Anyone who knows me, knows that I love my martial arts. I love it like a blacksmith loves fire, or like a sailor loves the sea. My love of Jujutsu is ingrained on my psyche. Holidays are the worst thing for me, but because martial arts are the second love of my life (behind my wife and family of course), it takes back seat for a few weeks over the Christmas break. I usually drive my wife nuts with my endless obsession with everything martial arts, but occasionally she supports me in my weird and wacky obsessive behaviours, like reading martial arts material whilst on the throne, or at breakfast time rather than the Herald Sun or the weekly times. For instance, a few weeks ago, my darling wife snatched a ripper bargain at a local library clearance sale...

For 50 cents she nabbed some priceless Judo books. One hardback pearler called ‘Judo and Judo-Do’ by a guy named Klingerstorff, another softback by the same author called ‘Judo self taught in pictures’ by Charles Yerkow. Now if you’re thinking that the author’s names sound rather more Germanic than Japanese, you’d be right. What a lot of people don’t know about modern Judo is that it’s founder, was indeed Japanese, but due to the strong relationship between Japan and Germany before WW2, Jigoro Kano (the Japanese founder of Kodokan Judo) spent some time instructing Germans (and British) in his art form. Consequently, Judo was actually taught to members of the German military and according to many sources, was originally driven by the Germans (in around 1930), with the view to inclusion of the art in the Olympic Games. This appears to have been largely politically driven from what I can gather however, as Kano himself seemed resistant to the whole concept of strong competition in the form of a world championship. To those who do not understand Judo, this may seem baffling, but to Kano, Judo was to be treated more like a Church or Religion rather than a competition (who’s emphasis would be driven solely by the prospect of medal counts alone.)

Anyway, the books were an absolute steal at 50 cents a pop. The best bargain being a hardback by M Feldenkrais: who was one of the first non-Japanese to obtain a Black Belt in Judo. I think that Feldenkrais was Russian Born but spent a lot of time in France and was a very intelligent man. In 1917, he played a major role in what is known as the Balfour Declaration: The Zionist movement for the ‘relocation’ of the Jewish community into Palestine, which had previously been ruled by the Ottoman or Turkish Empire (wow they certainly have been in conflict for a long time haven’t they?). Anyway, that’s about the extent of my knowledge on the history of the region which is probably a good thing, lest I bore you with unrelated garble and yet more inaccurate historical references.

Back to the book. It’s fantastic and offers hours of study opportunity with intelligent and precise technical illustrations as well. It really is a great book for those after a deeper and more scientific understanding of the art by a man with a deeply scientific approach to the method. It really gets the brain working, and is far more stimulating to me than the Sunday paper on any weekend. I’ve gone back through the same chapters on many occasions searching for yet greater understanding of the techniques and the principles behind them.

It would seem to me, that no matter what understanding I have of a particular technique, I am merely looking at it from one side of a multi-dimensional sphere, where I’m never quite certain of which angle I am peering through. Sometimes, one side seems much like another, but I am certain they are worlds apart, as they are not static... Floating in and out of one world of possibility to the next. Always dynamic and never ever tiresome.

Anyway, I could go on like this for hours, but I won’t. It’s bed time as another fantastic day draws to a close and my beautiful wife is calling me to get out of the ‘martial arts zone’ and back to the ‘hubby zone.’ Thanks for reading! Cya next time.

Format is a dirty word.

The word ‘format’ often signifies defeat to the technician. It is the final solution, but it is often the cheapest and most practical one for both the client and their computer...

Over the past 10 years, I have experienced first hand how difficult it can be to solve a software issue on computers. Occasionally, there comes a point at which the inevitable must be recognised. Format is the only way of ensuring that a clean slate can be drawn on which to build the system or restore it to it’s former state.
In recognition of the perils of this journey, Microsoft have endeavoured to make our job easier. But the problem is often complicated by faulty hardware and other external pernicious influences, such as Bots, Trojans and sometimes poorly written (but malicious) software that open the gateway for other harmful data that is usually designed to integrate with the operating system (so as to keep the user unaware of it’s presence in the machine) and or software present.
It is almost impossible for the average user to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent or misleading applications offered on the World Wide Web. Due to ‘Social Engineering’ considerations and the increasingly complex and professional appearance of ‘antivirus’, ‘anti-malware/spyware, ’ the end user is often left with no idea at all surrounding the question of trust and authenticity of an online identity. Who can you trust more? CA antivirus or WinAntivirus2007? To the novice, CA sounds dull, where Winantivirus 2007 sounds modern and specific to the operating system that 98% of home users are accustomed to... Not only that, but Winantivirus will always find a problem... Guaranteed. Install it on a freshly updated XP SP2 OS, and it will find vulnerabilities and exploits that haven’t even been discovered yet!
So, from this we can determine that a large percentage of computer users fall subject to the old electronic ‘sucker punch.’ People are always attracted to the ‘free stuff’ (or in the case of Winantivirus2007, actually pay for it), believing that the stuff you get for free is just as good as the commercial product. Now in theory, there is no reason why this should not be the case. However, in practise, there are few software engineers that would develop world class software in the name of charity alone.
‘Social Engineering’ relies mostly on the end user’s habitual behaviour. Things like skipping past long winded license agreements, and terms and conditions of use. The other thing that developers of malicious and so called ‘companionware’ software prey upon, is the end user’s unrelenting search for the ‘next’ button, knowing that at the end of the tunnel, there is the magical ‘finish’ button, that will restore their faith in computing technology. –Yeah, um right.

