Forms and techniques descriptions

[SingingTiger]

I'd like to find a "complete reference" for all of the forms and techniques as taught by Ed Parker.

The school where I'm studying teaches between 12 and 20 techniques per belt, and I know that many (and probably most) are the same as those taught by Mr. Parker, but many of the names are different, so when I see a discussion here or at www.kenpothoughts.com or elsewhere about a particular technique I'd like to know exactly what's being discussed, and how it might differ from what I'm learning or if there's a technique that I've learned that's essentially the same but with a different name.

I've got all five volumes of "Infinite Insights," and they're helpful as far as they go, but they're not anywhere close to complete. For example, I'm learning Short 3 now, but a description I saw on a website doesn't exactly correspond to what I've learned, and "Infinite Insights" (volume 5) only contains detailed descriptions of Short 1, Long 1, and Short 2. While I plan on learning the kata however my instructor teaches it to me, I'd like some historical background on it, as well as all of the techniques I have and will learn.

Any suggestions on reference materials?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Blindside]

Try www.kenponet.com

go the "The Flame" it is an archive of kenpo related info.

As for how accurate it is to a strict AK curriculum, I have no idea. Josh provides a good service to the kenpo community.

Lamont

 

[cdhall]

Originally posted by SingingTiger

...
Any suggestions on reference materials?

Thanks,
Rich

Mr. Parker Jr sells the Teaching Manuals that have the full technique and forms descriptions in them as they were written to assist an instructor or student in teaching/learning.

You can probably get them from him via his website even if you have to email him to get things going.

This is an excellent question and I don't know why this hasn't been posted before. Mr. Parker, Jr's site is probably up and running at
http://www.edparkerjr.com
the material with ordering instructions is specifically listed here
http://www.edparkerjr.us//epsmanuals.html

You may want to contact him to verify what I said, but it looks like you can get everything from 4 manuals for $210.00US plus shipping
:asian:

 

[cdhall]

Tell Mr. Parker Jr. that Doug Hall referred you please.
If you contact him of course.

 

[Zoran]

Try http://www.pcwood.com/kenpo/fulllist_tech.html

 

[SingingTiger]

Originally posted by cdhall

[...This is an excellent question and I don't know why this hasn't been posted before. Mr. Parker, Jr's site is probably up and running at
http://www.edparkerjr.com
the material with ordering instructions is specifically listed here
http://www.edparkerjr.us//epsmanuals.html
:asian: [/B]

Great!! Thanks, cdhall!

Rich

 

[cdhall]

Originally posted by SingingTiger

I'd like to find a "complete reference" for all of the forms and techniques as taught by Ed Parker.
...
Any suggestions on reference materials?

Thanks,
Rich

Doh! I can't believe I didn't post this before.
This is an excellent online resource for Techniques
http://www.kenpo-texas.com/
it is Mr. Billing's site and he is a member of MartialTalk too.

I just looked and he has the forms there as well. I frequently go there to look up techniques when I have a question. I have not really looked at it for forms info. But it's there. :ultracool

 

[satans.barber]

Originally posted by cdhall

Doh! I can't believe I didn't post this before.
This is an excellent online resource for Techniques
http://www.kenpo-texas.com/
it is Mr. Billing's site and he is a member of MartialTalk too.

Eek, that website could do with a serious overhaul!!

Ian.

 

[Michael Billings]

...mainly as a resource. Sorry if ya don't like it. A Dreamweaver version is the next evolution. I am an administrative law judge, not a web designer, and I did my best. It was actually part of my 4th Black thesis. Email me suggestions for the overhaul. I obviously can't spend much time working on it between my day job and teaching evenings, but always open to suggestions.
-Michael

 

[satans.barber]

Originally posted by Michael Billings

...mainly as a resource. Sorry if ya don't like it. A Dreamweaver version is the next evolution. I am an administrative law judge, not a web designer, and I did my best. It was actually part of my 4th Black thesis. Email me suggestions for the overhaul. I obviously can't spend much time working on it between my day job and teaching evenings, but always open to suggestions.
-Michael

Well, if I put some suggestions here instead of e-mailing them then other people making pages might learn something too

OK, these are criticisms I suppose, but I'm only putting them down because you can make your site easier for people to use, I'm not having a go or anything:

1) The front page has too much stuff just 'slapped' on it, it's far too confusing. Is it a menu? Not really, but then we find a menu further down the page....a lot of people might miss that entirely. Also, there's no menus on your subpages at the moment, so if someone arrives at one though a search engine they have no way of knowing that the rest of the site exists, and no way of getting to it.

