circular or elliptic. The movement in Uechi-Ryu kata is like ocean waves. When you are practicing kata, you need to move like ocean waves.
Ocean waves are mechanical waves that propagate along the interface between water and air. The restoring force is provided by gravity.
(Source: Wikipedia)
After we understand the mechanical concept of ocean waves, we now can apply the concept into wa-uke and techniques in Uechi-Ryu kata: A wa-uke is a circular or elliptical mechanical arm motion which propagate in a plane between the defensive and the offensive body. The motion is circulated by gravity and centrifugal force.
The Sanchin kata is the foundation for all Uechi-Ryu kata. As I mentioned in previous episode, all Uechi-Ryu kata have staggering effect, complementing each other. To understand the application of wa-uke, we have to gain deeper understanding of Sanchin. While the understanding of Sanchin increases, it complements the understanding of other kata in the system. One significant point we need to focus in Sanchin is the turning of our body. It not only creates centrifugal force, it is the fundamental movement we need to understand and master in order to apply wa-uke effectively.
With wa-uke, you can perry an attack; a kick or a punch or any combination followed by counter strike. Or if you wish, you can lock then throw or a take down depending on the degree of damage you think is necessary to be inflicted onto your assailant.
The mastering of Sanchin movement and wa-uke is more than enough to defend against any untrained attacks. If the assailant is a trained attacker, deeper understanding and years of training will be required to defend against such attack effectively with combination of other techniques. But if the mastering has exceeded the expert level, the wa-uke and Sanchin movement alone is more than sufficient.
Sanchin alone requires entire life time to understand and master. It embeds vast concept and knowledge like the ocean; providing unlimited exploration, improvement and perfection. We are only a tiny dot floating in the ocean.
HOWTO – SCIM and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon
Ubuntu 7.10, code named “Gutsy Gibbon”, has been released. I just finished upgrading from Feisty Fawn (7.04) to Gutsy Gibbon. The upgrade (downloading, unpacking, removing, installing, configuring and cleaning) took about 6 hours to complete.
The upgrade was smooth and without any problems except it broke my scim. I have exhausted the search on Internet for a fix but was disappointed. So, I tried to experiment with a few methods based on the information I had on the Internet and came up a work around for this problem.
Referring to my Chinese Input HOWTO here, I assume you have installed scim in Feisty Fawn (7.04) and later upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10).
- Goto System -> Preference -> Sessions. Delete the “Input Method” as created in my previous HOWTO.
- Uninstall and install again scim and all suggested packages.
- Click on menu: System -> Preferences ->Sessions
- Click Startup Program Tab then [New] button.
- Name: Input Methods
- Command: scim -d
- Click [OK] button
- Logout and login again.
- Go to System -> Administration -> Language Support
- Select your language(s) support. In my case, Chinese and Japanese.
- Check the box at the bottom, Input Method, to activate complex characters input. Apply, uncheck it, apply and check again and apply then quit.
- Restart Language Support to make sure the box is checked.
- Logout and restart your system.
- Login and launch any application, e.g. gedit or Terminal. Right click and select “Input Method” and check “SCIM Input Method”.
- Now click on the “Input Method” tray icon on the top left of your screen to choose your desired language support and input method.
Now, you should be able to switch input method in some applications such as Terminal or gedit. It still does not work on every applications such as Open Office. To activate scim for every applications, use the command line (or Terminal):
- Check your locale:
$ locale | grep LANG=The answer would be something like below, which is in my case:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 - Now, with the following command, insall scim-qtimm and tell your system you want to use scim for your input method in your locale:
$ sudo apt-get install scim-qtimm $ im-switch -z en_US -s scim - Logout and login again and start Open Office. You should now able to select your input method in every applications.
This should also work (with instructions from my previous post here) if you have a fresh installation of Gutsy Gibbon. Please let me know if this works for you.
Uechi-Ryu Zankai – My Anamnesis – Part 3
Let’s put the 1% aside.
