I saved two other bytes of my first attempt to write a 256 byte demo. Unfortunately we couldn't stick a decompressor in there, because it's now 63 bytes large. If you want to run it, grab a copy of dosbox, and off you go.
Again Aikido training, my lift to the blue mountains got organized, so I will participate in winter training.
My modelchecker moved into the Goanna-project repository today, so there's some chance they'll actually use it. Raf and I decided we should try a raytracer in 256 byte in the hope to get something worthy of compression.
Today the winter training starts. I went to the Olympic Park to get a lift from there to the blue mountains, more precisely to Mount Banks. One of the Aikido people had a class at Olympic Park, which I watched until he was finished. Some of the people here can roll with only their clothing making sounds! We need to train that a bit in Braunschweig.
We (three people in the car) drove towards the blue mountains, but stopped for a short while at the home of the driver. That was actually good because he attended winter training two times already and actually remembered, that we'd need to bring a bowl and a cup as well. Thankfully he borrowed us some.
Once we arrived at Mount Banks, we changed into martial arts clothing (except most of the people actually changed into clothing with something else underneath...) and went up the hill. It was not really a hard track in my opinion, but my sandals are quite good, as I understand now. We were instructed that this would be part training, part meditation and that we should please keep useless chatter to minimum. Altough this part of Aikido stems rather directly from its Shinto roots, the trainer made it quite clear that no religious mindset would be needed. As Shinto seems most concerned about how to connect to nature, the overall direction was still quite likeable to me.
Sorry for not taking any photos, but given the overall protocol, that'd have probably not been a good idea. Anyway, we started with some Aikido training, albeit without the final throws which would have really dirtied our clothing, given the slightly moist ground. After that went near a cliff and meditated for some time. After that, we went down in the last bits of daylight and set up some fire and our respective sleep spots. One area was designated as "Dojo", where we'd later have some more meditation.
After getting the fire going, we cooked some kind of soup-like stuff which consisted of rice and sweet potatoes. As I expected (never asked about it, though), the good was vegetarian (actually it was even vegan). Then we fetched some blanket, (or whatever other warm stuff one would desire), and started to meditate "in" the Dojo — that is to say, we sat around in a circle. Also we ate there and later there was a break where we cooked up some water to drink and warm up a bit. After meditation completed, we went to our sleeping spots and slept — I think that was the first time I actually slept outside some building or tent.
Next morning we were woken up (as announced beforehand) shortly before six and walked up the hill again. I think the following was the actual Misogi part of the training, as we were instructed to remove the upper part of our martial arts suit during warmup. We had some more training (with complete suit on) after that. Then further meditition, until either the sun would come up or we were sure that it would be too clouded to see any of it. The latter occured. After that the whole winter training was finished and I got a lift back to Sydney by another Aikido guy.
Did I mention, that the air was rather cold? I estimate two degree celsius, definitely not freezing, but definitely not above six. Well guessed, I just looked up the weather for Katoomba, minimum 1.8 degrees, maximum 8. As most of the training was in evening and early morning, the 1.8 gets it better. You probably know that I like cold in general, hence the overall experience was rather enjoyable.