Fresh wiki

I just noticed that ChinesePod have put up a wiki. Let's go!

He tried meditating

He doesn't say why, but he tried it. He writes about it, and being tossed about by the choppy waves of his monkey-mind.

Next time it may be gentle ripples.

10 days later, he's learnt a lot and is trying to divide his conciousness into levels. The you that does the clicking, the you that does the reading, the you that does the thinking, and the you that notices all that. Are they really all there inside, or are you making it all up, with mirrors?

Wakan and Yi Quan

From Cook Ding's Kitchen, this interesting language tool. Windows-only unfortunately. Since I've almost entirely switched I'm passing on the recommendation as is. The project website looks nice though.

While I was at it, I came across a very interesting program entitled Wakan. It’s available as a free download as long as it’s not put to any commercial use. Wakan translates between Japan and English, and between Chinese and English. It’s a very handy way to look up words and characters. Even if you have no intention of studying either Japanese or Chinese, but may want to look up a word or character from time to time, I think you would find it useful.

Wakan can be found at http://wakan.manga.cz/

Also on Cook Ding's Kitchen a post relating to Yi Quan, which I've not come across before. It seems to be a newly (i.e. early 2oth C) synthesised internal martial art system, a re-factoring of xing-yi if you like. The site linked to has some interesting background and a substantial qi-gong booklet for free download. Anybody else heard of this?