My visit to Okinawa improves not only my knowledge and skill in karate-do. It has been an eye opener and it lets me discover the real karate-do, its culture, philosophy and spirit; as an ancient budo art of Okinawa.
The Okinawan system is not as rigid and militarized as the Japanese system. The Okinawan system is more flexible in many ways. The Malaysian karate-do has been following Japanese styles which are very much a militarized training. The influence was from Shotokan, one of the few introduced to Malaysia in the earliest karate era of Malaysia.
Many times people have been asking me, “Is style really matter?” These people are thinking, if any karate that can teach you to fight well, what is so important what style it is. To me, the real essence of karate lies deep in its root of the style which has been forgotten by the new generation of practitioners. Many who know the real budo path of karate-do are not too interested in changing people’s thinking and often choose to be self-contained for self-improvement and self-preservation.
If you Google for “karate”, you will find many funny styles and names across the world. Many new styles are created outside of Okinawa/Japan. Really, can we call these karate? It is very difficult to have a stand on this argument. Call it whatever if you find nothing wrong about it.
My visit to Uechi-Ryu Zankai on Okinawa was absolutely an ultimate experience. Toyama Sensei is one of the very few grand master who really doesn’t care about the outside world. He is very disappointed how polluted karate is today. Of course, he feels very sad if he sees some videos of poor performance. He is entirely into preserving and passing on his knowledge to his high ranking students. My teacher, G. Seizan Breyette Sensei, a hatchi-dan (8th dan) kyoshi to-dan, is one of the very few high ranking students of Toyama Sensei.
The Zankai’s Training Philosophy
Uechi-Ryu Zankai is one of the remaining few old-style traditional karate-do on Okinawa devoting to continue to teach and to preserve the pre-World-War-2 karate-do which Kanbun Uechi Sensei brought back from China. And Toyama Sensei is the only legendary left on the earth who is actively passing on his knowledge which he learned from Kanbun Uechi Sensei.
The training at Zankai is very organic. Unlike most modern styles of karate-do, the Zankai uses training methods derived from organic living mechanisms which largely resembling a living organism in organization or development and profoundly affecting our bodily organs and functions. Many modern karate-do as well as other martial arts introduce free form sparring element to their training for competitive sports purposes with influences from Hong Kong and Hollywood movies. The introduction of free form sparring is also to transform monotonous old-style training to a more dynamic and exciting activity. It is rather hard to have modern people especially the youngsters to involve in a monotonic daily devotion. Martial arts training in the old days (100 years and more ago) was a daily devotion and monotonous with repetitive training. Modern youngsters prefer exciting new stuff such as sparring to display their male machoism.
The organic training of Zankai enhances functions of heart and lung especially. Take Sanchin for instance. Beginners (new students) learn Sanchin as first lesson in Zankai. To perform proper Sanchin, the shoulder must be down and pulled back, tummy tucked in and pulled up so the chest will rise and expand. This increases the capacity of the lung and reduces pressures onto organs such as the heart, the lung and digestive organs. The heart can pump more freely with bigger room. Bad body posture has long-term effect on our internal organs such as our heart. When our body postures collapse, our organs are squashed against each other. This is the reason for an enlarged heart appears in X-ray. Because of restricted space, the heart has to work harder to push against the pressure from the lung and other organs. Gradually, the heart enlarges due to the stress.
The kata system of old-style Uechi-ryu has staggering effect onto one another and they are closely inter-related and enhancing each other in one way or another. There is no basic or advanced kata in old-style Uechi-Ryu. In fact, all the kata complement each other at various stages of the training, enhancing and strengthening the body (skeleton, muscle tissues, organs and vital body functions), motor skills, balance (stability), breathing, mental concentration and ultimately all the senses.
Human is actually animal but with slightly higher intelligence and having civilization after going through many evolution. The human evolution contributes to the lost of animal characteristics both physically and mentally. Invention and innovation reduce our physical activities while we become more dependent on tools and machineries. Comfortable lifestyle has made us a lazy animal and lose all the primitive animal characteristics and instinct. Essentially, the training retrain us (human) to become an animal again. The training is based on 7 animal forms: Dragon, Tiger, Crane, Snake, Cobra, Leopard and Mantis. Dragon, Tiger and Crane are the major animal forms in the training. These animal forms teach us to move like them. After some period of training, you can notice improvement in physical strength, bodily structure and vital functions.
