This is the Judo blog of Lance Wicks. In this blog I cover mainly Judo and related topics. My Personal blog is over at LanceWicks.com where I cover more geeky topics. Please do leave comments on what you read or use the Contact Me form to send me an email with your thoughts and ideas.
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JudoCoach.com Blog by Lance Wicks
Dear IOC, please hold the next Olympic games somewhere I can watch it! Oh great you have. ;-)
Well, the Judo is over and to be frank I have watched almost none of it! It started at 5am and I have a job you know. This also basically killed a lot of the plans we had for www.08judo.com but fear not the site will grow, especially as footage arrives on Youtube etc.
I also have 40 hours of footage from the BBC recorded on DVD that i shall be watching eventually and shall try and summarise the fights on the site.
Having all that footage may also have solved a big problem I have with my research project... maybe. My research project for my BSc. is an analysis of the relationships between attack rate, scoring rate and victory. FInding suitable unedited footage has been an issue I have been struggling with, having 5 DVDs of Olympic Judo may solve that issue.
The issue I do have with it however is how using this BBC footage will affect the experiement. I am not getting a random selection as I had hoped. That said, the footage tended to be fairly random I think, so maybe it is not an issue. I need to talk to my supervisor about it.
It would be excellent to use this footage as it is really really current, so my research will have loads of interest hopefully. I am repeating some of the research that Sikorski, Franchini and Sterkowicz have done from as far back as 1987, so it might be really interesting to compare the 1987 results with what I find.
My assumption would be that the dynamics of Judo have changed quite a bit. It'd be good to "prove it" and perhaps even be the first to do so?
Anyway... as I started with, Beijing got away from me (and there is still half a week to go) but I am slowly getting caught up.
In other Judo news I have (finally) managed to complete a little project for Mike at the University of Bath. The project was to build a search engine for the Richard (Dickie) Bowen archive. Mike gave me some of the archive (a small subset) and I have written a small parser and search engine. So I have a single HTML file that has a search box. It works ok, looks ugly.
The plus has been the almost sub-conscious learning about what Richard Bowen had. Amazing range and quality of Judo Historical artifacts. Letters discussing the formation of the IJF, the EJU, the BJA. It is all available there at the University of Bath, I really REALLY need to look at some of this stuff the next time I am in Bath.
Anyway... mustn't spend all evening blogging, I need to eat!
Well, the Judo is over and to be frank I have watched almost none of it! It started at 5am and I have a job you know. This also basically killed a lot of the plans we had for www.08judo.com but fear not the site will grow, especially as footage arrives on Youtube etc.
I also have 40 hours of footage from the BBC recorded on DVD that i shall be watching eventually and shall try and summarise the fights on the site.
Having all that footage may also have solved a big problem I have with my research project... maybe. My research project for my BSc. is an analysis of the relationships between attack rate, scoring rate and victory. FInding suitable unedited footage has been an issue I have been struggling with, having 5 DVDs of Olympic Judo may solve that issue.
The issue I do have with it however is how using this BBC footage will affect the experiement. I am not getting a random selection as I had hoped. That said, the footage tended to be fairly random I think, so maybe it is not an issue. I need to talk to my supervisor about it.
It would be excellent to use this footage as it is really really current, so my research will have loads of interest hopefully. I am repeating some of the research that Sikorski, Franchini and Sterkowicz have done from as far back as 1987, so it might be really interesting to compare the 1987 results with what I find.
My assumption would be that the dynamics of Judo have changed quite a bit. It'd be good to "prove it" and perhaps even be the first to do so?
Anyway... as I started with, Beijing got away from me (and there is still half a week to go) but I am slowly getting caught up.
In other Judo news I have (finally) managed to complete a little project for Mike at the University of Bath. The project was to build a search engine for the Richard (Dickie) Bowen archive. Mike gave me some of the archive (a small subset) and I have written a small parser and search engine. So I have a single HTML file that has a search box. It works ok, looks ugly.
The plus has been the almost sub-conscious learning about what Richard Bowen had. Amazing range and quality of Judo Historical artifacts. Letters discussing the formation of the IJF, the EJU, the BJA. It is all available there at the University of Bath, I really REALLY need to look at some of this stuff the next time I am in Bath.
Anyway... mustn't spend all evening blogging, I need to eat!
Matt Sussman over at http://blogcritics.org posted a really interesting article about his Olympic viewing habits and how Judo features in it.
In his article "Pinned Down By Olympic Judo" Matt talks about how he has been watching the Judo from Beijing and liking it.
I particulary liked this passage:
I know I plan on describing good throws as "severe ippwnage" from now on. Especially for my "Digital Native" readers I am sure the term will take off.
Take a look at the site, and maybe let Matt know you've read his article.
