ryochiji's blog

Update

Busy week with lots of aikido, discrete math midterm, and a capture the flag game on the quads to top it off.
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So, it was a pretty eventful week. Between Tuesday and Thursday, we had a total of 9 hours of aikido (plus several hours in setting up, etc) with Kashiwaya-sensei (chief instructor of our umbrella organizations). We have another 6 hours of training this weekend with another sensei who's in town. My tests were on Thursday, and even though I was a bit nervous, I apparently did well enough to pass both shokyu ki-test and the 5th-kyu ki-aikido tests.

My discrete math midterm on Wednesday went okay, in that I'm not any closer to failing than I was before. Right now, I'm just under the mean, which means I'm still on the verge of failing (apparently a mean will get you something between C- and C+, and a minimum of C is required for it to count towards a CS major), but I'm close enough that if I work really hard, I can probably get myself above the mean (and pass).

Tonight, we were supposed to play Capture the Flag on the quads against Alper (for you non-UC people, it's a House in our rival dorm). They had challenged us, and the victor was to take the loser's House flag for a week. They came to the predisignated assembly area a few minutes late, and it was immediately obvious that we out numbered them 3 to 1. They claimed that some of their players had become severely ill, and the challenge was to be postponed for another day. So, instead of playing a House-vs-House game, we split up into two even teams, and played a game that way.

With Alpterites, Hitchcockians, and Snellians mixed into the same team, our team was in complete disarray when the game started. The Alperite captain clearly had no clue about defensive strategies, and a few minutes into the game (after I decided I had better switch from being offensive to defensive), Alex and I decided to coordinate defenses using a system we used during a preivous game.

Essentially, our defensive strategy is by depth and coordination, and takes full advantage of geographical features to block avenues of attack. We really got to test our strategy rigorously in this game, because by the time we'd setup our defenses, the opponents had figured out where the flag was. But we got the defenses up in minutes, and from then on, repelled all the attacks. It was pretty amazing how they threw everything at us, and the system kept working. We had rushes involving up to a dozen attackers, we had simultaneous attacks from multiple directions, diversions, multiple breaches, and even had the flag picked up a few times. At the end, the flag ended just a few dozen feet from where it'd started. We held off long enough that the opponent's defenders got bored, left, and allowed our offenders to capture the flag.

The problem now is that, the Alperites have some clue as to how our defenses work. I'm not sure if any one person fully understood how it all worked together (since Alex and I coordinated it), but when we play against them, we'll have to assume that they know, and will use it. The task for us would then be to find vulnerabilities in the strategy, and find ways to defeat it. We'll also need to assume that they will figure out what the vulnerabilities are, and find ways to defend against that. But we have some time.

Ryo Chijiiwa