On and Off

Whenever people try to do their impression of the late Pat Morita’s “Mr Miyagi”, they often use the old, “Wax on, Wax off” phrase, while making circular motions with both hands in front of them. I always chuckle when I hear that saying… then start thinking about a lesson that lies within second and last words… on and off. I guess that the real beginnings of computers, as we know them, could be said to have begun during WWII, a few years before I was born. These were large, crude machines powered by vacuum tubes, and generating a tremendous amount of heat. Yet, the most sophisticated of these behemoths possessed less computing capacity than today’s disposable hand held calculators. This is a story we all know. What I always remember, though, is that at the heart of the incredible things that today’s video games, pc’s, servers, mainframes and even the super number crunchers can do, is a simple principle…. On and Off.The reason that the computers of the 1940’s used vacuum tubes was that these lights would have two states at any given time, these would either be on or off. Multiplied by thousands of little tubes and using binary [...]

Off-balance with Purpose

It’s sort of weird, the timing of things. I was planning to write a note entitled “Balance and Force Projection”, sharing some of my thoughts on center-of-gravity, as it relates to karate-do. On Tuesday, I attended a motivational training seminar (ho-hum, I thought)…which turned out to be an extremely entertaining session, taught by a professional juggler, unicyclist, drummer, etc entertainer, who also taught some profound lessons in life. He also gave some short references to his church and pastor and talked about spiritual growth being one of the five major areas we balance in life. What struck me was that his lessons centered around the very subject I was planning to share, except where I was thinking about Balance vs Force Projection, he was talking about Balance vs being Off-Balance with a Purpose. He talked about learning to balance on a 6-foot high unicycle, then learning to move where ever one wanted to go, by leaning in the direction one aimed at. He also talked about the intracacies of juggling 3, then 4, then 5 objects and the necessary change-ups in patterns to do so. He talked about faith in taking risk, added to the responsibilities of due diligence prior [...]

From punching and kicking to praise and worship

This morning, our ministry sempais and senseis took a large step outside of their comfort zone and led praise/worship at todays’ NHPC church service. What started as a passing thought when members were talking story after a training session some months ago, ultimately became reality, powered by His spirit and our obedience. In that fateful discussion, someone noted how most of our senior members played various musical instruments and enjoyed singing. We laughed about creating a “karate ministry worship band”…but the joke was on us. As I was talking with Pastor Nando at Men’s Ministry early one morning and shared our “joke”…he immediately invited us to do so one Sunday, and asked for a date. And so it evolved that we actually committed to leading P/W one morning, early in 2006…during the two-week window that Sensei Trish would still be home for winter break (we’d definitely need the first two weeks of her break (late Dec) to do some practice). Sempais Doreen and Robert generously opened their home (complete with sound room) to our wannabe band and provided great snacks and hospitality. All band members were timely and tried to make it to practices during this holiday season. Everyone was [...]