The upcoming release of the Xbox flagship car brand Forza, with Horizon 4 has given the developers some great fodder to advertise with. Horizon is a free roaming driving game and 4 is set in the UK, apparently with lots of seasonal activity, just like the real thing. You know, rain, and well… rain. 🙂
An actor James Bond car pack brings models of classic Bond cars to the series, complete with some gadgets.
In this brilliant advert, using the actual game engine they have combined the music of Bond, and recreate vignettes of Bond scenes with his car and the bad guys too.
I am a big Forza fan, having advertised my book via it.
Also cool stuff collective,feeding edge and eightbar in various ways seeing it grow like this and be this good is awesome. Enjoy.
Watching Ready Player One on a VR Headset
This weekend I finally was able to purchase a digital copy of the film version Ready player One. It is something we saw as a family at the cinema but I had been wanted to take another look. I don’t buy many individial movies any more as with Sky, Netflix and Amazon things are usually easy to access as needed. It seems the US got to the home release first, another weird thing to be doing in the 21st century, slowly rolling out digital/streaming availability is so archaic and only really leads to piracy and lost revenue.
I had to make a choice on how to get to a digital version of the movie. Do I pay Sky for its buy and keep, where they also send blu-ray to go with the download. Or buy a blu-ray and attempt to figure out the film industry approach to digital, which, as with the release schedule is pretty archaic. Instead I went for Amazon Video. This we have on all our TV’s in the house, computers, pads and phones, alongside with Netflix. The last movies I bought were also on Amazon, John Wick 2 and before that The Raid 2, so its ideal to have next door to those.
I sparked up Amazon on the TV and home cinema and started to enjoy spotting even more of the references from my childhood and growing through the 80s as a gamer. Plus of course the who depth of engagement in VR is what flows through my head most of the time as a metaverse evangelist. Really though it is this targeted set of references and in jokes for me and my generation of geeks that I love. Wade’s Delorean with what seems to be a Knight Rider front grill, Duke Nuke-em aiming a launcher during the first battle scene, hello kitty and friends waddling along the bridge next to Wade, it goes on.
Being in VR though, with the headsets, suits, and running walkways I though I should at least try and watch it on my Oculus Go. I paused the TV stream, popped the headset on that is always next to me. I hoped an Amazon app had made it to the store, but no. Instead using the web browser I headed to Amazon video, logged in and found my movie, clicked play…. Nothing. It was a little deflating. Then though I noticed the “Use Desktop version” button in the top right and bingo it worked. Picking up where we left off at the start of the race with characters like SF’s Ryu wandering off to his car and seeing the Akira motorcycle raz into view. Selecting full screen gave a nice curved view of the 2D movie, enough I had to turn my head to look across the picture a little. Proper front row stuff. Not immersed as much as the main characters are int eh OASIS but a nice blend of traditional film, with new view tech and all a little bit meta 🙂
Another thing I noticed, which I think I had forgotten, was that when Wade first appears he has green hair, which he then dynamically changes to show avatar customisation in the OASIS. For me thats a big “yay” because I spent a long while with green hair in Second Life before finding my predator Avatar. My green spiked hair was a thing I identify with, and even got 3d printed. I also often referenced that in corporate presentations as the choice to have green hair is a subtle prod at conformity and social norms, just on the border of whether that would be acceptable to many in an office. It is not as full on extreme body shapes, or cartoon looks. The predator AV took this a stage further in the conversations. I also use green hair in almost every avatar in every platform as its a much quicker mental attachment than finding or trying to build a complex Yautja avatar. PS Home famously (from my point of view) did not allow green hair. Very odd!
