You say Karate, I say Kung fu

The Karate Kid opens June 11, featuring an American boy who travels to China because of his mother’s new job. Although not a remake of the original, it does borrow elements from its predecessor in addition to the title. Despite the film’s name, the main character, Dre, ends up learning Wushu and not Karate. The confusion is explained in film’s plot when a group of bullies nickname Dre “The Karate Kid” as a joke due to his limited knowledge of martial arts. Karate and Kung Fu might seem like the same thing to some people, but then some people also think Japanese is the same thing as Chinese. In Asia, the film is actually being released as Kung Fu Kid, possibly since the film’s title can be misleading to those who know the difference.

Does it really matter?
The differences between Karate and Kung Fu have been discussed by many people in many ways for many years. And does it matter what they are called? It’s all relative, of course. It matters as much as any name matters. Martial arts styles may share similarities, but they also have rich histories rooted in different cultures, their own philosophies, language, methodologies and yes, names. There are volumes of literature that discuss these details in depth, so I’m just focusing on their names. What do “Karate” and “Kung Fu” mean, and where did their names come from?
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3D Kung Fu Stances

For one of my personal projects, I’ve been planning to create a series of 3D renderings of various martial arts stances and techniques. One of the goals of this is to help me brush up on some 3D layout tools that I haven’t been using for awhile. Another goal is to help document various martial arts techniques. My first step in this process is to set up several basic templates to build upon. Here are a few tests (select an image to view a larger version):

Horse stance, crane block

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Sandbox WordPress Theme, Structure Diagram and CSS

There are a gabillion ways to modify WordPress sites, ranging from complete customization of the CSS and PHP to simply downloading ready-made themes. With so many resources available, it didn’t make sense for me to reinvent the wheel when customizing my own WordPress-powered site. However, as a designer, I still wanted to play a more active role in the actual site design.
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Martial Arts Background

I originally posted about my martial arts background in a previous blog version, but it’s about time that I made some updates. My study of martial arts has jumped around through the years and many of the levels or belts I’ve obtained might not amount to much. This is both due to my differing levels of commitment over time as well as how long ago they were obtained. There is also a wide range of equivalent levels between schools. That’s why I focus more on the amount of training time rather than levels. This value can also vary depending on how often training takes place, but I am giving general estimates in my summary below. At the very least, I try to take my mix of experiences as a way to help round out my general knowledge of martial arts.
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Multiple Blog Personality

As part of my organizational goals for the new year (we are technically still within the 2-week Chinese New Year window), I was planning to create a separate blog dedicated to my other main hobby (besides multimedia and technology): martial arts.

After remembering that my main target audience is myself, I’ve decided to just keep it simple. From now on, I’m just going to lump on any martial arts content here, splitting the blog into two main categories: martial arts and multimedia. The multimedia category is still intended to include topics related to design, technology and gaming. The martial arts category will include things related to, you guessed it, basket weaving martial arts!