In his article "Pinned Down By Olympic Judo" Matt talks about how he has been watching the Judo from Beijing and liking it.
I particulary liked this passage:
After a day of zoning into the hypnotizing flips and grips, I had to check out the rules. Different kinds of takedowns and pins have a rather subjective scoring system, and the highest score — judo's "knockout," if you will — is called ippon. The fact that it rhymes with "own" should definitely captivate the World of Warcraft audience to no end. "zOMG, d00d, that Korean just got ippwn3d!!1"
I know I plan on describing good throws as "severe ippwnage" from now on. Especially for my "Digital Native" readers I am sure the term will take off.
Take a look at the site, and maybe let Matt know you've read his article.
Well, as of about ten minutes ago the Being Olympic Games officially opened.
The games have opened in an amazing spectacle!
I was fortunate to actually (and unexpectedly) be at home and able to watch the whole thing right through. From start to finish the opening ceremony was amazing and bodes well for a great games!
I twittered for the www.08Judo.com site and have posted a blog post over there also about the Judoka involved in carrying their nations flags into the stadium. 17 I think it was. Take a look over at www.08judo.com for the details and try "following" http://twitter.com/08judo for updates.
The highlights from the athletes coming in perspective was Marcon Bezzina carrying Malta's flag, I know Marcon and she is great so it was wonderful that she was the flag bearer. The BBC coverage here mentioned quite a bit about her living and training at University of Bath, which has got to be great publicity for the programme there!
Well, most of my blogging and efforts will be done over at www.08judo.com for the next two weeks, stay tuned!
Lance
The games have opened in an amazing spectacle!
I was fortunate to actually (and unexpectedly) be at home and able to watch the whole thing right through. From start to finish the opening ceremony was amazing and bodes well for a great games!
I twittered for the www.08Judo.com site and have posted a blog post over there also about the Judoka involved in carrying their nations flags into the stadium. 17 I think it was. Take a look over at www.08judo.com for the details and try "following" http://twitter.com/08judo for updates.
The highlights from the athletes coming in perspective was Marcon Bezzina carrying Malta's flag, I know Marcon and she is great so it was wonderful that she was the flag bearer. The BBC coverage here mentioned quite a bit about her living and training at University of Bath, which has got to be great publicity for the programme there!
Well, most of my blogging and efforts will be done over at www.08judo.com for the next two weeks, stay tuned!
Lance
Mike over at www.okcdt.com just posted a great video promoting Judo for children. He has posted it on his site and on Blip.tv, I have embedded it below so you can enjoy it too.
Hi All, well Thursdays in the summer block are always interesting, with the debate and conference, this year it was no different.
For we fourth years it's a bit odd really as we've seen it all and done it.
But really interesting to observe how the later years tackle the projects we did previously. Take this years debate, they debated the new grading system and if their should be a competitive element in the BJA grading syllabus.
Really topical as the non-competitive system only got implemented in April.
I tried to let the debate decide how I would vote rather than my personal (entrenched) position. The arguments for the team arguing there should be a contest element actually swayed me there way over that of their opposition. Specifically Luke and Emyr That was till the questions where I was swayed back to thinking that a non-competitive system is the right thing. Loretta Cusack's response to a question from Mike Callan in particularly swayed me.
After the debate I took a look at the Research posters of the third years ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/lancew/ ) and listened to some of the mental skills presentations.
After all this i spend some hours in the Library with the rest of the fourth years finishing off our website assignment. Which is all done, which raised the interesting question of how does one tack a coversheet onto a website? :-)
Anyway... this evening we have the official presentation evening for the third years who graduate following my year and the regular social event, so I shall have to go now and be sociable. :-)
lance
P.s. Did I mention the female TV celebrity professing her love of me?? ;-)
For we fourth years it's a bit odd really as we've seen it all and done it.
But really interesting to observe how the later years tackle the projects we did previously. Take this years debate, they debated the new grading system and if their should be a competitive element in the BJA grading syllabus.
Really topical as the non-competitive system only got implemented in April.
I tried to let the debate decide how I would vote rather than my personal (entrenched) position. The arguments for the team arguing there should be a contest element actually swayed me there way over that of their opposition. Specifically Luke and Emyr That was till the questions where I was swayed back to thinking that a non-competitive system is the right thing. Loretta Cusack's response to a question from Mike Callan in particularly swayed me.
After the debate I took a look at the Research posters of the third years ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/lancew/ ) and listened to some of the mental skills presentations.
After all this i spend some hours in the Library with the rest of the fourth years finishing off our website assignment. Which is all done, which raised the interesting question of how does one tack a coversheet onto a website? :-)
Anyway... this evening we have the official presentation evening for the third years who graduate following my year and the regular social event, so I shall have to go now and be sociable. :-)
lance
P.s. Did I mention the female TV celebrity professing her love of me?? ;-)
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