So seeing Wade, in a movie about VR, the 80s and my generation my ego naturally assumed that any research the production team may, just may have come across my green hair metaverse evangelizing 🙂
If you like player one ready, or don’t, you will still like my own VR and AR story telling with real world gaming and tech references though with Reconfigure and Cont3xt. Its got a love of Marmite in it too 🙂
Trust me I’m a Doctor
Yesterday, July 8th 2018 was a very unusual day. I was invited to Southampton Solent University to receive an Honorary Degree in Technology. I got the invitation a few months ago and I have to say it is a really humbling feeling. As with all these things it is not individual effort that has led to this, but all the fantastic people I have had the opportunity to work with and share time with over the years. Also thank you everyone for you kind wishes and congratulations, likes and jibes online 🙂
My job that day was to join in with the rest of the academic body on stage and congratulate each of the 600 graduating students with a round of applause from the stage. Then I had my citation read out and the Chancellor handed me my tube and conferred the honor. Then I had a free form 5 minutes to talk to the students and families about the wonderful opportunities out there for them all. This part was the biggest honour of the day as a graduation day is a rare and special time. I talked a little about Choi Kwang Do and the milestones that we have in martial arts, and how getting a belt doesn’t mean stopping practicing and learning from the previous belts, its ongoing to learn and practice and the journey really does matter more than the destination. I also implored everyone to share and work together and most of all be nice, all the time if possible!
Also with me in gaining a Doctorate was Mark Sanger, Oscar winning film editor on Gravity (amongst many other fantastic films). He became a Doctor of Art. He gave a really good speech, and we commented afterwards how we said very similar things in different ways, which I hope helped get re-enforce our enthusiasm for getting on out in the World.
The university link is here but I am adding int he video from that page of the mini interview and roundup that the team did and put up really quickly!
I can haz FPV drone
Father’s day saw my headset count++ with the google cardboard style parrot headset for the iPhone to let me fly the Mambo drone and its camera. Its great fun as you would expect. Unlike VR where you move your head to see you end up keeping still as you have to move the drone, but it is like sitting on it. For a little drone its very fast about 10mph according to some of the logs it generates.
I also used Swift playgrounds to program it to fly under code control on the iPad. Which is awesome too. Writing code, flying drones and VR headsets seems like some sort of perfect geek storm to me.
Travel broadens the mind – Japan Part 1 Tokyo
This year has been pretty full with travel mostly with work but also with a fantastic family trip. The work trips included January to Boston, February it was Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Las Vegas for an IBM event in March, end of April it was Hannover and I just got back from Santa Clara, California from an IoT event. Nestled in there between Vegas and Hannover at the start of April was the family trip to Japan. This was a 50th birthday gift from my wife that I received the previous August. It seemed to take an age coming, partly with all the other travel before it, but was well worth the wait.
We headed out from Heathrow airport stopping by Heston’s airline food place in the terminal
Our first stop was Tokyo (ignoring the part about the very long flight as I just zone out and get on with that now)
We arrived to be met by the local representative, as this was all book through the wonderful Trailfinders company. He presented us with all the train tickets and schedule reminders and navigated us to the hotel (we chose a to pay for a taxi though we had train tickets as … you know a long flight!). Driving through the Tokyo roads the place looked and felt just right, it was not even too crowded or busy. The taxi driver was wearing white gloves (no picture of that but it just came to mind)
We were staying in Park Hotel at the Shiodome Media Tower which was ideally situated for the train lines.
The hotel took up the top floors of what a media office block but its internal atrium style made it feel miles away from anything.
We still had some time to explore after arriving before crashing out, so we went for a walk.
Being in the media part of the city there was some interesting art. Which kind of hints at the wonderful Japanese mix of efficiency and buttoned down approach to life combined with a great expression of art and culture and the joy of life.
Right near all the polished skyscrapers we found this district full of small arcades and shops. The loud noise of the pachinko places, where thousands of small ball bearing ping around pins was noticeable. We did not go in as they don’t allow under 18’s in to these gambling areas, despite the bright lights and manga window dressing.
So here we were in Tokyo, ready for the adventure
As expected, vending machines were everywhere, this was just round from the shops. Hot and cold cans of drink of all sorts.
Across from the hotel they were shooting a kids TV show, I was going to try and join in for old time’s sake 🙂
It made for an odd skyline picture but again, so very Japanese in its contrast and blending at the same time.
