About Nia

Konnichiwa, Hajimemashite! Watashi wa Nia Skywalk desu! (Good Afternoon, Nice to meet you! I am Nia Skywalk) Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu! こんいちは！　はじめまして、わたしは　ニア　です。　よろしく　おねがいします！

I am the developer, writer, designer and all around webmaster on Nia Skywalk’s CrossRoads (NSCR). Right now it isn’t much to look at because I have been working on editorial websites for the last couple years. If you love to read, the reviews and interviews you can find at Bookreporter.com and graphicnovelreporter.com may interest you. No more promises are being made as to when I will get my site up and running. I will continue working in the background until I have a usable site up and running. Commentary encourages growth, so comment often!

Nia and the Web

In the wily yet predictable patterns and ways of HTML, XHTML and CSS, I am self-taught. I started hand-coding when my youngest brother, 10-years-old at that time, asked me a simple question about a web page he was trying to build. I did not know the answer to the question and it frustrated me. Eventually, he got the answer from an online buddy and proudly showed me his new Pokemon “website”. It wasn’t really much of a ‘website’ even for those days, it was really just a page or two, but it had some features I found myself wanting to learn about. If this kid, a person that I assisted regularly in learning, was beginning to build such things, I thought it was high time I learned it too, after all, I could probably learn it faster than him, right? After all, I was paying for the internet, why shouldn’t I use it too!

In grade school, I had learned the basics of BASIC programming. In my free-time as I was growing up, I continuously attempted to use BASIC and variations to code fun programs on my Commodore 64/128 [Hey, I see you giggling behind your hand, don't laugh, we still have our C64/128 and it still runs. Can you say that about your first IBM clone?] When I began learning to write HTML, as I looked into the coding and formatting, I found much of it fit into my pre-programmed programmer’s logic and I swiftly took off writing each page by hand. And no, you really do not want to see those first pages [yes, I still have remnants, scary isn't it?]. Those first attempts were typical of the day: center-aligned, single column with pictures and banners, and extremely boring. Later, I learned about tables and how to incorporate them. My favorite web browser was NS4.77 and my favorite HTML editing program was a CuteHTML. I lamented the loss of NS4.77 for some time before I discovered Mozilla. When FireFox arrived on the scene, I thought I was saved. I no longer had access to anything fun, like CuteHTML or Netscape Composer, so all my pages were coded in NotePad, and therefore I was coding less and less anyway. It was a past-time, a hobby. I couldn’t use those skills for any jobs, so I let myself be pulled away for while.

After many years of holding onto niaskywalk.com and occasionally fiddling about with the lost pages I had there, I was considering letting the domain go and keeping only the free site when changes hit me. I began attending school to attain a degree. I was going to work on computer networks. I was going to build LANs and WANs. In order to pass, I had to take specific courses. One of those was HTML. I really should’ve just tested out of the class, but by then my skills were so rusty, you could’ve passed a car through them. I thought it would be grand to attend the class. I thought I would learn something new. I didn’t. Instead, I wasted a semester fighting with a teacher about what was possible and proving it to him by showing him my completed websites. By the end of the class, I had one of the smallest sites I had ever built. The spark for building webpages was once again lit.

And then I was no longer going to school, I had no good-paying job and I couldn’t get an internship into my newly chosen path. I was going out of control and a new change was introduced. I moved to New York City. I search high and low for a job, far and wide I would get no responses and the temp agency only wanted to schedule stuff on weekends. Then I saw an advert for ‘Meticulous HTML Coder’, something having to do with books. I jumped at the chance. Sure it wasn’t in my field, but hey. HTML! I could do that! I was hired based on my older websites. After all this time, I look back at what they saw and I flinch. I still knew nothing. I don’t know what they thought they were getting, but it can’t have been good thoughts. After a year at that job, I knew more about HTML than I ever had in my entire life. Good bye networking, hello html coding.

Nia and Digital Art

I learned how to use PhotoShop because of my youngest brother [Are you sensing a trend yet? Seriously. Same brother, six years later.] For the record I have three brothers, all younger, but typically when talking about the internet or anything having to do with graphics and digital art, I am usually refering to the youngest. He can be found at ApostropheD.com. He introduced me to PhotoShop by obtaining a copy from school and enlisting my aid while completing a school project.

Previous to this enlistment, I was a die-hard Corel PhotoPaint fan. I had several copies and could do many tricks with the program. Back then, I hadn’t learned about layers. All the tricks I learned were even more amazing now that I know what layers and how they work. After I learned about them, I dented many a wall when I thought about all the extra annoying problems I had to deal with in the past. Be amused on my behalf, go ahead, I’ll wait. All better? This is what happens when one is self-taught.

