#does this count as a primer even though it's like... also a post-game thing?

[puckpocketed]

2/1/2024 Winter Classic - Seattle Kraken vs Vegas Golden Knights

The Summer I Fell For Hockey - The Perfect Day: On Yanni Gourde and the Narrative

A bank of fog rolls over the new year, over Seattle’s skyline, over the morning of the Winter Classic. T-Mobile park, after weeks of preparation, is transformed; sprouting up from the baseball diamond is a construct of ochre-red wood and glass, freshly frozen paint and ice, and boards that flash with sponsorships. A sea of people all in red, cream, navy and pale blue flood in to fill up the stands, 47,000 strong. There’s the retractable roof for insurance, in case Seattle weather decides to get in character, but for once the air stays dry and sunlight cuts through the fog in time for the match, winking warm and yellow and sweet from behind sparse cloud cover. In the future, today will be remembered as a near-perfect day for outdoor ice hockey. Continents and continents (and a hemisphere) away, the chime of a phone alarm rings out into a damp summer morning. It’s 6:30 am. It’s Kraken game day. I jolt awake.

The Vegas Golden Knights enter the arena dressed collectively as Elvis, shirts split open to the belly button, reflective of their city’s desert-dwelling glitterati. My Kraken come as fishermen, in work boots and hot red overalls, outfits made complete with fluro orange caps and stuffed fish. When it comes time to get onto the rink in their gear, the Kraken are introduced by Sir-Mix-a-Lot in a truly terrible mashup of his hits and ad libbed lines. As they make their way down the faux boardwalk, jets of fire spew forth intermittently, and real fishmongers from Pike Place Market toss fish between the players in an ode to their post-game tradition (the stuffed fish yeet) and the city of Seattle. The anthem is shredded by a 14-year-old local on electric guitar, to the stoic, patriotic acceptance of everyone watching. (Gods but hockey is such an unserious sport, and for this it will have my heart in perpetuity)

The rink is mic'd today, and I’m grateful. I love the sound of hockey; I love the sound of skate blades carving sibilant lines, the way sticks will clack against each other, against the gritty ice; and when the puck hits someone’s tape just right, there’s a now-familiar little zing deep in my reptilian brain that heralds satisfaction. One day, when my city hosts the AIHL (Australian Ice Hockey League), I’ll be right next to the rink and able to hear it all for myself, but for now this will have to suffice.

The Kraken start dominant, winning the first faceoff and instantly initiating a dump-and-chase. Their cheeks are blacked in an effort to stave off ice blindness, but I like to think they’ve donned war paint. In line with this, Tanev starts the festivities by slamming the Golden Knights’ Whitecloud in a brutal check. Today, with the mics hot, every thump and bump gets caught as bodies hit the boards. Neither team is holding back, some mutually agreed upon level of violence dialled up three notches. Unlike the check-heavy games I’ve watched in the past, there is no pall of malicious intent, no thin veneer of civility to cover up simmering anger from the get go. No; today the hits start clean. No penalties are called for first period.

Had it been two weeks ago, I’d have jumped on the opportunity to extol the virtues and skillset of our starting goalie, Joey. Later, the entire arena will shake with cheers of his name. Because I can’t resist, I’ll say this: he’s still unerringly good at trapping the puck to stop play and cause a reset, shuttering any build up of momentum and opportunities for rebounds; still going on his heart-stopping adventures out of the net and catching compliments from the broadcast on his exceptional stick handling; and the puck at times seems magnetised to his glove. Spoilers for the rest of the game: it’s a shutout, and after all those incredible stops I’m sure Jack Eichel will be kicking himself about being read like a book for days. 35 saves (his exact jersey number) and the first shutout in Winter Classic history. The story writes itself.  But enough of that — Joey’s low-hanging fruit.  And besides, I’ve already put pen to paper on the Dacs propaganda; it all still stands.

The hard checks keep coming. I get the feeling that something’s different today, that there’s something in the air apart from the perfect weather. Despite Vegas’ stellar record against the Kraken to date (8-1-0), the Kraken have a vice grip on the game. I’m so used to watching them chase games to stumbling, clumsy victories that this dominance feels surreal. They kill off the Knights’ attempts at transitioning, relentless in their pursuit and determined to play along the boards, keeping the puck largely out of their offensive zone. When the Knights do manage to drag it in, the Kraken d-men spare no effort viciously batting incoming pucks away from the slot, and should that fail — Joey’s right there to remind them just how good he is. It’s still a simple game, a steady and unembellished grind the way the Kraken like to play — but something about today makes me think that perhaps the elusive, gossamer thing called ‘luck’ is on their side. Perfect days don’t exist, until they do.

My Kraken score their first goal off a stylish deflection. Dunner skips the puck at Tolvy from the blue line, over Amadio’s stick and into traffic. The puck sails past a scrambling Knights defence, where Tolvy finds it midair and smacks it down, right into the back of the Knights’ net. The second goal materialises two minutes into second period, and so does the inciting incident for this essay (blog post/diary entry/unhinged hockey breakdown). After winning the puck off a scuffle along the boards Yanni Gourde legs it, sending it into Vegas’ side of the rink. There’s some back and forth, but ultimately Borgy picks up a goal with a slapshot off the rebound.

Gourdo (or Pumpkin, if the pun appeals) is the quintessential Kraken player. From his career, to his playstyle, to how he’s never come close to stardom — he is, to quote Nick Faris, someone that, “[...]embodies who the Kraken want to be.” He catches my attention today because of his tenacity, and because the liveblog tag goes hard for him as future captain. I’ve come to learn that where esports fans call it the Script, hockey fans use a different phrase. It’s all the same underneath: when everything fits so well, when it all begins to rhyme like poetry, when it’s so compelling that surely someone must’ve made it up — that’s the Narrative. 

Gourdo is short for a hockey player, standing at a modest 5ft 9in (175cm). That’s the first thing you’ll hear about him; that he’s at or below league average. The second thing you’ll hear is that he was never drafted. In a league filled with stories of stars — whose fans and media orbit the monsters of the game, a dozen or so point-scoring darlings — here’s Yanni Gourde, the man who was once a season away from giving up the ghost and getting a civil engineering degree, a rookie for the Tampa Bay Lightning at 26. This, too, is Narrative — a different kind I’d say, because when you hear about underdogs you imagine a scrappy, uncut gem finally breaking through to reach the top. Gourdo isn’t some secret prodigy, and the stats he’s put up since he got his chance in the NHL are solid, a career high of 25 goals and 64 points in 82 games during his time with the Lightning, but nothing like your McDavids or MacKinnons. But that’s all just paper. Out on the ice, though? That’s where the real story is happening.

If Sidney Crosby’s story is the Narrative, Gourdo’s story is like if the Narrative was stolen by a side character — which, fittingly, is exactly what some of the best narratives are all about. A quick Youtube search turns up the usual fluff pieces done by team media. A deeper scan reveals an unusual amount of short highlights, largely scrums and fights that he’s been involved with. In one of them he can be seen sporting his big, crooked grin. This is how I find out that Yanni Gourde is a pest. An instigator, a rat. Whatever you call it, Gourde shares hockey lineage with the likes of Brad Marchand.

In ice hockey, games are won and lost off the back of power plays and penalty kills. But with hitting and fighting at an all-time low, how does one draw penalties? Gourdo has it all figured out. He plays his own game, sticking just short of too close and pushing the envelope on interference. He’s gone on record talking about his extracurriculars, how he verbally and physically taunts opposing players after the whistle: “I know most of the time it works them up and they want to punch me in the face a little bit more. If they take a penalty on me, then, I am winning.” Gourdo treads the line of illegality and sportsmanship, and tips people over the edge in his wake, and when they retaliate they’re caught out and sent to the box.

Rats have a bad reputation in the NHL. Honour codes dictate that you back up any insults, physical or otherwise, should another player challenge you to drop gloves — the assumption being that any on-ice beef is genuine — an agitator’s actions are premeditated, calculated to wreak as much havoc as possible. This insincerity leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many. And yet, Yanni Gourde is beloved.

When he was selected by the Kraken in the expansion draft, Lightning fans made tribute videos. When he first returned to Tampa Bay as a visiting player, the arena shook with his fans' welcome. He is universally regarded by teammates, both past and present, as a leader and an overwhelmingly positive force in the locker room; someone who knows how to get silly (krakenblr-core!), who contributes to constructing good attitudes on the ice, someone who has stepped up to fulfil leadership duties when his teammates have been injured.

Beyond his instigation (and his remarkably sparkling reputation in spite of this), most interesting to me is a distinct pattern to the rest of his shot highlights. There’s nothing too complicated about it, even I noticed as a fan who’s still learning: Yanni Gourde has that intangible, ineffable clutch factor. For every clip where he’s in a scuffle, there’s another instance where he’s scored a game winning goal.

My working theory for why? He’s the guy who didn’t give up on his hockey dream even after being snubbed by the NHL and relegated to the AHL, who debuted as a starter 6 years later than most rookies, made himself a nuisance to play against at every turn with his relentless puck chasing and instigating. He’s Gourdo. So of course he’s got the clutch factor; he snatched his entire career from the jaws of retirement in the eleventh hour.

