Farewell for Aaron De Smet this Thursday night

Just a heads up to say that we will be calling an early halt to training Thursday night to farewell Aaron De Smet, who will be relocating to Brisbane for study this weekend.

Aaron has been a stalwart of the Club, and has thrown himself into training across a number of the disciplines with gusto over the time he has been with us. He will most certainly be missed as a regular member of the training cohort! He is house sharing with other relocated member Tony Schirmer, and they are both looking to continue their training this year under Don Ouellette's guidance in Brisbane.

The plan is to have the regular jujutsu class from 6–7.45 pm an then decamp to the Mort Estate Hotel for a light supper.

Executive News: Members, Timetables and more

We held a Club Executive meeting on Friday to discuss preparations for the academic year ahead and planning for the next two months.

First, I would like to formally welcome Sean Crust and Tracy Campbell onto the executive in their roles as the coordinators for Systema and Seitei Iaido respectively. We are all looking forward to working with them in the year ahead.

Second, we are currently working towards supporting Jesse Gough to run a regular fire-twirling class under the auspices of the Club. Jesse is an experienced teacher, and while not directly "martial" in nature, fire twirling provides an excellent opportunity to improve coordination and dexterity. Before people become too excited (or concerned), the "fire" part of the fire twirling requires a considerable foundation of "twirling" skills, so it will be some time before anything is set on fire.

Third, there are some additions and changes to the regular class timetable that will kick in from mid this week. Posture and Flexibility (now called FlexiFit) will be moved from Tuesday to Wednesday 6–7 pm. Sean Crust will be running a PunchFit class on Mondays (also 6–7 pm), and Jodo will start 30 minutes earlier at 7 pm on both Monday and Wednesday nights. Also, Michael Conroy has again expressed interest in running a Saturday late-morning Systema class (probably starting either 10.30 or 11 am) but we will confirm that over the next week or two.

Fourth, could I ask that you start giving some consideration as to whether you might want to step into the role of Treasurer for the Club. For USQ students, it is a role that contributes towards Phoenix Awards, and is relatively low work. It requires you to do a monthly reconciliation of the in-goings and outgoings from the Club's account, counter sign the "spendings" that we have to do, maintain the membership database, and make yourself available for monthly Executive meetings.

Finally, can you look to spare some time on Wednesday 24 February for Market Day at USQ. This is one of our main opportunities to encourage new members, so your assistance will be most valuable and helpful! More details next week ...

Kendo this week

It was wonderful to have a chance to train with Maaike Stehouwer last Wednesday for what will likely be our last Wednesday afternoon session for some time.

USQ Kendo training sessions have now switched to a Monday 4–5.30 pm timeslot, starting this week. We will be holding them in the Stadium area of the CBRC, and Michael will be down there today in case someone is free for a hit up.

There is a small chance that Greg Nicholas, sensei, will be in Toowoomba this week (the vagaries of his work may keep him in Brisbane). If so, we will have a training session Wednesday night, so keep an eye out for updates on this.

Finally, we are still looking for a permanent venue for Sunday training. The plan at this stage would be to use the MEAC as a temporary solution until we find a venue with a more suitable floor.

Milestone in Go and Artificial Intelligence Reached

A milestone in Artificial Intelligence and Go was reached recently with science journal ‘Nature’ publishing a paper detailing the first victory of a computer program over a professional Go player.

On October 9 of last year five unofficial games and five official games were played between European professional player Fan Hui and Google Deepmind’s AlphaGo program. The result of the ten matches was decisive. Fan Hui won two unofficial games against Google’s artificial intelligence system, however AlphaGo prevailed in every official match played. 

Go has proven a difficult game for computers to succeed at, largely due to the great number of available options presented in any given move. Alpha Go, developed by the Google Deepmind team, has used a new method to gain mastery over the game though. AlphaGo uses ‘deep neural networks’, allowing the artificial intelligence program to learn from professional games and apply and fortify this learnt behaviour in subsequent games. It’s clear that the new approach to the game has been successful, with AlphaGo clocking up a 99.8% win rate against other Go programs, as well as beating Fan Hui, a 2-dan player who became a professional in 1996.