It'd be better if you had a menu either along the top, or down the side of each and every page. This is most easily done by making a big table and putting the menu in, then use this as a 'skeleton' file. you should then be able to add the content for the page you're working on into one cell and have the menu already set up.

2) link style: you've set your links to be the colour red, yet on the same page you also use masses of underlined red text, which suggests to the site users that they're links....yet they're not! As a rule try not to underline text at all unless it's a massive heading. People automatically think that underlined text is links when using pages. Using the page link colour and also underlining is just adds insult to injury!

Not only that, but you also have underlined blue text, which is the default link colour and style, also iused for normal text.

3) Framed forwarding: you've obviously bought the URL kenpo-texas.com and then hosted the page at http://home.austin.rr.com/americankenpo/index.htm [*], presumably because it's cheaper or free. That's fine, but, because you're using framed forwarding, the URL in the browser stays as kenpo-texas.com.

If you set it up with the company that you bought the URL from to re-direct to the page, instead of use a frame, then the address in the browser will change as you move between pages, which lets people bookmark pages on your site more easily.

[*] I just noticed that there is your website at http://home.austin.rr.com/americankenpo/index.htm and someone called Tommy Burks' (presumably you know him) website at http://home.austin.rr.com/americankenpo/index.html .

This is bad because if you navigate to http://home.austin.rr.com/americankenpo/ (someone might do this if they arrive at a subpage of your site from a search engine, since you don't have a menu on each page) then the browser will look for an index file.

The fact that you have two different sites, one using index.htm and one using index.html means that people could end up at EITHER page, depending on the order of preference that the server gives (something like DirectoryIndex index.html index.php index.php3 index.shtml index.cgi index.pl index.htm Default.htm default.htm). It seems Mr. Burks' comes out on top, so clearly .html is given precedence over .htm . To combat this you should move your entire website into a new folder, such as http://home.austin.rr.com/americankenpo/billings/ for example.

4) Size of main page: your main page has over 120Kb just in images, it's a rule of thumb that a main page should load in 10 seconds or under, on a standard 56kbit Internet connection. The two little flags at the top alone will take that long on a basic connection.

However, with broadband and cable connections this isn't really an issue, and I know that lots of people in America have these, so I shouldn't worry about that too much. Just be aware that some people might have to wait up to 40 seconds or so for your main page to load (the animated dragon is a big part (60+Kb), maybe you could move that to a 'kids' section?)


All in all it doesn't need that much work, if you work carefully on a skeleton file then you can paste into it most of the stuff that you've already written.

Once again, I'm not having a dig at you, I can see you've worked hard on it. It's just that this is my area of expertise, so I know how you can improve it, just the same as you could no doubt improve the quality of some of my techniques though your expertise.

Ian.

 

[Michael Billings]

I don't like criticism any more than anyone else, but being open to it, as it is one of the ways of learning (mind open ... etc.)

I do have lots of friends in the industry, who concurred with a lot of what you pointed out. I considered other formats and know I am "image" heavy, easily remedied. I will work on the skeleton table and have thought about having that on the pages. When I printed it for my 4th, it was over 400 pages. I have culled and taken down lots of old stuff. As I said, and email would be helpful, but since you put it in this context, I thought I would reply.

Thanks for input, however, a less sarcastic or judgmental initial statement would have let me sidestep my initial reaction to your statement. I understand you were not "having a go", and the feedback is fine. I just had a bit of a strong initial reaction. I appreciate the time you put into your response.

