Home Page of James D. Murray
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I currently enjoy practicing the martial art of Iaido (pronounced EE-eye-do). Iaido is an art of Japanese swordsmanship that concentrates on the draw and cut. You can think of it as moving Zen meditation. The particular style that I practice is Iai Tate Do Iaido (Way of the Fast Draw Killing Sequence).
I also practiced Hombu-style Aikido for several years, but currently find myself too short on time to participate. In fact, my Iaido practice has fallen way off as well.
Here are a few martial arts links:
In an effort to keep my metabolism from falling off the low end of the scale, I weight-train three days a week at a Powerhouse Gym in Fountain Valley, California. My bench press, squat, and deadlift maxs are not worth bragging about. I do well just to get into the gym by 7am. I also do very well using The Zone as my training diet (and the #3 combo at Carl's Jr. as well, which explains my gut).
My new health hobby for 1997-98 is in-line skating. Again, it's nothing fancy on my part. It's very fast and very low impact. And most importantly, it's an activity in which you can participate without the need for direct contact with sunlight.
Some people are good at building things with their hands, others are good at physically expressing themselves or interfacing with people. I am basically good at collecting, analyzing, creating, and distributing information that I find interesting. So you can imaging what a playground the Internet is for me.
I've been on the Internet almost continuously since 1981, thanks to living in close proximity major Southern California universities with either very generous system administrators or very little system security.
The only academic degree that I have this far collected is a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from California State University at Fullerton in Fullerton, California. My areas of concentration were archaeology, museology, ethnomusicology, and anthropological linguistics. I also managed to collect a large number of music classes in theory, composition, musicianship, and bass clarinet playing. And yes, there were a few computer science classes along the way as well.
I, in common with many people, have a collection of past doings in which I no longer participate. Included in this listing are musical instrument design, optical and radio astronomy, telescope making, medium format photography, building electronic projects, repairing Type I and IV Volkswagens, woodworking, writing science/fantasy stories, listening to AM talk radio, and playing Dungeons and Dragons. I burnt up only twelve years of my life on that last one.
Minor hobbies that have not yet transitioned to past hobbies include collecting old books and musical instruments, study of non-Western languages, care and maintenance of Japanese swords, dropping all my spare change into glass jars, and watching public television.