Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

From "My tagged link dump":

• Lua - A powerful, fast, light-weight, embeddable scripting language

Week 4 starts with slightly improved, but still icy runs.


On Saturday, ez10 runs a session. It's mostly a clinic to answer our questions. The particular question pops up is how to help students fix the toe-side counter rotation problem.

ez10 shows us a really cool tactic, which I called "bow" turn. Assuming for regular rider. On heel turn, taking right hand touching left chest or hovering in front of it to stay balance. The same time left hand is bend behind the back. For toe turn, left hand is touching right chest, while right hand is bend behind back. It's like what actor do when they come out at the end of the show and bow to their audiences.... of course we do it without bending the back.

I found it very effective on my students, also for my switch riding, which I do not do enough anticipation on the heel-side turn.


Terry runs a freestyle session on Sunday, focus on doing 180. The usual progression: spin 180 on snow -> hop-turn-hop -> hop 180 into the turn

On Monday night training, Terry works on independent pressure control throughout a turn. We did a few things:
- lean backward and lift up the snowboard head as we goes into the a turn (on both edges)
- forward/backward through out a turn; lean forward as we start the turn (front hand push down), center when we pivot, lay backward into the turn (front hand point up), then center again as we traverse. It's like we are rocking from front to back on each turn.
- The forward hand N/bow-tie/infinity motion. Our front hand move up and down (in fact, we are putting weight on front/back) and from edge to edge.
- ollie
- Dolphin turns; As we rock front/back throughout the turn, do a ollie as we out of the turn (while our weight is on the back) before we push front hand down and start the next turn (I couldn't do it...)

In addition, we tried the w/mustache exercise; traverse on heel edge, turn uphill until board on fall-line, board flat and transfer weight to switch from heel to toe, start traverse on toe edge.

Another note is when analysis student riding, The 5 basic elements also applied as student ride down from top to bottom/far to close as we observe them from below. On top, we can pay attention to their timing/coordination (shape/how long they stay from edge to edge), pressure control+edging (snow spray). As he/she come closer, we can start noticed more pivot/steering (shoulder/knee), and stance and balance (body position). As student ride by and continue down the hill, we can look at it from the other angle with reverse order of 5 elements. Another tips is to look at the board to see how it behaves on snow.

From "My tagged link dump":

• Twitter: Time for Maturity
  - I guess I found Twitter to be less reliable than I'd like....

I am still keeping an eye on new toy(s) sine last time.

I guess I can't make up my mind what to get or if I am going to spend the money.

There are 2 classes of devices I am interested:
1) PDA phone
2) tablet/UMPC

A small PDA phone is certainly more useful for my day-to-day life. I often read/send tweets from my Moto Ming in Starbucks or to jock down a few lines. Also, I still need it for Chinese hand-writing input... until I get the hand-writing tablet to work on Linux.

Candidates: O2 Atom or alike

A small tablet/UMPC becomes somewhat attractive recently because I am going to Vancouver next week, plus I might be mobiling more later this year. But I can't really justify it since I already have a T60 , which is my main machine at home. It's working well, except the size when compare to a UMPC. But I don't think I will like to work on my projects from it since the screen is too small... If I got a UMPC it will be use as Internet access and media device when I am not at home. I guess I can't have both world.

Candidates: oqo 02 (But it's too expensive), HTC shift (I saw it for ~$600 on ebay....), Asus eeePC (no air, please. I don't like Apple's close environment after my MacMini experience), Everex Cloud

Nokia N810 is nice, but is out of my list because it has no voice capability..... However, I am seeing N800 for under $200 on ebay.... tempting.

FIC Neo1973 is still too hacker-ish to me. It need to mature more to be a consumer device... even with the new Freerunner announced.

Wondering if there will be a successor to Moto Ming... I like the transparent flip so much.....

From "My tagged link dump":

• Handling UTF-8 with PHP (Web Application Component Toolkit)
  - Good information to help write PHP w/ UTF-8 support, until we are using PHP6
• OpenSER SIP Server
• Introducing xdebug
• Eloquent JavaScript

From "My tagged link dump":

• xkcd - - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
• SimplePie - A fast and easy to use RSS/Atom feed parser in PHP

From "My tagged link dump":

• Ning - A web service allow user to create their own social networks
• SIP Express Router/Media Server - A SIP server suite with free IP Telephony service
• AntiPatterns, a Brief Tutorial
• Symphony OS - A OS based on Linux
• Visual and Audio PHP captcha Generation Class
• Gridjit: A Social Portal for Twitter - A service to remash friend tweets, sort by user

From "My tagged link dump":

• Free website thumbnails
• Webstumb - web page snapshot-taker for Linux
• Remember The Milk - A online to do list and task management via twitter

Week 3 started after a meltdown, we barely have enough snow on the hill. We received 2-3cm snow on Sat, but that's it.



