Administrative Notes from 19 September 2002

Things here at KTJW are cooking. There have been a lot of changes going on and we are gearing up for the book release coming soon. We are waiting on some administrational things to clear with the text's registry, but we can anticipate going to print in the very near future. When the release date comes out I will be shouting it from the mountaintops, so stay tuned.

On another note, there is mention of a new section on KTJW, namely KTJW on TOUR. I am still putting the finishing touches on it, and will have that ready to go up soon. What this section is all about is Taniguchi-Sensei's visit to Canada this past summer. Harry Sidhu and Manjit Gosal were our gracious hosts, and great karate men too. We had a riot, and we will tell you all about it soon. Next summer may bring more karate tours, so this section may grow slowly but surely.

This last upload also features a very interesting article by my friend David Gomez of Georgia, USA. It is a pleasure and privilege to have his article here. A few long winded articles by myself are also included.

This week also brought to my mailbox American Samurai, complete with an article by yours truly. There is lots of other much better stuff in that periodical as well. KTJW will in the future have a section on Karate Magazines that are also out there for your reading enjoyment. There are some good ones, some bad ones, and some super cheesy ones. American Samurai is lots of fun, well structured, and smartly written. Talk to Bill Bly and get some information from him about how to subscribe.

Administrative Notes May 18th, 2002

Welcome back to KTJW!! Firstly, I must truly apologize for those of you who have come by the site only to find it GONE! Trust me, we were just as surprised as you were. We had been working with one hosting company which boasted to be able to provide us excellent service without interruption, but they were unable to follow through on their promises. In the meantime we have switched to another hosting company who boasts equally dependable service. We will see how they do in the weeks and months to come.

During the last couple of weeks we have been trying to iron out the troubles with the site and the delays are only attributable to me not being able to see my buddy and web guru, Chris Spackman, to give him the necessary information to make the switch happen quicker. So don't blame Chris. He is still DA MAN!

So even though the site has been off line we have not been idle with trying to provide visitors with more and more content to the site. There have been some dramatic developments to what we are trying to put together here. The biggest addition to the site would be the inclusion of my graduate thesis on Chivalry and Bushido as found in medieval literature. We broke it up into web page sizes, added illustrations to make it more visually appealing, and Chris put all the navigation and layout together. I hope that it is interesting for you to flip through. And of course, if you have any opinions or thoughts about that little piece of graduate work, let me know.

In addition to the addition of the thesis, some more material has put in the Articles and Letters section, but since we have been in a bit of a tailspin over this hosting nonsense we have been a little distracted. Next upload we will come loaded for bear, so stay tuned.

If you have sent email to me at mark@karatethejapaneseway.com anytime in the last 18 days, please send it to me again because I never got it. I am very sorry about that and would greatly appreciate your patience. I will also ask your patience again while I mass-mail all of those on my address list asking you to do the same.

So, now that we are back on track, the train set back on the rails, we can get back to work with this curious project.

Best regards always,

Mark Groenewold

Hi again,

I figured that I needed some place to also address some of the “business” things pertaining to this site. So, instead of an “Open Letter” where I try to keep my thoughts focussed on a particular theme or idea, this will be a different kind of installment where the “details” of this site can be addressed.

Here are some of the things that I want to notify you and/or clear the air about:

1. In the Links section of this site, Chris and I have decided that it would be very cool to also ask those of you who have links here to submit banners for your sites, if you have them, and we will use them on the right side of the page. Chris has set it up so we can put your banner where the URL hot link is. We can either keep a copy of your banner on our site, or link direct to one on your site. Either way, it will look pretty spiffy and be easier for visitors to find your sites and follow the links. Otherwise, visitors might get lost in the text.
2. In the statistics reports we have been looking at we are linked to a lot of different sites out there. That is very cool. Thank you very much! But with some of the links, we don't know where they are coming from. Maybe your site has been overlooked for some time. If you would like to have your link reciprocated please let me know so I can look at what your club or organization looks like. I appreciate links to this site, and if possible, would certainly like to return your kindness.

   Technical / Privacy note from Chris on the above: We do not use any cookies or web bugs (invisible gifs) at all. The information mentioned above is the raw data from the access logs. It tells us things like the ip addresses people connect from, where they came from (ie, they clicked a link to karatethejapaneseway.com from a google page), what browser they are using, and what pages they viewed. We don't backup this information, we don't sell it, we don't data-mine it. Sometimes we look at it to get a better it of how many different people are viewing the site (a lot), where people are connecting from (all over the world), and to see if there are any problem pages (nope).

3. I want to bring to your attention a project that Jon Keeling is working on. He is developing a database that reviews karate instructors. I think that this is a great idea and a potentially invaluable resource for students to see what other people say about who is teaching karate. Also, it is a neat kind of report card for instructors. If your instructor is noteworthy, either good or bad, please contact Jon Keeling (his site is on the Links page) and talk to him about how to make submissions to the database.
4. I had received an email complaining that there was a virus on Karate The Japanese Way. If you have received any information stating that there is some kind of problem with this site that is virus related, that is simply not true. Chris Spackman assures me that there is absolutely no way that there is a virus on the site, and that the systems that viruses seem to attack are completely unrelated to KTJW, the programs used to design our site, or the places where KTJW is hosted. We are, and always will be (knock on wood) virus free. Come to the site and feel free to click away with reckless abandon. You are safe to do so.

   Note from Chris: The company hosting karatethejapaneseway.com uses a UNIX operating system and the Apache web server. Thus, this website is not vulnerable to any of the many virii or worms that affect MS products, particularly IIS. There was a worm a few months ago called nimda that could spread through web pages as well as email. The nimda worm only affected windows users and websites hosted on IIS. You can not get it from karatethejapaneseway.com. Just not possible. I do not know of any virii or worms at the moment that affect web pages hosted by the Apache web server, however, if you think you have somehow received a virii or worm from us, please email me immediately with your concerns. My email address is spackman@openhistory.org.

5. I had also received a note from a reader who complained that KTJW was anti-org (opposed to large organizations such as the ITKF, ISKF, AJKA, KUGB etc). This is simply not the case. I am, in no way opposed to large karate organizations. I think that sometimes large organizations are good things. The only thing that I really advocate is for students to find good teachers, wherever they are, whatever organizations they associate with. Frankly speaking, I met some great ISKF guys in Edmonton, Alberta. Kurt Taylor, Sean Carter, and David Jones are phenomenal karate instructors--any one of which can make me cry like a little girl in under thirty seconds.
6. As the weeks march on I get more and more email. I am very glad to get it, and try my best to answer anyone who takes the time to send me a note. Most have been very kind, polite, and friendly. I appreciate that. Thanks for the mail, and feel free to drop me a line whenever you like. If I am getting a little slow in responding to anyone in particular, please accept my apologies. I try to get to everyone and am truly sorry if I can't get back to you quickly.

Thank you again for making KTJW a success so far. I look forward to continual collaboration with you and am grateful for your support.

Best regards,

Mark

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