david thorpe says that one of the low post moves made infamous by michael jordan was his "double pivot," (which is essentially an up-and-under done in the same direction, instead of a different direction) but i am not sure that's what i'm seeing in the rare times he chooses to do it, or a simple scoop shot layup towards the basket, no shot fake.

with the amount of hair i have right now and the fact that it's always sticking up, i think i can cosplay as mugen from samurai champloo.

sometimes i sincerely wonder where the manners of some people went.

while the term "fobsicle" is not new, apparently nobody's really used it before.

so let's just use it to categorize all those asian popsicles you buy at your local asian supermarket now.

y'kno, the flavors that include: melon (honeydew), red bean, green bean, peanut, mango, taro root, green tea, durian, etc.

fobsicles.

audible flatulence during a bible study...

witnessing some old lady walk out of the men's restroom...

Zakk Wylde Pinch Harmonic

had a hunch that what i was hearing all this time with all those rock tracks i was listening to was a pinch harmonic combined with a vibrato, but wondered whether it'd be possible to pull that off quickly. i guess my thoughts were confirmed; just need to practice.

it sucks when the one song you want to learn how to play on electric guitar has no tab for it, and the musicians are japanese (which means that the tab might be there somewhere online, but you can't find it).

nba 2k9 is really frustrating me. it's still a great game, but they could still do some things better (like more defensive options, such as hedging on screen rolls, and how high you want to jump for rebounds/ shot blocks, ie tipping vs monster spiking/ grabbing). you can do everything right, and still lose on a possession, defensively by letting a wing player get a late backdoor cut, or giving up a CONTESTED 3 ball. and then offensively, sometimes it peeves me that the wide open 3 ball i get misses because i didn't time my release right, or i don't get the double pivot post move out because for some reason, the computer decided to not make my underhand layup come out.

i don't get where parents get the patience to not lose it in public over impatient/ rude/ etc children; with the patience i have right now, i'd probably lose it, yell at them to be patient or not do what they just did, backhand them hard across the face, then watch them get carted away to an adopted family while i have to deal with soap on a rope.

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fate/ unlimited COMBOS indeed...

like anime, people can change into something they weren't before. something more powerful, stronger, etc.

unlike anime, that process isn't instant; it takes time, hard work, investment, etc. there are no magical spells, if you didn't change, it wasn't because you didn't have enough mana, or magic circuits, etc. oh yea; you can't merge your soul with someone's else's into a new body.

hardly a revelation, but yeah, i wanted to get this thought off my chest.

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i suck at full step bends on the electric guitar. i'm getting better at it, but it's still a work in progress. maybe my fingers are just really weak; i even contemplated using 2 fingers to bend the string. there's a buncha things i thought about trying to help make it work, but yea. at least i look kewl when i do it now, cause of the techniques i try to use. on the plus side, nothing gives you electric guitar calluses faster than doing vibrato and string bends on your axe.

i dunno if what i've done is called real guitar practice. yea there's a buncha stuff i've started to do, but i still haven't gone onto lesson 2 in my guitar instructional booklet.

i'm happy that fall quarter's finally over, but i'm still disappointed about the way i carried myself this quarter. i definitely need to learn how to better study.

i wonder what precisely makes it so hard for me to study?

when's the last time i ventured here?

hmmm...

seeing that kid on the tennis court who threw temper tantrum after temper tantrum reminded me of when i was little. but it didn't make me sympasize with him, only dislike that type of attitude even more. why? because that type of attitude was childish, and had no legitimate reason for being there.

fate stay night's pretty cool. i guess i must be a type moon fan. maybe if i looked at the fighting game a bit longer, i might like it too; initial impression turned me off though; attacks and combos did so little damage. i don't want to play a fighting game where i need to land 50 solid hits to get the K.O.

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john petrucci's alternative picking technique is so killer. maybe that'll inspire me to do something again on the guitar.

