My favourite devil kitten

Gratuitous picture cause I love it and it took me NINE hours so it deserves to be seen.

So super high off my bird drawing, which was done following instructions from a class in slow motion 😂 I decided I wanted to draw Mori.  But the *real* Mori.

Alas, they don’t make classes - anywhere I could find - on how to draw realistic dragon kittens ;).  Shocking that.  And even fewer (than zero - imaginative realism, remember) options about how to do so w pencil crayons!

Now, I’ve been doing a course on sketching (SQUIRREL!  hmm just scrolled back through some of my past posts - I stopped following that artist because I found her "follow alongs" helped me produce some cool stuff (I follow instructions well) but I wasn't actually learning to draw.  I found another artist - Kirsty Partridge - who has a class called "Drawing Decoded" which I purchased last year and have been working through that actually teaches how to draw.   She has several other courses and, of course, a subscription option lol.   I have two courses that I own (the second one is about using colour), and a one year subscription to see how much I use the subscription material.  Since I'm like 6 months into it, I'm going to say courses are a win but the subscription less so.   Which financially is great because the courses are forever. /endsquirrel)  Anyways - the bird drawing, above, was a follow along as well, so it doesn't "count" quite as much BUT I used my new skills from the drawing course to sketch Mori based on a photo I had….   Then just tweaked a few things ;).  Mostly based on books or other people’s interpretations of dragons.   C came in part way through and said he needed a spiky tail - he was right ;).  So now may I introduce:

My favourite devil kitten

For how early I am in my drawing adventure, I’m ridiculously pleased at how this turned out.  Certainly there are things I would do differently next time, and there are things I’d like to do differently but am not sure how yet ;).  But I was still really pleased with the end result.  And, those who know me will appreciate that apparently I was the *first* in the drawing school to share a dragon 😂. Said school is all about realism, so not shocking that.  But there was no rule I could see about NOT posting imaginative realism instead so…

Apparently imaginative realism is welcome here :)

#TIL - How to do a back handspring

Just like that ;)

Today I learned all the components of a back handspring.   Lol now to put in perspective - I could never do something that even vaguely resembled a back handspring even when I was spring-aged ;).  The closest I ever came was a front walkover or stand to bridge going backwards (I never managed the walkover part going backwards).   And these days - well my bridge is very structurally unsound and I’m legitimately terrified of what would happen if I tried to go into it from anything other than lying on the ground.  I don’t technically *need* to be able to walk to do my job but I kinda enjoy that ability for quality of life ;)

Suffice to say mine does not look like this ;-P

So anyways - did our warmup, then did some exercises about holding a tight core (think two parallel giant rectangular cushions.  Lie across them so ankles on one side and forehead on the other - holding your body straight across the chasm between them.  Then roll.   Front to back and back to front.   Both harder than it seems and somehow also not as hard as it seems.

Then on the handstand wall (where we also did some handstand practice - yeah!) with a cushion not far in front of it.   Facing away from the wall, one foot on the cushion, then arch/reach backwards till you find the wall.  That was supposed to be the easy part.  Suffice to say dear reader, at least for me, it was not ;).  

Once you find the wall (which I should remind is directly behind you 😂) then the part that we were supposed to focus on was coming back to standing leading w chest.    Demos that made it clear very quickly how if you lead w your head as instinct might suggest, you will end in a heap on the floor ;).  This part I had zero issue with.   Leaning over backwards till I found the wall (again - we’re talking inches here) - terrifying.  😂 

We did the pushing off through the shoulder thing in the warmup.  I get the general concept of that one and can do it in slow motion but I have yet to successfully combine it w literally anything else 😂.  New skills.  All about the new skills.

Then the coolest part. Hands over head, push off, arch backwards, hold all the things super tight, flip legs over head, and land in plank position.   Nbd right?

Lol the part I’m leaving out is the giant pac-man cushion, hands on coach spotter/extra strength/driver, and ability to do it all one step at a time.

