has been so kind as to supply me some seriously top shelf reading material about Sochin kata and fudo dachi. I’m sure this will lead to a great deal of further blog posts about kata realted topics.

Thanks Sensei!

Strange young adult novels from the 80’s aside, todays workout consisted of 20 Sochin kata. gave me some pointers on keeping my shoulders down and my back straight, as well as some help keeping my fudo dachi properly formed.

It appears that I wasn’t turning my rear leg out far enough and getting the rooted feeling of the stance all the way. Also, I was opening my stance too far on the front leg, causing my front half to lose connection with the floor. Basically, I need to figure out how to use the edges of my feet as brakes to stop my momentum and allow me a push off point.

This post almost got named “Stickman-san and the Lightship Fantastic”, because about 3/4 of the way through the workout, our good buddy got a jo staff stuck down the back of his belt and the top part taped to his head in order to break him from his leaning over habit. It was quite entertaining, I’m sure that will be along soon with photographic evidence.

Surfing the net tonight, I found a website that shows a video of Sochin performed by an uncredited Sensei.

It also goes on to show a small, grainy black and white video of one of the masters doing Sochin. These videos were shot in 1960-1962. I can’t make out who it is, but the credit says that the set of kata were performed by K. Enoeda, H.Kanazawa, H.Shirai, M.Nakayama, T.Kase, T.Asai, H.Shoji, T.Mikami, M.Ueki.

Now that’s quite a roster. The full site is here for the recent videos and here for the elder videos. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if chimes in to say that he has all of these on VHS or DVD or something, but they’re new to me so that makes them cool. 🙂

I got to class tonight, and in order to save my sore shoulder I elected not to do weight training tonight. I did 13 of my 15 Sochin before class and since we were flying solo tonight ( is sick, we hear) The Nidan Collective decided to further explore fudo-dachi.

With at the helm, we went through a deliciously sadistic set of basics after first introducing the class (even the white belts) to fudo-dachi. Since several of us black belts have been working on Sochin in some capacity or another, the class took a “Dukes-san leads, the rest of us chime in when we have a good point to make.”

Matt then proceeded to run us through punching, blocking, kicking, and even the experimental wonder of roundhouse kick from Sochin. It was pain, pure unadulterated pain. But it was good. I was learning things from the dynamics of moving from fudo-dachi in order to perform some of these other techniques. The effect that this has on my center can only strengthen it, which is what I am after.

The second class was kata free swim time, which I used to round myself out to 20 Sochin kata for the night. We took a little time at the end to watch the brown belts do Tekki Nidan, they were lamenting the fact that many of the details of the kata are described differently and interpreted differently by the various black belts around and that they were getting confused.

They want to have “one way, for certain, absolutely the right way to do this technique” and now they’re at a rank where interpretation starts to creep in. There is a “right way”, but it may get described slightly differently by the black belts. And there is always the chance that we’re just wrong about any given fine point, which has happened from time to time.

All in all, I believe tonight to be a great and very valuable class for everyone involved. It was tough, it was new material for many, and everyone got a chance to work on something they needed to.

I have added some new features to the Sochin Counter below.

Tasha’s Engagement Ring
Originally uploaded by dalcher.

Inspired by , I decided to dig out a couple of my illustrations that I did as a part of my Graphic Communications minor coursework.

Pictured here is an illustration of my wife’s engagement ring, I’m fairly fond of the way the diamond came out. The band was a little rushed, but still ended up OK.

Pictured elsewhere is my masterpiece… an illustration of my brother-in-law’s brother’s 1967 Chevy Super Sport. The ring took two weeks to get done, the car took about three. Illustrator is one of the most challenging classes in the GC curriculum at WIU.

Interestingly, I took this course from the brother of my boss at my college job. She was very supportive of me while I was taking this course… it wasn’t easy and I was pretty much cracking under the deadline stress that year. It was a good time, and I have more sense of accomplishment from these two illustrations than I did much of my programming coursework for my major. Funny how things work out that way sometimes. 🙂

I updated Dalcher.com a bit more to contain some new icons that I created. You will find that they link to my basement pub pics and my Flickr account respectively, I am working on a few more that I will add as I finish them.