Yours in Kenpo,
-Michael
UKS-Texas

 

[Michael Billings]

Thought I would try out a new look for Kenpo-Texas.com

Quicker & cleaner HTML. Not nearly as "interesting" but also not as busy, and a lot faster. Will work on other pages as time permits to make the material more accessable and user friendly (although that really was not one of my goals.) Being on a cable modem has spoiled me, I am loading faster than a T1 line and forget how long it takes on dial-up. Sorry about that.

-MB

 

[cdhall]

I want to reiterate that I frequently use Mr. Billing's site to look up a technique description or something (the decriptions are closer to what I do than what PC Wood has posted).

His site is a great online resource, it is much better than carrying my notebook and Infinite Insights back and forth to work every day, and I'm very greatful that he has put it up.

I know he may not have much time or interest in making it easy for us to use, but that is all his call. Some of you guys live on the web. And I spend too much time on it at work.

So thank you Mr. Billings, there is a lot of great info on your site and I want to thank you for putting it on the web.

I agree with Mr. Billings, Ian, that your initial post was rather..."unflattering" but I'm glad it all worked out and we avoided any type of a flame war. I may have Ian look at a few of my sites now that I see he is a professional at this stuff.

Thanks again to Mr. Billings for all the work he put into his online descriptions. I hope to get my site updated later. I'll let you all know. I'll warn you now though, there will be lots of pictures of me.
:asian:

 

[Zoran]

Originally posted by Michael Billings

Thought I would try out a new look for Kenpo-Texas.com

Quicker & cleaner HTML. Not nearly as "interesting" but also not as busy, and a lot faster. Will work on other pages as time permits to make the material more accessable and user friendly (although that really was not one of my goals.) Being on a cable modem has spoiled me, I am loading faster than a T1 line and forget how long it takes on dial-up. Sorry about that.

-MB

Much better!

 

[satans.barber]

Originally posted by Michael Billings

Thought I would try out a new look for Kenpo-Texas.com

Quicker & cleaner HTML. Not nearly as "interesting" but also not as busy, and a lot faster. Will work on other pages as time permits to make the material more accessable and user friendly (although that really was not one of my goals.) Being on a cable modem has spoiled me, I am loading faster than a T1 line and forget how long it takes on dial-up. Sorry about that.

-MB

Mr Billings, that looks a lot better! What an excellent start to an overhaul.

Once again, sorry if I sounded overly critical, that was never my intention! I just like to try and help people where I can.

Ian.

 

[Kirk]

Mr Billings, the site is excellent! I never knew you did privates!
Noted!

 

[Michael Billings]

It allows me to look at content and revise or add new things, especially since I have not been aggressively adding material of late. Renews my interest.

Oos,
-Michael
UKS-Texas

 

[cdhall]

I just put in another plug for this site on the technical forum and I realized that it is when posting stuff like that that I rely on Mr. Billings site and his technique descriptions the most.

And good work on trimming down the homepage sir.

Mr. Duffy has received several comments on how clean and easy it is to navigate his site. But we don't have the same type/volume of info up that you have. We did purposefully err on the side of fast navigation.

http://www.akfkenpo.com

if you want to look. I'll brace myself for Ian's comments.

I know there might be a broken link or two and that there are a few places that need more work than others, but mostly I think the site is in good shape.
:asian:

 

[Kirk]

Do you know if that tape is ever going to be available on DVD?

 

[cdhall]

Originally posted by Kirk

Do you know if that tape is ever going to be available on DVD?

Which tape? The American Kenpo Homecoming that Mr. White praised at camp as something he treasures as a kind of scrapbook?

That one?

No. Not likely. I produced it. I have the masters, and we don't have enough orders to justify it as far as I know.

But it is possible. Contact me or Mr. Duffy if you really want a DVD version. Email me and tell me if you just want it on a DVD disc or if you want chapters, bonus footage and other gooies. Almost everything we shot is on the tape. There isn't much that was cut out. The tape was actually shot over a 1 year period. We picked up extra footage before we finalized the release version.
:asian: