This is partially inspired by Pierre Baudin's recently published matrix of hybrid patterns and partially a byproduct of revisiting old work. Back in the spring as I attempted to cobble together a hybrid Gina McGrath posed as a challenge to many of us at FLAME Festival I found that my perception of how polyrhythm hybrids could be composed was only a third of the story at best.

 There is something very unique about life.

We all know this story...you're at a festival, spin jam, or on an online forum and somebody mentions a trick or concept you've played a lot with. So much so that you have a framework worked out in your head for how to understand that move and how many other moves interlock with it. You speak up and say, "x move is a type of y and here's why!" And so begins a lengthy debate over the nature of the move that can at times get heated. Each person clings to their understanding and points out the logical fallacies in the other approach.

If you were are the recent Kinetic Fire Festival or have spoken to either Charlie Cushing or myself face-to-face in the past six months, it's entirely possible you've heard of Charlie's Quantized Field Theory for poi and one of its applications: notation for props. We taught a class together at Kinetic in which Charlie enthusiastically explored the idea with the crowd while I, suffering from a nasty cold and laryngitis, did my best not to collapse and make everybody's day a little dreary.

What is a triquetra?

For most of the past year, triquetra has been synonymous with three-petal antispin flowers and in some cases the hybrids that can be created by combining them with other patterns. Nick Woolsey even posted this video, explaining the concept and the term and its significance to poi spinning in general. After doing the math, however, I've come to the conclusion that what we describe as triquetras don't actually match the visual or mathematical properties of triquetras at all and that a couple of the conclusions we've reached based upon this assumption are false.

Given that Google Wave will be shutting its doors by the end of the year, I wanted to post a document that's long been gestating on it. I wrote up my theory of hard, soft, and mixed transitions in a rough draft form months ago and had shared it with a whole mess of people whose opinion I respect for feedback and clarification.