I competed in the Pennsylvania Open Judo Championships yesterday. It was a double elimination shiai (tournament) hosted at Master Eugene's school in Cranberry. This was the first time I participated in - and even witnessed - a judo competition.

I won a silver medal, and my record was 3-1. I entered the 175-151 senior men intermediate division. Here are videos of my matches:

1. I submitted J.R. DeFilippo (Kim) with okuri eri jime (sliding collar choke).
2. I pinned Rob Lynn (Joseki) with tate shiho gatame (high mount).
3. Mark deRouville (Brick) threw me with drop seoinage for gold.
4. I submitted Matt Fisher (Penn State) with koshi jime (clock choke) for silver.

Even though I ate a big pasta dinner last night and didn't even try to make weight for the tournament, I still weighed in at 152 pounds and weighed 151 after going to the bathroom before my matches. Therefore the guy who won (152 pounds) and I were the lighest judoka in the bracket.

Everyone had to wear a white or a blue belt - or a white or blue gi - during our matches. Even the black belts generally conformed to this rule; although, a lot of people just ignored it too. The competition ran late by over an hour, and I didn't feel like I had much energy while waiting. Somehow I had more than enough cardio, since I didn't really break much of a sweat or work that hard even during the one match I lost. Everyone else seemed exausted, so I guess I didn't work hard enough. I hope the reason is that I was just very efficient and/or had good cardio. Mentally I was drained by the end of the day, though.

I had fun during the judo shiai. JR trains at Kim's in Brendwood too. Rob Lynn invited me to train with him in Altoona, but that's a long drive unless I can get someone else to come with me. Matt Fisher trains at the Penn State Judo Team. I'm not too concerned about my loss to Mark deRouville, since he is the NJ State Champion and also placed in every skill division in his weight class. But I will learn from my mistakes and beat him next time. Good guys; it was an honor to meet them. I hope next time during the shiai I can relax more, and maybe win by ippon with a throw at least once. :)

I wrote my first Firefox 1.5 extension called "Personal Toolbar Button." Of course, it simply adds a toolbar button that toggles on/off the "Personal Toolbar" toolbar. This is where I keep all my bookmarks, but too many toolbars wastes useful screen real estate. Install it at extension's web site. (Thanks Mozilla.org!)

I was inspired by the web developer extension which uses the same trick to toggle its toolbar. I created a new GUID for the extension using an online UUID generator. This tutorial at Mozillazine provided the template for the extension. Roachfiend's tutorial filled in the gaps on how to package it as an installable XPI. Oh, and I used the DOM Inspector to figure out which CSS declarations/IDs to use.

The entire project took me about two hours because I kept making stupid mistakes. I originally wanted to write an extension for a programmable set of buttons for Firefox's toolbar, but I quickly realized that was too ambitious. Programming the extension was fun and a very practical use of my time - at least for me. All in all, I'm very pleased with the result. I hope someone else finds this project useful as well...

Had surgery on my ear today. I first injured my ear hurt my ear back in March. I was rolling with a judo shodan (black belt) and tapped him with a choke. Then during standing randori, he schooled me with a billion uchi mata throws. The result was a broken toe and cauliflower ear. Pictures provided upon request. :x

This was my first surgical procedure. It was weird. I felt naked under my gown. My weight was 154 lbs, heart rate 55 bpm, and blood pressure 125/65. The nurse inserted the most painless needle ever into a vein my hand. Then she retracted the needle and replaced it with a plastic catheter. That was actually more annoying than the needle.

I recieved a general anesthetic. It was strange... I don't remember being giving the anesthetic nor falling asleep, but I work up in a different room. The doctor removed the fluid and blood clots, then sewed it back up. He stitched it back up along with a tube to hold the skin and cartilage so they heal together. As the anesthetic wears off it gets more and more painful, but I have a prescription for the good stuff. :p

The doctor said he saw a lot of crushed and fractured cartilage in there. He doesn't want me doing any more BJJ or judo for about 2 weeks after I see him on Friday. However, I hope to do some non-contact drilling and rolling as soon as I can.

Its creepy and hysterical

What's better than the "noooooooooo!" ? the smackery, of course. (If I watch this one too many times I laugh so hard I cry and then I hyperventilate and can't breathe, and then I die. (probably))

Is it Cosby? or Lyrics Born? who cares

WInifred discovers the ugly truth

classic song, classic hair cut, classic safety not gauranteed.

it's only funny because it's a compendium of cliches.

ulitmate suffering

I apparently slept through a major facelift for Slashdot. I haven't really been motivated to dive into stories, given the same old "lather, rise, anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux, repeat" cycle and available news for nerds syndicated exactly how I want it to be on my own site(s), and that has meant completely missing /.'s evolution from "portal that looks like ass" to "portal that is actually kinda aesthetically pleasing".

