Bong Sau notes

When I asked here “is Bong Sau a deflective technique” well the answer is no, apparently. Bong Sau is certainly not a block, but neither is it a deflection; it is used purely for sensing where your opponent’s arm is and once you have made contact, and have that information, then the technique has fulfilled its purpose. One of the Sifus tonight gave us a demonstration to show that you could hardly see the technique when he applied it. As soon as he made contact and knew where the strike was coming from then, quick as lightening, he went into another technique to deal with the strike.

When practising the bong lap drill tonight my partner and I slowed it down considerably which I found very useful. Fast drilling of the techniques is rewarding and afterwards you feel as if you’ve had a good work out, but as we’re learning we also need to slow down and think about what we’re doing. My training partner gave the useful analogy of learning to write; when you learn to write as a child you start very slowly but as an adult you can dash off your signature in no time. I suppose Wing Chun is similar to any other manual skill, such as carpentry or bricklaying, in that you need to start slowly but you’ll get faster as you progress to master craftsman stage, i.e., Bruce Lee

Correlative Analytics (google’s way of doing science)

A friend sent me this link to an article describing a way of doing science (making predictions) without any theory or hypothetical model to explain the observed data. Instead, if the data is large enough (petabyte levels of data) then what are required are clever statistical algorithms to find correlations in the data and thereby make predictions. No theories or hypothetical models needed to see which one fits the data best.

These are powerful techniques opened up by having access to huge amounts of data and the writer of the article argues that these techniques will not involve discarding the scientific method but could complement it.

We Will Rock You

I was delighted to be invited on a girly trip to London last Thursday to see the musical We Will Rock You. As Gen’s brother, Jon Boydon, was playing the lead role of Galileo on that particular evening we knew it was going to be extra special. We Will Rock You is playing at the Dominion Theatre in the West End which is an old art deco theatre and, to me, seemed very big (it seats over 2000).

Jon was kind enough to give us a tour backstage before the performance and this was really interesting as we had a go of the camera where the actors were filmed whenever they were projected on to the big screen on stage. We were also shown where the band played in the wings and all the costumes that the actors got changed into as well as some of the settings and scenery (there is a big setting of Tottenham Court Road tube station which appears during the middle of the show). Backstage seemed to me to be a warren of corridors, little stairways and trap doors so goodness knows how the actors remember their way around to rush to the right entrance to the stage.

I don’t often go to musicals and I’d never heard of We Will Rock You even though it’s been going since 2002. It wasn’t what I was expecting, which was a story about Queen, I won’t spoil the story but the surprise element made it all the better. The script was written by Ben Elton and the Queen lyrics were cleverly worked into it, and of course Queen songs lend themselves to that kind of spectacular showing and big stage musical production (both Brian May and Roger Taylor are musical supervisors for the show apparently). For once I bought a programme which was worth the 4 quid as it gave an impressive amount of information and wasn’t just full of adverts. The music is live (of course!) and the band members have played with some high profile rock musicians including Eric Clapton, Meatloaf, Whitesnake and Black Sabbath.

Jon was excellent switching back and forth with ease, as required by the role, from rather gauche and awkward stutterer to confident big stage rock star. He had real charisma and stage presence in what was a very energetic and physically demanding role. The audience were very participative and really getting into it, and of course everyone knew the lyrics and at the end were singing along. There was a great deal of noise and applause at the end of the show along with a well deserved standing ovation.

Afterwards we went to a bar next to the theatre and I popped out to watch with interest as Jon was mobbed by admirers as he emerged from the stage door.

Jon joined us briefly for a drink then headed off home to have dinner and wind down before bed. He was saying that this sort of acting lifestyle is about 5 hours behind the rest of us as of course they’re late to bed and late to rise and do their main work during the evening.

We walked back to our hotel at the end of the evening tired out but happy after a very full day.

Madame Butterfly

I’ve been feeling quite fed up the last couple of months and looking through the Metro yesterday morning I discovered that Madam Butterfly was on at the Alexandra Theatre that very night. Great, something different from my usual routine, so on the spur of the moment I rang a friend who said she’d come with me, booked tickets for us and we were set for the evening.

It was the Ellen Kent production of Madam Butterfly with the Ukrainian National Opera that we went to see, and we got the £21 mid range tickets and were sat right up in the gods. But this was a good thing as it gave us a great overview of what was going on on stage as well as the fantastic scenery and settings. I’ve seen Madam Butterfly years ago with the opera sung in English, however, this was sung in the original Italian and I was surprised and pleased to see that it was subtitled. I know roughly the story, but it’s good to be able to understand the details of the plot and what the singers are actually on about. Subtitles were displayed right at the top of the stage on a board which looked like the sort of board you see at New St Station to give you the train times. I’ve only been twice to the opera (both times Madam Butterfly), and I don’t know if subtitling a performance like this is the done thing, but I think it’s a splendid idea which should encourage more people like me to come to the opera as they will understand what’s going on, though I can imagine some venues being too snotty to do it.