Anyway after helping my brother finish his school project and falling in love with all the tools available on PhotoShop, I accepted an amazing deal that allowed me to try Video Professor for PhotoShop7. Using those discs and learning the program completely changed my life for the better. Through that deal, I got to keep two of the three discs for no charge. It was well worth the hoops I had to jump through for them. Not two weeks after completing the lessons, I was called by my temp agency and asked if I knew anything about PhotoShop. Yes, I certainly do! After weeks of no high paying jobs, I got a job resizing images two days after that phone call and thus continued my ‘self-taught’ career path.

Later, I would use those skills in my internet production job and decrease production time. It seems my baby brother has a lot to be proud of, look how he raised his eldest sibling! Thank you

Nia and [[Insert Interest]]

One thing frequent readers of my site will discover is my circulating interests. I am interested in internet and webpage and blogs and so on and so forth, but I have many other interests as well. A short list might include reading, writing, drawing, anime, manga, science fiction, conventions, costuming, renaissance faires, Star Wars, sewing, chainmail, knitting, crochet, roleplaying, japanese music, foreign languages, horses, gymnastics and musical instruments. There are varying degrees of interest within the broad spectrum of these listed general categories, but that is something to be discovered amongst my pages, blogs, sites, tweets, MUs, networks, etc.

My interest in music is varied. I don’t really know what I like. When I hear it I can tell you whether I like it or not. I will go out on limb and declare that I don’t like HipHop or most gansta rap. Stick close to the 80s, 90s and 60s musics and you begin to start to get close. In the mid-90s I discovered filk and filk singers and that took me off into another direction. Renaissance Faire music moved in next and soon I couldn’t tell what I liked and didn’t like anymore. I even find that I like some of the free Starbucks music. Very odd.

Nia and Goshin-do Bugei Kaizen Dojo

At the time of this writing, I am beginning an interest in things Japanese. I have been interested in Japanese for a while, but never really did anything about it. I once enrolled in an Okinawan Karate class because my brother [care to guess which one?] needed some kind of focused discipline and athletics. He was pale and sickly from staying indoors on the computer all the time. ADHD in addition to that. I had taken Kempo classes when I was a preteen and found many of the lessons useful as I grew up, so I agreed with my mother when she suggested she needed to find a martial arts class for him. I bought his first few sessions as a birthday gift. He liked the class somewhat I think, but he still had lots of trouble focusing.

After I observed a class once, my mother spoke quietly with the instructor. Apparently she is a smooth talker, I was enrolled into the same class the following week. I was an adult. This was a kids’ class, but the instructor did not yet have enough adults interested to start an adult class. Normally, I would never have been able to join such a class, but the instructor had an older teen interested in joining as well. He sized us up as suitable partners and we became the senior students in the Goshin-do Bugei Dojo quickly. I stayed with the children’s class even after there was finally an adult class. They were used to me and the adults were not getting the same kind of training. Training that worked very well for my disorganised mind.

Stating that I look young probably sound facetious or arrogant. However, I have been told over decades that I do not look my age. When I joined the kids’ class, I looked to be about the same age as the teen I was paired with. He was 6 years my junior while I was already in my 20s. This has continued to this day. I have gotten age guesses, despite my obesity and stress, at up to 10 years younger than I am. Why is this important? It is the reason I was able to stay in the kids’ class. By the time they found out my actual age, the parents had already gotten to know me. The parents, including my mother since my brother was in the same class, always were in the classroom observing the whole time. I had been a camp counselor just previous to these classes, I was a benefit to the class, so there was no uproar from parents to push me and the teen into the adult classes. We asked, they said they couldn’t imagine the class without us there.

School Closes

For reasons beyond our control, the dojo was closed. We had learned much about the art, we were doing tumbling regularly and learning Japanese words and phrases left and right. My partner and I were just about to level up to the next rank of blue belt. I don’t remember what kyu that is 8- or 7-, but we were always to stay one belt above the kids. My partner had been sick and not attending several classes, so the testing was pushed back. When the school closed, it was a personal disaster.

The closing of the school coincided with a need for me to work in offices. I am ADD. My particular form requires outside structure to maintain anything. Therefore, I suddenly stopped all physical activity. Completely. I had to drive for almost an hour both ways from work, I sat all day in an office and I had no extra activities. I blew up in the following years like a balloon. Although I had been in roughly athletic condition, my forced immobility was probably the worst thing in the world to have happen at that exact time. This started a problem that lasted for about 10 years.

