Richard Cullinan's blog

Well, the bag is mostly packed, the fencing kit is packed and the nerves are sky high.

I'm off to WMAW 2009 and really looking forward to it but really nervous. Here in Australia or NZ I'm pretty much the most knowledgeable guy in the room for fencing stuff, or close to it. This event is going to be the first time in quite a while that I'm at the same event with a large number of people who understand fencing to the same level I do.

Here's the teaching notes from the recent classes I gave at Brisbane Swordplay 2009 convention.

Enjoy!

MORNING LESSON

Introductory Material

1 How to hold the sword
Forefinger over quillon, allowing pommel to move from thrusting grip to cutting grip.

2 Distance
Gioco stretta
Gioco larga
Out of distance
Circle of Engagement

3 Times
Before
Middle
Just As
After

4 Movement
forward
back
left
right
passing steps (change stance)
triangle steps (the sideways pass which is the predominant footwork)

This semester I've been skipping Stoccata training, and getting to the SCA Rowany training night instead on Mondays. It's a novel experience for me.

The small core of people turning up are all concentrating on analysing and learning various bits and pieces from manuals. There's one set working through I.33, another set doing Spanish, and me being a general answer resource.

I've taken to commuting to work these days on the train, instead of driving. It's about 90 minutes each way, which is only 10-15 minutes longer than if I drive, but I don't have to deal with the car park known as Homebush Bay Drive / North Ryde Road. Since I'd have the time on the train, I bought myself a Acer Aspire One Netbook from OfficeWorks, the D250 model to be precise, and as per usual dropped a decent OS on it instead of the Winblows it shipped with.

OK, so I had some fun running a Jeopardy style trivia night during the Saturday Feast at Fencing Fest. Just for those who couldn't be there I'm posting the questions. There were 6 categories, with 5 points in each category. I had fun, and people were still fuming about the questions the next day. So without further ado, onto the questions....

Last weekend I was up in Brisbane teaching Bolognese material at Fencing Fest 6. It's a lovely little event, and this year moved to the Vigoro Club in East Ipswich. Up to now it's been held at the Riverhaven Hall in Lutwyche. It's the first Fencing Fest that the MediumMe Slugboy has travelled to, so it was fun to see him playing against people not from Sydney. He actually did the best of all the Sydney folk playing in the tournament, and bounced afterwards since he beat Owain (one of the Guildmasters in Canberra).

I've been having some problems with Marozzo's dagger section, specifically Capitolo 54 & 57 dealing with the defence of the thrust.

The translation by Bill Wilson over at marozzo.org just isn't making sense, so I've been redoing it.

Well it had to eventually happen. My Palm E2 has given up the ghost, and attempts to resuscitate have been unsuccessful. Looks like I'm going to have to see if I can get it fixed, but the data is probably gone now as I've gotten slack about syncing it to the Kubuntu PC. The non-volatile memory was great, but it spoiled me after the Palm 102.

The times I'm missing it the most is in traffic driving between home and work. It's helped stave off the frustration at those times as I read my ebooks. Reading them on the PC screen just isn't the same, or as convenient.

First time blogger, long time web site owner... :-)

Thought it was time to roll out the personal blog. If you've been paying attention you will have noticed the Dardi book is growing a little. Well it'll grow in time as I work out how I want to write the material. I'll be posting any radical insights here over time as well.