8 ball flash!! Yes!! About 19 months after I flashed 7 balls for the first time; done it about 20 times now. I think going to the gym helped, as when I finally got it, I used all biceps, didn't use my back or my legs, just all arm strength, very low but quick and evenly spaced out, and caught 'em all.

Martin

Been watching more juggling videos and circus videos in general. More stuff to work on

Under the leg, both hands, both legs
Hooping. Just everything to do with it
360s and 180s
7 balls for more than 7 catches
6 balls asynch (asynchronous, not at the same time) as my brain has trouble following the Pattern because I don't practice it
5 ball half shower both sides. Though I hate these patterns, I wouldn't hate 'em as much if I were any good at them!
Three club mills mess
Four club doubles, with three clubs. Various techniques with three clubs work

Martin

Yesterday was a busy if admittedly not very interesting day. I went to my first AGM, the Leeds Children's Circus AGM. It turns out I wasn't allowed to vote; we're come up with a set of pretty complicated criteria to decide who can and cannot vote at meetings. I find our criteria pretty harsh. For example I've been volunteering there for three months, to be able to vote, I'd need a 70% attendance as a volunteer for six months, or if I missed out on that, 50% attendance over 12 months.

The criteria are perfectly reasonable but sort of miss the point; there were only five of us there anyway. It's good to have some sort of criterion to decide who can vote and who cannot, we don't want strangers literally walking in off the street and voting, but to have such tough criteria doesn't make a lot of sense. But I only objected to numbers involved, not the reasons behind the criteria. And since we're having the opposite problem to the one we're trying to counteract - not enough people coming to the meetings - it seemed pointless of me to object. Two pointless things to not make a poignant one!

Meeting over, I went for my 'induction' at the RSPCA shop. Problem is it never really happened, they'd asked me to come in for an hour but the induction forms hadn't arrived yet, so I spent an hour stacking shelves. I'm aware that's gonna be a part of my job but I was annoyed to go in for a reason other than the one I was told of. Not like they were even short staffed at the time; there were I think six people working. When I worked at Scope it was often just two of us, and then the manager would pop out to take some cash to pay into the bank and it would be just me for 20 minutes or so.

But no harm done. Not sure that in either of these two forages I actually achieved a lot. At Leeds Children's Circus I think I learned a lot more than I actually add myself in input, but mainly because other people were having the good ideas, or simply in some cases there were no good options.

Martin

After going to the gym last Friday I felt off not off enough to be called 'ill' but below par from about Saturday till Thursday. Can't actually remember what I did Saturday or Sunday. Monday went to Circus Society but wasn't really up for it, spent relatively little time juggling due to tiredness. Tuesday I again wasn't feeling well, with only Leeds Children's Circus to do that day. After some painting (skirting boards, not portraits) had a shower, fell asleep and missed all of Leeds Children's Circus. Wednesday, feeling a bit dispassionate about juggling, stayed in instead of going juggling. Think that might be the first one I've missed this year.

Thursday is usually a full day at some anyway, so nothing new there. Did a good job of getting stuff done,

Friday had a good day, did the job centre, had a job interview for RSPCA in Leeds and got the job as a voluntary job. Then did a really good session at the gym, the best I've done in ages. I figure if going to the gym makes me tired, the best response is to do more at the gym so my body gets used to it. But yeah, I'm sore today. I did a bit of juggling to warm up and enjoyed it; I've been juggling a lot recently; twice a week at the least plus Leeds Children's Circus and 6 hours of juggling in the Leicester convention. So a bit of a rest will make me keener.

Thing is today I'm definitely too tired to juggle today but after the football (on TV I mean) am gonna have a hot shower and go to bed, and hopefully if I warm up ok, tomorrow I can juggle.

Some nice weather would help! I've juggled in the garden just twice this year; once it was a bit too windy and the other time it was a bit too cold.

Martin

If you've read my previous post, you'll know that I essentially don't believe in God or gods or any sort of afterlife.

You don't need to do much research to see how many deities and religions have disappeared over the centuries. Roman Gods, Greek Gods, Egyptian Gods. Religion does seem to fulfil a purpose. But what? Well, I think some people can manage fine without a religion. Some people can't manage their own morality, they need to be told what to think. I think the idea that secular society will lead to less morality is very, very wrong! It'll lead to more morality. It would force people to think for themselves. And I think some people couldn't cope; they couldn't come up with their own moral values so they need someone to tell them what to do.

NB I don't think this is the only reason people are religious.

My main irritation with Christianity is that it is not fixed; the Bible was altered for hundreds or even thousands of years. It seems very odd that a book can be the word of God, then taken out of the Bible by a human being, and no longer be the word of God. Or visa-versa; something that is not the word of can become the word of God when a human editor decides to add it to the Bible. We know that there are account of Jesus that did not make it into the Bible; why? Who decided? God? No, surely not. It was people.

There's even a quote on the Internet which says "the Bible is true; the Bible says so". Erm does it? Where? The Bible isn't a single text anyway, but a compilation over at least 500 years of separate works. The Bible doesn't claim to be written by God directly either, but written by people. Many of the books don't claim to be the word of God anyway; so perhaps their not, even by their own admission!

Martin

A lot of the stuff I post here is stuff I pick up from my facebook (Martin Richard Gardner) and want to post something at length on the subject.

On Wednesday I picked up on the idea of veganism/vegetarianism. Here's my view on it:

I'm an animal lover, always have been for as long as I remember. But due to what I believe, I believe no harm can be done to anything once it's dead. It's the same reason I'm on the organ donor register for take whatever you want.