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i'm glad i got the behringer micromon. now i can practice on the electric guitar, while hearing the cd play, and not disturb my mom. ie, it'll be easier to practice when my mom's sleeping.

my above-average iq is both the greatest blessing and curse i have... like treasure in an earthen vessel, it's not always used properly; sometimes the form of the vessel taints the beauty of the treasure.

if i use it to study the truth, and to keep searching for it, i sincerely believe that there will be things that i come across and come to believe, that will put me at odds with everybody else (in part because other people don't spend the time to think about the truth in their free time). i already see that (like how i believe killing somebody even in self-defense is wrong, or that even if you kill somebody when God tells you to, that is sin), and if i were to open my mouth and express those beliefs a bit more vocally, it would put me even more at odds with everybody else. you see, the more time you spend thinking on why certain things are like they are in the world, the more you begin to peel apart the layers of perception that appear to be true, but just aren't. but there are going to be a lot of people who don't do that, and everytime you have to explain the end-all of what you believe, you have to go through a mountain of explanation to get to what you want to explain; along the way, they're probably not going to believe everything else you said and believed, making the conclusion moot.

so you inherently develop this sense of pride as you progress along and hone the ability to determine what is truth and what ie perception, because you simply know more than the average person, and courting the frustration built up from them not believing what you said (sometimes you just want to say, "just shuttup; i've done more thinking on this than you have, so just believe me," but you can't, you just can't). and that pride issue sucks, so you always have to keep it in check, which gets tougher and tougher the more you study and seek the truth. but you can't allow yourself to be humble either, if it means you have to be ignorant too; the Lord calls us to be humble yes, but he also calls us to "prove all things; hold fast that which is good," and Paul repeatedly told his readers to not be "ignorant".

so, like joe dumars trying to win a championship for the pistons now with the vets, but building for the future with young players, as a God-following "truth-seeker," you're trying to do the impossible; be a humble, yet knowledgeable person. i'm starting to think these two, though not exactly antonyns, might be polar opposites; you act humble because you realize your limitations. but when knowledgeable, your limitations have become smaller (on paper).

oh yeah; the other part of the equation; it doesn't help that i'm probably really emotional inside, on a frustrated/ angry-type level most of the time. so that compounds the process of explaining what i know to others. also, i'm really lazy sometimes. that doesn't help either. neither the fact that i'm shy too.

today's international caps lock day

ZOMGITSSOAWESOMETOTYPELIKETHISONCRUISECONTROL!?!?!?!

seems prop 8 will pass; most of the ppl supporting it are asian.

i was driving to cupertino library today after tennis, and buncha asians were picketing for "yes" on it. there were "honk if you support tradional marriage" signs, and ppl were honking like crazy.

i wonder why not as many ppl are on that prostitution thing?

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regarding racism (ie some sunday school reflections): it becomes racism when you start tying in culture with race. the ability to distinguish between one and the other is key. (i think) differences with people basically have less to do with race, and more to do with culture, but when you tie the two together, and assume the culture and personality of a person based his race (whether you believe that person is good OR bad), that is racism.

there's this one quote i'm trying to remember, but can't; it's basically saying that the only difference between the geniuses and those who aren't is the ability to see the same things, differently. i believe i saw it painted on a wall in a science lecture room while i was at UC Davis. here's two that it "might" have been:

"Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle than his fellows."
-Havelock Ellis

"Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and where the man of talent sees two or three."
-Ezra Pound

you stay classy, UCD band-uh

in this world, you have to screw stigmas. but you have to check yourself to make sure you don't go overboard.