On a day like today, where the weather is perfect and the sticky late game ice has puck bounces going the Kraken’s way, it feels like the right time for something magical. And in a match filled with physicality Gourdo defies expectations, plays his own game and manages a miracle. Early in the third period, the Knights go for an offensive reset on a loose puck in the Kraken slot that goes shooting past the blue line. It looks completely standard. I’ve seen it a hundred times by now.

And then, racing down the ice there’s Gourdo. I expect a check, because that’s the type of game they’ve primed us for. It doesn’t come. Instead, Gourdo slips right up into Cotter’s space, right under his stick. Their skates cross once but there’s no hit, and with the barest brush… the puck is lifted out from under Cotter’s feet.

This blog is named for a silly pun on ‘pickpocketed’, because it was one of the very first hockey concepts that really captured my imagination. I became quietly obsessed with the idea of pickpocketing in ice hockey, fascinated by hulking athletes who know they don’t even need to hit anyone to win. There’s something so delightful about it; the idea that in ice hockey, a game that is notorious for semi-legal fist fights and whose actual rules allow the players to throw their hundreds of pounds at each other in service of victory, you could simply lose the puck to a thief. Whatever you call it — pickpocketing, puck stripping — it’s the result of refs who’ve become increasingly trigger-happy on calls, and a league-wide shift toward protecting its superstars from concussions.

For Gourdo, it’s a matter of necessity. Being smaller than most players, he has few other options. He can’t just rely on checking; he’s part of the new wave of players who’ve bought in on the puck possession game, scrapping and digging to steal the puck away with stick lifts and finesse rather than outright force. (Funnily enough, fellow pest Marchand is named in an article as another player whose game is shifting to focus on puck possession).

In the wider arc of the Narrative, it’s a perfectly Yanni kind of play. He steals the puck away from the Knights right in their slot, and is left almost one on one with their goalie as everyone else on the ice rushes to catch up. It’s not beautiful hockey — there is no well-timed deke, no lethal toe drag release — it’s just Gourdo wrestling control of the puck from the carved up ice, awkward and off-balance. The first shot doesn’t even go in, bouncing off of Thompson’s pad. But Gourdo is right there to catch it off the rebound, never giving up, always holding on, and he scoops it right over and into the net.

I know the game is finished for the Vegas Golden Knights after this. Call me biassed about my Sharks but I’ve seen when a team is still hungry for a win, and the Knights aren’t coming to the table. More than just the number on the scoreboard, in hindsight this goal feels woven into the fabric of the Narrative. It’s gorgeously messy, unexpected. It comes as a surprise to everyone watching, the broadcast barely able to keep up before the puck makes its way to the net. It’s Seattle waking up from a decades-long slumber to remind the world that it’s always been a hockey town, and the Kraken victory a ringing statement. It's another game winning goal for Gourdo, exactly like he’s always done.

It’s not quite perfect hockey, of course, not what people think of as clean or even technically proficient. But if you’ve watched any Kraken broadcasts you know what I’m about to say.

That’s Kraken hockey, baby!

[tensonline]

busy busy boy

based off of the “wayv as male thot jobs post” 

this is footlocker employee!xuxi and coworker o/c 

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You were tired.

Your feet are aching from standing for almost the entirety of your shift. For the past six hours, you’ve had to deal with greasy teenage boys looking for the latest Nike shoe, helicopter parents wanting to make sure their kid had the best fit and angry customers trying to make a return without their receipt. Working at Foot Locker was exhausting.

“Hey _____, do you want to take your fifteen? I can cover you for right now,” your coworker, Seulgi, said.

“Oh my god yes please,” you said. Bless Seulgi’s heart, you thought. Your patience was starting to diminish by the hour. It was already five hours into your shift and you still hadn’t eaten lunch nor did you get enough sleep last night. College was a bitch and so was that Sensation and Perception class.

“Go ahead and go, I got you,” Seulgi replied.

“Do you want anything from Starbucks?,” you asked, “I gotchu so don’t worry about it.”

“Just an iced americano, please,” she said, “I’ll Venmo you the money when you come back.”

“Don’t worry babe. I’m pretty sure Ten is working right now anyway,” you said. Your childhood best friend and roommate had left earlier than you in his Starbucks uniform, but he mentioned covering a coworker’s shift.

Seulgi laughed, “Got it. By the way, give him my number, yeah?” Seulgi threw a wink at you as you gagged. “Fine, fine. I’ll be back with our drinks. Good luck with the white mom over there by the Air Jordans. She’s been trying to get us to give her an employee discount.”

Seulgi rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath as you walked away. You laughed at her reaction and hoped for her sake that the mom wouldn’t try to mess with her. Seulgi was incredibly intimidating when she wanted to be.

Working at the mall wasn’t as bad as you originally thought it would be. Since most of the workers were college students from either your school or the nearby universities, you enjoyed talking to your coworkers. They made your shifts bearable and entertaining.

It also helped that your childhood best friend worked at the Starbucks in the very same mall. You and Ten had grown up together and formed a friendship in middle school. Both of you stuck by each other in high school, applied to nearly the same schools, and decided to enroll in the same university. It was known that wherever Ten went, so did you. You two were inseparable.

As you rounded the corner, you saw Ten at the counter laughing at what someone was saying. Of course, he’s flirting on the job. Well, you mused, at least this one has a nice back. And he’s tall.

Wait.

He’s wearing a black and white short sleeve shirt.

You would know that hideous uniform anywhere, especially since you were wearing the exact same one.

Ten was talking to Huang Xuxi.

Huang Xuxi was one of the golden boys of your university. Captain of the soccer team, charming, incredibly handsome, and tall. (You’re pretty sure he’s around six feet. God.) Xuxi was known for just how talented he was on the field and for just how good he was in bed.

Granted, he wasn’t that much of an asshole. He never strung more than one girl along. He made sure every person he hooked up with knew that there was nothing more attached to it and if they did not want that, they were free to walk away and pretend nothing had ever happened. No hard feelings. Because of his transparency with partners and tight lips, no one ever had anything bad to say about him.

In fact, it was the girls he hooked up with instead that opened their mouth and bragged about having sex with him. They talked about how he always made sure they came first, how good he was with his mouth (in more ways than one), and his hands.

His gigantic fucking hands that could singlehandedly hold one iPad.

(You’ve witnessed it before and fuck was that one of the weirdest things that have turned you on).

Ten was still smiling and laughing at whatever Xuxi had said to him when he glanced up and noticed you. His face immediately changed into a mischievous smirk and when glanced at Xuxi and back to you. Ten knew how hot you found Xuxi and how much of a work crush you refused to admit you had.

That bitch, you thought. Ten better not say any dumb shit or I’m kicking his ass when we’re at home.

“Hey _____,” Ten said smugly, “What are you doing here?”

You were so gonna kick his ass.

“Hi Ten, can you make me an iced chai with soy and an iced americano? I have to bring it back to Seulgi before my break ends,” you said with a strained smile. You refused to have him and Xuxi in the same room for a long time. It would only end with Ten embarrassing you.

“Sure, let me just go get more stuff from storage,” he said while grinning.

You were glaring at Ten’s back as he walked away when Xuxi finally spoke.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

You hated how flustered you felt when he called you that.

You took a deep breath and put a sultry smile on, dialing up the charm. You turned around to see Xuxi smiling down at you with a fond look in his eyes. You felt your ears getting read and cursed yourself mentally.

Get a grip bitch, he can’t know how much you want to swallow his dick.

“Hey Xuxi,” you said with your best flirty voice, “Are you gonna start your shift soon?”

“Yeah, I clock in soon, like around twenty minutes or so. Are you gonna be working with me for a bit, baby?” he replied with a gentle smile.

You hated how easily he could call you pet names and hated even more how much it affected you, but you would never outwardly show it. Even if you did want to fuck him.

“Yeah, I got three more hours to go. I haven’t taken my lunch yet though since I’m trying to leave early.”

“Oh?,” Xuxi perked up “You wanna get lunch with me then?”

Fuck. He was so fucking cute. And that was worse than sexy.

“I’m sorry babe, but I promised Jennie I would eat with her after she finished her shift. We’re supposed to be going over to Jisoo’s after work,” you apologized. You didn’t even notice the pet name you just gave him but he did. While he perked up and looked at you with a gleam in his eye, you mulled over how you had already made plans in advance to meet up with your other best friends.

“Ah, it’s okay. Some other time, yeah?”

“Of course. Besides, I’ll ask the manager if she’ll let us work on the floor that way you can tell me all about your game last night?” you said. Your words ended off with a question. God, you regretted saying that as soon it came out. You didn’t want to be that annoying bitch who just kept fawning over him and never letting him breathe. Xuxi brightened up. “Yes! God, I hate being on the floor with Matthew. He won’t stop talking to me about his latest gym session and the new protein he’s trying out. You know yesterday he texted me telling me I need to work on my tits? Not chest or pecs, tits.”

You busted out laughing. Your coworker, Matthew, who usually went by BM, was such a gym bro.

As you and Xuxi kept talking about your coworkers' antics and updated him on what has happened today, Ten had already come out and started working on the drinks. He noticed how Xuxi and you had moved away from the counter to stand by the windows. He didn’t even think you noticed the change or how Xuxi looked at you.

