Resolutions for 2010

Resolutions for the new year.

• Transition from the 3.5+ level to the 4.0 level at tennis, playing more 4.0 guys.
• Take a lot of pictures
• Explore city parks and state parks and lakes
• Explore downtowns of cities in the Kansas City Metro
• Capture winter, spring, summer and fall
• Do some street photography and include people in pictures.
• Explore Kansas
• Pick up ice skating - be able to do the hockey stop, gliding on one foot with ease
• Get better at swimming - be able to do 3 laps without halting
• Do two half marathons and attempt a full if knees can take it.
• Use the road bike to work in good weather. Do Tour De Shawnee or similar.
• Do some dirt trails on MTB
• Do more sketching
• Explore the Rockies

Test the mail-in your post feature

This seems to be a nice little feature, though I don't think its something I'll end up using much. If I have access to email, I will have blogspot around too. Some of the use case I can conceive are - 

1. I'm on the go with an urge to blog some irretrievable thoughts, and with my iPod, I might use email than go to blogpsot on it. I'd imagine that Blogger should have an app for it though.

2. Posting an email I received

3. Post and email it to others in one shot.

4. You like your email client more than you like Blogspot.

5. Be at work, composing an email in Outlook, when you are really blogging!!

A brief history of art

My visit to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, spurred an interest in understanding the way art has evolved over time.

Cave painting is where it began some 32,00 years ago. We do not know the purpose of these paintings. Looks like human kind has an innate desire of expression. We started off crude and got smarter over thousands of years. Primitive techniques include spitting or blowing pigments onto the rocks.

There is Eastern painting and Western painting. Eastern seems to have been around longer than western but later as travel increased each influenced the other.

Eastern Painting - Chinese, Japanese, Korean

• Water-based
• Less realism
• Elegant & Stylized objects
• Preference for landscape over human subjects
• Importance of white space/negative space
• Ink & Color on silk or paper, gold on lacquer were common.

Art is very much inspired by and a reflection of the ideology.

Chinese Painting

Indian Painting

Western Painting

-Egypt, Greece & Rome

Painting in Americas

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_painting

Arthur Ashe on Tennis

Notes from the book:

Point your shoulder to the target for the double handed back hand. Fight th tendency to turn them paralel to the net before comppleting the stroke.

Timing on the serve - The strings should meet the ball, when the racquet head has maximum speed. Slow the swing at the start and let it accelerate naturally.

The not-so-fast serve does not have to be big disadvantge. Get control right. Get the opponent out of the court on your serve. Have him go for hard winners off your serve nad make mistakes.

Volleys -

Open racket face from start to finsh

Forward and down

Always hit with underspin

Sync breathing with hitting - Inhaling when getting ready, exhale audibly when hitting.

Squeeze racket to transfer opponent's power back into the shot

Half volley -

You are in trouble if you are having to play a half-volley.

Objective is to hit the ball deep and get into a better volleying position.

Bend the knees and have firm hands, and cover the ball and keep going forward. Use the racket as a wall not as a scoop.

The overhead

Get the racket behind you head early

Use the other hand to gauge the ball

Take skipping steps far enough so ball doesnt come behind you

Again get into hitting it at 1 o clock.

Keep your head high through the shot and follow through

The lob

If the opponent misses a lob, it is a good idea to lob again.

One tends to think too much about it and timing will be off.

This comes in streaks like the double fault.

The return of serve -

Most errors are made on the return of serve. Receivers try to do too much or are intimidated.

The first volley -

Good to put it cross court and deep - move forward into the side of the court that you hit it into and ou have a good open court to put it away on the second.

Hitting the ball on the rise

Refers to hitting the ball as it is rising, before it reaches its maximum bounce.

Short backswing.

Grip the racket tight.

Hood the racket over the ball (cover)

Follow through

St. Louis-Olathe-Kansas City-Manhattan

Movies, wine and dessert - a quiety weekend

This was a quiety weekend. 

With spring cleaning, one generally thinks of a house. For me though, it was my car - my car saw its first car wash in 5 months, relying on snow and rain since the dry deserts of the southwest.

With my own washer dryer, I was able to get two loads done. But this also meant, I am getting clothes out of the dryer only to wear them! Laziness finds a new high, or low however it makes more sense.

Getting a bottle of wine was quiet something though. Researching them took all morning, but priceless was the realisation on holding a 2007 wine that it wasn't the current year it was bottled in, and that the year now was 2009.

Most of it was the movies and I'm glad I love movies.

The Freedom Writers - An interesting movie with Hilary Swank in it. It about how an English teacher inspires a bunch of 'special' kids to get into literature/shool. What makes it interesting is that, its based on a true story. 

The Lucky Ones - Seeing Tim Robbins in the cast of a movie sets the expectations from the movie rather high and this one did live up. A mixed up and messed up story about 3 soldiers coming home for a month before returning to active duty. Isn't one of the spectacular ones, but is fairly grounded and makes for a decent watch.

The Cadillac Man - Robin Williams and Tim Robbins star in this comedy which of course is silly, but does have its moments.

Angels & Demons - I wasn't too sure about this one - I never did see the Da Vinci code. I read the book and thought it was pretty interesting, but that is where it sat for me. The concept/theme just didn't do much for me. I dragged my knee out to watch this one for lack of doing anything better. I remained disinterested for the most part and thought it got a little predictable, too predictable perhaps. I would not have missed this movie.

Sore knee, a sore thought

I have now been nursing a sore knee for a little over a week. A slight pain crops up when putting my weight on my right knee while bent, and that has kept me from doing the things I indulge myself with on a daily basis - tennis, cycling, running, rock climbing, swimming, racket ball and squash. Pain in not more than a square inch of my body has altered my lifestyle this week. All this is just a discomfort - I can walk about perfectly well and still do those things if I ignore the pain. This is still hard!

I was watching this show -think it was "I shouldn't be alive" on the Discovery - a wildlife ennthusiast spotting rhinos in an African desert crashed his plane, shattering his legs and his pelvis. His feet were swollen inside his boots and he struggled for two and half hours just to get them off; he believed that if he didn't his legs would need to be amputated; he said his life would be not be worth living if he survived. That didn't sit well with me though.

I can relate to the feeling of being so passionate about something that losing it makes life feel worthless. This past week comes close; admittedly though I have a good chance of bouncing back in a week or two. But still I asked myself this - if were to be that I could not do any of the things I so love and am accustomed to, would I want myself dead?

From this side of the shore, it sure is hard to tell how that would change the philosophy of things - but I hope there would be more to life - to keep going, with new purpose  and new meaning.