I’m sure the original author on the Blazers’ blog, regarding playing basketball defense, will bring it up in his part 2, but another really important facet of fighting games is making your opponent think he can control space so that he does his thing, but then actually setting him up so you control space. One great example is the fireball trap that Ryu possesses; contrary to what the uninformed believe, Ryu players actually want to not be fullscreen when they’re chucking fireballs; they want to be at the range where if you jump in, they can hit you with a dragon punch; that puts risk into their fireball game, but also means now they can lure the opponents into jumping over a fake fireball so they can dragon punch them. That’s why a lot of high level SF2 matches involve Ryu players whiffing a lotta standing fierce punches at midrange; they’re not actually screwing up the fireball motion; just trying to fake the opponent into jumping. Another example is to make your opponent think they can sweep you at max range, then back up ever so slightly so it misses, and then sweeping him as he is in recovery of his whiffed sweep (otherwise known as footsies). Your first goal in fighting games is to control space; shut down your opponent’s abilities to control space, and impose your ability to control space. Make your opponent scared, afraid to press buttons, and then in that moment of hesitation, you can do things you usually won’t be allowed to do; in the SF2 games, once you controlled the footsie game, and your opponent became afraid of pressing buttons at midrange, you could use that moment of hesitation to close in and do a 2-way mixup game, which would do more damage than standing at midrange playing the footsie game; as Ryu/Ken, you could throw them, or dragon punch. As Zangief, you could 360 throw or sweep. Etc. Once that happened, go back to the footsie game, and try to dominate again until you get another opportunity to do another mixup game, rinse and repeat.

It’s kinda how I play my help defense on the basketball court. Many of you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I actually don’t consider myself that good of a help defender (I would rate myself like a B-) in terms of blocks and the whole vertical game, because I don’t gamble a lot; I think Bob is the best help defender in that regard during pickup (of course, Bob has the luxury of coming from behind more than I do, but I still think he’s much better than me, because he gambles a lot more than me, but his success rate is still high). But I consider myself very good as a lock-down defender, and use that to my advantage in helping. So the way I gamble for blocks as a help defender is that I stay on my man as long as possible until I know the opponent is going to shoot, then come over very quickly and try to block the shot; many times I don’t come over at all. Done this way, I don’t get that many blocks. But it also prevents the opponent from dishing off the ball to the person I’m guarding, and usually ends up with them shooting the ball with me coming over; for me, I believe it’s better to come over later than earlier; come over earlier, and you’ll get burned with a pass everytime; when I first started playing at Terman Park, I used to gamble like crazy, come over super early, and I would pay the price everytime; my man would always be open and hit with a pass. But if you come over late, you might not get the ball, but they’ll usually never pass because they are almost finished with their shooting motion, and still get slightly distracted by your wingspan and jumping, especially if your height and wingspan relative to the people you play with makes you a big man. IE, make them think they can control space their way, give them an open lane to the hoop and don’t come over, make them “stick out that sweep,” and then shut it down at the last moment by your space control. So my help defense is a lot like how you play footsies in fighting games; I hover between that “too late” and “just in time” timing when coming over; you don’t think I control that particular area of space, but I do.

On that regard, you will notice a lotta times when somebody slashes into the lane, I’m one of the last people getting there to help; it’s not because I don’t know they’re coming, but it’s because of this principle of helping that I’ve got. I’ve got my back turned towards them, arms raised to prevent a pass to the man I’m guarding, but I’m really trying to make my body language look like I can’t see them at all, while my peripheral vision is totally on them, and judging distance and timing, judging when or if I can gamble, Not to mention I know everybody else has already crowded the paint, so I don’t need to go over just yet. :D

Look, it’s not that I don’t like getting blocks when playing basketball; I HEART them. They make playing defense fun. But it’s more important that you put yourself in position to get maybe 3 blocks in an afternoon, but safely alter 10 more, than it is to get 10 blocks, but leave your man open 30 times. Or something like that. Bill Russell once said something to the attitude that it’s not about trying to block every shot, but making your opponent think you might block every shot. My help defense school of thought is like 180 degrees different than his; I’m trying to make my opponent think I might never block his shot.

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On other notes, a lotta things the BlazersBlog article talked about I’ve heard before (not just the controlling space part), but it was good to hear them reemphasized again. Like the mentality thing; one of Dennis Rodman’s quotes from his book describing his attitude on defense was essentially “I used to look at the guy I was guarding and think, f... this, I just decided something; you ain’t getting s....” When I get into a really serious shut-down mode playing pickup basketball, my intensity inside is very similar; “I am not giving you anything today,” or the like.

