Videos, Updates and Happy Birthday Linda! (11/16)

First off, it is my sister’s birthday on the 16th.  It is the 16th in China sooner than it is the 16th in the U.S. so I thought I would get a jump on things and give a shout out to her here on my blog (which I think she reads maybe once every few months).  She just moved to the Bay Area, so if you see her walking around Lake Merritt give her a big hug from me.

… hmm .. maybe explain why you are doing that first.  Otherwise things could get weird.

I’m actually writing this on the 15th of November and post-dating it for tomorrow when I will be traveling from Fuyang to Xi’an (barring any unforseen snow storms).  I also wanted to post up some information on recent videos I’ve updated to my youtube channel and some changes I’ll be making to my website too.

Videos

I recently started putting up the 1996 China Nationals footage that I have on my hard drive up on youtube.  It isn’t the whole competition by a long shot, but it should give you enough of a feeling for the stuff there were doing that year.  Some great performances by the likes of Liu Hai Bo and Liu Qing Hua so be sure to check that out.  So far I’ve put all my women’s footage, including some traditional events (because they used to rock it Old School, back in the day), as well as men’s Chang Quan.  The men’s events will follow during the week.

You can see my youtube channel at http://youtube.com/wushuzilla

Here’s a quick one of LQH’s long fist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvrNfWI0mVA

Updates

If you haven’t had a chance to sign up for my twitter feed, you can do that as well.  Just head over to twtitter.com/wushuzilla.  I also have a facebook fan page for those of you who want to keep in the loop through that network.   facebook.com/pages/wushuzillacom (I should probably change that name ….).

I’m going to be slowly rolling out changes to my website to help consolidate all of the content in to one location.  Mainly to do with my videos.  Having them on youtube is great, and it is good to have them organized into play lists there, but sometimes I think people just want to have a page where they can go and see all of the videos that they can watch listed together in an easy to read, chronological format.  So, one page has all the playlists for a specific competition, for example, instead of circulating through a ton of different pages on youtube through trial, error and lucky “related videos” finds.

If you haven’t noticed by now, the content for both narom.net and wushuzilla.com are the same.  I set it up so that the themes look different based on the URL you are visiting from, but the content remains the same.  It should keep me from having to repost everything across multiple networks.  I’m also going to try to figure out the deal with my alivenotdead accounts.  Having two of them is becoming somewhat problematic.  But more on that situation later (but any suggestions you have in the meantime would be appreicated though).

I am going to try to be a bit more responsible and accessible through my blog and online networks as well, so feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions about something.  I’m more than happy to help out if I can.  Especially if you have suggestions on ways to make thigns easier for visitors to wushuzilla.com. (Keeping in mind that this current design is PURELY TEMPORARY!)

I would say that probably most requests would be for specific videos, which is one of the reason all the 1996 stuff is going up right now, but keep in mind that I’m eventually going to put up everything I have online (if it isn’t already there) so if you are patient enough you will see it all there anyway.  I do get unusual requests from time to time so if you are looking for some esoteric or hard-to-find, let me know and if  I have it I’ll try to post it up for you.

I also have a few ideas for some regular features here, but I’m going to ease in to those gradually.  No need to rush things.  I’m not going anywhere (I hope).

I think is most of what I wantecd to write.  If not, I’ll post it up for the next update.  In the meantime, cross your fingers and dot your eyes, and if we’re all lucky, by this time tomorrow I’ll be back in Xi’an!  And hopefully soon thereafter back to training.

P.S.

Oh, by the way, my sickness is dying out almost as quickly as it came up.  I just have some residual coughing from a throat tickle right now, but barely even a stuffed up nose or a tingling head to speak of so that is pretty good news.  Yay for my immune system!