With the potential confusion of a language that we have almost no possibility to read or speak with any degree of competence we had a guide show us around Tokyo on the first day. This was also great to be able to talk about the differences and similarities in our cultures. I learned an awful lot from our guide and we also shared our perspectives. One of the key things that we learned was about the religious side of life. Japan has both Shinto and Buddhist culture, plus a smattering of other things like christian churches. However the key is that there seems to be no specific religious tension, it is not a choice of believing or not in one or the other, the Japanese people have absorbed both, or all. Our guide said asking someone what religion they were in Japan would be a confusing question, as its melded and just all part of life. Shinto shrines are typically marked by the typical square arch, with rope and white flags and buddhism has ornate temples, they co-exist.
We first went to a temple though, obviously a tourist trap with lots of shops around it, but at the same time oddly tranquil despite the crowds. We were shown how to cleanse our hands with water and make an offering and a prayer. It did not, as an atheist feel hypocritical nor like being a tourist, just blending in.
We were lucky enough to see some of the famous cherry blossom
We also got to see a very rare art exhibition of panel paintings, not photos of those, but they were stunning. All telling various Japanese samurai stories and fables. The art style being 2d and not using perspective, yet at the same time feeling flowing and in motion.
Escaping hustle and bustle we entered the Japanese garden next to temple. The aim of these is to recreate elements of nature, ponds are lakes and sea, rocks represent mountain ranges.
Like our pond at home, lots of Koi
The garden is very old, again part of the absorbing of the old and new that the culture seems suited to.
Right next door, in the same grounds as the temple this was our first view of a Shinto shrine, we did not visit this particular one as we had more of that to come.
We took a boat trip back to our next destination, but our guide pointed out these buildings and highlighted the symbolism that is often used. The Horns on the building in the background are the logo of the beer company, the building to its left has golden windows and a white top, representing a glass of beer!
we were heading to another park, in the background one of those buildings is our hotel.
The park offered more peace and quite from the hustle of the city
We were heading to a tea house, where we had our first tach of Matcha (Green tea). This is not the normal weak green tea, but frothy almost broth. Sweet paste is eaten first then the more sour tea is slurped down.
No chairs (or shoes)
On leaving we saw one of the original 60’s capsule architecture examples. Still nestled in and preserved and absorbed.
Then it was up to a very high floor to have a meal.
They did have an english menu but our guide talked us through this
It was also really nice to get this, and odd as I had forgotten it was now april 2018 and my birthday was in August 17 🙂
An yes there were robots, Softbank’s Pepper made an appearance on this trip a few times
In Tokyo, whilst navigation may have been a worry, once you get there its pretty easy, every is labelled and numbers and signs tend to have English too.
We went past or through a shopping district and ended up in a toy shop, thousands of collectibles. Including dancing storm troopers
I nearly bought this wonderful predator Mr Potato Head, but showed some restraint. In Second Life my full name is epredator potato, just to add to the serendiptiy! I bought a mini Deadpool instead.
We were headed to the main Shinto shrine, we were shown how our guide respectfully crossed each arched boundary, at the side of each, bowing with respect as we got deeper into the shrine.Not something everyone was doing by any stretch, but it seemed the right approach.
Organisations have barrels of Sake and of Whiskey stored as an offering for good luck and prosperity.
The centre of the shrine was a very large structure and area.
Then for utter contrast we were taken to the “teenagers” favourite shopping street and hangout. An utterly crammed area that we battled around so that the kids could take a look, but I was very glad to escape.
We then hopped on the train back to our hotel.
I didn’t photograph all my food, but there is more of this later. Stunning textures and colours and presentation on every dish we ate everywhere
The next day we were on our own heading out into the city
More to come…….
The entire album of photos (all 550+ of course!) https://flic.kr/s/aHskBD8Lbw
Blaming MWC for missed anniversary! 9th Year of Feeding Edge
Somehow we have ended up in March, almost as if February with its short number of days decided to sneak past us all. February is an important month for Feeding Edge as that is the birthday month. This 9th year I managed to not find the time to post and celebrate like every other year In part this is because of all the preparation for heading to Mobile World Congress this year in Barcelona. I had not had the chance to attend this show before, but this time my 451 Research and IoT and AR/VR analyst work took me there, along with a lot of my colleagues.