On Saturday, Norm runs us through a pack introduction. Since the features in the park is too advanced, I do not attempt. But it was fun checking it out.



On Sunday, we have a new Level 3 instructor Terry show up and have a session on early pivot.
- Drive with knee
- Early pivot

We tried a few tactics:
- spray snow sideway/uphill
- sponsor turn, try to pivot and show the logo on the base of the board up-hill.
- traverse across the hill, and tried to pivot from edge to edge. It's tricky when you are on toe-side edge and pivot to the heel-side.... which might result into catching the edge and fall. I actually ended up fall on the heel edge, tried to recover it by force myself to make a hell turn.... but end up hit an instructor from behind. (not good)

bonus: Norm hits a rail

Monday night, Terry runs the training session on steering. The different between pivoting and steering a snowboard is generally that: pivoting is by upper body movement (anticipation), while steering involve more lower body driving the turn with knee and ankle.

We tried run after run with different idea:
- side-slip and steering, focus on center body position
- adding flex/extension to the above
- medium size full/complete turn, pivot in between the turn when traverse perpendicular to fall-line, spray snow up hill/earlier in the turn.
- bow-tie on snow, body center in board and just twist the board left and right on snow.
- turn like a fish, focus on independent steering of both feet, back feet following the front feet into the turn.

Some points:
- drop lower/flex more to allow more steering movement from the knee.
- minimize/reduce edging can help steering/sliding.
- focus on a buttering/sliding with minimal edge
- no speiss, as it forces the weight shift to the front.

From "My tagged link dump":

• Twitter, Facebook called on for higher purpose (CNET) - Interesting use of twitter/facebook and other social network infrastrucure for a good cause.
  - Quote: "Social networking in the humanitarian space, that's something you're going to see"
• A decentralized Twitter? (Scripting News)
  - Decentralized is nice, which made the system redundent and robust. But twitter's power is the API and how 3rd party can use the public timeline.
• 不是遺珠之中港台唱片零七速讀 (::littleoslo:: )
• 一個人選2007中文專輯最佳四十 (::littleoslo:: )
• MisterHouse - An open source home automation program
• 網台好風光：一條民間廣播風景
  - quote: "民間電台的事件告訴我們，現時香港廣播發牌制度是何等嚴苛"
• 係播網絡電台 Hong Kong web radio station with Podcast
• The Danger of Free (ReadWriteWeb)

From "My tagged link dump":

• Zero Per Gallon: No Goats. No Exceptions.
• 啤酒的福杯 (貓眼看世界‧張婉雯) - Quote: 朋友走到這個男人身旁，忽然發現：這個人，此刻需要的，不是福音
• What PHP Deployment Gets Right (Ian Bicking)
  - PHP is executed in a request by request model, which isolute applications for potential problem.
• Mongrel - A HTTP library and server for Ruby using HTTP
• AideRSS - A web service to analyst/filter/track performance of any RSS feed and mash the result to a RSS feed

From "My tagged link dump":

• Project VGA - A project to design an open source VGA compatible video card
• Ribbit - A new kind of "phone company" that provide a platform to build and use the service the way they like it.
• Can Ribbit Finally Bring Web & Voice Together? (GigaOM)
• ReadBurner - A web service that aggregate Google reader shared linkblog items to find pouplar/shared items on the web

From "My tagged link dump":

• 小本拍登陸諾曼第壯烈戰爭場面 (五師兄字)

New snowboarding season finally get underway!

I am so happy to get 4 programs this year; Sat morning (beginner) + afternoon (intermediate), Sun morning (intermediate), and Thur night (intermediate). A lot of ride time w/ students.



Week 1 is so warm and foggy. I can't even see the top of the hill. I have a great group of beginners, and basic mobility went so well with the help of my 2 TAs. Sunday morning intermediate group is very skilled and present me a good challenge to bring them to a new level of riding.



Week 2 didn't start off smoothly as I have to shuffle students around, and I ended up with students that with somewhat wider skill level. But we managed to get up the hill and do some side-slipping, pendulum w/ a J-turn.

On personal training side, I have some runs w/ ez10 for some feedback on my riding. This year for sure I am riding better, but always some improvement to get closer to that perfect ride:
- more driving the turn w/ hips and knee
- watch for toe side lay back position (maybe some binding change)
- less sudden flex on turns, need to be more gentle

From "My tagged link dump":

• Entertainer project - A easy-to-use media center solution for Gnome/Linux

From "My tagged link dump":

• Mythbuntu - A MythTV distribution based on Ubuntu and Openbox

From "My tagged link dump":

• CMM.HK Podcast Network

From "My tagged link dump":

• 2007: The Year in RSS (ReadWriteWeb)

From "My tagged link dump":

• 香港中文歌發展史話簡篇 (come back to love [轉載])