The old-style Uechi-Ryu training, like many old martial arts in the olden days of China, does not include jiyu kumite or free form sparring. Kumite (for short), cause destructive effects and harms more than constructive growth to our body. The ancient Chinese had learned a great deal about injuries many thousand years ago without sophisticated medical equipment. Many Chinese martial artists were practicing for their health and to protect family and country. They rarely flashing their skills. Until today, this culture remains in modern Chinese martial artists. But no doubt, there are some going around (the world) displaying and promoting their strongest arts. Like many other modern martial arts, the wushu introduces San-shou or free form sparring into some of their training for competitive and other reasons mentioned above.
I have written articles about injuries and their potential long-term effects. You can read my articles about injuries here.
Persimmons
I love persimmons! When I was a kid, I did not like the fruit and wouldn’t even want to taste it. But now, it is one of my favorite fruits. It’s sweet in taste and seedless. My kids love it too.It comes in variety of shapes according to its species. It may be spherical, acorn- or pumpkin- shaped. Pumpkin-shaped persimmons are most common here.
Do you realize that too much of persimmons is bad for your health?
According to the Merck’s Manual, it can cause epidemic of intestinal bezoars. Persimmons contain tannin shibuol, which polymerized in the stomach, is the cause of bezoar. The bezoar caused by persimmons is called persimmon bezoar. 90% of the bolus that occur from eating too much persimmons require surgery for removal.
Mobile Marketing
Have you ever received a SMS or MMS for marketing some products or services on your mobile phone? I have received many recently. Many are not local origin.
Technologies such as Internet and mobile phone services such as MMS and 3G have opened up a whole new dimension of marketing channel to businesses and corporation. A new marketing strategy called mobile marketing is increasingly becoming the most popular marketing tools. Businesses can deliver marketing content directly to the palm of targeted consumers.
A survey has found that more brands are ready to spend larger proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the very near future. About 71% have projected to spend more than 10% of their marketing budget in mobile marketing campaigns in the next 2 years. The survey have also indicated about 10% of consumers receiving SMS marketing have requested for more information on products and services grew from 32% in 2006 to 58% in 2007. More survey details can be found here.
How do you perform mobile marketing? First, you need to have mobile marketing software. GoLive! Concierge is a industry leader in mobile campaigns management suite. Setting up your campaigns with the software is fairly easy. You can provide services such as: subscription, ring tones and wallpapers download, SMS voting, Text-To-Win, reminders, polling, auction, chat and much more; to your targeted recipients.
GoLive! Mobile is also having an in-house design team to provide your company WAP Site Design or Mobile Website Design. You can host your content with GoLive! Mobile’s WAP Site Hosting or Mobile Website Hosting plan. If you are looking for a complete suite mobile marketing products and services, GoLive! Mobile is the right place to look into.
Database Restored
I don’t exactly know for sure but all my WordPress databases were having some hiccups. When I visited all my sites, it displayed “WordPress database error: [got error 28 from storage engine]“.
That sounded like some kind of storage error. Have I run out of disk space? Nope. I am only using 200+MB of disk space out of 400GB of total disk space. A search on the web had suggested that a MySQL database problem had occurred. MySQL can become overburdened after many long hard days of fetching and editing tables and created overhead. This is like having defragmentation of hard disk space. Data stored in this defragmented space is no longer continuos.
I quickly followed the repair instruction found on Paul Stamatiou’s blog. Unfortunately, I could not start phpMyAdmin either. It gave me some error messages. From the error messages, it look like I had run out of disk space on /tmp. I was helpless so I turned to my WSP.