The scale of the event and the major venue the Fira Gran in Barcelona was pretty amazing, 8 very large halls with a good 30 min walk from end to end if you didn’t stop or go into any halls. A major surprise was that it was very cold and snowed for the first time. Not ideal !
The analyst life is not one of joyfully hopping from stand to stand enjoying the great shows, but one of 30 min meetings every 30 mins usually 30 mins away from one another. All the big shows suffer from this, but equally we get to hear a lot of great stuff. There are the odd times when meetings move or there is a gap but in general every day is like this. Also I started the show off with moderating a presentation set on stage, so had to hold off on the dashing and do more of the imparting of information to a large crowd in an auditorium all looking to hear about IoT Security and Blockchain
The best way to get from hall to hall is on the top corridor
You may think of MWC as a mobile phone selling show but it is getting much more like CES with lots of huge stands and gadgets and of course cars.
F1 had a significant presence too.
Including an esports racing challenge
There was an awful lot of AR and VR on stands across the board, lots of 360 video such as Intel showing Shaun White’s gold winning winter olympic run.
Elsewhere I saw this AR based race track demo
A few hololens made an appearance too
Make of this poster what you will
Our robot masters made an appearance in a number of shapes and sizes, though AI was big news to go along with IoT and Blockchain at the event. i.e. my day job 🙂
It was great to see the Kickstarter smartwatch with real hands that I backed have a presence at the show too – MyKronoz
Makes one feel a little space out!
I nearly did not get home, and I know some other UK people actually didn’t so I think myself luck as we had snow. Lots of it for us. It meant driving the Nissan Leaf around to help Predlet 1.0 do her paper round, and one other round too for several hours on Basingstoke estate roads.
So I think that makes a memorable belated 9th birthday. I will have to pay close attention to the decade of Feeding Edge next year, a bit more travel to do first though, Vegas, Japan, Hannover, Santa Clara takes me to June. Now if I can get everyone I meet to also just take a look at Reconfigure and Cont3xt and post a nice review that would be most useful. It may even help book 3 making its way from the back of my brain to the page.
Happy New Ye#AR – Welcome 2018
These years just tick away don’t they? Last year finished in a big rush of work with reports to get out before I took the rest of my holiday that was sitting there ready to expire. I was really please that I got my AR and VR long form report out for 415 customers. These a 6k or words and pictures but I was not expecting to be in a position to share Augmented and Virtual reality insights quite as much as I have this past year. It is what I know, and what I feel or course, but there are a lot more things in IoT especially in Industrial to try and stay on top of. However, AR is the UI for IoT, so there it is. It was over 18 years ago trying to get a shared avatar space of our offices working with presence of people, at the turn of the century! The along came Second Life, which made things a lot easier in 2006.
2017 was supposed to be the VR year, and it sort of was, but also AR is hot on its tail and finally Magic leap, on the 20th December unveiled their AR goggles.Yes, that was just a few days AFTER I managed to ship to AR/VR report with the words, “we shall have to wait and see what they do” in it. Though the shut down of Tango, which I did get in as an amendment waved the flag that would happen.
No prices, not dates, other than 2018, but its a jump in technology with light field (hopefully)
We are also very close to Ready Player One hitting the screen, which will be the main point of reference for escapist VR with Spielberg directing. So it seems all the future thinking stuff we have all been doing is going mainstream to some degree or other.
Apple ARKit and Google ARCore put AR tracking into the hands of everyone with every mainstream device too.
Maybe a few more people will spot my novels and enjoy them with all the AR and VR, IoT and Quantum theory in them 🙂
So it looks like being a good year.
Enjoy !
