stslavik

5,694 reputation

1250

bio	website	ocbujinkan.com
	location	California
	age	31
visits	member for	1 year, 3 months
	seen	15 mins ago
stats	profile views	41

I'm a web developer, IT consultant, and programmer with a property management firm in Orange County, CA. I also teach and train in Bujinkan Ninpo Taijutsu.

A lot of my side-projects end up rolling into my work life, and feel that the experience I've gained with web development, Ruby, Qt, C/C++, Java, etc. may actually be of use to somebody.

I've recently joined the Martial Arts private beta, and will be answering questions on there with regularity.

Oh, and I really hate when people tell me, "No, it can't be done." You're wrong; It can, it should, it will, so shut up and watch me.

Nothing is true; everything is permissible.
- Hassan-i Sabbah (حسن الصباح‎)
Ruler of Alamut, Founder of the Hashshashin.

	5,694 reputation	bio	website	ocbujinkan.com	visits	member for	1 year, 3 months
1250 badges		location	California		seen	15 mins ago

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238 Comments

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Jul 12	comment	How do you prepare for the stress of a real self-defense situation? Same thing happened here about 2 years ago – suspicion is that one of the valet's clocked a loudmouth in the back of the head (since amazingly "nobody saw anything" even though it was at the valet stand). Never saw it coming... And that's kind of the point – since he never saw it coming, there's nothing he could do; no way to change it. What sense is there in worrying over what we can't change (the inevitability of death, for instance). Getting hit is still less dangerous than throwing a few thousand pounds of metal down an interstate at 70 miles an hour.
Jul 11	comment	Looking for cheap cutting material for tameshigiri practice That's fascinating. I never would have thought of them for archery...
Jun 28	comment	How do I increase my wrist strength for punching? Suggest link for "Practical Programming" (There are about 2 dozen similar titles in various media). I made my point; you feel the information is wrong or dangerous, and we've both made our relative arguments. I'll leave it to the community to decide their view.
Jun 27	comment	How do I increase my wrist strength for punching? @DaveLiepmann Punching a bag with proper form is creating resistive tension in the muscles of the forearm that brace the wrist. The strength of your wrist is not static; it adapts to the stresses under which it's placed. Two quotes for you: Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. And If you want to be better at X, do X
Jun 27	comment	Is practising techniques on both the left and right sides beneficial or detrimental to martial development? @Shauna +1 for belly dancing and "train both sides to use both sides". It's a bit like anything: If you want to do a task better, do that task; I don't subscribe to the idea that, "If I need to carry a 180 lbs. man, I should do bench presses." Instead, carry dead weight in similar fashion.
Jun 18	comment	How do I increase my wrist strength for punching? @DaveLiepmann Your comment is invalid: Striking against something is implicit in both the question and answer.
Jun 13	comment	Will engraving a staff made of white waxwood compromise its integrity? "just a white lacqure painted over what looked like common American oak " Sooooo common, and a very good point. Caveat emptor. Most martial arts weapons that are commercially available are lousy, relying on the fact 99% of buyers wouldn't know oak from pine. Quite the dangerous game.
Jun 8	comment	How can I try to engage students who don't really want to be there? I'm basing my answer on social cohesion theory, and, as with most of my answers, my methods tend toward the subversive. I believe in forcing a favorable outcome through manipulation (I was bullied a lot as a kid), and I enjoy pushing people's buttons. Take it for what it's worth ;)
Jun 8	comment	Will engraving a staff made of white waxwood compromise its integrity? You usually won't experience it because the wood is treated (with boiled linseed oil – it's a common treatment in commercially available tools). However, when you're removing the top layer by engraving into the weapon, if you don't treat it, you're exposing it to the risk.
Jun 5	comment	When should I run away? @dmckee Thanks for catching that. I apologize for the mistake.
Jun 5	comment	Will engraving a staff made of white waxwood compromise its integrity? Are you sure it's pine? Generally you don't use soft woods in the construction of bo, though Japanese White Pine are extremely popular in bonsai. More popular are white oak for their density and compressive strength.
Jun 5	comment	Will engraving a staff made of white waxwood compromise its integrity? @Trevoke: If you don't like the feel of a sticker under your hands, engraving will not be any better. I took a Dremel to a red oak hanbo I had: you lose the slide that the smooth wood has in your hands.
Jun 4	comment	How can I try to engage students who don't really want to be there? Do you have to sign off on them meeting their requirement?
May 18	comment	What strength and conditioning exercises are used in tai chi? The point being that if you want to be able to carry a big weight while running, you should carry a big weight while running. Performing deadlifts is not equivalent to holding the posture in your legs necessary to perform silk reeling, but simply the act of silk reeling will give you the required capability.
May 18	comment	What strength and conditioning exercises are used in tai chi? There's a notion that all workouts are created equally, which is incorrect. Georges Hebert discovered the differences between strength and usable strength in 1902 while he and his crew attempted to evacuate some 700 souls from St. Pierre in Martinique during the volcanic eruption. See L'éducation physique ou Lentrainement complet par la méthode naturelle
May 18	comment	What strength and conditioning exercises are used in tai chi? @DaveLiepmann Silk-Reeling is a neigong (內功 – internal skill) exercise mimicking the movements of reeling silk from silk worms; the movements are long, exaggerated, smooth, and slow (like they'd need to be to avoid damaging silk). These movements are common in Chen and Wu taijiquan. Hope that helps.
May 17	comment	Is there a written, authoritative source I can reference for interpretations (Bunkai) of Karate (Shotokan) katas? Welcome to the site. Generally, answers here need substance, not just links (links can go dead and result in a loss of information). Perhaps you could paraphrase what it is that makes those links relevant to this discussion. See Answering Questions on martialarts.stackexchange.com
May 15	comment	How does Bartitsu's “foot hook with a cane” technique work? Welcome to the site, and thanks for answering!
May 15	comment	Is there a US-based organization supporting Iaijutsu? Sounds like a reasonable question, so long as we're sticking with the existence of organizations in the US for iaijutsu; if we start getting into individual instructors, that's off topic for this site.
May 15	comment	What makes this seated Daito-ryu technique work? Coming from a background as a magician, and having a long background of martial arts training, I'm quite confident that what I describe isn't a parlor trick; these same principles underly every technique in martial arts in one way or another, even the ones you train in.