Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminar in Aberaeron

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an effective self defence martial art and an excellent way to get fit for men and women of all ages and abilities. Dave Birkett will lead a seminar in this exciting art on 12 December 2009 between 13:00 and 16:00 at the Aberaeron Leisure Centre. The cost of the seminar is £20.

Dave, head of the Dartford MMA martial arts academy, is a seasoned martial artist with over two decades experience. Dartford MMA is affiliated with the Mauricio Gomes / Marc Walder Team and Dave teaches Brazilian (Gracie) Jiu Jitsu for both competition and self defence.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a cutting edge martial art developed from traditional Japanese Jiu Jitsu by the Gracie family of Brazil. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is famous for its devastating ground fighting techniques. This art was specifically developed to allow the smaller person to defeat the larger through the use of leverage and technique. Gaining superior position over an opponent, and applying myriad chokes, holds, locks and joint manipulations is the foundation of this fun martial art.

Check out the event page on Facebook or contact Graham on 07917 676243 for more information.

OneDeko: PrestaShop e-commerce site for furniture retailer

OneDeko, London designer furniture retailer, required a robust and fully featured e-commerce site. The client's legacy e-commerce site, a proprietary application built by a single developer, was falling well short. Core features such as the capacity to customise products with specific finishes and fabrics while increasing or decreasing the final price were absent, while other essential features such as full access to define products' meta data for purposes of SEO were also lacking. It was determined, in consultation with OneDeko, that a new online shop be launched using the PrestaShop Open Source e-commerce solution.

A clean and minimal custom template design was created to showcase the product images. Hosting providers were chosen and all hosting-related issues were dealt with on behalf of the client. Production and Sandbox environments were installed on the client's server, to allow OneDeko staff to perfect their catalog before launch; by setting up two environments, OneDeko is able to test changes to their catalog before making them public, giving them the confidence to play around with the system without fear of disrupting their customers.

We began this project with a very long 'wish list' of features, and PrestaShop was able to fulfil a vast majority of these desires. Requirements for the shop and CMS included, but were not limited to:

for the shop:
- clean design
- clear navigation
- reliable checkout
- 'friendly URLS'
- suggested products listed on a particular product's page
- search by keyword or manufacturer
- wish lists and saved products (for later purchasing)
- user account

for the CMS:
- vouchers management
- sophisticated catalog management
- site content management
- access to meta data
- sales and featured product configuration
- landing page configuration
- image maps creation (scenes with links to products)

PrestaShop, as a 'post-Web 2.0' e-commerce solution, handled these requirements, and more, 'out of the box'. The CMS is very fully featured, yet intuitive to use, and includes a huge suite of features to help the retailer promote their web presence and deliver a high level of customer service.

Only a few short weeks after launching the new site, the shop has shown its worth in creating revenue opportunities, to the delight of OneDeko. Their new capacity to manage online vouchers has been a boon, while the capacity to track users' interest in products allows staff to follow up with customers and generate sales that otherwise would've been lost.

I am very pleased with PrestaShop and am I very glad it is serving OneDeko so well. Template customisation is a lengthy process, as it is a fully featured shop with many pages to work through, but it is also a straight-forward PHP/CSS/HTML application which should be recognisable to web professionals. Installation is uncomplicated and is done through a 'wizard' type web interface. The PrestaShop forums are very useful and quick to respond to new threads. Again, my faith in the collective intelligence embedded in an Open Source project, versus the limitations of a proprietary system created by a single mind, is vindicated and certainly has benefited my client by delivery a significantly more fully featured and robust e-commerce solution.

Zen and the art of skipping

I feel amazing! Epiphany while skipping! Letting go and operating in a state of detachment enhances ability (by avoiding fear and existing in the now). I've understood this, on a cerebral level, for some time and Coach, Marc Walder and other more senior martial artists I have the pleasure and privilege to train with have repeatedly emphasised this in classes, seminars and personal tuition. From my own meager competition experience I've had practical experience with being 'in the zone', but I find it terribly difficult to relax in regular BJJ practice.