Stack of new tech to catch up on! Games, watches, Mocap and old age
Yes its been a few months, but as I write for a living about tech elsewhere it is a bit of a busman’s holiday to blog, but I intend to keep going, Sept and Oct were just very busy, travel and more holidays. All that and turning 50 at the end of August! What the hack happened there, where did that come from? Thanks all for all the comments and best wishes on Facebook and Twitter. Plenty more years left yet!
One of my presents was a trip with predlet 2.0 to the NFL game at Wembley, I had got him playing Madden on Xbox and he was all up for the game and how it worked which was fantastic.
The game was a weird one full of incredible errors on both sides and the favourites, the Dolphins lost, which was quite amusing. Though all teams were supported, as you can see some cheeseheads in the background.
My kickstarted watch arrived yesterday, the Mykronoz Zetime. Now I do have an Apple Watch, but didn’t;t when this was first an thing to invest/preorder. This swiss based watch is a traditional watch with real hands, a good solid engineered feel to it too. However under the hands is a screen that can display watch faces and information. Regular buttons and/or touch screen interaction work. It paired with my iPhone and its apps so pretty much just works. When you get a message and need to read it the hands file to 9:15 to not obscure the text, then wind back to the time when you exit. It is supposed to have a 30 day battery life as a watch and 3 days burning smartwatch features. Heart rate monitor and movement sensing are all part of it too. I thin it will be more of a posher dress watch or just to show off at IoT conferences 🙂
Today my Enflux motion capture suite arrived too. This top and trousers stretchy contraption has every sensors that track body movement and connect to blender and unity3d on Windows using BLTE. I am not posting pictures of me wearing it just yet, need to loose a few stone first ! However the connection and mocap calibration just worked straight away. I will see how well it works to record Choi, compared to the Kinect experiments of old
Here is how it records in unity3d
I had an interesting time ate the Augmented World Expo in Munich a few weeks ago too. AR is really getting embedded in a lot of enterprise solutions and the future is rosy for that as the user interface for IoT 🙂
I did get to appear (just) in the Meta headset demo on stage.
Also I got to see and feel the very clever effect of the light field displays from Avegant in a private showing.
On the games front. Wow, we are in the midst of a bumper crop of interesting things. Forza 7 on the Xbox is brilliant as usual, and they have kept the importing of the custom car gfx which means I get to quickly repaint my cars 🙂 Only picture I have handy is a stock paint set in the rain.
Mordor and Assassins Creed follow ups both giving a good deal of baddy bashing and climbing up things. Both huge games and probably never to be finished.
Double Mario on the Switch, first the turn based strategy mashup with the Rabbids, which proved to be far better than I expected and one of my favourites now, and a few days ago Super Mario Odyssey, giving Zelda a run for its money, though obviously more arcade like.
These need their own posts and comments but I think I will wait until the arrival of the Xbox One X in a few days hopefully.
I have had some really nice comments about the books too, still a few billion people to sell them too and a third one to find the time and energy to write 🙂
Vancouver then a Van
We just got back from an amazing holiday in North West Canada. Whilst jet lag is still kicking me and tomorrow I may forget everything as I turn 50, I though it best to record some thoughts now.
Firstly 4 days in Vancouver felt so relaxing that it was like we had lived there for ages. We did a fair bit of course, cycled around Stanley Park
We also got on a sea plane to Victoria, where we then boarded a Zodiac rib in dry suits to blast out into the sea and get sighting of Orcas – Killer Whales.
The dry suits were not very dry though !
We found some great places to eat in Vancouver and got some great recommendations from friends too. I marched us off to have korean shaved ice – Bingsoo
As a home form home the predlets experienced yet more VR
The science museum was great too
We all enjoyed that.
Then we went for another holiday, completely different we hired an RV for 12 nights
Just a 7 birth, 9m long, 3m high and wide V10 mega beast, or so we though until we got to see the other campers.
We headed off on what ended up being a 2500km drive to multiple sites.
We managed to go and get supplies at a local Walmart but this was not where we were supposed to park!
The first was by a lake and had no hookup for the van, but it did have Canada geese and play park for the kids
The second site had a swimming pool and full van hook up. It is odd to be flushing sewage at the side of the van down a big pipe next to where the other people are having their breakfast, but that’s camping !