Just another sign that the world is about to end, I guess.

I competed in the Kumite Classic this past Saturday (May 27, 2006). It is a no-gi submission wrestling and a gi-required Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament. (A gi is the typicially white uniform some martial artists wear.) My record was:

• Men's Gi White-Belt 145 lbs: 1-1 (Second Place)
• Men's No-Gi Intermediate 145 lbs: 1-1 (Second Place)

My record is now 7-6. I had a lot of fun at the tournament, but I am not satisfied. Man, I'm a little pissed for not getting first place. I have a lot to work on.

Gi Division

In my first gi match, I defeated Matt Jubara by scoring 16 points. He was very strong and very tough. You can watch a video of Jubara vs me.

My second gi match was against Mat "Rosco" Rosborough for the championship. He was very tough too. We went into overtime, and I eventually ran out of gas in the tank. It was very long: the match lasted over 8 minutes... I have to work on my cardio so I can roll for 10 minutes or more at a high intensity. Watching it, I don't think my technique was as smooth as I would like. You can view a video of Rosco defeating me.

No-Gi Division

In my first no-gi match, I faced a karate guy (I could tell because he wore black karate gi pants and no shirt); although, he said he did study grappling. Donnie took care of him a few years ago in the advanced division. Now he was back, but in my intermediate bracket. Oh well. I owned him and finished the dude with a RNC. Watch a video of my easy no-gi match.

In my second no-gi match I faced Rosco again. This time I scored a super sweet judo throw. I was actually trying for Harai Goshi, but Randy told me the throw was really Harai Makikomi (on further reflection, it probably was harai goshi). It was mostly instinct: I was setting up a throw and just saw the opening. In judo, that would have been ippon. However, this is grappling so no soup for me! Rosco rolled when we landed and I felt off balance in side control. Somehow I ended up with reverse guard and tried for a toe hold, but I screwed it up. Still, with 45 second to go the score was tied and I was winning with an advantage. However, I was still tired and lost when he passed my guard as I opened it to attack. Randy uploaded a partial clip of Rosco vs Me in no-gi. (I wish he got the whole thing so I could go over my many mistakes.)

Analysis

Ironically if I just stalled from guard a little bit then I would have won. However, that is stupid and not honorable. No excuses: I lost twice to the same guy in both championship matches. I have to work on my control, my cardio, and my leg locks. I have to be able to finish long matches grapple at 110% throughout the fight. This month I shall try to improve these aspects of my game.

There is more about the tournament at the CMU Grappling Club's tournament page or my training log.

SO blah blah blah, I don't like SuDoKu. I have no smarmy comments on how its teh dumbxx0rz or how its adherents are the lamxxz0rz... (if you came here looking for that, I apologize and admit that I'm slipping) infact on paper it would seem that "this would be right up my alley." A puzzle? With numbers? Sounds cool.

But it leaves me cold. Which is too bad. Because The WashPost has an enormous "funny dog comic" section (Big ups to "Mutts" and Hillary Price's "Rhymes with Orange") and SuDoKu features prominently. Even the Jumbles aren't enough.

So imagine my surprise when I came upon Terry Stickles Sticklers... which was just a thinly veiled Algebra problem!
"What positive number has a square who, when subtracted from its double, equals 24?" Man, did that make me miss grammar school. I'm not sure if that is better than SuDoKu, or far, far worse. But for what its worth, I did it anyway.

Then while getting my haircut today, my barbzardrist(strong bad link left as an exercise for the reader) asked me for some help on her kids homework (one of those "you have a week off from school, so do some work!" packets). There was a relatively easy one: "find 5 three digit numbers, between 300 and 600, where the middle digit is odd, the first and last digits are even, and the sum of the digits is 13." Simple enough. (and it only took a little while before I realized the pattern...)

But here comes the hubris part; there was another puzzle; 5 names, 5 cars. By process of elimination, determine who drives what cars. I believe there were 4 clues.

BUT I TOTALLY READ WAAAAAY too far into it! Like, the first clue had "Yesterday, Church and Stanley went to lunch with a guy who had a silver car.", the last clue had "Stanley has a dull car colour" (gray), and the second clue had " A gray and a red car drove past Stevens house yesterday"

So I link all those together and say "A ha! Those TWO cars were on their way to lunch with the silver car guy, and they MUST have driven past Stavens house, and Stanley has a gray car, Thus Church drives a Saturn! Err, I mean the RED car!"*

*This would be a totally valid conclusion for an LSAT logic games test puzzle. They really have a thing about Saturns.

