CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

Yesterday, I attended my first aikido class in almost 5 years! Needless to say I was a little rusty. The main point in aikido is to be relaxed and fluid when performing the techniques, but I could tell I was forcing all my movements. In any case, my mind and body felt a lot better after the class. It is kind of like yoga, but you learn self defense in the process. I’ve also volunteered to update the Rochester of Aikido website. Nobody has updated the site in 5 years! Time for a change.

In hockey news, the Calgary Flames win on the road again. I wonder if playing at home makes the team lose focus or what. I’ll make a bold prediction that the Flames will get their act together for game 6. Go Flames go!

I can’t believe how cheap DVD burners are getting.  If you search on PriceGrabber or Froogle, many 8x or 4x DVD-+RW drives are under $100.  The price of hard drives are also quite low now.  If you check TechBargains.com, they mention that CompUSA is selling a 250 GB harddrive for $159 (and no rebates either).

Now for the hockey news. The Calgary Flames lost again today to the San Jose Sharks. It doesn’t look too good now that San Jose has the momentum. We’ll see how strong this Flames team really is come Monday night. Keys to a Flames victory are the powerplay and more focus on getting to the scoring areas. I think we’ll see a different team tomorrow.  

It has been raining here heavily since last night. I couldn’t sleep last night because I awoke to the strangest of nightmares. Can anyone tell me what it means when you see a white ghost like figure whispering to you in a high pitch voice that “your time has come”? I could feel my soul leaving my body for a couple of seconds and then I screamed and woke up! I have been looking what this all means at DreamMoods.com, and apparently the ghost signifies that I

may be afraid of death and dying. Alternatively, ghosts are representative of something that is no longer obtainable or within reach. It indicates a feeling of disconnection from life and society. This dream may be a calling for you to move on and abandon your outdated modes of thinking and behavior.

It is possible that the ghost is the “Grim Reaper”. According to the same website, the Grim Reaper represents

the negative, rejected aspects of your personality. It represents aspects of yourself that you have repressed. Alternatively, it symbolizes death or the end of something.

This is scary. I am not sure what will happen now.  

Yesterday, I was getting all hyped up about hybrid vehicles when I came across a Slashdot article about how hybrid cars don’t live up to mileage claims. After following up on those links, I am now a lot more sceptical about getting one.

By the way, go Flames go! The Calgary Flames are looking for the sweep in the playoff series with the San jose Sharks after Tuesday’s win to lead the series 2-0.

Wow! This past weekend saw the gasoline prices at the pump soar to $2.07 / gallon. I guess its time to seriously think about getting those hybrid vehicles, like the Toyota Prius.

Another bit of news worth mentioning is that the offline Playfair project is finally back online. I am quite curious to see if the Apple lawyers will find another way to shut this project down again.

I rented and saw “The Last Samurai” last night and it was pretty cool. The samurai fighting sequences kinda reminded me of all the Aikido lessons I took when I was younger. I attended religiously for 4 years at Calgary Aikikai. I’ve tested and received a 5th kyu ranking. However, I know most of the techniques needed to get brown belt (3rd kyu). In Rochester MN, I attended the Aikido of Rochester dojo off and on for a couple years.

Oh by the way, go Flames go! Hopefully, tonight we’ll go up 2-0 in the series.

I never got around to finishing up on the other WebSphere XML article, but here’s an interim article which I think is quite eye-opening. If you are an IT web applications architect making the decision between Domino and WebSphere or both, you need to know how well the product aligns with the task it is being asked to perform. For example, we all should know that Domino is an excellent choice for collaborative tasks and WebSphere is great at transactional based tasks. More.