bujinkan.me Archives - 武神館兜龍 Bujinkan Toryu

January 7, 2009

Bujinkan.ME News #39 (New Year, new DVD at Budo Shop)

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!
(Happy new year!)

This year is Heisei 21 and 牛年 ushi-doshi, the year of the buffalo, cow or ox in the zodiac calendar and the element of earth. Buddha invited the animals to participate in a race. The prize was a coveted position on the Chinese Zodiac calendar. The first 12 animals to cross the river would appear on the Chinese Zodiac calendar in the order in which they completed the race …. the rat used his brain rather than his brawn. It hitched a ride on what it perceived was the mightiest swimmer. Just before the buffalo reached the shore, the rat jumped off the buffalo’s back and crossed the finish line before the buffalo, putting the rat in first place, and the buffalo the second place, followed by the tiger…

The cow is is also associated with the deity 虛空藏菩薩 Kōkūzō Bosatsu (Ākāśagarbha in Sanskrit). Kokuzo (also written Kokuuzou, Kokuuzoo) symbolizes the “vast and boundless” Buddha wisdom that permeates the universe. Believers pray to Kokuzo to grant them wisdom on their quest toward enlightenment. People also pray to Kokuzo to improve their memory, technical skills, and artistic talents, for Kokuzo is revered not only as the deity of wisdom, but as a protector of craftspeople and artisans.

About this years Bujinkan theme… I don’t know so much other than what has been stated on websites (here, here, here and here), apparently there is no particular theme for techniques concerned (the philosophy you can read on the links above). However I heard there will be more sword as this is a thing we in general need to practice more, sword is also my favourite weapon :-).

I will be off to Japan tomorrow, and will probably make a few blog posts on my web site… http://toryu.se about the trainings and stuff.

Web Site Updates

I’ve been working on a a new seminar list, completely new code. I’d like to call it Bujinkan Seminar List v2.0 beta, check it out (webmasters check the page source).
http://toryu.se/seminars/bujinkan.php

I also set up two new rss feeds. I’d like to keep updated with everything new so I merged all kinds of blogs and forums I’d like to keep an eye on in one single feed. There is two different ones, first one is in English, the second one is in Swedish.
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedSE

Hankyou 2008 – Christmas seminar DVD

Instructors: Paul Waserbrot, Mats Hjelm, Steven Helling, Daniel Bodin, Fredrik Markgren, Arvid Karlsson, Jens Lindstrand, Richard Maier, William Ustav

Theme: Reflections of this years Bujinkan theme, Togakure-ryu ninpo taijutsu

Many instructors from Sweden went to Japan to train with Hatsumi Soke and the Shihan. Many of these instructors came to share their knowledge and feelings from their training trips.

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden December 2008

Format: DVD/R- which plays on all computers using and ordinary DVDRom. It also plays on most DVD players (check your manual!).

100 Minutes playing time top quality, available in NTSC only.

Language: The instructions is in Swedish!

Click here if you want to buy it!

I will be away for training in Japan and back January 20’th when I will be able to ship all orders right away.

Upcoming seminars

2009-01-16/2009-01-18 – Helsinki, Finland
Shihan Moti Nativ Seminar, with Shihan Moti Nativ
For more information (price & schedule) please contact [email protected] More info… http://shinden.fi

2009-01-24/2009-01-25 – Stockholm, Sweden
Seminar with Sheila Haddad, with Sheila Haddad & Thomas FranzÃ©n
Bujinkan To Nan Dojo invites you to a Sheila Haddad Seminar 2009! Sheila returns once again to give one of her popular seminars with focus on women in Budo. Men are of cource welcome to train as well. Most welcome. More info… http://www.budogruppen.nu/

2009-02-07/2009-02-08 – Stockholm, Sweden
Keiko seminar intro to this years theme, with Mats Hjelm
Introduction to this years theme. Mats is planning his annual January trip this year also. More info… http://www.kaigozan.se/seminars/

2009-03-14/2009-03-15 – Stockholm, Sweden
Keiko seminar with Holger Kunzmann, with Holger Kunzmann, Shihan
Shihan Holger Kunzmann from Germany will be in Japan during February, after this trip he will come here to share what was being taught there. More info… http://kaigozan.se/seminars/

2009-03-20/2009-03-22 – Helsinki, Finland
Shihan Arnaud Couserque seminar, with Shihan Arnaud Couserque
For more information (price & schedule) please contact [email protected] More info… http://shinden.fi

2009-04-18/2009-04-19 – Stockholm, Sweden
Seminar with Pedro Fleitas, with Pedro Fleitas
Bujinkan To Nan Dojo invite you all to a great happening. Pedro Fleitas will be giving a seminar in Stockholm, Sweden. Mostly welcome. More info… http://www.budogruppen.nu/

2009-04-18/2009-04-19 – Szeged, Hungary
Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu (Chuden kata), with Mats Hjelm
Chuden kata techniques from the schools of Bujinkan. For more info see the web site More info… http://szeged.bujinkan.hu/

