Real quick (some day soon I’ll have enough time to post a longer blog), I’ve updated Renais­sance Mar­tial Arts web­site with new infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the full sched­ule and infor­ma­tion about the first day of classes (Nov 4th!).

I’ve also gotten pic­tures from the first day of the Mar­tial Arts Fes­ti­val up. So you can see some awe­some shots of Kali, Hung Gar and other mar­tial arts in action. Check ‘em out here.

Other than that I wish I had enough time to pull a Hal­loween cos­tume together, but that didn’t happen this year. :-(

Well it’s been a week

And this is the first moment I’ve really had to write any­thing. And its going to be short. The school is all but fin­ished. There are still some small touch­est that need to be fin­ished. Oth­er­wise we’re ready to open and will start classes again next Monday.

The Mar­tial Arts Fes­ti­val went well, though there was a lighter atten­dance than I would have liked. And some of my pho­tog­ra­phy was pub­lished in the local Alter­na­tive News Paper (City… it’s sorta like the Vil­lage Voice, but not really), but they didn’t give me a photo credit.

Oh well… you win some, you lose some. More blog­ging and pic­tures will follow.

oy

Things are really bustling here. Work is going like gang­busters and a lot of things around this project are coming together. But it feels like with every two steps for­ward we take one step back. And I don’t know if we can afford to be moving away from our goal.

The school is coming together, but that’s going to be down to the wire as well. We NEED to get all the paint­ing done this week­end. I also need to wrap up on all the col­lat­eral work.

And some­where in all of that I need to squeeze in a brother vis­it­ing, an out of town friend look­ing to relo­cate vis­it­ing and an open­ing party for the Degas exhibit at our local gallery. Oy… but it’s a fun life at the same time!

Soc­ca­matic

For all you fans of Wal­lace and Gromit, the BBC has launced a new site and series of 10 shorts in antic­i­pa­tion of the new movie. Yup folks, there’s a new movie coming from the same folks who brought us Chicken Run: Aard­man ani­ma­tions. So go can check out Wal­lace and Gromit’s Crack­ling Contraptions.

Also, for those of you keep­ing track we have a little under two weeks to get the school in shape. As I type this, the floors are drying from their second coat of polyurethane. We’ve also com­pleted prim­ing the walls. Once the floor is dry we’re going to paint the walls and build out the office, dress­ing rooms and the stor­age room. Then we need to install the mir­rors (you would not believe how much mir­rors cost!) and it’s go time. I just wish we had more than 11 days to get this all done!

Here’s a com­pos­ite shot of the school taken before the floors were com­pleted and any prim­ing was done:

From the Ami­tyville Record:

POLICE BLOT­TER
The fol­low­ing inci­dents have been reported by the Ami­tyville Vil­lage and Suf­folk County Police Depart­ments and other local fire and law enforce­ment agencies

NUDE DRIVER IN MVA

Ami­tyville: Police were called to the scene of a motor vehi­cle acci­dent at Mer­rick Road and Bayview Avenue Oct. 2. The acci­dent occurred approx­i­mately 3:20 p.m. Upon their arrival police said Edward Shevlin, 35, of Clin­ton Ave., East Patchogue was found sit­ting behind the wheel nude of a 1987 Ford. Police said he was intox­i­cated and had struck another vehi­cle oper­ated by Chester Sokolowski of Bay Shore. Shevlin was arrested and charged with oper­at­ing a motor vehi­cle under the influ­ence of alcohol.

…thanks Glenn

Well, I liked the table prob­lem at the Renais­sance site. Heather sent me off in the right path. The prob­lem was due to my fla­grant misuse of HTML. Basi­cally I was using an “li” tag with­out a “ul” tag (mainly because I hate what the “ul” tag does to for­mat­ing). And IE appar­ently was chok­ing on that usage and blow­ing out the tables.

We fin­ished apply­ing most of the first coat of polyu­rathane to the schools floors last night. This week­end we’ll be paint­ing the inte­rior and then next week a second coat goes on the floor. After that we build out the stor­age rooms and the dress­ing rooms. So close, so far, so little sleep.

busy clippers… Things are just flying by right now. Work has been hectic, but great. (side note: have you ever noticed that I like to write that something’s been crazy, then imme­di­ately follow it up with “but good” or “but great.” Sigh, it’s a sign of lazy writ­ing I guess). Learn­ing con­tent for kodak.com keeps progressing.

As for the school, things are really shap­ing up. The ceil­ing is down, the lights are up and the floor has been redone. It’s look­ing beau­ti­ful. There’s still a ways to go though and only two week­ends left to the fes­ti­val and grand open­ing. That’s pretty scary!

Speak­ing of the school I spent most of last night updat­ing the web­site. I now remem­ber how much I hate and love web design. I’m still strug­gling with table ren­der­ing across dif­fer­ent browsers. IE for some reason doesn’t want to con­strain the nav­i­ga­tion tables to the pixel widths I spec­i­fied and I can’t figure out why…. Still, check it out at ren​Mar​tialArts.com.

Things for the third annual Chi­nese, Indone­sian and Fil­ipino Mar­tial Arts Fes­ti­val are going great. We have a great line up this year and it should be two great days. Now if things would go smoothly for the Exact The­atre Project I’d be totally rockin’ and rolling. If anyone knows anyone will­ing to spot a couple thou­sand dol­lars to a strug­gling non profit, please let me know.

Photo de jour