author: @sleepyfox
title: Was Saito Ueshiba's worst student?
date: 12-Jul-2024
Morihiro Saito (1928-2002) was often jokingly referred to by O'Sensei as his worst student. O'Sensei, literally 'great teacher' is the name that Aikido practitioners use for Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), the founder of the modern martial art of Aikido.
I always thought that this was a cunning plan by O'Sensei to keep his best student at home rather than having them running off to some foreign country to run the Aikido organisation for that country and grow the art of Aikido there, like so many of O'Sensei's senior students.
author: @sleepyfox
title: The Chi problem
date: 09-Oct-2025
Much has been said about the word sometimes written as 'Chi' in English (pronounced the same as in the English word 'cheese'), corresponding to the Chinese character 氣. This character, pronounced 'chi' in Chinese, 'ki' in Japanese, 'khi' in Vietnamese, 'gi' in the Philippines etc and corresponding closely with the Indian word 'prana' is variously translated as 'energy' in the sense of vital life-force, or 'élan vitale' from the French.
author: @sleepyfox
title: On Shu-Ha-Ri
date: 25-Oct-2024
So, fairly regularly something turns up in my inbox relating to Shu-Ha-Ri (守破離) often quoted as a Japanese model of skills acquisition. These articles, blogs etc. are all problematic in some way or other, and inevitably as both an Aikido instructor and a career IT professional with deep experience of Software Development Methodologies, I will get asked what I think. Hmmm...
So, let's start with the Wikipedia article:
This gist https://gist.github.com/sleepyfox/61d4375aa1fcfad8cb0338edb4151546 URL shortened to https://tinyurl.com/fox-sustainable-development
author: @sleepyfox
title: Taiji Tennis
date: 08-Nov-2024
So I read a bit about Tennis, and thought 'Hey, that sounds cool, I'd like to learn that', and looked around to see if there is a local Tennis club, and if there is a learners' group. Great news, I find a 'Learn Tennis' session run by a local instructor. They appear legit, are certified and insured by the Tennis Union of Great Britain, so I go down on Tuesday evening to the local sports centre and give it a go.
author: @sleepyfox
title: The corruption of critical thinking
date: 05-Apr-2014
preamble: An open letter to Mr. Binstock and Dr. Dobbs addressing their recent editorial entitled "The Corruption of Agile" and its follow-up article addressing feedback from the community.
EDITED: 2024-10-29 in order to fix broken links and to use the Internet Archive in order to make available material which commercial publishers have egregiously removed - see Fox's 8th Law[^7]. Sadly it appears that my closing hope was not upheld over the intervening decade by the recipients.
Dear Mr. Binstock,
author: @sleepyfox
title: ObFOSScation
date: 15-Oct-2024
The problem with #FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is that everybody thinks they know what it means. I once spent a couple of years working on and off with Ross Gardler, a VP of the Apache Software Foundation and Manager of OSS-Watch in Oxford.