Tell me I'm not the only one who sees PacMan?

So let’s back up a bit.  My coach borrowed one of the two coaches working w the arial class to do a quick demo.   You orient Pac-Man so you’re sitting in the cutout w your feet on the ground.   Push off both feet and reach backwards.  The first time the coach paused the wheel at that point so you’re now in an arch over the open space you were just sitting on moments ago.  She made sure everything was in roughly the right place and key components were tight and then rolled us back to sitting.

I'm betting this kid is the appropriate age to be doing this ;)
Pic stolen from amazon sales ad so considering public domain.

The next time we got to go over.  So. Much. Fun!  My hips being the mess they are suffice to say I landed v crooked and not in a plank the first time 😂 💀.   BUT also not broken, and grinning like a 5yo told they can have ice cream for breakfast.

Got to try once more without the practice run and w a little more power and speed.  This one I stuck.  It still wasn’t straight but it was all kinds of fun.  Still grinning, hours later.

After that played w handstands for a bit while the rest of the class was finishing - I love that it’s not only socially acceptable but actively encouraged to try other things when it’s one of the few one-at-a-time activities.   I should say - “other things” that we’ve already learned and have proven we’re safe with 😂.  Which is why I generally stick to handstands and cartwheels.  Or very recently, round offs (but only on the bouncy track!). Managed to stick a handstand for a couple seconds for the first time in a v long time so that was a bonus.

End of the class was somersaults from the trampoline onto some cushions.  I really enjoy this - it’s what they were doing my very first class but I didn’t get a chance to try that day (although I did get to bounce on the trampoline and flop over 😂. Which, tbh, is WAY harder!!!).  

AI Adventures

So as some of you know from this blog, I've been utilising AI to help get in spoken spanish practice between lessons since, well, I don't live in a Spanish-speaking country ;).  What may not be as well known is AI is becoming more common at work too and I'm finding random uses for it that I quite appreciate because it saves me a ton of time for more interesting things.

Where this collides is the topic I picked in today's practice session was "getting help from a career advisor" lol.  Shockingly, once we got through some of the basics, it had some theoretically good ideas.  It offered to send me some links, which I was actually almost into seeing and then... I remembered it's just the language app not the work app and as such it will NOT, in-fact, actually do anything other than correct and analyze my conversation skills.   lol oops.

Also amusing to me - at the end of each feedback report it has a "cultural tip" related to the conversation.   This was today's:    

Where my significant protest lay is that the AI was the first to mention PMI 😂. I only used it back in response to the question it asked me.  And, vowels are pronounced differently in Spanish so it both took me a sec to recognize what it was saying AND made me interested to know if I could say it back in a way that wouldn't get my pronunciation yelled at.

I will say, this tech is improving fast and impressively.  I had a friend try it the other day for whom English is not his first language (obv I switched all the settings around) and I was really entertained listening to the English AI - we started with British by accident but I switched it to US to make it more familiar and omg was it ever a riot.   Very definitely a real feeling and sounding conversation to what you'd hear on the street.   It still has a compartively short memory, but far less so than it used to, so it does feel like an actual conversation now.

The only part I consistently don't like, and this one actually drives me insane.  It's effectively taking dictation and then you get your feedback from that - great in that you can see what it heard (identifies pronunciation issues) etc.  Less great in that I *often* get feedback that I spelt something wrong because I missed a silent letter.  A SILENT letter.  I was *supposed* to miss it while speaking.  The AI typed it.  And I know, logically, that I can just ignore that feedback and move on.  But man it annoys me every single friggin time.   lol logic is not welcome here!   Also, potentially because it would be one simple IF statement to solve -- if the user didn't physically type the sentence, no feedback regarding silent letters that weren't typed.  But - maybe it'll learn that eventually.

Living in interesting times - I do wonder sometimes what this chapter will look like in HS History texts ;)