I appreciate why this is, and my tension is particularly apparent when I go on the offensive. I've spent the last 4-5 years on the mats primarily in defensive mode, and I have a reasonable amount of confidence in my defence, feeling pretty comfortable with larger, stronger and less skilled opponents and offering, at least, annoying resistance for some (many?, perhaps that's going too far) opponents that are larger, stronger and of a similar or greater skill level. However, I rarely 'close the deal' and submit these opponents.

A major barrier to my offence is my self-consciousness at being outside my comfort zone and the associated fear that comes with feeling exposed, ignorant and out of one's depth. This manifests in gritted teeth, tensed muscles and essentially my whole bod telegraphs that I am up to something. This clearly isn't optimal for working 'multi-pronged' attacks and flowing with whatever the opponent makes available. I'm aware that I have this problem, but struggle to overcome, and here is it is clearly my ego getting in the way; fear, self-consciousness, attachment, all bugbears to adapting competently to the fluid opportunities of a spar.

This evening I turned this around a wee bit and 'skipped with detachment'. I've been working on flexibility, in particular working towards full side and box splits. This is a goal I'd hoped to achieve before last Christmas, but that plan was scuppered by MCL/cartilage injury. Ever since I matted my basement a few months ago and my knee has felt up to it, I've been trying to stick to a daily stretch routine. Today, I warmed up for my stretch with some skipping. Skipping can be boring, so I had fat 'phones on and big dance beats pumping. I tried to make the whole thing more fun by skipping 3 times on both feet, twice on the right, twice on the left and back to both feet. I was absolutely sucking out! I took the speed right down and practiced just moving between each leg for 5 minutes, then started to build up the speed of skip and alternation and, then, the strangest thing. I noticed I was switching between feet every two beats at a quick pace - no problemo. It seemed that I'd tuned out *trying* to skip on alternate feet and just started bouncing to the beat and it was easy. As soon as I became aware of what I was doing and thought 'I gotta keep it up', I'd lose it. As soon as I became attached to the skipping routine my jaws clenched, my brow furrowed, my bod tensed up and I lost the groove. I kept working and after 30 minutes was happily skipping and transitioning between alternate feet, different variations of beats and etc with a lot less getting tangled up in the rope. I *felt* the difference between being all uptight about 'having to do it right' and, in Coach's words, 'doing it like it doesn't matter'. Now I *know* what he meant. I am so very excited about this! I could absolutely identify when I was just enjoying what was happening and bouncing along and when I got too attached to keeping the skip going (and so ruined it). Was almost like that point just before sleep, when you're not entirely conscious of yourself and your worries, cares or wishes and sort of floating in a limbo of consciousness/unconsciousness. I'm well chuffed with my wonderful little breakthrough.

Now the hard part, putting this into practice on the mats. We shall see, no doubt about it though, I love this journey.

Opposing forces: Penny Thomas BJJ seminar

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending a BJJ seminar with Gracie black belt, Penny Thomas, at the Warrior School of Combat, Kensington. The seminar was co-ed with a slight majority of female players and a good range of white to purple belts. It was absolutely packed. Just goes to show how many folk are willing to make last minute plans for a BJJ treat, with one plucky lass coming down from Birmingham.

The primary theme of the evening's training, on reflection, seemed to be the use of opposing forces both to feint and to control and the use of opposing forces was apparent in the evening's takedown drills and ground work. Emphasis was also placed on the use of one's full body weight to gain position and control.

We warmed up with a selection of takedown drills, including double and single legs, what we call 'Drop Seoi Nage' at my club (a sacrifice version of Ippon Seoi Nage) and sweep to mount/side mount from the back and front. Here, Penny highlighted the importance of encouraging the opponent to fall into the trap of the takedown. So, if the goal is to get the opponent's weight moving forward, push the opponent back, so their reaction to move forward initiates the takedown you've in mind, hence the use of opposing forces. Personally, I was interested to note the similarity in Penny's approach to these techniques and how we train them at Dartford MMA; Penny even calls her arm position 'T-Rex arms', just like Coach! For me, the synergies between Penny's approach and what I train normally was comforting and made me feel part of something bigger. The 'story' of Gracie Jiu Jitsu is told around the world, and while there may be minor regional variations in how that story is interpreted, the core is preserved and shared by the entire Gracie community. This sort of outside reinforcement also boosts my already deep trust and confidence in the Marc Walder/Mauricio Gomez technique that is part of what we do at Dartford MMA.