For example, if I were buried and somebody defiled my grave, dug it up or whatever, it would upset living people, but it wouldn't upset me, as I'd be dead.

I also believe that ultimately the only way to escape suffering once and for all is to die, which is why I plan on dying one day. That may sound trivial but reading the Metro 15% of the UK population interviewed said they would like to live forever. Well I wouldn't!

So on the issue of vegetarianism, a dead animal is also one that has escaped suffering forever, so eating it cannot do it any harm. That's why I would never give up meat for ethical reasons, unless I totally change my view on the issue, of course.

I've been saying for ages now, probably for years, that I'm a bit overweight but not enough to consider doing anything about it. I've been saying I won't worry about it unless I get to 16 stone (224lb). The problem is, at my current rate I'm due to reach that in June or July. Hmm. My weight in itself is not so much the issue, not so much as the trend, if I keep gaining them I'm in for all the usual problems, increased risk of diabetes, back problems, knee problems, etc.

Also, with all the juggling I do, I do need to eat big portions some of the time, like if I'm gonna juggle for three hours on a sunny day, I need a big meal or else I will start to feel unwell, faint, light-headed etc.

But to underline, this isn't panic time yet.

Martin

Here's the followup to my last post.

So I'm not working one afternoon a week as a volunteer for Leeds Children's Circus. It's pretty much my ideal voluntary job. I suppose if it involved cats and anagrams, that's the only way it could get better. I say children's, it's actually up to 13 so the older one's aren't what I'd call 'children' but rather younger teenagers.

Not too surprisingly it can be tough and frustrating. There are two hour-long session, from 6-10 (in terms of ages) and from 10-13. If you're ten, you can do either, but not both. It's a pound for an hour.

I haven't been there all that long, a bit longer than I thought, seems I started in February 2012! I feel like we've lost our way a bit. Yesterday for both groups, we spent as long playing games as we did do circus skills.

I should really find out who is theoretically in charge, do we have a structure, who's at the top? Are we all volunteers? What's our mission statement?

The younger group, I really think they need it to be quite school like. If you give them some free reign, the tend to mess about, hit each other with the juggling equipment. With juggling balls that's ok, relatively, but not when they use juggling clubs or devil sticks or whatever, those things definitely hurt, even for an adult, and our kids are as young as six. So letting them pursue their own interests is out.

The second group, ten till thirteen is a bit of a tougher one. First of all, they understand that we're not teachers, second of all when left to their own devices, they don't tear the place up, but they don't do any circus stuff either. There is one person in particular who does, but I won't mention him/her by name. But having 11 teenagers and only one of them genuinely interested is a pain. It would be nice to have some free sessions, or half sessions, to say 'practise whatever you want', but the problem is they just don't.

Our current system, which I don't think anyone is too happy about, is to start late - not our fault, the kids arrive a bit late, if we started on time we'd literally outnumber the kids. So we start about 10 minutes late into an hour session, have like 20 minutes doing introductions and playing games. Then a 5 minute break. So now we only have 25 minutes left of the original session, and no circus skill have been practised. Then we typically split them into three groups and rotate, so they get about 10 minutes with each piece of equipment.

The advantage of this, splitting them into groups, is kinda divide and conquer, easier to control a small group than a large one, also it should limit boredom, kids will gets stuff of even things they enjoy after a short time, so the idea is to rotate them to stop them getting bored.

Our discussion last night went a bit like this:

Try and start on time. There's only so much we can do about that. Have a warm-up which is an actual warm-up, not a game. Or not necessarily a game, a game is okay if it involves some actually warming up. Then do one skill, or more accurately one piece of equipment for the rest of the session. Then play a game at the end if we complete everything as a 'reward'.

Martin

I've just realized thinking back that quite a lot has happened in the past two weeks, and I haven't had time to write about it here.

A friend of mine died on Monday. It seems it wasn't discovered until Tuesday as he lives alone. So the funeral was a week later. I've been to two funerals before, both family members. This was a much shorter affair, about a 35 minute service. I'd mentally prepared for it being anything up to 2 hours. It was a nice service, simple, honest, to the point.

We had a little drink at a hotel down the road afterwards, I got to meet his mum and his sister. Got talking to a couple of nice looking women as it happens (well you know, life goes on, at least I am alive so I can do these things) though they were a bit older than me and in reflection I don't think they were flirting with me they just wanted to find out more about what Eduardo was like with his friends. They were friends of the family as opposed to friends of Eduardo's or family members.

It was quite a nice day, not a very long day, and after that I had Leeds Children's Circus, which I fear, I may not have mentioned at all in this blog, which is pretty shameful. But my head's kinda gone and I have plenty of time to write more posts.

Martin

Went to the Leicester juggling convention 'Lestival' on Saturday and frankly the last two days I have been too tired to do almost anything, though, with some difficultly, I did get out last night for about four hours.

So my review is... more of the same. This is the fourth different juggling convention I've done, the third one-day one and yeah, they're all pretty much the same. That's not meant in a pejorative sense, just as a lot of things people enjoy as more or less always the same. I didn't enjoy it as much as other conventions. That's presumably not to do with the setting or the people there or the food. Nor was I overly hungry or overly tired. In fact, because I was better prepared I did more circus stuff than I've ever done at a convention before. As a result, I talked to fewer people. Anyway, I enjoy it less, but I still enjoyed it. I passed up two things to be there; watching the FA Cup final and university night out from 9 till 2am, and I don't regret it. I do feel a bit burned out from circus skills, mind you.

Martin