Yes, Xuxi was a huge manwhore and had a body count that could rival the number of goals the soccer team scored last season. Yes, he was known to not date or keep a girl for longer than two weeks. But Xuxi looked at you like he was endeared. Like he was intrigued. He and Ten had quite a few mutual friends, so Ten is no stranger to seeing Xuxi flirt. With you though, it was different.

Xuxi looked like he wanted to ravish you and hold your hand. He looked at you as if he was hooked on your every word, and he was.

Ten smiled to himself.

“_____, your drinks are ready!” He yelled out.

You startled and turned when Ten called your name. You had nearly forgotten you were on your very short fifteen-minute break and had to get to work before your manager fired you. Talking to Xuxi just made you tune out everything else.

“Let’s go back to work together, I’ll just sit in the back while waiting,” Xuxi whispered to you. Turning back around, you startled when you realized just how close his face was to yours. Just What the fuck. How did he get so close? Why does he smell so good? How is his skin so clear?

This isn’t fair, you dejectedly thought. Xuxi had no visible pores at all while you were wearing the e.l.f primer and translucent powder to make sure your skin doesn’t look cakey.

The fuck, must be nice being born with naturally good skin. It saves you money AND time.

“Okay,” you mumbled. You glanced down at his lips and….. Wow. Are they naturally that big? Did he get fillers? What other body parts were big besides his lips, hands, and di---

“_____?”

“Yes!,” you jumped. You made the mistake to make eye contact with Xuxi while he smirked as if he knew that you were gawking at him.

“Let’s go back to work, okay babe?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sure,” you said dazedly.

“Hey _____, hurry the fuck up and come here,” Ten said.

You walked up to him and Ten yanked you so hard that you basically had half your body on the other side of the counter.

“Get it together bitch,” Ten whispered. “You did not waste some of your primer and the jeans that make your ass look good just to make an ass out of yourself. Stop being ditzy and starting flirting, you slut. I know you want to suck his dick. Plus, you need to get out of this dry spell you’re in. That belt you have on is basically a chastity one. Especially since it's from Ross.”

You gasped. “First of all, fuck you, you classist bitch. Second of all, I am not in a dry spell. We’re just not all massive hoes like you.”

“Yeah well, I’m a bisexual. And a dancer. And one that lives in Los Angeles. Everyone knows we’re the biggest sluts there is. And don’t change the subject. The last time you got laid was at that frat party which was last fucking month. You hooked up with Mingyu, remember?”

“Yeah,” you sighed dreamily. Mingyu was in your top five best lays ever. You knew that football player strength would have come in handy. “God, he was so good. He was huge AND had the strength to throw me around. You know I love men that can carry me.”

“Yes, I do, unfortunately. I also know that so can Xuxi over there. But guess what? He won’t unless you just keep staring at his blowjob lips and acting like some shy virgin. Now go, I want you to bring out the hoe side of _____ and have him so wrapped around your finger that he daydreams about you when WAP comes on,” Ten hissed as he practically shoved you away.

As annoying as your roommate may be, he was right. You wanted that dick. And you were going to get it.

You took a deep breath, fixed your posture, and straightened out your shoulders. Grabbing the drink carrier from Ten, he quickly fixed your hair and whispered “That’s it. That’s the hot _____ I know. Go make me proud.”

You walked back to where Xuxi was leaning by the door. “Ready?” you asked.

“Yeah,” he said. Xuxi locked his phone and put it in his pocket. When he lifted up his, you gave him your best sultry smile.

“Let’s go then,” you said, with a suggestive tone.

Xuxi smirked as he opened the door for you. He had a sinking feeling that whatever you and Ten were having a whispering match about, would end with him in trouble.

But he wouldn’t mind at all, especially with your ass looking that good in those pair of jeans and smelling so damn good.

[moistwithgender]

(Overdue) Media round-up (January 2019)

Feb’s almost over and I was gonna write about what I’ve processed when I realized I only posted about the anime I watched, I think? So this is a catch-up post for manga and games, before the end of this month in a few days. If you want to read the January anime round-up, it’s in my “curry watches anime” tag.

Games:

Puresabe’s 2019 New Year Rockman Hack (NES): Puresabe does one of these every year and they are always pretty hard! But I think the last few years have been much more balanced than their older projects. They are always just boss fights, but with complex patterns and sometimes multiple phases. Being just a boss fight (or two) means they are super short, but you will spend most of your time learning them. Also there are no checkpoints, so every death means you’re back to phase one. It’s very fun when it’s a good hack, and this was a good hack. I had a very rough start to the year and considered giving up, but went back and beat it, for good fortune in the new year. (Beaten 1/2/19)

The 2nd Super Robot Wars (NES): I decided 2019 would be the year I got into SRW, and so I started here, because the first game actually has no hard plot. I enjoyed it to a point, but the difficulty climbs to an absurd degree, and I wish I’d cut my losses and just youtubed it. The game allows you to save at any time during a turn, and resetting the console means it recycles the RNG and you can get different luck. This is...required. Most of the way into the game, I was having to reset twenty times in a row per unit action, just to make sure I could survive an enemy attack, or successfully hit an enemy. The funniest thing is that when I finally beat this, I almost immediately started up one of the later games, so clearly the kernel of value was visible to me through all that bullshit. (Beaten 1/13/19)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light (Switch): I had been chomping at the bit for what felt like forever just to play this mode of this game, and not only was it good, it surpassed my expectations multiple times. This mode has a lot of twists for something that mostly implies narrative, or otherwise ignores it. I’m the rare person who mostly plays Smash Bros solo because I have NO FRIENDS, and this was worth the price of admission for me. I don’t consider Smash Ultimate itself beaten yet because I haven’t beaten Classic Mode on 9.9 difficulty yet. I have finished with 9.8, like, four times. Please kill me. (Beaten 1/18/19)

PaRappa the Rapper (PSP): While taking care of my cat, I found an opportunity to actually use my PSP for the first time since...2008 or 09? When I bought it secondhand? Jesus. Anyway, it turns out that PaRappa actually has absurd input detection and an equally hard to parse system for what counts as “freestyling”, which ultimately results in a final stage where you’re...required to play notes that are completely unrelated to what it says to do on-screen? I still beat the game (in a single sitting, too. it’s short), but I was pretty frustrated. Greenblat’s aesthetic is iconic, and the songs are very fun to listen to (this game has maybe the only potty humor I actually enjoyed), but the game part is actually the problem. (Beaten 1/25/19)

Patapon (PSP): I played PaRappa spontaneously, but I’ve actually meant to play the Patapon series for quite a while. This is less a song-performing rhythm game and more of an action/strategy type of rhythm game where you consistently keep a beat to keep morale up. It’s pretty good, but missions can be 3-6 minutes of consecutively hitting four notes and then waiting four notes, and while that itself sounds doable, I am just terrible at rhythm and messed up a lot of good opportunities. The difficulty curve in this is high in the beginning, lowers over time, before hitting a huge spike and then being a cakewalk for the last four or so missions. There’s also a lot of grinding, which means this rhythm game came out to almost a 16 hour run. A bit tiring. Not sure when I’ll jump on Patapon 2, but I hope it’s easier to play, since my impetus for picking up the series was the intro FMV for the third game. (Beaten 1/30/19)

Games beaten in January: 5 Games beaten in 2019 thus far: 5

Manga:

Getter Robo Vol 2 (Finished): I didn’t feel like plowing through 51 episodes of the old 70s anime, so I decided to just read the much shorter, and somewhat unrelated manga. In the show, the heroes are what they are, heroes. Likable mains for kids to watch on Saturday mornings. In the manga, as per Go Nagai’s influence (and the main author, Ken Ishikawa, who I LOVE and who was Nagai’s assistant), the heroes are violent asshole moron sociopath terrorists who gradually become more unhinged as they are exposed to the very radiation that powers the machine they use to fight dinosaurs (though said gradual descent is more of a thing in the later manga/OVAs). Also, the villains are dinosaurs. Turns out they had the original ancient civilization and Getter Rays chased them into the Earth’s core and they want to planet back. That’s Getter Robo! It’s very good.

Getter Robo G Vol 1-3 (Finished): This is kind of more of the same as the first, and again, I didn’t want to watch the 39 episodes, I wanted the primer so I could play SRW. As I’ve approached the later games, it turns out they prefer to take influence from the shows, not the manga. Oops! Whatever. In this sequel, it turns out the Dinosaur Empire was a pawn or something to It Was Aliens, the Hyakki Empire, and it’s...more of the same. In both the GR and GR G mangas, I found the occasional chapter with wildly different art, and I figured that those were Ishikawa’s gorgeous art, and the majority was Nagai’s. But, I’m not sure, and I wonder if those were revised or extra chapters done years later. Idk. Anyway, they are both very fun reads, even if they serve more as primers of the lore.

Shin Getter Robo Vol 1-2 (Finished): HERE’s where things start to get really good, and surreal, and bleak. This manga is not adapting a tv series (though later OVAs would reference it. This manga is actually I think where a lot of the inspiration for Gurren Lagann came from, and if you like that series, you should read this to see the connection. I can’t really explain without spoiling either (though if in 2019 you don’t know what happens in Gurren, you are super lucky and need to go watch it all asap). NOTE, this takes place after the 7 volume Getter Robo Go manga, which has a show but I think is unrelated, but more importantly is probably the BEST Getter Robo series. I read that before knowing a thing about Getter and still loved it (though I think having context will really benefit it). GR Go is the biggest justification for getting into the series. If any friends of mine want to look into this series, I’ll actually help give them a guide. Interestingly, the most modern Getter series (of which the most recent was in 2004 (please come back)) all take reference from the darker mangas, not the old 70s show.