Andrey, the support of my WSP, and the administrators had done a great job. They fixed my problem under 15 minutes while I was interacting with Andrey. This is, perhaps, my best experience with all the WSP so far. I hope they keep up with their good work. Two thumbs up for them.
Sparring – A medical implication – Part 3
To continue from previous topic here and here. Now, let us focus on injuries in children. Children suffers greater risk of injuries than adult because they are in their tender growing age. Children and adults share the same risk for injury of the bones. However, child’s bones are subject to a unique injury called growth plate fracture. Growth plate fracture requires immediate medical attention because long-term consequences may include limbs that are crooked or of unequal length.
What is growth plate?
Growth plate or physis is an area of developing bone tissue often near the ends of long bones (such as femur), between the widened part of the shaft of the bone or the metaphysis and the end of the bone or the epiphysis.
The long bones of the body do not grow from center outward, instead, it grows at each end of the bone around the growth plate. The growth plate is the last portion of the bone to ossify or harden, which causes it susceptible to fracture. Because muscles and bones develop a different speeds, a child’s bones are weaker than the surrounding connective tissues or ligaments.
When a child is practicing free sparring or jiyu kumite in sports karate (or Tae Kwon Do) for example, the constant body bouncing introduces stress every each time the child landed on the ground. This may cause or retard the growth of the bones by injuring the growth plate. The child’s bones may become crooked due to the repetitive stress which the bones have to withstand.
Excessive kicking motion will further weaken or injure the already weak connective tissues or ligaments mentioned earlier. Take mawashi-geri or roundhouse kick for example, when the child misses the target, his/her leg will snap in the air. Without hitting a target, the momentum of the kick cannot be transferred and thus snapping of the leg will injure the knee by absorbing the momentum of the kick. All these injuries are long-term.
Children’s bones heal faster than adult’s. This gives two important consequences. First, it is important for a child with injury to see a doctor as quickly as possible to receive proper medical treatment before it starts to heal. Ideally to see an orthopedic particularly if manipulation to align the bone is necessary. Second, the immobilization period required for healing is shorter than adult.
Risk Factors
Who is at risk?
- Children near the end of their growth period are particularly vulnerable compared to children of other age.
- Boys’ risks are twice the girls’.
- More than one third of growth plate injuries occur in competitive sports.
- About 20% of growth plate fractures occur during recreational activities such as biking or skateboarding.
Are you willing to subject your children to such injuries for participating sparring or kumite and suffer long-term effects for their entire lives?
Loans
Earlier, I talked about loans. These days money always spin in my head. Setting up a business has not been easy especially when more investment is needed. I am thinking of a possibility or perhaps a fantasy – build my own dojo (karate training hall)!
Instead of renting a space from someone, the monthly rental could be monthly repayment to the loan. I am thinking of a personal loan or secured loan to finance the purchase of a piece of land and building a home with a dojo built-in.
Ukpersonalloanstore.co.uk gives some ideas about the loans. In my opinion, taking a loan to build my dream home with a dojo is a great idea. It’s nothing wrong about it as long as the loan is good and cheap. The broker team will search the secured loan markets with hundreds of secured and unsecured loan plans to cater my financial requirements.
On October 9, The Ernst & Young Item Club, an economic forecasting group in the UK, has stated that the Bank of England now needs to start looking at cutting interest rates in order to lift the economy, amidst fears that growth in the UK could fall by 1% in 2008. Interest rates have been hiked up five times since August 2006, taking the base rate from 4.5% to 5.75%, its highest in six years. For the past couple of months the interest rate has remained static. I am optimistic about the interest rates in the near future and expect it to come down by 1%-1.5%.
If you are looking for a loan for any reason, it is the best time to start looking at ukpersonalloanstore.co.uk now.
Something fun for mums!
Hey mum, chill! Here’s something fun (if you are a mum).
This is the William Tell Overture of Mum by Anita Renfroe. Anita is a multifaceted creative artist, a Christian singer and a musical comedian. Her creativity is absolutely amazing. With a blend of musical comedy and inspiration, she leaves her audiences with hearts infused with humor and hope.
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