The ground-work portion of the seminar focused on mount and open guard. We looked at some of the fundamentals of the mount position, specifically grape-vining the opponent's legs while driving weight through hips into solar plexis - I'm on the receiving end of this whenever I spar with Coach, not comfy - and working to get knees under opponent's armpits while tucking the feet onto the 'shelf' of the opponent's hips. Penny reinforced the importance of dropping the body's full weight through the opponent and ensuring the position prevented weight being supported by knees rather than the opponent. From the mount we drilled Americana, Ezekiel and arm triangle. Again, the use of opposing forces and the body's full weight was clear, and, for example, in drilling the Americana we feinted 3 attacks against alternate arms, on the third driving full weight against the arm to drop the elbow by the opponent's head and take the submission. I especially enjoyed the open guard drills, as this is a new facet I've just started working and we looked at one of the three basic sweeps I've been looking at. The importance of pushing and pulling to control from open guard gave further evidence of the theme of opposing forces to both control a position and to feint; as a standing opponent lost base due to the push-pull of the open guard and came to one knee, an opportunity was made for the sweep.

Finally, a big thanks to Penny for making time to train with us during her whirlwind trip to the UK. Penny's a tremendous athlete and an inspirational sportswoman. Thanks to Pippa Granger and Warrior School of Combat for opening their doors to all of us, and thanks to all the great folk I got to meet and train with; such a rare treat to meet and train with men and women from a range of clubs.

Photo reproduced by kind permission of Meerkatsu (who's review of the seminar you might also be interested in).

FOWA 2009: warrior principles of start-ups

Life is fighting. I have stronger belief in this maxim everyday of life's journey. I am a 'fighter' of sorts, having worked in a few BJJ competitions between knee injuries, and certainly martial arts, since I started training in '98 and increasingly over the past 4 to 5 years especially the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, has been the prism through which I understand the world. 'Fighting' is, as I've touched on previously, a many splintered thing and the principles I understand as fundamental for tearing it up on the mats, for me, underpinned FOWA's second day of talks.

It is difficult to separate out three distinct principles, as in practice, they are organic to one another and represent articulations of different means of overcoming the limitations of ego. With that in mind, I propose three Warrior Principles for Start-ups/Cheerleaders/Zoo Keepers and Your Mom, because really they are grand notions that run through everything. Remember, life *is* fighting.

1 Be in the now

2 Be fearless

3 Be committed

I'll take the third principle first. Be committed. In tech community parlance this translates as 'passion'. This really came through for me during Alex Hunter's discussion of brand savvy. His message in a nutshell: there's no room to half-ass it, believe everyday that your project is awesome and let that standard of excellence and personal investment drive your business activities. Or, as Coach says, 'if you believe in your sweep, more than he believes in his base, you'll get it'. This isn't some sort of Jedi mind trick that magically teleports you to the top of Google's page rankings or mashes your opponent's side into the mats, rather absolute trust in your technique allows you to deliver it with powerful conviction and if your competitor is that much less confident, well then, you just might take their back and sink in an RNC (oh the joy!). Total commitment could be considered an expression of an unselfconscious state of being, where fears of failure or timidity associated with looking like a douche don't come into play. This state can best be achieved when fearlessly existing in 'the now'. Only with girded loins and a solid heart can we move forward to embrace change with positivity.

