Ice Fishing at Blue Mesa...

Friday night my brother Jarrett came into town. He had brought both his ice fishing equipment and his snowboard. I have never been ice fishing before so Saturday morning, Jarrett and I went to Gene Taylors to purchase earthworms, meal worms, and salmon eggs. I also picked up my 2008 Colorado fishing license. We first drove to the end of the lake, past the dam, to look at some property. On the way back, we stopped before the entrance to Blue Mesa Reservoir and the Gunnison River. The first photo is Jarrett walking out towards the middle of the lake. The second photo is Jarrett drilling the first hole. We started fishing after 12:30 (I need to still adjust the time-stamp on my camera to reflect MDT)

After about an hour or so Jarrett caught the first fish as seen in the third photo. About ten minutes later, Jarrett caught his second fish for the day. As four o'clock approached, I hadn't caught anything yet and the weather was starting to get cold. I drilled out my own hole closer to Jarrett and put some new meal worms on my hook. A couple of minutes later, I caught my first lake trout of the year. Jarrett took the final picture of me with my 15 inch trout. Notice that I am not wearing my sun-glasses. Big mistake as the sun was extremely bright although the temperature on the lake was close to fifty. I also ended up with my first sunburn of the year. Most of the ice was at least 2 1/2 feet think but I did wander more out in the middle where the ice was only four inches thick.
This was the first time I went ice fishing and I am hooked! (bad pun) I had a great time on the ice with Jarrett and later, the fish provided a delicious dinner for the two of us.

Aikido for 3/26/2008 and Jarrett...

Last night's Aikido class was once again just Jake and I.

• morotetori ikkyo (omote and ura)
• morotetori shihonage (omote and ura)
• morotetori kokyu nage (omote and ura)

Although we didn't practice a large number of techniques, we spent much of the time working on different varations of each technique. A good class.

Tuesday night Jarrett called and he coming to visit me this weekend. He is bringing his fishing gear and snowboard so hopefully I'll have some different photos next week.

Aikido for 03/24/2008

For last night's Aikido class, I brought my bokken for some bokken-tori techniques to practice with Jake.

Here are last night's techniques:

• tsuski nikkyo (omote and ura)
• tsushi sankyo (omote and ura)
  
• tsuski kokyu nage
• bokken-tori shomenuchi kokyu nage
• bokken-tori shomenuchi kotegaeshi
• bokken-tori shomenuchi irminage
  
• bokken-tori yokomenuchi shiho nage

For the bokken-tori techniques, the techniques are only done one side. Practicing with a wooden sword is more about the movements and proper mai ai positioning than as a practical response to an attack (although this practice does have some relevancy if a baseball bat is coming towards you).

Aikido for 3/19/2008

I really need to write my Aikido class blog post the day after class as the details a couple of days later gets fuzzy. Here is the list of what Jake and I practiced Wednesday night:

• shomen uchi ikkyo (omote and ura)
• shomen uchi irminage (2 styles)
  
• surawazi shomen uchi ikkyo (omote and ura)
• surawazi shomen uchi irminage (2 styles)
  
• katatetori kotegaeshi (2 styles)
  
• yokomen uchi gokyo
  
• kosatori juji nage (omote and ura)
  
• kosatori shiho nage (omote and ura)

The practice went well and it does look like we'll be able to use the old mats used for the climbing walls, so there won't be a need to move the large wrestling mat from the storage room. The wrestling mat works well but it is large; Jake and I get an extra work-out before and at the end of class sliding the mat into the room. The old climbing mats are smaller and are cut into squares. We'll have to use duct tape to keep the new mats together, but that shouldn't be too bad as the old climbing mats have a fabric top and bottom that should make the tape adhere.

I don't have any plans for this weekend. I should continue my efforts at spring cleaning but when the snow is still coming down (we had about an inch and a half this morning), my motivation drops.

Aikido 03/17/2008

I am posting this entry on Monday's Aikido class after being slammed yesterday at work.

Jake and I practiced for an hour, halfway a young women approached me about the Aikido class and tonight we might have an additional beginner.

The techniques (I know I am missing a couple, d**n my short-term memory) we practiced included:

• katatetori kokyu nage
  
• katatetori kote gaeshi (omote and ura) 2 styles
  
• katatetori juji nage (omote and ura)
• ryotetori juji nage (omote and ura)

Tonight, depending on who shows up, I'll focus on the basic front and rear rolls and maybe a kokyunage and an ikkyo omote technique.

Painting Dad's Portrait

Two years ago I started a painting of my father. I am very much an amateur at painting but of all the types of artistic expression I have tried, I find painting with oil pigments to be an unique type of intellectual and creative process. Painting with oil is as much about the process as the final output, one that cannot be done in a short time but must be a process of adjustment and inspiration over time and space.

