I’m into bodyweight strength exercises.

While this probably stems from my martial arts background, it isn’t because I believe there is some magical difference between using free or machine weights versus bodyweight. In fact, I’m going to guess that using a complete set of free weights is “better” than using bodyweight, in terms of workout input and gain output. The problem is, those aren’t the only factors.

My interest in bodyweight strength exercises solidified when I read The Naked Warrior, by Pavel Tsatsouline, a former Soviet Special Forces instructor. While the guy is may be a little nuts, he brings up some good points; gym weights, are great but, as he notes, unless you live a life with the predictability of a house plant, they won’t always be available.

What it all boils down to is a regimen of doing 2 exercises: the pistol squat and the one-armed push-up.

The results have been good, and, while one-armed push-ups can work out your abs quite a lot, I’m ready for the next level: the dragon flag

Click here for a youtube video demonstrating the dragon flag

So, here is what I’ve constructed for myself, a dragon flag board.

I’ve been meaning to make it for a while, but I just got a little store credit for returning a lid-less trash can to Home Depot, after using the lid to make a shield, completing a costume of King Leonidas from 300.

Return policy abuse, you might suggest, but maybe someone at Home Depot should have thought of this before refusing to sell me just the lid.

Anyway, the board works by laying yourself on your back, with the bulk of the board under your torso and your head between the handles. You can then grasp the handles and it will support leg lifts and dips. And, it slides nicely under Gus Gus and Buster’s table when I’m not using it.

I figured, with plenty of athletic experience between us, some sort of weight training post was going to come up. I’d like to hear sometime what anyone else does. Maybe Tim could give us a rundown on his hulkening sessions.

Reminiscent of Infantry fight system, and to show dramatic combat with guns, is the final fight scene to the movie Equilirium (2002) by Kurt Wimmer (major spoilers for those who haven’t seen it yet).

At least 20 shots fired and not a scratch on either guy. Notice how it was harder for John Preston to point and pull a trigger than it was for him to wrist-lock the gun from his opponent? That’s because it’s more dramatic that way. Guns are more tricky to pull this off without the dissolution of viewer disbelief (like Mike’s Commando note in the last comments). Wimmer, or whoever choreographed the fights, did a good job throughout the movie.

The two weren’t exchanging blows and deducting hit points. Instead, they were deducting each others’, as I put it in the last post, easily-replenish-able statuses.

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So, I have been drumming up ideas for a tabletop RPG combat system, mainly as mental-masturbation, but I think I might have found something I can use for Emporium (the combat system is the largest design hole that I currently have for Emporium). The real goal is for a combat system that is intuitive, not too complicated, yet still interesting and dynamic from round to combat round.

One way to do this is to account for proximity (think Warhammer 40k or Battletech). While that can make combat interesting, it also can turn your RPG into more of a strategic simulation.

Then, two combat systems converged in my mind as the two most interesting combat systems I have witnessed. Unfortunately, both of them are action systems, not turn-based.

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I have always disliked how AD&D handles combat, especially the damage system.

Compare a level 4 fighter, who has 40 hit points, and a level 1 mage, who has a whopping 4 hit points. The two are fighting side by side versus some castle guards. During the skirmish, the fighter gets hit with long sword which, for this example, does its maximum damage of 10 hit points and then gets nicked a few times at values of 3, 4 and 5; the mage gets stabbed with a dagger and gets completely knocked out with the max damage of 4 (some systems would have just killed him, but we always played that you get knocked out at 0 hit points and start to bleed to death until stabilized at -1 hit points).

The obvious problem with this is the disparity of damage between both characters, who are, after all, 2 humans. How can a small stab mean death to one character but hardly anything to another?

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There’s a little fishing store you can see from Route 50 on your way west, right before Kent Island. I’ve been meaning to take a picture of it for years now, but Buff got it while on her way back from a job interview. What were the designers thinking?

This will be my rant on my particular experience with teaching in China. It had to happen eventually and I guess that I should be glad that there’s no chance my employer will read this blog, as some employees have faced problems for saying less than I’m about to say.

There’s a problem with the way English is usually taught in China. It is taught via book learning. This fundamentally wrong because a language, by definition, is spoken. The effect is a couple generations of Chinese who can read pretty well and who often have a surprisingly broad vocabulary, but who simply cannot speak English. If you can’t speak a language (hint: “lang” latin derived for “tongue”), then you really can’t do much with it, can you?

My company’s mission is to teach oral English to young Chinese students, to get them actually speaking the language, not just learn about the language as if it was a dead one. Seeing as I’ve learned Chinese the Chinese way (mostly reading and writing, very little speaking) and didn’t appreciate it much, and based on the linguistic theory that I’ve studied concerning language acquisition, I fully believe in my company’s mission. Unfortunately, the company itself doesn’t.

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Finally I make a Proto-post about my Asian excursion. I was thinking since a lot of travel blogs end up with a couple posts in the first month and then one every 3 months after that, I would try to hold myself to one post every month. So, now that I’m 5 months late, let’s get right to it.

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The following wall of text is a manifesto of my justification for wanting to develop a game. I might edit this a little later, but what you see here is enough of a final version to post.

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The Legend of Zelda II, the Adventure of Link, has long been berated as the bastard child of the Zelda series. Many go so far as to not include it within the Zelda “genre” out of personal distaste for the game. But, I consider it one of my favorite games of all time.

There are many cases to defend the game, like unique gameplay and excellent player control, but my angle is specific: It’s the video game that has the most interesting swordplay, as far as I am aware.

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Once we stepped into the trees enough to not be spotted on the road, I lit the torch. It burned amazingly well and bright, but here’s the shocker: You can’t see much with a torch in the woods. First of all, you have to hold the torch well away from your vision or it’s too bright for your eyes. Also, you can’t see but a few trees ahead of yourself. I noticed the wood underneath the torch head started to catch fire so I spread mud over that part.

We walked and managed well. There’s a problem with many forests on Delmarva; they are mainly made up one tree type, since the forests have all been logged and these are new trees. This tree, the loblolly, is has roots that are poisonous to many other plants and make the ground unfit for many other plants, except briars. This is why it’s so hard to navagate through Delmarvan woods, with such dense thorns. And, for us, we had to be sure not to light any tall or hanging briars on fire.

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