Lynne D Johnson's consideration of the 'future of print' and Gary Vaynerchuck's thoughts on, well, 'crushing it', for me, particularly stressed the importance of adapting to change and rolling with the punches. What does this mean, in practice? I turn to the rubric of BJJ for understanding. When starting my BJJ journey, I, like white belts the world over, found safety and comfort in holding on to positions that were long past their expiry. This is a manifestation of fear and the misguided desire to impose our will on a fluid situation rather than grappling with the opportunities as they are, there and then: see Gary's advice to 'stop your cryin' and exploit the opportunities that *are* there, rather than fixating on those that aren't. As I've metamorphosed into blue belt over the past year, fear remains an issue for my game, but chasing long dead positions is far less prominent in my rolling than in the early days. Fear of change leads to an inability to adapt and, well, you adapt or die. The more I am fully invested in the now, and the more I capitalise on immediate opportunities the more I am able to fight well and this allows me to win. Winning isn't just tapping someone out, though sometimes that is an effect, but it is coming away from the experience with the most personal growth. Okay, a bit 'new age' perhaps, but as Vaynerchuck noted he is, 'always about the process not the results'. It is the means, not the ends, that make us stronger and impart the confidence and skills to deal with change as it presents itself.

So, how did I enact these Warrior Principles at FOWA? I reverse stage-dived the 'Kevin and Gary Show' (a Q&A session with Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuck). Gary asked for a show of hands, 'who has a start-up', and then invited us on stage, or at least the first one that could get there. I looked to my left and apart from my business partner there was one dude at the end, but I was calculating this as I jumped the dude's legs and laptop bag. I'm turning and running at a good clip towards the stage and glimpse movement out of the corner of my eye and only then realised; the steps are to the left, there's someone headed for them and stairs are for chumps. I'm taking the most direct route. A parallel process, also spawned, is determining if there are stairs at the front of the stage, without my glasses I can only make out what appear to be tiers, no, not tiers just detailing; gonna have to vault. My bod picks up pace and I'm putting my hands above me onto the stage and jumping to get my hips over, *knowing* that if I get my hips over the ledge I'm in. Swing my leg up and over, and boom, first on stage. Recognise!

Yes, I flashed my ass to the audience as my dress was not built for scaling stages. Yes, I was totally unprepared to pitch Braineos. Yes, my domain wasn't even configured properly and we're still frantically trying to tighten up our core features and implement our beautiful Safetygoat design in order to push to private alpha in 6 to 8 weeks. But, 'big whoop', these things meant nothing; I was completely committed, I was in the now and fearless. I saw the position and I went for it without *thinking* without the limitations of ego, just was and did in unison. This is what it is all about. Man oh man, I rejoice that I am a grappling-geek.

See ya next year!

Sausage Fest, strike that, FOWA 2009

The 'future of the web' a grand vision that is being considered and debated at this week's FOWA. You could be forgiven for assuming the 'future of the web' is both white and male – the demography of Internet engineers/web developers/IT professionals remains resilient to change. Wider, unchallenged social gender biases were especially prominent in Osama Bedler's (PayPal) presentation. While Bedler's talk on embracing change and moving forward with positivity into a cashless future was well delivered, inspired and fun, the promotional clip from PayPal depicted an intransigent world where women retained greatest responsibility for getting the shopping in and 'mom still made all the meals'. Yeah, way to challenge 'the now' and envision a liberated future. Yet, the conference has included some exciting technology announcements in a convivial atmosphere in West London.

Day 1 included some fantastic talks. Highlights for me? I took a lot from Mike McDermot's (FreshBooks) perspective on priority marketing systems required for even the most scope-trimmed start-ups; this is not my area of expertise and conferences, especially Think Visibility, have been a great source of Internet-focused marketing information. Bruce Lawson's (Opera) discussion and demonstration of HTML5 was thrilling and has me itching to implement new rules in my app's mark-up. Chris Thorpe's (The Guardian) talk on how The Guardian is seeking to adapt to a changing world through 'mutualisation' included a lot of lessons for industries/organisations clinging to outmoded business models and pointed to the prudence of embracing change and innovation in telecommunications. Aza Raskin (Mozilla) finished the evening with pizazz, with a thrilling discussion and demonstration of the future of browsers as Mozilla understands. Mozilla, again, is pushing a sound agenda of personal ownership and individual liberty by innovating a 'you-centric' browser. Inspiring, cogent stuff; not to mention the semi-gratuitous bondage pic included in the presentation appealed to my sense of fun.

