Freebording is no joke
A few days ago I finally got the chance to ride a Freebord1 (something I linked to years ago when I was using del.icio.us) and for what may be the first time in my life, I wasn’t able to immediately master it. While that may sound a bit pretentious, I think that if you know me you know things like that (skateboarding, wakeboarding, snowboarding, skiing, blading, whatever) have always come very easy to me.
But this machine, this fusion of snowboarding and skateboarding, felt very foreign. You see, the Freebord is kind of like a regular skateboard, except that there are half-bindings for your feet, the trucks are stretched out well beyond the width of the board, and there are six wheels. That’s right, six. The extra two are spring-loaded caster wheels that sit in the center of the inside of each truck. The basic idea is that you turn (or, more accurately, carve) by giving the fifth and six wheels pressure, which is done by centering your weight on the board until the ‘extra’ wheels ‘take over,’ at which point you lean to either side and the ‘regular’ wheels that are on the same side as the side you are leaning, begin to slide across the pavement and act kind of like an edge on a snowboard.
I felt so sketchy on this thing and had I not seen videos of what it was capable of (some of which are linked to directly from the main page — watch them!), I probably would have deemed it broken after only a few tries. That said, I was starting to get the hang of it near the end our session, but not before my body started telling my brain I wasn’t 16 anymore2 and my brain started telling my body I could die.3
I was out with my brother and his roommate, both of whom bought Freebords minutes after I called my brother a couple of months ago and implored him to watch the videos of it in action. ↑
I hurt. Still. ↑
My brother’s roommate cracked his skull open not a week after they got their boards; the incident left him in pretty bad shape. Did I mention that this kid was there when I was trying to learn how to do it? Yah, that kind of messed with my head a bit. ↑
This is your brain on Tetris. “The Tetris effect is a biochemical, reductionistic metaphor, if you will, for curiosity, invention, the creative urge. To fit shapes together is to organize, to build, to make deals, to fix, to understand, to fold sheets. All of our mental activities are analogous, each as potentially addictive as the next.”
Note to self
Next time you’re thinking about taking a two-layover redeye from California to Florida the day before Christmas, don’t; just shoot yourself in the face. Also, remember that the airlines are nothing if not fastidious — they never fail to notice the pulsating “PLEASE LOSE THIS!” sign that you couple to all of your luggage.
I’m not dead
I’ve obviously been a little delinquent in updating this site for the last month or so, but I can assure you that my dereliction wasn’t for want of desire or something to say. To put it quite simply, I’m busy, and still adjusting to ‘real-world’ life as a first-year associate at a prominent IP firm.
There are a billion and one things I want to write about these days, hell, there a billion and one things I want to write about regarding the things I want to write about (e.g., Apple’s upcoming “iPhone,” which I portended, to much resistance, more than two years ago; the Pearl1 I just purchased; how I love my new office speakers so much that I’m probably going to buy another pair for my apartment; etc.), but time hates me and I can’t seem to get her back on my side.
Everything about my life is rushed lately. Everything. This post included. To be honest, it’s kind of always been that way, but never to this extent; never to the point where I’ve had to find so many backburners to keep all these neglected interests, people, and thoughts alive. Don’t get me wrong, I relish the chaos and thoroughly enjoy sifting the signals from the noise — it’s what I do best — but the number of things I’m currently attempting to juggle is ridiculous and I fear that at some point I’m just going to have to cry “uncle.”
The only constant anymore is the fact that the job comes first. Period. Unfortunately, that means a lot of my other interests are receiving much less of my time than they have been given in the past. I’ll eventually find a balance, but until then, the myriad pots I’ve my hands in will likely continue to suffer from inattention.
On a completely unrelated and unimportant note, Ari, from HBO’s Entourage, is my new favorite TV character.
How to choose CD/DVD archival media. A surprisingly well-informed article on the subject.
The decadent whims of the world’s wackiest dictators. “Radar has compiled a list of ten autocrats that rate not so much for their ability to govern with an iron fist but for their personal levels of outrageousness and eccentricity.”
Insect Lab “is an artist operated studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and electronic components.” Struggling with what to get me for xmas? Struggle no more.
For the USPS, a tip
Perhaps, before claiming that you offer a “tracking” service, you should look up the meaning of the word. My understanding is that I’m to input a tracking number, supplied by you, into your website. It is also my understanding that you are to monitor the package represented by that tracking number as it progresses from sender to recipient, and that I’m to be told where it is, where it’s going next, and how long until it’s in my hands.
Curious then that I wasn’t notified of any pit stops my package may have made along its 1800-mile journey over the last three days. In fact, the only thing I received from you concerning my package’s movement was a notification that it had been delivered. While it was great to receive confirmation that the package I was holding in my hand was the one I was expecting and not the one I wasn’t expecting, it would have been nice to know when it was to arrive and how it was getting along in the interim.
Maybe you’re just trying to set yourself apart from the myriad other parcel services that actually update you as to the whereabouts of your package. I’m obviously being facetious, or am I? Given that this is the third time I’ve experienced this non-communication, I’m actually starting to believe my own sarcasm. Keep up the good work.
The world’s longest diary. “For twenty years, Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, has kept a written record of absolutely everything that has happened to him, day and night. For no less than four hours each day, Shields holes himself up in the small office in his home, turns on his stereo, and types. His diary, at 35 million words, is believed to be the world’s longest.” Unbelievable.
Weighing the Web. “So as of today, cyberspace weighs less than two ounces.”
- Al Gore on whether Bush has seen An Inconvenient Truth
Q: Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie yet?
A: Well, he claimed that [he] would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.
Taco Bell considers adding breakfast. I’m already waiting in line. Issues? Yah, I’ve got ‘em.
Rotary reading desk. I think it’s safe to say I would have owned one of these had I been around in the 1500′s.
TiVo File Decoder “converts a .TiVo file (produced by the TiVoToGo functionality on recent TiVo software releases) to a normal MPEG file. This has the same functionality as using TiVo’s supplied DirectShow DLL on Windows with a tool such as DirectShowDump, but is portable to different architectures and operating systems, and runs on the command line using files or pipes.”
UF vs. OSU
The Gators absolutely deserve their BCS Championship Game nod and all you haters out there know it! Can we get both the basketball title and the football title in the same year? You better believe it.
The Digital Ice Age. “The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of future readability. As technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats.”
Skurniture skateboard table. How could I not order one of these? Seriously.
CopyAllUrls Firefox extension “copies and pastes all URLs of open tabs in structured and well defined form to and from the clipboard.” This extension has been a godsend for me. I run it at work at the end of each day and paste the results into an e-mail I send to myself (instead of manually copying/pasting each unread tab’s URL).
The Windows shutdown crapfest. “I worked at Microsoft for about 7 years total, from 1994 to 1998, and from 2002 to 2006.The most frustrating year of those seven was the year I spent working on Windows Vista, which was called Longhorn at the time. I spent a full year working on a feature which should’ve been designed, implemented and tested in a week.”
The Chicago Sun-Times on the Zune. “The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.” I’ve kept rather quiet about the Zune (at least publicly), willing to give it the benefit of the doubt (really), but reviews like this are all I’ve seen and so I’ll take quiet comfort in the fact that my private conjectures regarding its specs, abilities, and likelihood of success are all ringing true.