The inside of the van was bigger than the hotel room, or so it felt sometimes
We stopped on the long 3-4 hour journeys to admire the trees and sights
We then headed to Lake Louise, a campsite by the river. With Bears.
We walked into town by the river
We took the bus to the actual lake, where it was a bit misty
Where we then walked 3 km up a big hill to mirror lake, not many people with us there.
This fella was though
When we got back down the mist had cleared
Elemming had booked afternoon tea at the Fairmont as a complete contrast to the hiking and camping
We then headed to the pst famous road in Canada that runs Lake Louse to Jasper. A long 400km run to Hinton but fantastic road and fantastic scenery such as the glacier
more waterfalls
and water
Driving the view was great but not easy to take photos, but stops I got them.
We arrived near Jasper, in the rain. It all seemed a bit UK camping like.
Still, they had Wifi
And weird beer cans
When the rain cleared it was quite spectacular.
We had a day of nothing, doing nothing at all. It was great.
Then it was Elemming’s birthday.
So we went up a cable car and walked up the top of Jasper’s Whistler mountain. The cloud kept rolling and and rolling away it was very spooky. As was the big fat Marmot that laughed at us on the way up.
This is where we walked from, the cable car stop in the distance
Then once again for contrast we drove off to the hot springs and sat in boiling hot water with hundred of others
The next day we were travelling but I made a pinhole camera out of the beer box in case we got a clear sky for the Solar Eclipse (we didn’t)
As we drove along it went dusk like, very steadily, car headlights got very much brighter. Once it was done we stopped for a cuppa
We made the next KOA campsite at clearwater it had another swimming pool too.
We drove up a smallish mountain road, it got a bit bumpy towards the end and got to watch Salmon jumping the falls. Predlet 1.0 managed to catch a phot but I was just watching. Saw 5 all in all. Very cool
Elemming saw a bear n the way up too.
There were an amazing set of Waterfalls to view all very varied
There were some great places to eat here too
Our next stop was on the way to whistler it was a bit more desert like, and apparently was closed due to the wildfires two weeks previous.
We then headed to Whistler the final stop arrived to a watch out there are bears warning again
After a stroll into town we were in civilisation again, with olympic park.
We rode two chair lifts (yuk) up the first mountain
Then the peak 2 peak in gondola across to Whistler. The worlds longest of its type. only two posts holding it up. we avoided the glass bottom gondola.
A long way up/down
More olympic rings
Stunning views
Then a gondola back down (phew) I really don’t like chair lifts especially with a snowboard on.
The final day was a 4×4 trip up Whislter to look for bears
We saw Slumber, a 21 year old male for about 40 mins, it was amazing how he could melt away into almost no grass or trees then pop up a head to look at us whilst he ate berries. iPhones are not great for that sort of photo but here he is.
We saw some awesome cycle parks too
After a slap up meal and beer in El Furniture Warehouse (a happening place it seems) we drove back to Vancouver. Suddenly hitting traffic was a shock but the van was undaunted and undented
2500 km sat here.
Timing was a bit odd then as we had to drop the van at 11am but flight was 9pm. So we sat at the airport and watched our screens
Once we were able to drop the bags the predlets got to play chess.
And that was that. Luckily after the drive, the wait and the flight and no sleep we had a bank holiday monday to recover.
The whole trip was amazing, I still don’t like camping, too much faffing around but I am glad we did it and saw the things we saw.
The big van fitted the big scenario too.
The whole album of photos is here. Probably missed a few so may do a search for the lost ones 🙂
30th Year of Choi Kwang Do and 2nd Dan Grading
This week sees the 30th year of Choi Kwang Do as a martial art. Many from the art are travelling to Atlanta for the celebrations. we were not in a position to go with this the last week of school and work commitments, but I think we managed to celebrate in our own way.