Mazinger Z Vol 1-5 (Finished): I think Go Nagai’s works are weird, melodramatic, gross, and just kinda badly drawn. They are great experiences, if you go in with a grain of salt and also avoid the *most* transgressive ones. Don’t google Iron Virgin Jun. Just. Don’t do it. Devilman is probably his best work, but Mazinger Z is another series with a much more famous long-running 70s cartoon (92 episodes!!!) and burned itself into the nostalgia of Japan. Whereas Devilman eventually becomes traumatizing, Mazinger Z is pretty laid back and goofy, while also being Nagai’s brand of The Most Dramatic Thing Ever. If you follow me, you might’ve seen me post pages in my manga tag. It’s a LOT. Though, actually, I don’t think this manga is all that great. It can be *really* funny, but I don’t even remember if the series actually ends. If you read one or two volumes and want to put it down, I think you’re safe to. You got most of the lore. The biggest events seem to take place in later series that I haven’t delved into yet.

UFO Robo Grendizer Vol 1 (Finished): I actually haven’t been able to find anywhere to read Great Mazinger, the sequel series, so I skipped to Grendizer, which is the second sequel. It’s pretty unrelated continuity-wise, so it’s easy to pick up. This is only one volume and yeah they really just want you to watch the 74 episode show, but I’m good. Still, this is a fun book, and Nagai throws in his batshit ideas. The main character is an alien prince whose tragic backstory is literally that the villain kidnapped his younger siblings and all the country’s children and just! Dropped them all from the sky to their death in the middle of the city! And they don’t censor it! GO NAGAI! I really need to read the autobio manga Gekiman because of what snippets I’ve seen, Nagai is actually a super mild-mannered dude who doesn’t really get where his ideas cross lines. If you want to say “oh that’s just wacky Japan”, it’s really not, he was public enemy #1 with parents all over the country for a long time.

Super Robot Retsuden Vol 1 (Finished): This is a single volume crossover of Nagai super robot IPs including Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, and Steel Jeeg (a guy who’s more Ultraman-adjacent than super robot), and there’s no real plot beyond “oh no new bad guy! buy the toys, kids!” It’s throwaway, and I mostly read it to see who Jeeg is without getting into his own series. Also, it was drawn by Ishikawa, so I felt a bit obligated. His art is just so pretty.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer Vol 1 (and maybe 2?): Satoshi Mizukami is a godly storyteller who uses the language of shonen to tell deeply mature and introspective stories for adults and if you follow my posts you might remember me gushing about Spirit Circle and Planet With. I actually haven’t touched this series since February started but I need to get back in because the first two volumes out of ten are amazing (warning, though: there’s a pet death and it’s real sudden and was hard for me to handle). Please read Mizukami’s works.

Manga volumes read in January: 14-15 Manga volumes read in 2019 thus far: 14-15

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Okay that’s everything. I wrote a lot more than I expected to. If you read all that, thanks. If you are interested in any of the things I wrote about, great! If you decide to play through SRW2, don’t, stop, don’t do that. In a few days I’ll be writing about a much better SRW game.

[enbywrestlingfan]

NJPW Wrestling Primer (Updated for 2017)

A while back I did a primer post to help introduce people to the wrestlers of NJPW, but it's become out of date over time as things have changed since then, since wrestling always changes. So this is an updated version from mid-April 2017.

Kazuchika Okada - The greatest wrestler on the planet today, and one who is in the middle of possibly the best title reign of all time, which has featured numerous 4.5 and 4.75 star matches, as well as two 5 star and even a 6 star match. He originally made his legacy in NJPW with a now iconic rivalary with Hiroshi Tanahashi, but since has become a true ace for the company. He is the leader of the CHAOS faction and possibly Gedos son. Though, the position of ace wasn't meant for Okada, it was meant for..

Tetsuya Naito - Naito was supposed to be the new top face of NJPW, but the fans rejected him. So during a US tour, instead of returing to Japan like most, he took a little soul searching journey down to Mexico, and met a man named La Sombra (you might know him as Andrade Cien Almas from WWE NXT) and his Los Ingobernables stable. This inspired a change of attitude in Naito, who returned to NJPW, and turned his back on the fans who rejected him, becoming one of the best characters and heels in wrestling in the process. He leads the Los Ingobernables stable, has had 5 star matches with Kenny Omega, Micheal Elgin (and imo with Tanahashi at WK11), and is just a master of working a crowd. He won the IWGP Heavyweight Title, and threw it in the air like a piece of trash. It was amazing.

Kenny Omega - Currently in NJPW, there are three men who could be considered the ace. Okada, Naito and Kenny Omega. Omega is probably the most popular wrestler in NJPW outside of Japan, due to him being Canadian. He's the leader of Bullet Club, and is one of the greatest wrestlers on the planet today. Theres simply nothing Kenny Omega can't do. But he has two modes: if he keeps his shirt on in a match, expect more comedy, but if the shirts off you're in for the match of the night because thats when he gives 100%. Last year he became the first gaijin to win the G1 Climax Tournament, and went on to have a 6 star classic match with Okada in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom. Since losing, he's been searching for the answer of "why can't I win big matches", and his current goal is to walk into the upcoming NJPW shows in America as champion, no matter what.

Hiroshi Tanahashi - The former ace of NJPW. He's the man who pulled NJPW out of the dark ages. A wildly popular rockstar of a man, who is still one of the best big match workers in all of wrestling, even now that he's slowing down. He's had classic matches with just about every big name on the NJPW roster, and I don't think you can count him out just yet. He's currently a member of the weird Taguchi Japan stable, and doing lots of 6 man tag matches, but I can't help but feel he'll be chasing singles gold again soon.

Katsuyori Shibata - Shibata is an interesting case. He debuted alongside Tanahashi and Nakamura and with them he was part of the chosen future of the company. But when things got rough for NJPW, he jumped ship to go do MMA fights instead. With his 4-10-1 record, it is often considered pretty bad for him, but when he came back to wrestling, he seemed more legitimate than ever and wants to fight his way to the top instead of being handed the title. He's the anti-hero face that everyone wants in wrestling, a true badass who will fight until the very end... which he might have in his recent main event with Okada. Due to a combonation of dehydration due a longer match than he's used to, and a dangerous shoot headbutt spot, he had to get surgery on his head following the match and might never wrestle again, but if his music hits again, the pop will likely be thunderous.

Minoru Suzuki -  48 fights, 29 wins & 19 losses. That is the MMA record of former King of Pancrase Minoru Suzuki. He's the leader of Suzuki-Gun, and someone who would break your arm off and laugh at your suffering. He's the best bastard heel on the planet, a legitimate badass, and he scares me. He's held both the AJPW Triple Crown Championship, and NOAH's GHC Heavyweight Championship, and only needs the IWGP Heavyweight Championship to be one of few men to hold all three of Japans top belts, and even at 48 years old, age might not be enough to stop him. He's an ageless badass.

Tomohiro Ishii - Ishii is one of the most underrated men in NJPW, as he can be slotted in as a top guy at any time and he'll put on a fantastic match. Just an incredible worker when motivated in a singles match, but usually does tag work with other members of CHAOS, usually Toru Yano. But there are moments of brilliance in all of his matches.

Those are the major players in the company in my eyes but here’s some fun minor characters:

Ryusuke Taguchi - The funky weapon, who likes to throw his ass into peoples faces to win matches. When motivated he's one of the most dangerous junior heavyweights on the roster, but he'd rather just have fun. He leads Taguchi Japan, which is a stable of random members of the roster who for some reason united under the flag of The Funky Weapon. It's awesome just trust me.

Bad Luck Fale - A huge, slow beast of a man. Currently the longest running member of Bullet Club, being the first person to join Prince Devitt's (WWE's Finn Balor) new stable back in 2013. He's a constant force that is protected in singles action and that makes him dangerous. In tournaments he's a spoiler. Don't bet against Fale, he's kill your brackets and your dreams. He's gotten singles wins over most big names in current NJPW, and is a hard guy to predict. Fear the Underboss of Bullet Club.

Tama Tonga - A future breakout star for NJPW, since his awesome performance in the G1 Climax last year, Tonga has just been getting better and better with each match. He's got a unique in ring style where he uses his speed to confuse an opponent before striking. Always fun to watch, and I see singles success in his future, as well as more tag success with his brother:

Tanga Loa - Camacho. Does anyone remember Camacho? Teamed with Hunico in WWE? No? Well he’s in Japan now with his brother and they’re pretty great. He's a brawler, and that's about it. It works in tag matches but don't expect much from a singles match with him.

Ricochet - The human incarnation of flippt shit. He busts out 630 sentons like they're nothing, it's incredible. But beyond that he's just a fantastic and well rounded wrestler.

Will Ospreay - The best high flyer in wrestling but needs to slow the fuck down before he kills his knees. He's only 23, and already one of the best in the world, and only gets better as he expands his style.

