Links
These are a few of my favourite links.

Flavours
There's more than one way to view this weblog; try these flavours on for size.

Subscribe
Subscribe(RSS) to a syndicated feed of my weblog, brought to you by the wonders of RSS.
or by Atom..

Cambs County Council and the Geospatial web!
I'm looking for new halls for my Tai Chi (and hopefully Kickboxing!) classes, due to issues with my previous one, which is turning out to be fairly tricky to find. On a whim, I phoned the council, and asked the receptionist if they had a list of halls for hire, expecting to get passed onto another department. "Oh, yes" she said, "would you like me to email you the link?". Sure enough, a few mins later, I was looking at this. Browsing it, I realised what I wanted was it overlaid onto a map, so I could see where would be appropriate. Looking at the source, it was in nested HTML tables, and inconsistent formats, so I gave up the idea of writing a web scraper, and mailed the site admins on a handy link, asking if they had the info in a CSV that I could use in a google maps overlay.
A day later the reply came back; "Oh, we've done it! put "Halls for Hire" in the Search For box (including the double quote marks) and put the village/town you are thinking of moving to in the Location box leave the Show Results on a Map box ticked then click on the Search Cambs.net button.

Live Earth rather than Google maps, and in a tiny window, but otherwise superb - great job Cambridge County Council, and completely unexpectedly competent and on the button!

Posted at: 07:59:24 4 Oct 2008 [/martialarts] permanent link

Self defence?
Try Milking Goats.. Oh it does the heart good, it really does. You go, girl! :-)

Posted at: 14:05:38 12 Sep 2005 [/martialarts] permanent link

How to defend yourself with a stick
I don't normally post martial arts stuff here, but this was just too good to pass up. BoingBoing pointed me at these articles from the 1900's describing how a gentleman armed with a walking stick, may defend himself. Amazing stuff, and I was struck at the resemblance to Tai Chi Chuan sword work. Check out the images, though!
Part One, Part Two.

Posted at: 17:34:02 29 Jan 2005 [/martialarts] permanent link