A few sunday’s ago predlet 2.0 and I stepped onto the floor of the dojang in Farnborough to face our biggest challenge yet in Choi Kwang Do. Together we went through the grading for our EE Dan (2nd Degree) Black Belts. We shared the floor with other students heading for their 1st Dan. It was an amazing and gruelling experience with 2.5 hours of full on effort. Also Predlet 1.0 took her tag grading for 1st Dan blue tag afterwards, which is about another year or so until she will be doing her 2nd Dan. She may well be doing that at the same time as Jan does her 1st Dan too, another family double grading. To do 2nd Dan you have to also effectively do 1st Dan again, then add another layer to that. These gradings are as much a test of mental strength as they are of physical conditioning. Remaining focussed but remembering what to do and to be as flowing as possible whilst still delivering aggressive energy is a challenge. I know during the course of my patterns my mind lots its way for one set, and in speed drills I transposed two of the kicks in the wrong order. The experience from the 1st Dan of something similar helped a great deal as that is the time to reset, acknowledge it and get on with it. There is to much to do to be annoyed or worried about mistakes. An extra problem this time ardour was the humidity. It was pushing 30C outside the hall and Doboks are heavy fabric that soak up a lot of sweat. During our spinning kicks though I kept having to move around a bit as a slippery puddle was forming under my feet and falling over risks not only losing focus but injury towards the start. For most of the grading we were shuffled around in the line up to avoid predlet 2.0 and I being next door to one another which can be a distraction. However for the 2nd Dan elements it was just us. He is so fast at his patterns that it can throw me as I he is 1 or 2 ahead but we had practiced that so I learned to try and ignore him and focus on mine. This is tricky when you are combining being a proud or concerned dad, an instructor and a fellow student doing their own thing all in one. You also have the amazing panel of very experienced chief instructors and Masters watching your every move and family and friends behind you also watching. Unlike being on stage or TV though this does not feel like a performance, it is important to try and suppress the performance elements, so I find a different me and try and work internally, but being human its hard not to look up and wonder what anyone is thinking, am I doing it right? am I letting my teacher down. These fleeting moments can interrupt the flow that one is trying to achieve whilst also managing heart rate and breathing to give maximum effort but not take everything from the tank for the rest of the grading. We all managed to achieve our goals though.
I had spent a good few months focussing on conditioning, PACE training and doing full sets of curriculum in order to be ready. On the Monday before the grading I had tried to do almost a full grading of techniques, patterns and speed drills plus some heavy work on the bag and BoB but with a few more breaks and lots of water just to rehearse enough. My in class preparation from Master Scrimshaw and with my fellow students set the foundations for being able to do this. It is certainly not something you just turn up to and hope you can do it. After my various teeth extractions at the start of the year my energy levels had dropped and a few months ago in class at Basingstoke CKD I couldn’t do even just the kicks in order at a good pace without a water break. That was my Rocky steps moment, each training session I explored how much of that I could do until that full set on the Monday.
These are incredible experiences and I am really appreciative of the instructors and masters who give up their time to run these gradings on a Sunday. The feedback and advice before and after is always very useful and the ecouragment partnering for some of the energy sapping drills really helps too. I am really please for predlet 2.0 too. At 10 he has achieved not 1 but 2 black belts and is enjoying the next stage of the journey too. He was worn out for the week after this (as we both were) which given how energetic he normally is indicated the effort he put in too.
These belts represent a milestone in a journey, they are called degree’s because they are the result of many years of study and practice. They are as much about mental strength as physical and whilst the belt is an external indicator it is the feeling and sense of achievement that is inside that counts. It is also a reminder of how much there is yet to learn, each belt brings new challenges, chapters in a book, and the black belts are like a whole new book in a series. I remember my first grading and at white belt, thinking how can I get through this it is hard. 1st to 2nd Dan is the same feeling. Yet each technique that is learned works on the base of those very first techniques and the attitude to them. They are all equally as important, and learning new things makes the previous new things seem familiar. Familiarity doesn’t become complacency though, ever time you think “I’ve got this” a new twist, distraction or realization makes itself known.
As we say in Choi, Pil Seung! and a very happy 30th anniversary to everyone.