Consulting Swordsman
I stopped drinking alcohol on August 19th, aiming for 100 days. In the end, I reached 103 days without booze, and without much effort. This post unpacks my 100 days no booze results, including cholesterol, visceral fat, sleep, heart rate, and the strange mysteries of my DEXA scans. If you want the background and the … Read more
As I posted on Sword People last week, I’m taking 100 days off alcohol. Why would I do that? The DEXA Scan: an uncomfortable truth I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan (at BodyScan UK). My last was … Read more
It’s the beginning of “Mental Health Week”, so I thought I’d share the chapter “Mental Health” from The Principles and Practices of Solo Training. This comes after a chapter on visualising your mental model for training as a tree, with mental health as the roots, physical health as the trunk, and specific attributes as … Read more
Who was la Chevalière d’Eon? As well as being a spy, soldier, and diplomat, la Chevalière d’Eon was one of the greatest fencers in the world. She was a regular dinner guest at Domenico Angelo’s house, and most famously fenced with le Chevalier St. Georges (also a soldier, and a composer and musician), in a … Read more
The New Year is upon us, and with it, a new opportunity to do interesting things, and a time to perhaps take stock and think about what’s important. That would be lovely, except right now I’m totally overwhelmed with stuff to do. You might be to, so here’s how I deal with it. First, let … Read more
In “Following my own advice” I described how I try to get something important done every day before checking emails, because prioritising the important over the apparently urgent is key. In that post I rather blithely referred to concentrating on ‘creating assets’, and loosely defined assets as “anything that adds value to your life. Value … Read more
I just uninstalled the Facebook app off my phone. Shock! Horror! How could I do such a thing? Well, yesterday I gave a class to some students on a professional writing course at the University of Suffolk here in Ipswich. The topic was time management, and my advice boiled down to the following key points: … Read more
I loathe bureaucracy in all its forms. And I really don’t understand why so many companies, organisations, and people feel the need to clutter up other people’s houses with pieces of paper that aren’t either proper letters (I’m a big fan) or nice cards (also a fan). As you may know I did a major … Read more
Tomorrow, I’ll pull the trigger on my latest venture: an online course. It is called “Recreate Historical Swordsmanship from Historical Sources” and by the time it is done, it will be a clear and systematic way for people to learn how to do the academic side of historical swordsmanship. You know, the bit that makes … Read more
Creating a card game to teach the basic theory and terminology of a medieval combat system was really hard. Audatia is done though: four glorious character decks and two expansion packs; piled up on my desk they really look like we created something. When people hear about it, the most common reaction is “wow, that’s … Read more