Jushin Thunder Liger - Iconic legend of juniors wrestling, character was based off an anime which is much less known than Liger himself, still wrestles but has slowed down a bit. He's 52 years old and can still outwrestle most juniors on the roster.

Tiger Mask W - Not Kota Ibushi

Kota Ibushu - A freelancer who turned down a full time WWE contract to do weird shit in Japan, used to team with Kenny Omega as The Golden Lovers but they broke up and have soap opera level drama AND JUST NEED TO MAKE UP ALREADY. He's also not Tiger Mask W.

Togi Makabe - Bruiser Brody 2.0

Ropongi Vice - Trent Barreta (yes, that Trent from WWE) and Rocky Romero just wanna have a good time in Ropongi, but have to wrestle too but are very good at it. Rocky is one of the best tag wrestlers around, and Barreta is becoming one of the best too.

Sanada - A member of Los Ingobernables De Japon. I can't help but feel like NJPW has big plans for him. He debutted helping Naito win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and has had big singles matches with both Tanahashi and Okada, but has never held singles gold. (only member of L.I.J to not get a singles title) He's an incredibly agile, handsome, and skilled wrestler, expect big things from him in the future.

Evil - A member of Los Ingobernables De Japon, is Evil and has lasers.

Hiromu Takahashi - The Joker mixed with Kefka mixed with a Pro Wrestler, he will kill himself so long as he kills his opponent at the same time. Has a fetish where he needs to lick everything he touches.

BUSHI - Evil Luchador who spits mist in peoples eyes and has really fucking cool masks.

Yujiro Takahashi - The Godfather but Japanese, the only Japanese member of Bullet Club, formerly teamed with Tetsuya Naito as No Limit

Micheal Elgin - The worlds strongest Canadian, likely lives in a gym.

Satoshi Kojima - Heir to the lariat, will take your head off with it, loves bread (seriously follow this guy on Twitter, his broken english tweets are as wholesome as his lariats are stiff)

David Finlay Jr. - Son of Fit Finlay, getting very good

Tomaki Honma - Gravely voiced fan favorite who usually loses but is always fun, he uses his head a weapon, started his career in Big Japan Wrestling where he was the first person to use light tubes in a deathmatch, and is currently on the shelf with a very major neck injury and might never wrestle again.

Toru Yano - A comedy relief wrestler who just wants you to buy his DVD and will keep beating your faves with upset victories until you do

Yuji Nagata - Some would say Nagata is the former ace of NJPW during the dark years, but no one really wants to take that title. But he's a fantastic worker even in his old age, one of the last of his generation of NJPW.

Hirooki Goto - A man who could challenge for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship a thousand more times and still choke every single time, but always have a good match in the process. Seriously, this guy loses 80% of big matches he's in. He's a stiff worker and it's great, but get your head in the game Goto, you can win matches, I know you can!

Kushida - Have you ever watched Back the the Future and thought, ‘this is great but I wish Marty McFly was a wrestler’. Kushida. That’s Kushida.

and just so many more and I could go on forever. There are so many great wrestlers in NJPW, and you really don’t need to know the commentary to enjoy it.

[happy2bmyownboss]

*This post does contain some affiliate links which help to support our blog and our family.

Ohhhh! I am so excited to be sharing this post with you. The kids are pretty excited about it too! My fingers are going faster than my brain as I am typing and somehow or another they are managing to put into words what I want to say. I did show a sneak peak of some of the items we’ve received in this post here but now I am going to show you everything we have right now.

If you haven’t seen my latest posts about homeschooling check out the links here but if you are only interested in what we have planned for this year, please keep scrolling.

I’ve been talking about how excited I am for our next homeschool year and I just can’t wait to get started. I have actually talked about this curriculum before but its been awhile. My kids are finally at the age that I think this will work out really well for everyone.

I want to make it known that I am still a huge fan of Easy Peasy All-In-One-Homeschool and Discovery K12.com but right now this will be our main curriculum as I really wanted to get away from so much screen time. I’m just so excited although I know that this will mean more hands on time for me but I’ve loved this idea since I first came across it in 2016. At the time the kids were a bit young and I decided to wait but when they happened to see a couple of shows on TV and showed a lot of interest I decided the time was right.

Also this decision was made well in advance of the recent publicity that this series has had.  I purchased the main book back in 2016 before I had an inkling of what was going on right now.

Are you ready? Drum Roll please…..

This is the majority of it and I’ll break it all down piece by piece below:

I know this isn’t for everyone and it’s not the newest or most exciting thing this year but it is going to be so much FUN! We will be using the Prairie Primer… I plan to do a lot of the activities but as you know sometimes I venture off course and I may end up using this more as a guide. I have include affiliate links to the products we’ve purchased. Purchases made from these links cost nothing extra and help to support our blog.

I did buy this book here so I can read it aloud to the kids before we get started. I think this will benefit the older kids more so they can get a better understanding of who Laura Ingalls Wilder was. The kids are really enjoying the book so far. I read a little bit to them at lunch time and/or before bedtime.

I’ve ordered several items to go along with it as I really want to get back to some old school methods of learning and simpler ways of living. What better way than with The Little House on the Prairie books, which we already had on the book shelf? This DVD set is on my wish list as I really think the kids will enjoy watching them.

I’ve purchased these math books here:

I already had and used these readers and spelling books:

And these books for handwriting:

There are these for Home Ec and we have several other projects planned:

I think the girls will love the paper dolls and everyone will enjoy the coloring pages and the fun new to us recipes that we will find.

Then these for Science:

Nature Adventures! A Guidebook of Nature Facts, Songs, and Hikes in San Diego County

Kid’s Herb Book, A: For Children of All Ages

Animal Tracks: North American Animals A to Z

Animal Tracking: A Waterproof Folding Guide to Animal Tracking & Behavior 

ABCs Naturally: A Child’s Guide to the Alphabet Through Nature

Peterson First Guide to Trees

And Social Studies:

Sugaring Time

Laura Ingalls Wilder Country: The People and Places in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Life and Books

Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography

The Little House Guidebook 

Louis Pasteur: Founder of Modern Medicine

The little guys won’t let me forget Arts & Crafts:

Pioneer Crafts for Kids: 40 Craft Projects for Children

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook: Favorite Songs from the Little House Books Paperback 

Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too

Here is a couple of other items we’ve purchased to go along with it as well:

These came from Lakeshore Learning which is one of my favorite places to shop for educational and special needs materials.

And then some of these for extra studies:

Circle Time Activities

Social and Emotional Learning in Middle School: Essential Lessons for Student Success

All Thru the School Year: 540 Reward Stickers

If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How to Write . . . You’ve Gotta Have This Book!

And these:

Merriam-Webster’s First Dictionary

Merriam-Webster’s Rhyming Dictionary

Uncommon Courtesy for Kids – A Training Manual for Everyone

I’ve also been rereading these for a few tips and encouragement before we get this next school year started:

The Organized Homeschool Life: A Week-By-Week Guide to Homeschool Sanity

Simple Organization for Homeschools: Tips for Getting and Staying Organized While Homeschooling

The Joyful Home Schooler

Academic Homeschooling: How to Give Your Child an Amazing Education at Home by Tracy Chatters

These are most of the books I ordered specifically to go with our Prairie Primer studies. There are a couple of others on my ‘Wish List’ that I am working on getting.

All work and no play would definitely make for some boring days. We’ve added a couple of new games to our collection to help build different skills through play:

Lakeshore Allowance Game

Little Treasures Monkeying Around

Hasbro Trouble Game

Building Bugs

Little Treasures Balancing Pile Up Game, Add Toppings on the Pizza But Don’t Let Them Fall of the Pizza Man’s Pie

Games can be so beneficial for learning different skills like time management, fine motor skills, math, reading, listening, sportsmanship, socializing, and so many more. I do have a couple more on the way soon!

We also have a slew of other materials and activities that we will be rotating through the year:

Tons of books! Not too mention the ones we now have access to with our new library cards! I’ve also been leaving a couple of items like this owl clock and abacus out for the kids to play with. Our newest counting abacus was keeping Jacob entertained when I took this picture.

The bottom shelves hold a lot of information and resources for other studies that we will be using from time to time throughout the year.

This book shelf holds our ‘Daily Readings’… I’m not exactly sure what I want to call it yet but these are books that are divided up according to seasons, holidays, and other events. I have them in order from January to December and there is a wide variety of topics included as you may be able to see.

I plan on making some sort of dividers and I had some of our seasonal activities here too but the shelf got too full. Now I have the activities in this purple/gray container here:

It is a bit full already so I probably need to weed through these and/or find a new storage solution for them. I plan on using the beige container to hold upcoming worksheets and such for easy access. I’m thinking that instead of buying a planner for me I am going to enter all of the lessons and ideas into Homeschool Manager and then print off the weekly schedule to keep in my planning binder. Then I can just check off the lessons as we complete them.

I still need to grab a few binders for the kids so we can keep up with all of these fun lessons. I’m really gonna try to do better with their portfolios this year and add stuff to them on a more regular basis.

We have most of the supplies in that we’ve ordered and I’m sure that the UPS and Fed Ex guys will be so thankful for that. I do have a few things I’d like to order and some that I need to reorder because of a computer glitch earlier this week but we are pretty much set to start soon.

I plan to incorporate some of the other items we already have into the lessons as well.

I’m really trying to be as frugal as I can and use as much as we already have. We have a lot of DVDs and other items that will go along with several of the lessons I’ve looked through already. These have been accumulated over a period of years! A lot of these items have been purchased through Amazon and Lakeshore Learning.

I have ordered quite a bit through William’s scholarship so that I can try to spend more one on one time with in some areas. Some items will be used to try to motivate him to work a little bit more independently as well. William is really interested in these bags with the big books and puppets that I have hanging up. I’ll try to work one or two of those into our daily reading soon. I also have some books with CDs on order and hopefully they’ll be here soon so he can start using his reading center.

We’ve been so excited every time a package comes in the mail. It’s been a job getting everything organized over the past couple of weeks but I am so glad we toughed it out. We still have some areas to work on and I hope we can get to them sooner rather than later… babysteps, I know, one step at a time. There are still a few things to order and reorder because of a glitch in the system earlier this week.

Now even though we are doing a lot old school stuff I’ll still be adding in some new tech/STEM stuff like these items that we already have on the shelf:

I am working on a few lessons so I can include the younger kids as the Prairie Primer is intended for grades 3-7. I know most of the lessons can be adjusted for the little ones but they will need a little bit more one on one time with Momma too.

I am hoping to incorporate our Spielgaben set into some of these lessons. We purchased this several years ago and unfortunately have not used it as much as I wish we had. The past several months it has just been an expensive, very expensive dust collector… that’s gonna change though. This link here is the a similar set of items.

We will also be having some/most of the kids starting up square dance lessons for PE. I thought this would tie in really well with our theme. Mr. Awesome will be teaching the kids gun safety which was part of the study suggestions in the Prairie Primer. This reminds me that I need to check on a hunter safety course so I won’t have a ‘restricted’ hinting license this year.

I’ll also still let the kids have some free learning on the computers and tablets as we will be doing this curriculum for 4 days a week. One day will be for free learning, library, field trips, and catching up. The kids have been begging me to sign up for ABC Mouse again so I’ll probably do that later this week.

Talk about field trips, boy do I have some really good ideas. We are fortunate enough to be close to a few places that will tie into this theme really well. These are some of our family favorite places to visit. We haven’t taken Mr. Awesome and his boys yet but I think that will change here in the near future.

The kids always love to visit the Mill Creek Retirement Home for Horses. Admission is a bag of carrots so we always try to bring the biggest bag we can find. Horses tie into the theme as well, right? Even if they don’t we always get a lot of exercising in and the peopl are always so friendly and give us a lot of information.

Then the Morningside Nature Center is just a hop, skip, and jump or two from us and the kids really love going there. They explore the cabin, play with the old time toys, and feed the animals. The volunteers are always so helpful and answer any questions that the kids have as well. We usually have a picnic lunch afterwards right there near the farm.

There is also the Dudley Farm Historic State Park and many other sites that we will be exploring. These sites also offer a wide variety of activities like making yarn dolls, cane boils, festivals, and other recreations of life in the pioneer days. How can you not have fun?

Be sure to follow along with our blog so you too can join in our homeschool adventures as we travel back to the pioneer days and recreate some of the wonderful stories told by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We’ll be taking lots of pictures, maybe doing a few vlogs here and there, and sharing a lot of the resources that we have found with you. We’ll also share links and deals to specials that we come across too.

If you are interested in trying this out you can use any of the affiliate links I provided in this post to check out what we are using. I’ll try to make up a printable checklist of materials that we are using here soon and I’ll update this post as I can with new ideas so you may want to bookmark the page for future reference.

I also have a whole board on Pinterest, Homeschool: Little House On The Prairie Resources, dedicated to this year’s studies. Be sure to follow the board for updates on new pins that I find. I’ve been pinning for a few years now and should have a plethora of resources on there. I have also started a board with ideas for new studies based on different literature. I am not certain if those will pan out or not but I hope they do and I will share them in the future. If you have some favorite books that you think our family would enjoy please share them in the comments below.

What are you plans for the next year?

Happy Homeschooling

Now that I’ve pulled everything outta the tote I’ve got to find a place to store it!

Kirby’s Kids: Our 2018-2019 Homeschool Curriculum Reveal *This post does contain some affiliate links which help to support our blog and our family.

[apsbicepstraining]

Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink

The Amazon Kindle is likely the least gadget-y contraption ever formed. No one ever calls about its remarkable specs. It doesn’t need upgrading every two years. You just pick it up, make it on, and speak. It’s always felt that method too, even when the Kindle had a keyboard and nineteen buttons and weighed four hundred pounds.

It’s the black and white E Ink presentation that really mounts the colour. It’s slow and sort of awkward to tap around on, but it’s simple. It doesn’t reflect brightly the mode your phone does, hindering your spouse up at night. Eventually, you stop “ve been thinking about” the Kindle as a screen altogether. It’s just a book.

Electronic paper, as that flaunt tech is known( E Ink is a marked period owned by the company referred E Ink, the tech’s contributing purveyor ), has always been associated chiefly with the Kindle and its ilk. But e-paper would soon be very big than e-books. These sturdy, easy-to-read screens are taking over the world, from billboards to price tags to the walls of your mansion. We’ve been thoughts this future eternally: the all-screen macrocosms of Total Recall , Minority Report , Blade Runner , and other less-dystopian movies. Investigates have wasted decades works out how to turn walls, floors, ceilings, and facades into touchscreens. The only style that works is if those screens are rugged as hell, don’t need much ability, and can be used and seen in utterly any conditions. Exclusively one display engineering checks all those chests. Sooner than you think, e-paper “re gonna be all” everywhere. You might not even notice it’s there, and that’s the point.

First Words

Before we get too far, here’s a speedy primer: An e-paper spectacle is filled with really tiny ink vessels, which have electric charges. Some of the ink in each capsule is grey, some is color. Exploiting electrical environments, the spectacle rearranges the ink to reveal different things on the screen.( When you alter the sheet on a Kindle, the resulting twinkle is just the ink rearranging itself .) That rearranging takes a very small amount of superpower, but when it’s done, it slams off. Keeping an portrait on the screen doesn’t require any capability at all.

An e-paper display obviously can’t do everything an LCD or OLED can. Those technologies are more colorful and vibrant. They refresh faster, and they’re much more responsive to touch–there’s no chance you’ll be buying an E Ink smartphone or television anytime soon. But not everything needs all that pizzaz, which is why contraptions of all shapes and sizes are already borrowing e-paper screens. It’s all over the wearables industry, for one: the Pebble Time, the Withings Go fitness tracker, the Sony SmartBand Talk, the flexible brand-new Polyera Wove Band. One of Timex’s high-end GPS watches has a hue E Ink screen, expending a engineering called Mirasol. For these and other wearables, long battery life is much more important than tack-sharp resolutions and crispy colors.

Case Study

Even some inventions that do need enormous screens still benefit from e-paper. Yashar Behzadi thinks so, regardless. Behzadi is CEO of Popslate, which makes a smartphone case that gives an E Ink screen on the back of your telephone.( Microsoft has also been experimenting with something similar, called FlexCase .) He’s been working on the event since 2012, after he and his co-founder made a index of all the things that suck about smartphones. They property on three big ones: you have to constantly swerve it on and unlock it only to see anything; it’s always running out of artillery; and the screen is both bad for your eyes and often hard to read. They figured the back of your phone was powerful, underused real estate. What if you apply another screen there? Popslate looked into lots of presentation tech, but Behzadi says E Ink was the only one that met all the company’s requirements.

Popslate’s suit can expose different kinds of information on the back of your phone.Popslate

The Popslate case is an excellent, always-on accessory for your phone. It’ll show you the latest athletics tally, flash your next calendar happen, or even scroll through the sheets of a work. And the company’s long-term intention is an issue of the content , not the hardware.

” If you’re ESPN ,” Behzadi says,” having a continue dashboard on someone’s phone is high-value for you .” Next up for Behzadi is finding out where else he was able to employed that screen. Popslate worked with a company called Plastic Logic to mount the E Ink screen on a plastic approval, which reaches it both rugged and flexible enough to go anywhere.” You have a thin-film screen, half a millimeter dense, that they are able conform to anything and is always on ,” he says. What’s not a usage instance for that? Behzadi craves Popslate to supplant your gondola dashboard, your light switching, and everything else. The craziest component is, he might not be crazy.

Reading the Signs

Next time you go into a retail store( they still exist !), look at the price tags. Get really close, and you might notice that they’re no longer slice of article snapped out and jostle into region. They might be screens. Tiny price tag, of all things, have become a big e-paper business.” What happens is ,” explains Giovanni Mancini, heads of state of global marketing for E Ink,” Amazon will have an advantage because they can change pricing many times a day. And that’s extremely difficult to do with paper .” With E Ink price tag, a administrator or corporate structure can change tolls when the game purposes and the accumulate is parcelled, or when the bananas are about to go bad. And the grace of it, Mancini says, is” we’re kind of a drop-in replacing .” Costco doesn’t need to run power up and down its aisles, because the labels will last two to five years on the coin-cell artillery that comes inside.