As a result of AlphaGo’s success, a match has been arranged against Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best professional Go players, and is set to occur in March. Most of the Go community is still backing Sedol, given the large skill gap that exists between a 2-dan player such as Fan Hui, and a 9-dan player such as Lee Sedol.

Despite this, after AlphaGo’s victory against Fan Hui, Sedol’s match is sure to gain the attention of Go players across the world.

And though the odds seem in favour of the human player, few can deny that the day when artificial intelligence programs outclass human players is closer than ever.

So what does all this complete computer mastery of Go mean to the average Go player? With any luck, it means new and exciting ways for the game to be played being revealed, with new and exciting challenges for us to solve appearing alongside.

A commentary and analysis of the AlphaGo games against Fan Hui are available on YouTube. 

Third attempt ... Arnis session with Don Ouellette this Thursday

Don has confirmed that he will be in Toowoomba Thursday afternoon baring any unforeseen circumstances.

We will be holding the regular Arnis session from 6–7.30 pm in the place of Jujutsu. Tom Johnson, sensei is making noises that he would like to visit and run an Iaido class from 7.30–9 pm, so it looks like Thursday is shaping to be an excellent day for those with a weapons-bent!

I'm personally looking forward to both visits. Don has a bunch of new curriculum work to run through, and Tom sensei a bunch of pointers that he has brought back from the Nationals held in Perth two weekends ago.

Jujutsu: Kyusho waza

As always, a new month means a new focus for training in Jujutsu. We will be starting that focus on Tuesday night with some practice guaranteed to raise the heart rate and dust off any new year's cobwebs that remain.

Could all jujutsu-ka please bring their 4oz gloves, mouth guards and shin and instep protectors for this month. We have some Club ones that you can borrow (mouth guards excepted), but it is always better to bring your own!

BBRD Kendo this week

Kendo keiko at the CBRC will be on Wednesday afternoon from 4 pm.

Maaike Stehouwer is in town for her final USQ university examination in the morning, and would love an opportunity to have one last hit up as a USQ student! All are welcome. Let Michael know if you wish to borrow any equipment so that it can be available on the day.

Kendo on the move

I just wanted to provide the members and friends of BBRD and Mushin Itto the heads up that after more than a quarter century of Sunday morning training, we will have to find an alternative venue for weekend Kendo keiko.

Unfortunately, the redevelopment at the James Street PCYC has left us without a suitable space to train. Specifically, the sprung floor of the former basketball court is now occupied by gymnastics, and the former space where gymnastics was located is now a bare concrete floor. This is completely unsuitable for the practice of Kendo, as fumikomi on such a surface will inevitably result in injuries.

The Toowoomba-based Kendo seniors will be looking to find an alternative venue this week— most likely temporary at first to minimise the disruption to training, before finding a new permanent home. It does, however, provide an opportunity to revisit when the best day and time for Kendo training might be through the week, and this will be considered alongside plans to reinvigorate Kendo at USQ, and start a school-based Kendo program in 2016.

We will keep everyone posted as far as possible, though we are likely to use direct e-mail and Facebook to let people know of what is happening later this week.

Also, if you think of a suitable space for Kendo, let us know ASAP so we can investigate all options!

One last (minute) change for the week of training

I've just spoken with Don Ouellette and he will be in Toowoomba for work on Thursday. As a result we will be postponing the start of Arnis till 6 pm and run it in stead of the regular jujutsu class in the first session of the evening, and then a jujutsu flavoured Systema session for the second session.

For regular jujutsu-ka who haven't practised Arnis before, please do not be deterred as it fits in with this month's focus on heiki-waza (weapons techniques). That and Don is an excellent instructor who is definitely worth making the effort to train with!

Look forward to seeing you there!

Holy Name back to school this week

Holy Name is back for the new school year this week, with children starting classes on Wednesday.

This means that BBRD classes will be going to our regular term-time schedule. Start times for evening classes will be affected by the Extend after hours program, and often times we will not be able to access the MEAC till 6 pm. However, please be ready to walk in as soon as the space is available so that we can properly prepare the environment for an evening (see below).

We may also be changing the time for the Posture and Flexibility class from next week to a Wednesday from 6 pm, and there are plans to fill other available timeslots over the coming weeks. We will post updates as soon as we have the details confirmed.