I may do some CSS rollovers to break down the sections further but for now I’ve only got a need for high level breakouts. Plus it gives me more of an excuse to play with The Gimp.

Well, January is over so that means its goal assessment time.

Since I started my goal of 2000 Sochin this year only ten days ago, I have missed most of the month to actually achieve this goal. Despite that fact, I only find myself with a deficit of 42 kata. Not too shabby!

I feel a certain amount of accomplishment for turning out as many kata without sacrificing quality (for what it is at the moment). I never schlocked through kata just to put numbers down, each one had a technique or two that felt a little better than the last. Can’t help but feel a little good about that.

As for my other goal of debt elimination: we’ve done well on this front too. We have completely paid off three credit cards this month and we’ve got another one on the ropes for February. That will be just in time to hit with a right hook/uppercut combination of Incentive Pay and Tax Refund.

That being said, I want to take a minute to thank my lovely wife for throwing everything into this initiative. She’s also done well on her own personal goals for this year, but I’ll leave those for her to share. It takes a lot of dedication and some sacrifice to do what we’re on track to do this year, and she’s a great girl for helping me do these things. Thanks, honey!!

So we’re doing well. I’m going to catch up sometime in February for the Sochin initiative, and we’ve got plans to continue the debt elimination plan as well. Good times, I can’t wait to see what things look like next January! 🙂

Tonight I did five Sochin using five pound wrist weights and ten pound leg weights. I then did five more with the 20 lb weight vest on. I then did a total of five more au natural.

In between classes, and I did five more kata. That brought the grand total up to 20 Sochin for the night! 🙂

Tonight’s workout itself was very good. We did basics during the first class, including sparring combinations. The second class we continued on with more sparring combinations and drills to learn how to use them more effectively.

My exploration of Sochin is already starting to lift the veil on how to use my center better. About 20% of the time tonight, I actually felt like everything was connected when I attempted to throw combinations at my partners. I have found that this regiment is a double-edged sword… the rest of the time I was having difficulty keeping my center together, I assume it was because of the fatigue of the number of kata that I did. This will pass in time, but I think its going to be hit or miss for awhile.

The only physical problem that I have to report tonight was that I’m starting to feel some strain near a tendon on my right shoulder. I really feel it most when I’m doing the weight training on the high/low blocks in Sochin. I think I may monitor this a bit closer as I continue and adjust the weight training accordingly until that set of muscles develops past the pain point. That’s it though… we had a good set of sparring drills tonight with no major catastrophes that I can report. I think Dobbleaire-san caught one in the nose, but I didn’t see how it happened. Maybe someone else can fill that one in.

Thanks as always to the people that have done a handful or more Sochin with me to keep me motivated over the last ten days. has probably the highest count aside from myself… its tough but he’s a tough guy. Thanks bud! 🙂 Also, thanks Dad for helping me along in this… even though I tend to complain about the weight training. Its hard, but there’s a reason its hard… its making me better. I appreciate all of the help you’ve given the last week or so, I hope I’m helping you as much!

John McLoughlin
Originally uploaded by dalcher.

I screwed around a little bit attempting to find some inspiration for some 8 bit graphic icons to augment the vintage video game feel of my website. I didn’t have much luck, which led me to the distraction du jour: The Gimp, an OSS Photoshop-like application.

The Gimp’s usability has come a long way since earlier versions. Before, it was nearly impossible to find where any of the common features were. At least now they’ve stumbled across an icon set that is somewhat telling and they’ve switched to some more descriptive naming conventions.

I didn’t do much outside of install it, I took a few headshots for my cousin… that let me find out where greyscale mode and levels were. I wasn’t too happy with them, but he was so that’s the important thing. He is attempting to get discovered through a friend in the Michigan music scene. He’s a talented kid, I hope things work out for him.

I have updated Dalcher.com to include the RSS feed of my blog. It is still in rudimentary form, but the information is there.

I’m going to mess with the style/format of the data as time goes on, but for now its better than my placeholder page that was up there.