And here we are, almost at the end of February.  Two months of 2010 have disappeared already!  Time flies, whether you are having fun or not.  Anyway, here’s some fun links to enjoy…

• This week’s Star Wars links: first a montage of various Star Wars characters interacting with a chipmunk.  These are definitely worth checking out as they take the Stormtroopers 365 idea one step further into our world.  And second, this rather strange collection of pictures features science fiction characters in everyday settings including a closet look at Darth Vader on the, er, water closet.
• I’m not sure quite what to make of this IronMan Magazine interview with Mike O’Hearn but his work ethic is remarkable and he’s a really big guy.  I did disagree with one thing that he said, though, and that was the idea that weighted chins give you big biceps.  I don’t think this is necessarily true as I found very little change in my arm size going from a weighted chin of 30kg to 70kg.
• Don’t miss this training footage of Ted Ligety’s off-season training for the slalom in the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver.  There are some interesting new movements in there plus some twists on older movements.  If you’re looking for more, check out this interview with Ted.
• Recent business news has shown that as full-time jobs continue to decrease, part-time jobs are on the rise.  Is this the start of a new Utopia in which we all work 21 hours a week or less?  Or is it an unsustainable position and we’ll all need to go back to working all hours once the economy picks up again?  As someone who was on the brink of being offered a 4-day week once upon a time, I am still unsure about how I would feel about it.
• This week’s creature feature is a selection of pictures of mountain goats in progressively more precarious perches.
• Bill Hartman doesn’t write often but when he does it is wise to pay attention.  In this short article, he comments on a study performed on female athletes showing that the rear-foot-elevated-split-squat showed greater demands on the glutes and hamstrings than a traditional back squat.
• Geoff Neupert is another infrequent poster but sage advice provider.  If you’re jumping aboard the biofeedback bandwagon, it might be worth checking out this post about Geoff’s experiences from a lifetime of lifting and learning.
• A new blog to link to this week, with this interesting snippet from the brilliantly titled blog “What would Pisarenko do?”  The principle is that “every weight requires a slightly different body position and a slightly different coordination of the muscles in order for the bar/body unit to be in the correct balance and for the maximum force in the correct direction to be imparted to the bar.”  A simple but very profound concept.  Having read this, I immediately realized that my squat form changes very subtly as I add weight but I had never put two and two together.
• To my shame, as someone claims to be able to do a passable front lever for at least a couple of seconds when they put their mind to it, I had never seen this progression, called the “ice-cream maker”.  Next time I need to pull my stuff together (usually because someone I know is coming round), I will try these.
• A friend recently asked me about sorting out his knee pain, caused as he thought by too much running.  I would qualify that statement, as he spends most of the day sitting at a desk and weighs about as much as the average runner bean.  I sent him a link to this article, which is a great round up of the various stretches and drills you should do to keep your hips, knees and ankles in order.

That’s it for this week.  Short and sweet.

But if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you won’t want to miss next week’s edition of Don’t miss these great links!  There’s been a bumper crop of posts and photographs on the web from the galaxy far, far away.  So I’ve done an extra-special Star Wars edition.