But this was not an LSAT question. This was a first graders homework.

After a couple of other answers didn't add up, I realized "Oh, none of these clues are temporally/causally connected. Infact each clue is just ' this name does/doesn't have this colour car. figure it out.'

I tipped extra on the haircut so she wouldn't tell anyone about that.

Why? and Who's got the Money?!? being the top two.

something tells me she's gonna get SBLOUNSKCHED!

Its monday, and my back is sore from ditch-diggery.

Lawrence Weiner and Brian Jungen.

Jungen's Prototypes for new understanding comes really frickin' close... like an Airline Industries rave flyer made flesh (RIP Todd Baldwin).

Ok I admit it, I have been lazy recently. Not much had happened in the WRT scene in a while.
OpenWRT now has a great Web-Interface, DD-WRT got better on a daily basis while Sveasofts lost all its developers except James and the quality of their firmware releases declined even more.

However there finally was a somewhat working "dev build" recently that I and others took a look at. It became obvious that Sveasoft had switched to a new kernel and it turns out that kernel is a direct copy from OpenWRT.

Sveasoft had been using OpenWRT parts in the past but now they are basically using it as the foundation for their rip-off scheme. As always they have not released the corresponding source code to the subscribers, not even on request.

In reaction to this obvious GPL violation, OpenWRT posted this NOTICE OF LICENSE TERMINATION. Basically this means that Sveasoft has no right to use any parts of OpenWRT in their firmwares anymore.

There is a discussion going on about this on the OpenWRT forums as well as on digg.com.
Feel free to join it and make sure to notify your favourite news sites about this issue. Sveasoft has been violating the GPL for a long time now but they have gone one step too far this time.

"One of the main reasons for caffeine giving you a wake-up call is that it forces the liver to hydrolise glycogen into glucose." (src) Glycogen "is the main form of carbohydrate storage in animals and occurs primarily in the liver and muscle tissue." (src) Granted those two sources are not good references. I need to do additional research. However, if true, would diet caffeinated beverages not work for diabetics (since the caffeine increases their sugar level)? Also, would caffeinated beverages degrade athletic performance by depleting your muscle glycogen supplies? More investigation is called for. Any insight anyone?

CMU Grappling kicking ass, taking names - Highlights from our tournament in December via Google Video. I'm Jimmy. :-) There is another tournament in March, but I haven't decided whether I will compete in it. Many of my friends are going to enter, but I am burnt out from tournaments. I'd really like to skip one - just for once - and catch my breath. Oh, and I've been diverting my whining to a different journal to spare you, my /. friends and other readers. :-)

I hope you get your five bucks worth. Much obliged! Even if you are a convict, I'll still use the power of TF against Mrs. Haversham. I've got no shame.

For you /.'ers, I'll probably be scarce round these parts. I hear Total Fark can lead to complete mental breakdown.

So if you found yourself in Vancouver, BC for a period of weeks, WWYD?

/Hat tip to RW

On Exams. I feel better though still stressed out. In the real world, I refer to documentation all the time even for basic stuff just to confirm things. Why do profs expect you to know everything from memory?

On Championships. Wow. I was afraid this might happen. Many of the people that I roll with during practice really want to prove themselves.

The first person I fought beat himself up for a few days afterward. I tried comforting him and instructing where he went wrong. Now he really wants a rematch even though I just want to have fun!!!

The guy who took third wanted to spar very hard Wednesday, because we didn't get to fight at the tournament. I think he wanted to know whether he could have beat me if he won his match. Instead I gather it clouded his judgement. During randori I tapped him twice. However, I was really sad and just played around for the rest of the session.

I grapple just to have fun and lose weight. That's it. I'm very worried that now I'm expected to do well at every future lesson and tourney, and everyone will be gunning for me! That is very stressful and not fun at all. :-/

On the other hand it was actually a relief yesterday when I went to the advanced BJJ practice, since I got decidedly crushed when rolling with the blue belts. I usually go on beginner BJJ day with most of the other white belts, and I was beginning to get nervous when my luck would run out!

Unexpected Consequences Odd that is felt better losing than winning. On the bright side, a clothing manufacturer wanted to sponsor me.... Methinks the advertiser is a tad too enthusiastic, or that he couldn't get Fedor to do endorce his product, or that he tipped the bottle too much. Still gave me a chuckle! :-D

Ya Drew! Thanks to a buddy of mine who also fought, you can download a quicktime highlight clip set to some funny music. Feel free to download more videos from our club if you wish.

I promise more Geeky stuff later...