Well, people it’s time to wake up and smell the roses...

Nothing is for free (that will fit in an ip packet anyway), and guess what?

Sometimes webpages are bogus, and hey!!! Yes you! The bank is not really emailing you, and no, sorry you really haven’t won the lottery.

Sorry to get all negative on you kids, but it’s time for some sobering facts.

'Genuine Microsoft Software’ shipped direct from China at half price might not be a good idea (or even genuine).

The Sultan of Brunei has not left you his inheritance

The best antivirus programs are definitely not Free. Free stuff in general is always stuff you can do without and remember that Trojans will not prevent STI’s.

Facebook is no substitute for real life experience and not all Indian men are airline pilots for Garuda...

Your PC is not infected! You have Winfixer: The worlds best antivirus and registry error fixer. LOL... No, Limewire is not part of windows, and no, windows updates are not received via bit-torrent! Your eight year old computer will not get any faster, no matter how much money you fork out for performance enhancing software... In fact, your new performance enhancing software will probably slow your eight year old Pentium computer down by about a third.

The very fact that you have downloaded all that crap onto your PC (that promises to fix every one ofthe problems), means that it’s time to let a professional give it the old ‘F word’ Format Baby, format. Start backing up your precious photos and quicken files now, because once it’s sick, your PC is slowly but surely going to die and Winfixer (and all of that other crap out there on the web) will only speed up the journey. May the force be with you!

Alan Strikes Back.

Well, Alan is a unique individual. Recently he entered the store with his PC in one hand and a shuriken (throwing star) in the other with a bagful of broken cd’s.

He told me that the inner Samurai had come out, and that the PC was in imminent danger of a major beating. The words sword, knife, nunchaku, death (and destruction) were uttered in the first minutes of our meeting. It became apparent to me that Alan had not only a working knowledge of the martial arts, but a propensity to use it. What worried me even more was the prospect of him applying the same computer-savvy ‘finesse’ to his nunchaku wielding revenge on a totally innocent (and wireless) mouse. (Such a waste of mousing tallent).

As the tension in his voice (mixed with signs of trepidation and nervousness) escalated, despite his obvious stress and sufferance (including sleepless nights), I found it hard to overlook the ridiculousness of the situation. The fact that Alan was close to breaking point over an image from the ‘hubble’ space telescope, and a collection of crappy clips from www.space.com -seemed paradoxically amusing, yet terribly unimportant to me. But being the professional soldier-geek I am, with a perfectly straight face (and obvious concern for the striking edge of his katana) I set about pacifying this misguided 21st century warrior... clearly an individual with a vendetta, for to exact revenge on this poor computer was what he had in mind. The PC had done what any self respecting Windows PC would do when crippled by the debilitating curse of a limited user account.... It failed, it failed again, and eventually, it crashed.

This was the last straw for Alan, He cracked: The inner samurai was released and out came an arsenal of martial arts weaponry that would change the course of Alan’s computing history for ever. Suddenly, a moment of sanity overcame him when the 3rd Shuriken he released from his fists of fury, sliced through an insolent office 2007 (disk 2) cd, sending a shard of brittle spear-like plastic back at his own head. “You won’t win, you bastard” cried Alan, and henceforth, engaged on the ‘many minute’ journey to the computer repair shop with an already submissive PC under his right arm, and bloodied shards of Microsoft office CD’s. This was real, this meant war... This was ummm..... bloody stupid I’ll admit, but true.
So we were back to the wall (in the context of the solution to this hellish situation). To unleash Alan into the ‘real world’ of computing, to give him *dunt dunt dahhh* administrative privileges... would *gasp* mean that he could seriously screw it up and *gasp* truly make our lives a living hell. Well when he told me of his method of troubleshooting (the shruriken attack and sworn oath to thrust the sword through the LCD the next time he saw ‘access denied’) I realised that Alan was ready for his first grading in computer-do.
Like an over-eager student who rushes headfirst into my fist, he now explores the world of windows full access permissions. Seriously scary, but a necessary part of releasing the computerized samurai-geek within. Bonsai!!!