Also, I think I’ve realized beforehand that offense beats defense too because offense is dictating, and defense is anticipating; I don’t think reacting is a good word choice for defense (though it can be for offense); the difference between anticipating and reacting is that you need to think ahead that so-and-so move is what the offense is going to do. Reacting on defense would mean you could just go on autopilot and whatever the opponent did and you saw, you countered clean. That is b/c in fighting games, most people need to anticipate said move to counter it; ie, bait it. The really scary players are those who can REACT to said move; they only need to see it, not guess when it’s going to come out. So they never have to tire themselves out second-guessing whether the move is going to come; if it comes, BOOM they got it.

Anyways, though offense is supposed to beat defense, defense is still more important than offense because it’s consistent; offense isn’t. This also is consistent both in team sports, and fighting games. You can’t be offensive all day; it just doesn’t work; some days you’ll just roll over your opponents and you won’t need to defend, other days nothing will work. But your defense is going to be there regardless. I used to believe if your defense was tops, you could have a junk of an offense and still win. That’s not true; your offense still needs to not be suspect, and this game is still won by who scored more points than the other team; even if you many to somehow deny your opponents to 0 pts, if you scored nothing as well, you don’t win. BUT, your offense doesn’t need to be tops if your defense is. IE, a team with solid offense, but great defense wins over a team with great offense but solid defense most of the time. I mean, you need not to look any further than the 2008 NBA Finals; that was a great example of a solid offense, great defense team (Celtics) vs a great offense, solid defense team (Lakers). 2004 Finals was also a good example, with the Pistons being that defensive-minded team, and the Lakers being that offensive-minded team.

this news article has too much lol

yeeesh; niners win; willis for t3h 86 yd td as well...

giants and packers just killing it on the road. sick.

i think the preference ppl have for mac n' cheese really is a kid thing; they liked it as a kid, and kinda blossomed from there. i don't ever really think i HATED it, probably liked it at one time, but it's just something that i look at now, and go, why would you want to eat that now? shouldn't we be hooked on pasta alfredo or something like that if that's how it is?

anyways, i brought up THAT, in order to bring up some peculiar foods that i like now, PROBABLY because i liked them as a kid:
-cottage cheese (actually, all types of cheese, but i have no problem eating this with nothing added, which might surprise a bunch of people; i don't think it's disgusting; it's basically got the same flavor as tofu, ie bland, and it's really good health-wise, which is a surprise, because it's a cheese, but the truth is that body builders love it because it's a very good source of high quality protein with low fat, and tends to have very little additives.)
-avocado (again, don't have to add anything to it)
-vienna sausage (this one's weird, but i always loved them)
-pound cake, frozen, sliced, sara lee (again, childhood thing, but it's pretty good i THINK when you eat it this way; sometimes my mom would give this to me for breakfast)

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my body's weird; it tolerates ALL kinds of weather; cold, hot, whatever. but the initial adjustment from one extreme to the other kinda bugs me. like right now i'm still in "hot summer" mode, so the beginning of this week and the end of it are both going to kick my ass.

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i think i just wasted 15 minutes of my life idling on blogger trying to decide if i could write any more.

The NFL started yesterday! JT O’Sullivan, please make UCD proud (or at least less ashamed, as Abe Simpson said to Homer), and not that 5 TO effort! Ah yes, the 2K Niners; where they get the high draft picks that the Warriors can’t get, but still royally screw things up. Nevertheless, I’m still psyched for football. That season-ending injury to Tom Brady's gonna make things interesting.

Congrats to Serena Williams for winning her 3rd US Open. I was pulling for Jelena Jankovic (did I even spell that right?), but Serena did a great job. The commentators loved how Jelena smiled after every long rally she won and looked at the big screen to look at herself. Oh yeah; did a lotta splits trying to hustle her ass off (I think I heard a lotta “I love you Jelena!” right before each serve). I guess putting on makeup really did put her into the finals. Very entertaining women’s finals, but Serena’s stroke power and serve power was just too much; I actually predicted as such when I was watching.