The previous version of Madam Butterfly that I’ve seen was an excellent production and sung in English (and a good translation as far as I could judge), however, the music and singing in last night’s performance moved me far more. My friend Maria thinks, and I tend to agree, that this is because the opera is meant to be sung in Italian, and when sung in English you’re hearing it in a language that it was not originally designed for, no matter how good the translation is. As the music and language are intertwined perhaps this is why I found the Italian version more engaging.

The role of Madam Butterfly was superbly performed by a young Korean soprano, Elena Dee, in her first professional role. I got the impression reading the review in the Metro that Ellen Kent, whose production it was, doesn’t like overweight opera singers and won’t employ them no matter how good their voices are. However, my friend Maria reckons that opera is one of the performing arts where looks, age and body shape don’t matter; only the voice matters. I tend to disagree when opera is a viewing spectacle and Elena Dee, being young and good looking, really looked the part of Madam Butterfly, played a wonderful tragic heroine and had the most gorgeous voice. The tenor, Andriy Perfilov, playing Lieutenant Pinkerton was excellent and being young, handsome and fit really suited for the role.

I’ve heard several versions of the famous aria at the beginning of the second act, and Elena Dee’s that we heard last night was absolutely gorgeous. However, I’m going to be really picky now and say that Maria and I agreed that her voice tended to lose its power in the lower registers – the best versions of Madam Butterfly that I’ve heard have a warmth and power and vibrancy in the lower notes which to me really packs an emotional punch, but she’s a young singer and certainly has a beautiful voice and I’m sure this will come in time.

There was tremendous applause for her at the end of the show and tremendous applause, as well as some boos and hisses, for Andriy Perfilov in his role as the cad Pinkerton.

The audience were the usual middle aged couples but also a surprising, to me, number of young people dressed up for the evening (well young women to be exact as I don’t think Madam Butterfly would normally attract groups of young men on a night out).

I’ve never been to the Alexandra Theatre before and the seats we were sat in were quite good as they were at the corner of the grand circle – not right at the top, but with a wall behind us so that we could lean forward without annoying anyone behind.

It was a wonderful evening and I’ll certainly go and see another Ellen Kent production if I get the chance.

La La La Human Steps

Last Tuesday, on the recommendation of a friend, we went to see the dance company La La La Human Steps at the Hippodrome. The production was called Amjad and though I don’t pretend to entirely understand the concept behind it (partly because I was too mean to buy a programme) it did seem to have a Swan Lake theme with the music sounding reminiscent of it in places.

I’ve seen Swan Lake but this was a modern piece and incorporated more acrobatic movements. All the dancers, male and female, looked very muscular and there was an interesting mixture of body types and heights (unlike the few classical ballets I’ve seen the dancers varied in height from quite short to very tall). It was impressive to see the skill and athleticism of some of the moves. At a couple of points, when the male dancers were on stage, one of them looked as if he were doing a pirouette, but horizontally in the air! (Apparently this is the barrel move and it’s certainly impressive to watch simply for the skill and sheer physical courage that it must involve). All the dancers seemed to have superb control where every gesture from posture to fingertips seemed to have meaning.

The music was quite mournful and was played live by a group of four musicians (grand piano, cello and two violins). There was good use of lighting (rather cold lighting) which seemed to catch the movements of the dancers very well (at first I thought the dancers had finger extensions as their swan like gestures were so graceful, but I think that this was the light emphasising the hand movements).

The piece was long – it started at 7.30 pm and continued until 9.15 pm with no interval and yet I didn’t get bored or restless.

I felt that the audience was unusual for a ballet in that it consisted of a good mixture of ages; along with well heeled retired people who, I imagine, have the time and money to attend ballets, there were people our age as well as a lot of youngsters cheering and whistling loudly at the end which made me feel I must be attending something cool

Global Party

Yesterday evening we went to a “Global Party” held at the Cross in Moseley. This was a very nice affair with a good live band, the Late Arrivals (though unfortunately the sound system didn’t do them justice as it was so loud all definition appeared to be lost in a mush of noise). However, the main reason we went was to see our belly dance teacher Yasmine perform. She put on a sterling performance which had everyone looking on in admiration at her artistry in which she made the most difficult moves look relaxed and easy. Yasmine explains to us in our classes that belly dancing is an ancient North African folkloric dance and this is the emphasis she puts on it when teaching. The more modern cabaret version of the dance came about later.

Belly dancing has an emphasis on isolation of the muscles so that they move while the rest of the body is kept still, for example, in some moves you endeavour to keep the torso, neck and head still while the legs and the side abdominal muscles (the obliques I think these are called) do the work. This concept of isolating certain muscles seems similar to what is practiced in hip hop though of course the dances are very different.

