Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. It was on this day, 10 years ago, that Heidi Wilmott, better known here as ninjanurse, become a moderator (or a Sensei, as we call them) on KarateForums.com. In honor of this milestone, I recorded a video talking about the contributions that Heidi has made here and how much they mean to our community. 10 years is such a unique milestone. Outside of managing KarateForums.com for almost 14 years, I have managed several online communities over the past 15 years. I also know a lot of other people who have been managing online communities for a long time. I have never had a moderator this long. It's very rare. We've been fortunate to have Heidi not only as a moderator for this long, but as a member for more than 12 years and as a staff member for almost as long. In honor of this accomplishment, we decided that we needed to do something special, outside of the community. After some discussion with the staff, I decided that it would be fun to send Heidi and her husband, Mike, out for a great dinner at a restaurant local to them. Heidi follows a vegan diet and while you might think that made this difficult, it actually helped quite a bit because I knew what I needed. An upscale restaurant with an impressive vegan-friendly selection for all three courses, plus drinks. After I identified a restaurant, I didn't want to assume it was the right choice. So I reached out to Heidi's daughter, Holly, through Facebook. I had never spoken to Holly before. With her help, and some additional thoughts from other members of Heidi's family, I was able to get a better picture of the type of experience Heidi would prefer. Holly shared that Heidi really enjoys Ithaca, New York - specifically the Ithaca Commons. With that in mind, we're going to send Heidi and Mike to Mia, a restaurant in the Ithaca Commons that has an excellent selection of vegan-friendly options. Once Heidi selects a date, I'll make the reservation, and we'll happily pick up the check. As I told you via private message, Heidi, I hope that you and Mike order whatever you want and have a wonderful evening. You deserve it, and it is only a small token of the appreciation that we have for you. Thank you for all of the amazing contributions that you have made here. Thank you for your efforts as a member of staff, helping to maintain the standards of our community. Thank you for your kindness, support and friendship over the years. I hope that others will join me in congratulating Heidi on this impressive milestone. Thank you for reading. Sincerely, Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We have always had pretty strict guidelines regarding self-promotion within our community. They have served us well and helped to create the high level of discussion that we enjoy here. As time passes, more and more people share video in our forums. This is a good thing because there are plenty of discussions here that can be aided by visuals - such as technique demonstrations and competition footage. However, as people create video and post it here, we have noticed that some have included tasteful branding in their videos - usually for their martial arts school or a resource that they run. This creates a potential conflict with our guidelines regarding self-promotion. Today, after a lot of thought and discussion amongst the staff, we have made an adjustment to our guidelines to clarify that conflict. We want to encourage people to share video here, as long as they are committed to being a member of our community - not just someone looking for video views. As such, we are relaxing our guidelines on self-promotion, as they apply to video, to allow for light, tasteful branding. Here is the new policy, in full: This policy applies only to videos that include branding of companies, organizations, products or websites that are affiliated with the person sharing the video. I'd like to provide some examples to help illustrate how this will work. What does tasteful branding look like? Please see and . What does it mean for a video to start a discussion here? Please see this post. What does it mean for a video to add value to a discussion as a reply? Please see this reply. Our goal is to encourage people to share videos they create, including a plug for their own school or website (much like a signature link at the bottom of your posts in the forums), but to discourage video sharing that feels exploitative to our community or overtly self-promotional. If you have any questions regarding this new policy, please do not hesitate to ask, either here or via private message. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Patrick

"Street Fighter: The Later Years" is a funny series, RW. Here's a link for anyone who wants to watch it: http://www.collegehumor.com/tag/street-fighter-the-later-years Patrick

Happy birthday, Ken (wagnerk)! Thank you for all of the great contributions that you have made to our community. Enjoy your day. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. As there are now two threads for this conversation, I am going to close this one and direct further replies to the other one: http://www.karateforums.com/going-from-shotokan-to-kickboxing-vt48259.html This will make it easier for everyone to follow the discussion. Thanks, Patrick

Happy Mother's Day to all of the Moms here! Patrick

Congrats gronis. Nicely done. Patrick

Congrats on the book. Best of luck. Patrick

Very kind! Thanks for sharing. Patrick

Thank you for sharing that, chiliphil1. I'm sure it's not an easy thing to put out there when martial artists tend to be fairly critical of kids attaining the rank. Side note: I was homeschooled, as well. Thanks again, Patrick

Thanks for the question, Bob and for answering, Shotokannon. In this context, I just mean that the image will display in the post. Like this: http://www.karateforums.com/img/photos/heidininjanurseaward.png Thanks, Patrick

That's awesome! Congrats skullsplitter. Please keep us posted. Patrick

Hey Gary. So glad to have you with us.

Thanks Bob. I appreciate the support. I don't have any plans to bring the photo album back online. However, our software will better handle photo embedding in the future, and I look forward to that. Thanks again, Patrick

Welcome aboard, enjayed. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. The May selection is... Wado Heretic. Congratulations! Thank you for all of the great contributions that you have made to our community. Sincerely, Patrick

Thanks Bob and Shotokannon. I appreciate it.

Congrats AlbanyDude.

Welcome to KF, Sapper Woody. Glad to have you. Patrick

I own and manage a few websites, including this one. I'm also a writer (I've written two books) and public speaker.

Just in reading about this, it's been in development in one form or another since at least 2011: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/scarface-update-being-developed-by-238762 Regarding the content, TheWrap reported this more than a year ago: Here are Al Pacino's thoughts on it: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/al-pacino-talks-scarface-remake-783079

This discussion was split off from the Which Kata Best Demonstrate the Core of your Practiced style thread, so the topic could live on its own, allowing people to talk about it at length without distracting from the other thread (and vice versa). Thanks, Patrick

I have split the discussion of bunkai and whether or not it is about "learning how to move," onto its own thread, so that this thread can be focused on its original goal. If you'd like to follow the other discussion, please head over here: Bunkai = Knowing How to Move? Thanks, Patrick

Hey all, Wednesday is Noah's birthday. Happy birthday. Hope you have an awesome day, Noah! Thank you for all of your outstanding contributions here and for being a great member of our team. Sincerely, Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. Back in September of 2002, we launched the KarateForums.com Photo Album. As a community, we used it actively for a while, but then use of it slowed as people just started sharing pictures here in the forums. People started doing that because it made a lot of sense. It's more natural and puts the photos in front of more people. And so, the Photo Album died out. The last photo was posted on December 12, 2012, nearly 2 and a half years ago. In light of that, and the way that people are using the forums, we have decided to close the old KarateForums.com Photo Album. However, it has been archived so that it can remain online for the time being, for those who might want to take a look back. You can view it at this link: http://www.karateforums.com/albumarchive/album.html In the future, we will make it even easier to post photos here. For now, I encourage you to use a free image hosts like ImageShack and then embed the image here. If you have any questions or would like help doing so, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for time and understanding. Sincerely, Patrick