I started penciling a scene where my father is working at his table saw through a set of glass doors at a house my father used to rent in Grand Junction. When I started the painting, I didn't have the time or the place to work on this, so after applying one color for curtains, I had put away this painting until this weekend.

On Saturday, I started painting and I quickly realized that I was out of white paint. I still continued to work on the piece and after I finished up for the day. The first picture is a result of this day of painting. You can see the couch in the foreground painted yellow. When I have white again, I'll be bleaching out the yellow to more of a tan color. You can see my father pushing a yellow two-by-four through the table saw. While I was working on this painting, I realized that this scene will not be factually accurate but is a recollection of a specific time and place (early 2006 in Grand Junction, Colorado). Another context for me is that my father has always worked with wood, building bookshelves, cabinets, and other small wood-working projects all of my life and this painting is also capturing an important facet of my own father.

On Sunday, I continued to work on this painting. With the long lead time for oil paint to dry, this painting breathes the environment of the cabin. While painting, I considered how information about this and other physical objects begin to create an presence online. This blog entry is the first about this painting but going forward, I could easily imagine having a dedicated web server attached to the painting itself, maybe integrated into the physical frame. The web server could just be as simple as an RFID chip along with a couple of sensors such as humidity and temperature. The server could publish a small subset of information about the physical state of the painting long after it is finished. It could also have a dedicated IPv6 address that would not change and could be tied to RFID. This painting would become a "spime", publishing information about itself and providing a base identifier to organize other information related to itself. This intersection between physical object and its new intrusion into an information-rich ecology is an area I would like to further explore in my own art.

Here is a second photo I took of the painting on Sunday. You can see that the floor is now a darker brunt brown color. The actual carpet was much lighter but I like how the carpet color and the back fence behind my father provide another frame for the painting. I am working with two different light sources. Inside, a light source comes from the lower right, more of floor lamp. Outside, the light source is from the upper left, with the shadows cast from my father down onto the table saw.

Friday night movies

Friday night I rented four movies from Redbox; American Gangster, Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Beowulf, and Hitman. Friday night I watched the Assassination of Jesse James, Hitman, and Beowulf. Saturday morning I watched American Gangster.

Of the four movies, American Gangster and the Assassination of Jesse James were by far the better movies. Hitman wasn't awful, just lifeless and relatively boring action sequences. I wonder why the hyper-kinetic, choppy camera is taken to represent good and accurate violence? Beowulf was visually stunning but again, this type of animation does not translate emotion that well. The "actors" or computer assisted avatars do not display reserved emotions but have to act in large, broad strokes.

The Assassination of Jesse James was the best movie of the four. As a study on the effects of celebrity in North American culture that existed over 120 years ago along with the violent undertones of celebrity in our culture that still persists. These themes are still relevant and I wonder if there has been some scholarship about the links between our celebrity culture and violence. Obviously, there is a set of celebrities that achieve their fame through violence. Here in Colorado, we have the Columbian School Shooters, and in the movie, Robert Ford is killed in Creede, Colorado.

American Gangster was enjoyable, not as an "gangster" movie, but as a police procedural and as a history piece. I watched the extended and unrated version of the film. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington act was enjoyable and the only part of the film that felt forced was what must of been the alternative ending. All in all, not a bad film.

Robins in Spring'sWinter

Coming into work this morning (it was snowing) I passed the student union on my right and found a large number of American Robins in the snow-covered trees.

"Spring" update...

This week is spring break for the college, so the traffic is way down at the library. Last Wednesday I didn't teach an Aikido class as Jake was feeling ill. I did show up for ten minutes in case anyone else showed up, but no one did.

I talked to my Dad last night. Grand Junction is experiencing a real spring with the trees starting to bud. There is still a lot of snow here in Gunnison; in fact, this morning it was snowing when I left for work. Next week I'll start teaching again. My bruised right root is feeling good so I shouldn't have any problems when teaching.

Aikido class 3/3/2008

Here are the techniques from last night's Aikido class:

• Yokomenuchi kokyu (irmi style)
• Shomenuchi Sankyo
  
• Yokomenuchi kokyu (uchi and soto)
• Katatetori omote break-fall practices. These break falls did not hurt that much because we brought out the wrestling mat. I think I sprained the ball of my right foot as it continues to hurt from last night.
• Ryotetori kokyu (uchi and soto), with two variations on the uchi style.
• Ryotetori Irminage
  

Jake was the only student again. I have been enjoying practicing with Jake as his Aikido is solid an we do work through the techniques to make sure we understand them. I still haven't sent in my application for Rocky Mountain Aikido Summer camp. I need to get a witness to sign the form and then I can send them. I'll make that my goal for today or tomorrow and get it mailed. What it will mean for me is that I need to start increasing my cardio and general fitness before I'll be ready for this summer.