2009-05-01/2009-05-03 – Stockholm, Sweden
International Bujinkan TAIKAI 2009 (Kaigousuru), with Many instructors from the whole world
To date the following instructors is coming… Duncan Stewart, Shihan (Japan). Juan Manuel Serrano, Shihan (Spain). Lauri Jokinen, Shihan (Finland). Mariette vd Vliet, Shihan (Holland). Mats Hjelm, Shihan (Sweden). Morten B. Østenstad, Shihan (Norway). See the web site for latest info! More info… http://www.taikai.se

December 19, 2008

Bujinkan Seminar List (v2.0 beta)

I’ve been working on a new seminar list. I totally rewrote all code to php, it is much faster than the old one. There is a few things I need to figure out before I remove the “beta tag”, but it is already very usable (open the page and look at the page source for options).

Here is the link for preview http://toryu.se/seminars/bujinkan.php

This weekend I’m at a seminar, then I take a week off over the holiday, then new year and off to Japan. So I don’t know when and how much time I have to work on it.

If you have any ideas, please let me know, add a comment here or contact me!

Merry christmas and happy new year!

December 16, 2008

Bug fix on the seminar apps

Every December the Next month seminars would show the whole past year. It was a scripting bug that I have fixed now. Since it is december next month it should default to January and forwards, but there is also a tab with Next years seminars so instead I added a message that it is the end of this year and look at next year for future seminars.

Here is the PHP code if you want include it on your web site.

<?php
$nextmonth = mktime(0, 0, 0, date(“m”)+1);
$monta = date(“m”, $nextmonth);
if ( $monta == “01” )
{ $yerra = date(“Y”)+1 ;
echo “<p>It is probably December now, click on Seminars next year</p>”;
}
else
{ $yerra = date(“Y”) ;
$ch = curl_init(“http://toryu.se/cgi-bin/SEMINARS-ME2.cgi?$yerra-$monta”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}
?>

If you want more examples how to display seminars from the database on your web site, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I really do encourage all web masters to use any code they want (mine or modified) to display seminars from the seminar database.

December 11, 2008

Bujinkan.ME Superfeed EN on your web site?

Here is a tutorial how to put headlines from the Bujinkan.ME Superfeed EN on your own web site.

Put this code in your html doc where ever you want it to show.

<script src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN?format=sigpro” type=”text/javascript” ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href=”http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN”></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript>

You can add your own style, override settings and more, see this guide!

This is the widget we use on the landing page here (http://bujinkan.me/). It is Springwidget another way of adding it on Facebook and much more…
http://www.springwidgets.com/widgets/view/23/false/true?param=http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN

December 8, 2008

Get more info from the web in shorter time…

then you can spend more time on training, I will explain it further down.

If you subscribe to our RSS Feeds, please change them to the following feed instead. You gain a lot more features, you can mark, share, e-mail and more, and it looks better to.
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN (English version)
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedSE (Swedish version)

Some of you might wonder what this RSS/Syndication and stuff means. Well read on…

Do you recognize yourself?
You are interested in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu (I assume that since you you found this message), and spend quite a lot of time on internet going to different web sites searching for new postings. Some web sites is difficult to find the newest postings, you have to log in and after one or many clicks you find something you think you haven’t read, maybe you already read it? It is very easy to miss something interesting, because the lack of features on the web site (search function for example), or because the interesting stuff was posted on a website you don’t know about. Maybe this is why you google for new web sites. Maybe you stopped doing this because it takes too much time.

Well this is the old way, there is a much better way, it is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), to put it simple is like subscribing to one or many newspapers. What you need is something that can read feeds (the news papers). I personally have a Google account and use the Google Reader. With that I can access all my feeds from any computer and phone (see the screen dumps below). I’m not bound to one computer to do this.

There is many other ways to do it, there is many different readers (Aggregators), I like the google one because I’m not dependent of which computer or device I must use. I can use any device with an internet connection and log in to my account (I mostly use the iPhone on the bus, subway or any time I chose). As you can see on the screen dumps I subscribe to several other feeds to. I only to go to the web site if the content I read interest me enough.

Note 1. It is completely up to the web master of the original feed if the content is web optimized (text formatting, pictures etc), and if the whole article can be read. We can only forward what we get, so don’t complain to us because you can only read the first five words on the Kutaki channel. Just click on the header link to go to the original web site if it interest you.

Note 2. We took the freedom to add small google ads at the bottom of each post. You will hardly notice them after a while. If you click on them you are sponsoring our web sites and work.

Note 3. In the subject header the [brackets] indicate what web site it originates from, our script remove the “www” and takes the first twelve or so characters up until the first “.”, when you opened the post the subject is always linked to the original posting.

My shared items

When I find something I think is good, I click “share” on my reader, then it will be posted here. You can also subscribe to my picks, articles that I have read and I think is good.
Note that there will be a lot of unrelated stuff (not only Bujinkan).