Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in ironphoenix's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 12th, 2012
10:54 am	Martial arts fun Fool me once... good enough! Yippee! Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
10:42 am	Registered! I've just registered for the US Aikido Federation Summer Camp: a week of pretty much flat-out aikido, at the end of July. It promises to be intense! Current Mood: chipper (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
3:01 pm	This weekend's reflection ( Reflecting on the Good Shepherd... ) Current Mood: mellow (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
10:26 am	Quantum question Read this article on quantum entanglement first. If your brain hasn't imploded yet, here's a question: What would happen if Alice and Bob checked the correlations of their measurements before Victor decided whether or not to turn on his entangler? (Link ganked from dagibbs!) Current Mood: thoughtful (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
9:03 am	A capella Pentatonix' a capella cover of Goyte's "Somebody that I used to know" (3m 26s). Beautifully done. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
11:56 am	Duolingo Duolingo is impressing me quite a bit... I was invited in to the beta this weekend, and have been working on my Spanish. The premise is pretty neat: you mix various language exercises with translating stuff from the web, and they use the crowdsourced translations to cover their operating costs so you learn for free. The implementation is also very good: I haven't found it buggy, and it's engaging, which is really important for language learning, especially when it's a hobby. Currently, they only offer English, Spanish, and German, but more languages (supposedly including Klingon!) are on the way. I don't think it's sufficient to become fluent, but I think it can help one reach basic competency in a practical and enjoyable way. Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 18th, 2012
10:39 am	Test date! My ikkyu (what would be brown belt in most arts that use colors for ranks) test in aikido is scheduled... Wednesday the 28th. This is the last one I'll do here; black belt tests are done out of town, at seminars. It has been a long time coming, in large part because I've put it off. Current Mood: calm (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
10:29 pm	Mixing success 5 parts table cream 4 parts Licor 43 3 parts Scotch (I used Grant's Sherry Cask) 1 part Cointreau Shake gently with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. This is a fairly strong [ETA: and sweet] cocktail, with smoothness from the cream and 43, alcohol warmth coming mainly from the Scotch, vanilla and other more subtle flavors from the 43, and an orange note (which comes through especially in the finish) from the Cointreau. Current Mood: happy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
8:22 pm	Roll tes cennes! J'ai entendu ceci à la radio hier soir... trop drôle, et trop catchy! Translation for the non-Francos: I heard this on the radio last night... too catchy! The track is titled "Roll Your Pennies" and is a pretty good parody of the hip-hop obsession with money; catchy, too! Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Monday, March 12th, 2012
3:10 pm	SmoQue Shack Warren (the original chef at Sweetgrass, which is now gone) has a new restaurant, and it's on our semi-regular rotation. A few dishes of note: Pulled pork: Yummy, with the vinegar note that soul_diaspora likes but has a really hard time finding up here. Ribs: Tasty and meaty, with very little fat. They are not "fall-off-the-bone" tender, but if you want a more substantial experience, this is the stuff. Jerk: awesome, with the flavor very deeply pervading the meat, not too spicy (although gets considerably hotter on reheating). The pork is excellent; for the chicken, the dark meat works better than the white. Pirri-pirri: really tasty, but **** that's hot! soul_diaspora and I could not finish an app of pirri-pirri wings even working together... we were defeated by the spice. You order and pay for your sides separately; even so, the cost of a meal isn't unreasonable, coming out well below what a steakhouse would cost for similar fare. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 9th, 2012
1:47 pm	Games tomorrow! The votes (and the rest of my life) point to tomorrow, so... games, my place, arrive after 1. RSVP/ETA appreciated as usual; call ahead if you're arriving after 5:30, in case we're dining. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012
1:30 pm	Games again! Vote for Saturday or Sunday this weekend... I'm open to both right now! (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
5:41 pm	Metaquoted dungeonwriter on passing. Written from the point of view of an invisibly disabled person, but applicable to passing in many contexts, this captures some of the complex ambivalence of passing. Current Mood: thoughtful (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 27th, 2012
10:39 pm	Ganked from commodorified A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine by O. Hai and I. B. Hakkenshit. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2012
10:26 am	Martial arts stuff I think my test time at aikido is coming soon... I should skip Wednesday evening games at Carleton more to practice up. My "grid", as it's called, is pretty much settled, and now I'm just trying to drill the specific techniques into my hindbrain. The grid is a matrix of five basic throws by a dozen basic attacks; one constructs a set of techniques for each combination which cover the different directions and basic variations of the techniques. The particular choices made here are quite individual, and they become one's "hip-pocket" techniques. The other bits are mostly okay, although I still could use more multiple-attacker work and maybe a little disarming practice against staff and sword as well, just in case. There's one hip throw that I really want to get right, too... the fellow who showed it to me nicknames it "the choo-choo train", because of the circular motion of the hip used to drive the throw. It's a throw in a style favored by one of our senior instructors whom I see too seldom, and I'd like to drop it in on my test as a bit of a tribute. The recent change of Friday evening classes to kenjutsu makes things a bit tricky, since that has long been one of my usual practice nights, and now I can't really use it for aikido test prep. On the flip side, I think I may have more of a talent for kenjutsu than for aikido, so the sense of relatively rapid progress is a welcome change. Of course, it might also be that my aikido practice has trained me to be better at learning this kind of stuff. Current Mood: chipper (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 19th, 2012
5:00 pm	This weekend's reflection Which is easier? To say to the paralyzed man, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Get up, take your mat, and walk"? ( A reflection in which the words 'victim-blaming' don't appear directly, but they're implied. ) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
11:22 am	On Target! Information is power, but of course we only use our power for good: profit is good! Current Mood: nauseated (Comment on this)
Monday, February 6th, 2012
10:30 am	Set! We started yesterday's gaming with a couple of rounds of Set, and then ended up playing three games that constitute a set: Airlines Europe, Metro, and Automobile. Current Mood: chipper (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
10:04 am	Games next Sunday! The usual drill, arrive after 1:00! Current Mood: chipper (9 Comments |Comment on this)
9:52 am	Marching band The Norwegian Royal Guard in a military marching band and drill team competition. Impressive stuff; we didn't get to do nearly as much interesting drill when I was in the Reserves! 8 1/2 min video with music, fullscreenable. Current Mood: chipper (1 Comment |Comment on this)