One thing I have noticed is that belly dancing seems to bring out the exhibitionist in some people. At the end of Yasmine’s performance she started to invite people to dance with her and, while being flattered at the invitation, most of us will still let her take centre stage as even with a few lessons we know we’re going to look really rubbish beside her. However, a few people seemed to take this as an invitation to take over the stage, try to push Yasmine out of the limelight and make themselves the centre of attention. Yasmine, of course, handled the matter with grace and inclusiveness, showing tolerance and friendliness to the people concerned who were … shameless, is the word that springs to mind. This is not a judgment, merely an observation, and it can be very funny in a cringe making kind of way.

Facebook

Someone sent me this link which is a rant and very biased, rather than a balanced piece of journalism. It does, however, bring up some interesting stuff about the alleged philosophical and political ideas behind facebook.

Python and Jython: they’re the main two

I’ve come across some differences between python and jython while amending a grinder test harness. Using python 2.5.1 I can do this to get a uri embedded in a string:

tup = text.partition('rdf:about="')
resourceTup = tup[2].partition('"')
print resourceTup[0]

partition returns an array of substring before the separator, the separator itself, and the substring after the separator.

Of course, when running under jython, it would error with:
’string’ object has no attribute ‘partition’

But this works in jython:

tup = text.split('rdf:about="')
resourceTup = tup[1].split('"')
print resourceTup[0]

I wondered if jython were using the java String class as you can use split and join, however, there is no indexOf method etc as there is in the java String class.

Here is a useful command to find out what methods an object supports

dir(str)

and can be used in jython to find out what methods a Java class supports

dir(String.class)

There are of course far more fundamental differences between the two than itty bitty string handling but there’s only one way to find out which one is best: fight!

Wing Chun (notes on importance of relaxation)

This week Sifu reiterated the importance of relaxation and of maintaining the correct structure. When practicing fook sau or tan sau, and when your partner is pressing into you, concentrate on maintaining the angle of the shape (by using your triceps); if you try to counter by tensing your biceps and using strength you will fail if you are weaker, and even if you are stronger you will tire yourself.

To paraphrase Sifu:

Tension slows you down – tension in the muscles decreases speed.
Tension shows intention (your opponent can see or feel what you will do next).

Unfortunately, Monday night I yet again got bruises on my arms through not applying the tan sau structure correctly. Tonight one of the instructors took me through it slowly and it was interesting to feel how tan sau should be when applied properly. There should be no clashing, but friction, as your opponents arm travels down yours as the blow is deflected rather than blocked. Wrist must be kept straight in line with the forearm and fingers extended. The clash seemed to occur perhaps because I wasn’t turning enough in my stance or wasn’t turning the arm fully into the tan sau position (the arm should “corkscrew” up into position). I was perhaps also pushing outwards with the forearm rather than concentrating on the centre line.

Programming Collective Intelligence

It’s easy to get so involved in your day to day work that you don’t find the time to read around the wider areas of your profession (or at least I find this to be the case). Because of this, one of my colleagues suggested that we have a “geek book club” where we read articles and books that are related to software development, and through this I’ve encountered books such as Object Thinking and Pragmatic Programmer that I otherwise wouldn’t have heard of. For holiday reading over Christmas one of my colleagues suggested that we read Programming Collective Intelligence.

Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran

This is a book about machine learning and AI in relation to developing Web 2.0 applications so there are chapters about search engines, spam filtering and making recommendations a la Amazon. These chapters I haven’t read but, as I’d implemented a genetic algorithm at university, what I immediately did was to skip to chapter 11 entitled Evolving Intelligence which is about Genetic Programming.

Genetic Programming is a term I’d not heard of before but it is, apparently, an offshoot of Genetic Algorithms. The difference, as I understand it, is that Genetic Algorithms start with an initial population of data structures which represent the answers to a problem. These data structures are amended using the evolutionary concepts of crossover and mutation and a fitness function which chooses the fittest structures (answers) to go on to the next generation. However, as the author explains, Genetic Programming evolves the algorithm itself, not just the parameters or results of an algorithm. In Segaran’s example the algorithm is modelled as a parse tree, which is the way in which programs are often first broken down by a compiler or an interpreter. This tree representation of the algorithm is then subject to crossover and mutation to evolve “better” programs as defined by the fitness function.

This kind of programming, the author tells us, has been used in fields such as optics, gaming, evolving scientific inventions such as antennas for NASA, designing a concert hall shape that gives the best acoustics etc. Though this is only one chapter in a book it goes further than the basics, for example, it touches on how you can provide the algorithm with memory and the algorithmic population with shared memory to help it learn longer term strategies, and points you in the direction of implementing this. I was most impressed and wished that I’d had this book to hand when first learning about the subject. I’ve only read chapter 11 and a bit of chapter 5 but these have already given me a good overview of the subject of genetic algorithms/programming, refreshed my memory on stuff I’ve already learned, taught me new things as well as helped me brush up on the python language. If these chapters are anything to go by then the entire book is well worth reading.