Over the last few years, thanks in part to marriages like Popslate, E Ink( the company) has reimagined its purpose. It used to be little more than potential suppliers for e-readers. Now it’s embedding its technology in luggage tags, so you can check in without involving that big ugly tape all over the manage. It’s partnered with a gas company in Germany to supplant all of its immense price clues with E Ink parades.( Some blissful daytime in the very near future, a lederhosen-wearing adolescent preparing minimum wage won’t have to go outside with a long secure and a fistful of monstrous plastic counts and hang up the day’s rates .) E Ink’s working with the city of London to made screens in bus stops, powered by a solar cell on the ceiling.” You’re not worrying about delving trenches, affording ability to the area ,” Mancini says. On the buses themselves, they’re swapping those discovery signalings, which are now made of paper, for e-paper.

E Ink screens are getting both smaller–Behzadi says Popslate’s working with them on a sticker that has both spectacle and connectivity–and big. Much bigger. The UN built a wall-sized clue out of e-paper in 2013, and Mancini speaks vaguely about an upcoming activity at” a rather large design in Southern California where they want to animate the outside of the building .” The tech they’re using, announced E Ink Prism, is really no different than wallpaper. Except this wallpaper keep moving, change, and disappear when beige heydays go out of style.

E Ink’s perception is now nearly impossibly broad. Anywhere fabrics can go, Mancini says, E Ink wants to be there.” What we’re looking at is, where else can we usage this outside of what you typically would think of emblazon, colour, and flaunts? What other compounds is impossible to encapsulate that are used in other industries ?” I mention flavors as a joke, but Mancini agrees. All that’s going to take a while, he says, but it’s coming.

Paper Trail

Even as its employs have changed, e-paper technology certainly hasn’t. The basic hypothesi behind an E Ink tattoo is the same as the one in your Kindle. But that could be about to change. Color e-paper, for example, has been possible for a long time but is only now coming into use. A busines in China has developed graphene e-paper, which is brighter, most flexible, and more rugged than mounting the display on glass or plastic. Another companionship demonstrated off a video-capable e-paper screen, the whole way back in 2012! A lot of this tech has been “18 months away” for so many years now it’s hard to reckon it’ll ever actually show up. And E Ink, the company, has such a patent moat that it has acted as a monopoly, which Behzadi says has stopped rates perhaps too high. But E Ink lost a big patent engage in 2015, and the market could expand soon.

The e-paper tech is there, Behzadi tells me, it just takes a while to come to market. He’s antsy, though. He’s particularly aroused about hybrid showings, which stack e-paper and LCD together into a single machine that can switch between them at a moment’s notice. When that comes out, you might get an e-paper smartphone after all. But even now, start looking around. Everywhere you check paper, see a nature where it’s replaced by a minuscule screen that draws almost no dominance, consider this to be newspaper, and is amply interactive. That world-wide is coming, it’s coming in black and white, and it’s coming faster than you think.

The post Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[apsbicepstraining]

Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink

The Amazon Kindle is likely the least gadget-y contraption ever formed. No one ever calls about its remarkable specs. It doesn’t need upgrading every two years. You just pick it up, make it on, and speak. It’s always felt that method too, even when the Kindle had a keyboard and nineteen buttons and weighed four hundred pounds.

It’s the black and white E Ink presentation that really mounts the colour. It’s slow and sort of awkward to tap around on, but it’s simple. It doesn’t reflect brightly the mode your phone does, hindering your spouse up at night. Eventually, you stop “ve been thinking about” the Kindle as a screen altogether. It’s just a book.

Electronic paper, as that flaunt tech is known( E Ink is a marked period owned by the company referred E Ink, the tech’s contributing purveyor ), has always been associated chiefly with the Kindle and its ilk. But e-paper would soon be very big than e-books. These sturdy, easy-to-read screens are taking over the world, from billboards to price tags to the walls of your mansion. We’ve been thoughts this future eternally: the all-screen macrocosms of Total Recall , Minority Report , Blade Runner , and other less-dystopian movies. Investigates have wasted decades works out how to turn walls, floors, ceilings, and facades into touchscreens. The only style that works is if those screens are rugged as hell, don’t need much ability, and can be used and seen in utterly any conditions. Exclusively one display engineering checks all those chests. Sooner than you think, e-paper “re gonna be all” everywhere. You might not even notice it’s there, and that’s the point.

First Words

Before we get too far, here’s a speedy primer: An e-paper spectacle is filled with really tiny ink vessels, which have electric charges. Some of the ink in each capsule is grey, some is color. Exploiting electrical environments, the spectacle rearranges the ink to reveal different things on the screen.( When you alter the sheet on a Kindle, the resulting twinkle is just the ink rearranging itself .) That rearranging takes a very small amount of superpower, but when it’s done, it slams off. Keeping an portrait on the screen doesn’t require any capability at all.

An e-paper display obviously can’t do everything an LCD or OLED can. Those technologies are more colorful and vibrant. They refresh faster, and they’re much more responsive to touch–there’s no chance you’ll be buying an E Ink smartphone or television anytime soon. But not everything needs all that pizzaz, which is why contraptions of all shapes and sizes are already borrowing e-paper screens. It’s all over the wearables industry, for one: the Pebble Time, the Withings Go fitness tracker, the Sony SmartBand Talk, the flexible brand-new Polyera Wove Band. One of Timex’s high-end GPS watches has a hue E Ink screen, expending a engineering called Mirasol. For these and other wearables, long battery life is much more important than tack-sharp resolutions and crispy colors.

Case Study

Even some inventions that do need enormous screens still benefit from e-paper. Yashar Behzadi thinks so, regardless. Behzadi is CEO of Popslate, which makes a smartphone case that gives an E Ink screen on the back of your telephone.( Microsoft has also been experimenting with something similar, called FlexCase .) He’s been working on the event since 2012, after he and his co-founder made a index of all the things that suck about smartphones. They property on three big ones: you have to constantly swerve it on and unlock it only to see anything; it’s always running out of artillery; and the screen is both bad for your eyes and often hard to read. They figured the back of your phone was powerful, underused real estate. What if you apply another screen there? Popslate looked into lots of presentation tech, but Behzadi says E Ink was the only one that met all the company’s requirements.

Popslate’s suit can expose different kinds of information on the back of your phone.Popslate

The Popslate case is an excellent, always-on accessory for your phone. It’ll show you the latest athletics tally, flash your next calendar happen, or even scroll through the sheets of a work. And the company’s long-term intention is an issue of the content , not the hardware.

” If you’re ESPN ,” Behzadi says,” having a continue dashboard on someone’s phone is high-value for you .” Next up for Behzadi is finding out where else he was able to employed that screen. Popslate worked with a company called Plastic Logic to mount the E Ink screen on a plastic approval, which reaches it both rugged and flexible enough to go anywhere.” You have a thin-film screen, half a millimeter dense, that they are able conform to anything and is always on ,” he says. What’s not a usage instance for that? Behzadi craves Popslate to supplant your gondola dashboard, your light switching, and everything else. The craziest component is, he might not be crazy.

Reading the Signs

Next time you go into a retail store( they still exist !), look at the price tags. Get really close, and you might notice that they’re no longer slice of article snapped out and jostle into region. They might be screens. Tiny price tag, of all things, have become a big e-paper business.” What happens is ,” explains Giovanni Mancini, heads of state of global marketing for E Ink,” Amazon will have an advantage because they can change pricing many times a day. And that’s extremely difficult to do with paper .” With E Ink price tag, a administrator or corporate structure can change tolls when the game purposes and the accumulate is parcelled, or when the bananas are about to go bad. And the grace of it, Mancini says, is” we’re kind of a drop-in replacing .” Costco doesn’t need to run power up and down its aisles, because the labels will last two to five years on the coin-cell artillery that comes inside.

Over the last few years, thanks in part to marriages like Popslate, E Ink( the company) has reimagined its purpose. It used to be little more than potential suppliers for e-readers. Now it’s embedding its technology in luggage tags, so you can check in without involving that big ugly tape all over the manage. It’s partnered with a gas company in Germany to supplant all of its immense price clues with E Ink parades.( Some blissful daytime in the very near future, a lederhosen-wearing adolescent preparing minimum wage won’t have to go outside with a long secure and a fistful of monstrous plastic counts and hang up the day’s rates .) E Ink’s working with the city of London to made screens in bus stops, powered by a solar cell on the ceiling.” You’re not worrying about delving trenches, affording ability to the area ,” Mancini says. On the buses themselves, they’re swapping those discovery signalings, which are now made of paper, for e-paper.

E Ink screens are getting both smaller–Behzadi says Popslate’s working with them on a sticker that has both spectacle and connectivity–and big. Much bigger. The UN built a wall-sized clue out of e-paper in 2013, and Mancini speaks vaguely about an upcoming activity at” a rather large design in Southern California where they want to animate the outside of the building .” The tech they’re using, announced E Ink Prism, is really no different than wallpaper. Except this wallpaper keep moving, change, and disappear when beige heydays go out of style.

E Ink’s perception is now nearly impossibly broad. Anywhere fabrics can go, Mancini says, E Ink wants to be there.” What we’re looking at is, where else can we usage this outside of what you typically would think of emblazon, colour, and flaunts? What other compounds is impossible to encapsulate that are used in other industries ?” I mention flavors as a joke, but Mancini agrees. All that’s going to take a while, he says, but it’s coming.