With highlights come lowlights. FOWA has many corporate sponsers – a pro and a con – and the panel talk on experiments with building in ASP dot net MVC left me cold; while the tech sounded decent, though the panel's developer (Matt Lee, Redgate) noted it represented more of a 'catching up', it all seemed a bit staged and infomercial. Similarly, the breathless, chirpy presentation for Facebook (Cat Lee) regarding FB Connect was not up to par. The rep delivered what seemed in many ways to be a 'canned talk'; the announcement of a Connect API was exciting and the tech looks interesting, but the delivery did not seem at all appropriate to the audience. While I absolutely agree with Addison Berry's (Lullabot) message that employers benefit from facilitating passion through transparent communication, I was a bit disappointed by her talk which vaguely alluded to all the 'cool shit' and 'crazy shit' she was able to do working in Open Source. What is this 'amazing shit' – no idea – specific anecdotes/examples would have left me with less of an impression that she was 'talkin' shit'.

Day 2 is off with a bang! Britt Selvitelle (Twitter) threw out two points of note: 1) an upcoming release of Twitter Labs (currently in development); 2) the notion of whacking in an API with start-up alpha releases (we're on the same page, dude!). Simon Wardley's talk on cloud computing was hilarious - yes, really - informative, radicalised and astute. Following Wardley's discussion of uBuntu's drive for standardisation in provision of clouds (to drive innovation and retain Internet freedoms, versus constraint through lack of interoperability or a vendor's ownership of a reference model), Joel Moss (Codaset) and Sanj Matharu (Vodafone) demonstrated the ease of mobile widget (mobile apps to you and me) creation using Vodafone's API; these babies are made in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There's a one million Euro prize fund for great apps, so get on it.

My morning break is coming to a close. All I can say is am looking forward to Vaynerchuck this evening – fuck yeah!

Cannons UK Flooring: BJJ mat review

I matted half of my basement, last weekend, with 40mm jigsaw mats from Cannons UK Flooring; it is now an absolutely superb training space! One of the best purchases I've made in a long while, and I would highly recommend these mats to fellow grapplers.

Cannons UK offers very high quality mats at a fraction of the price charged by other online retailers (between £50 and £150 less than other suppliers for my 12 square meters). I was somewhat put off by the website, which is, shall we say, less than polished with some slightly eccentric behaviours, however I was convinced they were legit when I rang to see about placing an order. The customer service was friendly, professional and efficient, not to mention delivery was only £10 and they delivered next day. Well above par from what I could tell from competitors' sites.

The mats are reversible (red or blue) and come in two finishes; I chose tatami. All mats come fully surrounded by edging squares. The mats arrived in perfect condition and were very easy to lay. The jigsaw edges fit snugly and as you would expect. It took 20 minutes or so to trim the included edging squares to fit around the outside; this was very straight-forward and there's so much surplus edging that it is possible to have several attempts at any trimming jobs that aren't up to standard.

While I am hoping to roll on these babies this week, I have so far used them for Pilates, stretching, partnerless BJJ-drills, sprawls and callisthenics. While I was at first concerned that the finish was a mite too slick, in fact it has a nice level of grip so that there's no mat burn, but enough friction to not go sliding wildly when in Yoga postures or moving across the mats in elbow-to-knee. The 40mm thickness is a dream. The mats are laid on concrete, but the exceptional EVA foam core means it is entirely comfortable to sprawl as hard as you like, break fall and so on.

Mats are a pretty major purchase and I had tried to win some, with readers' kind support, in BView's 99% off contest; I came second place, but by this point was totally fired up to make it happen. I hunted around online for weeks comparing prices and Cannons UK was by far the best priced and I can affirm the high quality of the mats. Having a home matted area has been a goal for some time and I am really pleased with the end result.

Roll on.