Chatter Of The Squirrel

ISO Country Codes

For whatever work related reason… I’m looking up the ISO list of country names…

And I saw this: TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA.

Now, how did that happen? Did Taiwan piss of ISO ?

Don’t need glasses no more

Enough said.

GenCon 2008

Someone asked me, that if I had all the money in the world, where would I want to go?

Everyone will probably start thinking of walls, tombs, or falls that they must see. Dead things. Or dead things made by dead people FOR dead people. Me, I started thinking of life, especially where people are teeming with PASSION.

My first answer: I will want to be in Indiana this weekend.

This is the GenCon Indy weekend. Probably the most important event for gaming all year. Where game companies show off and release new products. Where unwashed geeks flock to see the latest cool games. Games. Demos. Panels. Tournaments. Painting competitions. Painting classes. LOTS.

Where I will be able to see things like THIS first hand.

Now THIS is a thing of beauty. A Slayer Helljack, crouching over a girl holding a teddy-bear. Beautifully sculpted, fantastic pose. Here’s an art piece that tells a story! It inspires terror, menace, and a tiny sliver of hope! Will this mechanical warmachine powered by necromantic energies show mercy to this hapless human, or will it reason that it will reap more suffering from letting the traumatised orphan live.

It brings a tear to my eye, and makes me glad that Cryx is my chosen faction when I started this hobby.

Georgia Invaded

Everything I know about Georgia, I learnt from 10 Days in Asia, which is a pretty neat party game that is very easy to teach and pick up. Wolf has an open set at his shop, and we play it at every available opportunity. That is… when no one else brought a cooler boardgame to play…

Don’t get me wrong, 10 Days is a good game. One evening we lost track of time and played till 3am Sunday morning. But sometimes, you can’t scratch the power-gamer itch with an entry level boardgame like this. Games like this will sell way better. You’ll make more friends playing this game.

But that itch some of us have, that you people with poor math skills and mediocre sense of strategy could never understand, yarr… For that, we play something like Colosseum,

Digressing again…

Anyways…

Yes, I know a bit more about Georgia than some people.

It’s a small country that has a border with Russia.

And yesterday, it was invaded. Way to steal the limelight from the Olympics. But will anyone care though?

Russia is starting something. I keep repeating that they’re gonna start something. Is this obvious aggression obvious enough for everyone yet?

What can happen now? Will America send in troops? Nah. No oil to protect. And fighting against a big scary dog with nukes. No Jews to protect either. Bush can’t even get people to stop Iran from building nukes, and those guys are going to actively threaten Israel and start a nuclear war.

Is the UN or NATO going to do anything? Without even looking at their track record for averting military aggression… Russia has too many allies in both already.

Interesting times. Oh, interesting times.

What will be fun though, is to wager if there’ll be any humanitarian outcry from Malaysia. The clowns in government have always been all too ready to criticize American and Israeli. Let’s see if they’ll even squeak at the big scary dog…

Gyaku Kote

Gyaku-Kote, keep the locked-wrist in your centre-line. From mid-sternum, roll it in a small circle, and downwards to navel-level, keeping it in the centre the whole time and not pulling it to the left or right. This is not a throw technique, you’re not using your strength to push the opponent to the ground. You’re just bending the wrist, and his shoulder should drop on its own.

After the take-down, one foot under the shoulder, the other foot forward and lateral. Grasp the hand with: your 3rd & 4th finger on his thenar muscles, and your thenar muscle between his 1st & 2nd carpal bone. With the wrist grasped and locked thus, his fingers will be loose and open. Now ‘help’ him bend his fingers into a fist.

Tsuki-Ten Ichi, after the Uwa-uke, the leading side torso is deliberately left forward & open to entice the opponent. When the follow-up attack comes, then the torso is pulled back and the attack blocked with Uchi-uke & Shita-uke. After ‘pulling’ back the exposed side, you should be back in the normal & natural fighting stance. Do not pull so far back that your hips become incorrectly positioned to counter-attack with a kick.