Changes
So anyone that isn’t doing this via RSS has probably noticed a few differences. Those of you who do read via RSS – if you got a bunch of messages telling you my site is unavailable – sorry about that.
It turns out that the disk my VPS was hosted on crashed irrecoverably. Of course, it took my provider 5 days to get back to me with an explanation as to why my site was down. They eventually did give me an explanation, but not before I got sick of my requests for information going unanswered and transferred my site to a new host. I think there is money to be made in seeking out stocks of companies that have awesome customer service and buying that. I have yet to test whether the opposite is true, but if a company has shitty customer service, I just don’t have the patience to deal with it anymore. Moral of this story is – VPSland has shitty customer service, so they get no more of my money. Linode comes highly recommended by people I trust, so I have big expectations of them. Time will tell.
The site is not the only change in my life of late. I went back to Australia last month for final selections for the Australian national kendo team. Unfortunately I was not successful, so I won’t be going to Milan next year to compete. A pity really, I would have loved to have gone. It’s ironic that I came to Japan to do more kendo training, but if anything have ended up doing less over the last 3 years than if I’d stayed in Melbourne. I made a conscious decision to try and strike a better balance between my home life, my work and my passion for kendo. I did that, but it meant that I was not as sharp as I needed to be at selections. I didn’t fight badly, just not well enough. As it stands, I’ve made the Australian team twice. I would have loved to have gone a third time, but it is not to be. Other things in my life are calling. I will not be part of the squad for subsequent campaigns. I thought I’d be more upset about it than I am, but when it’s time, it’s time.
I’m looking forward to spending more time with friends and family. I’m looking forward to spending more time on my Japanese (which is still awful, for the amount of time I’ve spent in the country). I’m looking forward to being more active in the testing community. I’ll still be swinging sticks at people, but I no longer have to drive myself into the ground in order to get ready for competition. It actually feels pretty good.
What’s so great about getting hit with a stick?
in Everything, Kendo
as Kendo, learning kendo
Besides also getting to hit people with a stick? Plenty – eventually.
As a beginner in kendo you generally start by learning the body mechanics, repeating the same movements over and over while your teacher continually corrects you on what seems like an endless stream of minutiae.
It’s tough at this point – you’re not quite sure why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you can see off to one side the more experienced students spiritedly attacking one another in what looks like a free-flowing and even random manner, and you wonder if you’ll ever get there.
Gradually though, your body learns and you start to understand why your hands and feet must move just so. Eventually you strap on the armour and it’s like starting over again. Your hands feel weird holding the shinai through your kote, your field of vision is restricted by the men gane, and when you finally add an opponent into the mix, it adds a whole new element to the entire dynamic. Having someone screaming at you and trying to hit you with a stick is not what we usually identify as an environment conducive to learning.
At some point down the track, you face off against someone and your body knows what to do. You have internalised the body mechanics your teacher spent months drilling into you, leaving you to explore how to implement it. You attack your opponent. Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes not. Sometimes they counterattack. Sometimes they confound you with their ability to evade even your most spirited attacks.
The day you achieve a real connection between you and your opponent is the day a new world opens up to you. There comes the realisation that knowing how to strike is not enough – more important is knowing when and why. When you achieve that connection with your opponent, you engage them in a battle of wits and will.
There is an ebb and flow to a match. You can feel it when you have the ascendency, when your opponent does and when it’s in the balance. You engage in a chess match to outmaneuver and outwit your opponent in order to strike them.
Eventually, you realise that a strike is successful not because you have hit the target, this is only a physical manifestation of success. The strike is successful because you have won your chess match and like the final move of a chess match, by the time it happens, there can be no other result.
If you like physical activity and you like to use your brain, then you’ll probably enjoy kendo. I was contamplating adding a software testing analogy in here, but what the hell. You software testers out there can draw your own parallels. 
Repetition begets skill…however
In testing, I think there is a tendency to confuse repetition for the purpose of learning with repetition as the application of skill. I have heard that some expound using scripts as a means of skilling up unskilled staff. I believe this thinking is fundamentally flawed. The reason being is that there is no clear [...]
It’s easy to bullshit yourself
It’s easy to tell yourself that you’re training hard when in actual fact you’re slacking off. I find myself doing it far too often for my liking. If in the kendojo I’m fighting beginners, I might fend off attacks in order to get them to try and work out why they are unsuccessful. Nothing necessarily [...]
The four sicknesses of kendo (and software testing)
I began writing this entry and almost immediately discovered this entry from Michael Bolton on emotions and oracles, which explains things probably more eloquently than I am trying to. I can’t really speak as to why emotion isn’t valued by some testers. I haven’t encountered any situations where this has been the case – I [...]
勝って、兜の緒を締めよ
katte, kabuto no o wo shimeyo. When you win, tighten your helmet strings. This saying is a reminder to remain ever vigilant. In battle, victory over an opponent should not be a signal to let your guard drop. If anything, it should serve to remind you to be even more wary. Defeating one is no [...]
Oh captain, my captain – changing your perspective
in Everything, Kendo, Miscellaneous, Software Testing
Those of you who have seen ‘Dead Poets Society‘ may remember Robin Williams exhorting his students to stand on their desks in order to show them the importance of having multiple perspectives of the world. I always thought that this was a most excellent scene. If you haven’t seen it, consider checking it out (or [...]
Enzan no metsuke – looking at the far mountain
An oft touted phrase by martial artists is ‘enzan no metsuke’, which translates roughly as ‘looking at the far mountain’ – essentially the gaze you would use to view something very distant. If I am fighting an opponent and I focus too keenly on their sword, or the movements of their body only, then I [...]
What colour belt does your software under test have?
One of the things I really appreciate about kendo is that we don’t wear coloured belts to denote rank. If I have never fought someone before, I have only what I can read from them to go by, be it how they carry themselves in the dojo, how they dress or the information I can [...]