Paper Trail

Even as its employs have changed, e-paper technology certainly hasn’t. The basic hypothesi behind an E Ink tattoo is the same as the one in your Kindle. But that could be about to change. Color e-paper, for example, has been possible for a long time but is only now coming into use. A busines in China has developed graphene e-paper, which is brighter, most flexible, and more rugged than mounting the display on glass or plastic. Another companionship demonstrated off a video-capable e-paper screen, the whole way back in 2012! A lot of this tech has been “18 months away” for so many years now it’s hard to reckon it’ll ever actually show up. And E Ink, the company, has such a patent moat that it has acted as a monopoly, which Behzadi says has stopped rates perhaps too high. But E Ink lost a big patent engage in 2015, and the market could expand soon.

The e-paper tech is there, Behzadi tells me, it just takes a while to come to market. He’s antsy, though. He’s particularly aroused about hybrid showings, which stack e-paper and LCD together into a single machine that can switch between them at a moment’s notice. When that comes out, you might get an e-paper smartphone after all. But even now, start looking around. Everywhere you check paper, see a nature where it’s replaced by a minuscule screen that draws almost no dominance, consider this to be newspaper, and is amply interactive. That world-wide is coming, it’s coming in black and white, and it’s coming faster than you think.

The post Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2hvUeW4 via IFTTT

[apsbicepstraining]

Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink

The Amazon Kindle is likely the least gadget-y contraption ever formed. No one ever calls about its remarkable specs. It doesn’t need upgrading every two years. You just pick it up, make it on, and speak. It’s always felt that method too, even when the Kindle had a keyboard and nineteen buttons and weighed four hundred pounds.

It’s the black and white E Ink presentation that really mounts the colour. It’s slow and sort of awkward to tap around on, but it’s simple. It doesn’t reflect brightly the mode your phone does, hindering your spouse up at night. Eventually, you stop “ve been thinking about” the Kindle as a screen altogether. It’s just a book.

Electronic paper, as that flaunt tech is known( E Ink is a marked period owned by the company referred E Ink, the tech’s contributing purveyor ), has always been associated chiefly with the Kindle and its ilk. But e-paper would soon be very big than e-books. These sturdy, easy-to-read screens are taking over the world, from billboards to price tags to the walls of your mansion. We’ve been thoughts this future eternally: the all-screen macrocosms of Total Recall , Minority Report , Blade Runner , and other less-dystopian movies. Investigates have wasted decades works out how to turn walls, floors, ceilings, and facades into touchscreens. The only style that works is if those screens are rugged as hell, don’t need much ability, and can be used and seen in utterly any conditions. Exclusively one display engineering checks all those chests. Sooner than you think, e-paper “re gonna be all” everywhere. You might not even notice it’s there, and that’s the point.

First Words

Before we get too far, here’s a speedy primer: An e-paper spectacle is filled with really tiny ink vessels, which have electric charges. Some of the ink in each capsule is grey, some is color. Exploiting electrical environments, the spectacle rearranges the ink to reveal different things on the screen.( When you alter the sheet on a Kindle, the resulting twinkle is just the ink rearranging itself .) That rearranging takes a very small amount of superpower, but when it’s done, it slams off. Keeping an portrait on the screen doesn’t require any capability at all.

An e-paper display obviously can’t do everything an LCD or OLED can. Those technologies are more colorful and vibrant. They refresh faster, and they’re much more responsive to touch–there’s no chance you’ll be buying an E Ink smartphone or television anytime soon. But not everything needs all that pizzaz, which is why contraptions of all shapes and sizes are already borrowing e-paper screens. It’s all over the wearables industry, for one: the Pebble Time, the Withings Go fitness tracker, the Sony SmartBand Talk, the flexible brand-new Polyera Wove Band. One of Timex’s high-end GPS watches has a hue E Ink screen, expending a engineering called Mirasol. For these and other wearables, long battery life is much more important than tack-sharp resolutions and crispy colors.

Case Study

Even some inventions that do need enormous screens still benefit from e-paper. Yashar Behzadi thinks so, regardless. Behzadi is CEO of Popslate, which makes a smartphone case that gives an E Ink screen on the back of your telephone.( Microsoft has also been experimenting with something similar, called FlexCase .) He’s been working on the event since 2012, after he and his co-founder made a index of all the things that suck about smartphones. They property on three big ones: you have to constantly swerve it on and unlock it only to see anything; it’s always running out of artillery; and the screen is both bad for your eyes and often hard to read. They figured the back of your phone was powerful, underused real estate. What if you apply another screen there? Popslate looked into lots of presentation tech, but Behzadi says E Ink was the only one that met all the company’s requirements.

Popslate’s suit can expose different kinds of information on the back of your phone.Popslate

The Popslate case is an excellent, always-on accessory for your phone. It’ll show you the latest athletics tally, flash your next calendar happen, or even scroll through the sheets of a work. And the company’s long-term intention is an issue of the content , not the hardware.

” If you’re ESPN ,” Behzadi says,” having a continue dashboard on someone’s phone is high-value for you .” Next up for Behzadi is finding out where else he was able to employed that screen. Popslate worked with a company called Plastic Logic to mount the E Ink screen on a plastic approval, which reaches it both rugged and flexible enough to go anywhere.” You have a thin-film screen, half a millimeter dense, that they are able conform to anything and is always on ,” he says. What’s not a usage instance for that? Behzadi craves Popslate to supplant your gondola dashboard, your light switching, and everything else. The craziest component is, he might not be crazy.

Reading the Signs

Next time you go into a retail store( they still exist !), look at the price tags. Get really close, and you might notice that they’re no longer slice of article snapped out and jostle into region. They might be screens. Tiny price tag, of all things, have become a big e-paper business.” What happens is ,” explains Giovanni Mancini, heads of state of global marketing for E Ink,” Amazon will have an advantage because they can change pricing many times a day. And that’s extremely difficult to do with paper .” With E Ink price tag, a administrator or corporate structure can change tolls when the game purposes and the accumulate is parcelled, or when the bananas are about to go bad. And the grace of it, Mancini says, is” we’re kind of a drop-in replacing .” Costco doesn’t need to run power up and down its aisles, because the labels will last two to five years on the coin-cell artillery that comes inside.

Over the last few years, thanks in part to marriages like Popslate, E Ink( the company) has reimagined its purpose. It used to be little more than potential suppliers for e-readers. Now it’s embedding its technology in luggage tags, so you can check in without involving that big ugly tape all over the manage. It’s partnered with a gas company in Germany to supplant all of its immense price clues with E Ink parades.( Some blissful daytime in the very near future, a lederhosen-wearing adolescent preparing minimum wage won’t have to go outside with a long secure and a fistful of monstrous plastic counts and hang up the day’s rates .) E Ink’s working with the city of London to made screens in bus stops, powered by a solar cell on the ceiling.” You’re not worrying about delving trenches, affording ability to the area ,” Mancini says. On the buses themselves, they’re swapping those discovery signalings, which are now made of paper, for e-paper.

E Ink screens are getting both smaller–Behzadi says Popslate’s working with them on a sticker that has both spectacle and connectivity–and big. Much bigger. The UN built a wall-sized clue out of e-paper in 2013, and Mancini speaks vaguely about an upcoming activity at” a rather large design in Southern California where they want to animate the outside of the building .” The tech they’re using, announced E Ink Prism, is really no different than wallpaper. Except this wallpaper keep moving, change, and disappear when beige heydays go out of style.

E Ink’s perception is now nearly impossibly broad. Anywhere fabrics can go, Mancini says, E Ink wants to be there.” What we’re looking at is, where else can we usage this outside of what you typically would think of emblazon, colour, and flaunts? What other compounds is impossible to encapsulate that are used in other industries ?” I mention flavors as a joke, but Mancini agrees. All that’s going to take a while, he says, but it’s coming.

Paper Trail

Even as its employs have changed, e-paper technology certainly hasn’t. The basic hypothesi behind an E Ink tattoo is the same as the one in your Kindle. But that could be about to change. Color e-paper, for example, has been possible for a long time but is only now coming into use. A busines in China has developed graphene e-paper, which is brighter, most flexible, and more rugged than mounting the display on glass or plastic. Another companionship demonstrated off a video-capable e-paper screen, the whole way back in 2012! A lot of this tech has been “18 months away” for so many years now it’s hard to reckon it’ll ever actually show up. And E Ink, the company, has such a patent moat that it has acted as a monopoly, which Behzadi says has stopped rates perhaps too high. But E Ink lost a big patent engage in 2015, and the market could expand soon.

The e-paper tech is there, Behzadi tells me, it just takes a while to come to market. He’s antsy, though. He’s particularly aroused about hybrid showings, which stack e-paper and LCD together into a single machine that can switch between them at a moment’s notice. When that comes out, you might get an e-paper smartphone after all. But even now, start looking around. Everywhere you check paper, see a nature where it’s replaced by a minuscule screen that draws almost no dominance, consider this to be newspaper, and is amply interactive. That world-wide is coming, it’s coming in black and white, and it’s coming faster than you think.

The post Get Ready for the World to Be Comprised in Electronic Ink appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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