And I’m really bummed Rafael Nadal could not meet up against Roger Federer for the US Open men’s championship; I really think Roger Federer’s going to eclipse Pete Sampras’ grand slam total; he’s only 2 away; I think Pete might’ve quit early because he was just bored; funny how the greatest players who just roll through their sports always quit when they’re bored, not when they can’t play anymore; it’s when their playing dips ever so slightly, or when they’re bored. Not when they absolutely suck. Like MJ could’ve had 8+ titles had he not gotten bored midway through the 90s. And he probably still couldve kept playing after 98, although he mightve not won anything anymore. Jerry West mightve won more than 1 had he stuck with it, but he admitted after the NY series that he felt he couldn’t play at a high level any longer, so that was it for him.

do you fight the battles you absolutely know you can't win? i would actually say yes. because effort does not get wasted, whether you believe it or not.

i ARE so hyped for the nfl. go to imeem and listen to the e.s.posthumus - posthumus zone song, and pump yourself up; it's the nfl on cbs theme song.

jeremy is right; doubles matches in tennis end so quickly. i still can't believe the bryan brothers have played 703 consecutive matches together.

good for both hakeem and ewing to enter the nba hall of fame. i srsly gotta consider ordering the dvd boxset for the 1994 championship season.

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i considered yesterday, after leaving church, and seeing a black cat with some white splotches in the church parking lot, and carefully going up to it so i could pet it, that cats are "smarter" than dogs, in that they are less naive, and test the waters a lot more (which may also be why though i like both, i prefer cats more). walk up to a dog, and it will get excited and bark and run to you, etc. even the really midget ones. walk up to a cat without a care, as i did initially, and it will get ready to run away. i had to slow my movement, crouch, stop a few feet from it, and extend my hand the rest of the way to meet it; it proceeded to arch its back, etc, roll over. ppl talk all the time about how cats suck because they're not as friendly as dogs, etc, well, maybe if you checked how you acted before you approached it, like not run full speed at it, it might not take off (but nooo, it's never my fault, it's the animal's fault). sometimes ppl act too much like dogs, and then are surprised when they get betrayed. acting like a cat goes a bit more in line with being "wise as serpents, harmless as doves," as st. matthew once recorded, which is why i also tend to like cats a bit more.

it's gonna be hot this weekend. guess i have to sleep on the sofa downstairs for a couple more days. it better not be unbearable when i go to practice on the drums tomorrow.

looks like i'm gonna have to play pick-up bball this sunday instead of tennis. that is, if it isn't too hot.

i love when walgreens has clearances; their stuff is so cheap. right now they're trying to just get rid of all their school supply stuff to make room for halloween, so a lotta school stuff is on discount. i got a pentel energize mechanical pencil for 2 dollars, when it was 5 dollars regular. very good pencil; the tip is retractable, the grip is very good, and the eraser hides away pretty well too, while still being able to be easily pulled out. included extra leads and erasers too.

i watched part of the republican national convention yesterday when sarah palin took the stage; pretty good. she seemed like she knew what she was doing and saying. we'll see if john mccain knows what he's doing tonight. btw, they kept saying john mccain is a maverick; everytime i heard the word i kept thinking of two movies; top gun and maverick, lol. "i'm too close for missiles! switching to guns!"

aaaand... i should go jogging at least once every week. the fact that i played very little exercise activity for about 1 month, then played tennis with eon and felt my knees slightly sore afterward (which has never happened to me when playing tennis) should give me a sign.

i feel whatever tennis i play with eon or bill never really makes me better. i still can't do a topspin properly; most of the time i do it, i either hit the ball too high, or whack it straight into the ground. and i mos def need a new racket.

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going throughout life without ever taking a conscious effort to think for yourself is being somebody else's pawn. thinking for yourself takes time, effort, energy, resources. but it's worth it, because you really don't know who you can trust in this world.