What an INCREDIBLE weekend

This weekend I was privileged to attend an absolutely incredible gathering of some of the top martial artists from around the world. Not only did I have a weekend of training under wonderful instructors who were all at least 7th degree black belts, but they saw fit to bestow the rank of 5th degree black belt on me.

There was too much great material for me to go into detail here, but one in particular stands out above the crowd. Person A grabbed Person B's lapel. Person B reached up and held onto Person A's wrist for several seconds... and then Person A was unconscious. (Yes, I know that's WAY too slow for effective use in a fight, but still -- holy crap!)

There were also more private moments, conversations with some of the "top tier" folks, that rocked my world even more -- I'm still digesting a good bit of it, and probably will be for quite some time.

The WITCH is back!

The WITCH is back.

No, not a Hallowe'en figure, nor a religious figure, nor a slightly cleaned up version of an Elton John song.

The WITCH is the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell. the 2.5-ton machine, first constructed in the 1950s as part of an atomic research program, became the "world's oldest original working digital computer" after a museum in the UK restored and then rebooted it on Tuesday.

Pretty cool, in my opinion!