School reopens with a new name

After about a year and a half, my sensei contacted me again. He told me of a new location for the school. He also added a word to the school’s name. Goshin-do Bugei Kaizen Dojo. Most of the kids never came back. My partner came back, but didn’t last long. He had a medical condition that was extremely painful. I was completely out of shape. My muscles were all gone and I was obviously fat instead of the ‘large’ I was previously. Most devastating to me of all, the format of the classes changed. I was not allowed to join the kids’ class in the new location. Instead I joined the adults. Several started who had been in the old class. By the time I finally left the school, that class was down to one person… incl the sensei. That one person was me. And no, I never made sensei.

My sensei ran three days of classes. Two of those days had kids classes before it and he had a few other supplemental classes, including an attempt at a women’s self-defense class. The important ones, the ones he threw his energy into, besides the kids classes were Jiu-Jitsu and Shinkendo. I was the only reason there was a karate class. I swear that was the only reason it existed. There was a discount. If you paid for two of the classes, the third one was free. People were interested in Shinkendo and Jiu-Jitsu, they only came to the karate class if they felt like it. This saddened me. I had no regular partner, I was stressed from driving like mad to make it to class every week. I was not getting back into shape again and I was unable to regain what I had lost in order to get that blue belt.

You may wonder what the difference was. Was it because of the stress of working all day and then driving madly through horrid traffic to make it to class that was keeping me from improving? Maybe. Was it the fact that my teacher, although he was obviously skilled and knew his stuff, was not good at teaching adults? Possible. Was it the fact that I was taking metabolic adjusting drugs to attempt to help me loose that excess weight and they were muddling my brain? Perhaps. These were all valid reasons, certainly. Mostly though, I believe it was because he had changed the format of the class to accomodate the adults. Well… that and the fact that the facility made us share a space with a monthly group, so the class was only in the same location three weeks out of four.

When he was teaching the class where I was improving and staying in shape, he was mixing his many arts and skills and throwing in a dash of tumbling. The kids were learning how to fall and tumble as if they were in Jiu-Jitsu, they were learning about pivot points and dodging as well as learning kicks, punches and karate forms. We warmed up with tumbling: cartwheels, forward rolls, backward rolls, various other conditioning exercises…. it was never just the same thing over and over again. At least it didn’t feel that way during the class. When he restarted the classes in the new location, he was forced to segregate the arts. Gone was most of the tumbling from the karate class. Gone was the throwing and falling. To compensate, I took the Jiu-Jitsu class. Because of the deal he kept up, I also took the Shinkendo class. Adding more need to rush home from work.

The karate class had less and less attendance. I ended up failing my testing for a belt in Jiu-Jitsu. I remember that day clearly. The warm-up falls had given me a headache, the room was always spinning, during the testing my judogi bottoms ripped just off the seam and I couldn’t think of any other throws than the one I used every single time, which also had the benefit of hiding the ripped seams from sensei and class alike. That was the last time I attended that class, gaining only a half-rank. I was always too dizzy in the class. It was a good thing that I left, but it made me sad.

Shinkendo was the most popular. We had about seven regulars with each new session bringing people in who enriched the experiences. Five of us actually gained two levels while I was there.

Nia departs

Near the end of my time at the dojo, sensei’s outside job was forcing him to work overtime. The business he was working for was due to be terminated, but they would still need his services for long after the company disappeared. As a result, people were being released. He was forced to work more and more hours to cover for the less amount of workers. All the classes suffered. There were plenty enough senior students to keep many of the classes running, that wasn’t the problem. The largest problem was the class with the most advanced student(s) had no senior students. Ok. It did have a senior student. One. Me. The others were damn close to reaching my level, and I did know more of the polishing needed for the forms and simple moves than they did, but after a while of no actual teacher or at least a brown belt level senior student, there is only so much one can do to advance their skills.

Eventually, the class was reduced down to three students and no teacher on the karate day of the week. The teacher made it to Jiu-Jitsu and Shinkendo, but he just couldn’t make it to karate. After several weeks with two students, followed by a few more weeks when I was the only one showing up, I had had enough. With great sadness and much remorse, I just left the school without any warning. I sent him the last of my payments. I missed the next Shinkendo promotion. I was done.

Return Home?

I returned to the school once. Not to train, just to say hello. Several years had passed. The school was still open, and five students were considered regulars. Three had been students with me. They were no longer official in Shinkendo though. They didn’t have enough students for that. The karate class was nonexistant. See, what did I say? It was open only for me. I gave him my phone number, we were supposed to get together in the next few weeks. He never called. It’s been a few years since I visited, and I miss them all. Especially with my recent reawakening of interest in Japanese.

Nia and Japanese

I am living in New York presently. I have found it unbelievably easy to access many things Japanese. I found a class and I am now learning the language in a conversational way.

[... to be continued ... ]