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Appreciation

I was sitting here listening to an interview with Geddy Lee, from the band Rush. I don’t have a link. My wife was playing it.

In the interview, he talks about the period after their last tour with the late Neil Peart. At the time Neil had not yet received his death sentence – a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiform – the kind of brain cancer that killed my dad. It’s a cancer that no one survives. But at the time Neil had retired from music. He was in his 60s, had spent his entire life touring hard. And the man never phoned it in. They said he didn’t want to perform as anything but his best self. So he was worn out and wanted to live his life with his new family.

For that tour Neil had created an amazing drum solo. Like everything he did, he put a massive amount of work into it. In this interview Geddy says that post-tour he was listening to the recordings and video and was just amazed by the solo. He emailed Neil and said something like “man, that solo is just fantastic.” Neil emailed him back a long letter, and said he was kind of disappointed that during the tour no one said anything about it.

The greatest rock drummer in the world – disappointed – that no one expressed appreciation of his work during the tour. Not even his beloved band mates. The thing is, Neil was just a guy. The greatest drummer of his generation, but a humble and quiet man who liked to write and read and ride his motorcycle. Just a guy. A guy without a massive ego, who still appreciated being appreciated.

This got me thinking about how nice it is to be appreciated. I think no gift you will ever give anyone is as valuable as an honest and deep expression of appreciation for them.

So, during my first trip to the Paderborn freestyle contest in Germany during 2015, people came up to me all weekend and told me how much they appreciated my old freestyle trick tips website. How they got their start by going to the site. This was from about 1999 – 2010. No YouTube yet. They were genuinely excited to meet me. This has happened a few times.

I’m just another old skateboarder from Texas. I’m not that good. All did was put up a website with video and sequential images teaching freestyle skateboarding tricks. I knew it was popular, but I had no idea. I honestly didn’t.

A few years later, during the premiere of the first NeverWas Skateboarding video (I had to miss the premier), a person who would become a friend, Ben, stood up and talked about my site and me, and how as a teenager with a lot of stress and problems going not he would go to my site to study and learn tricks and it made a big difference for him. When the guys told me about this the next week I just cried.

Again, I just put up trick tips. I’m just a guy who did something.

Finally, a few years ago a the World Freestyle Roundup contest in Vancouver, Canada (once again I wasn’t even there), I was given the Ambassador of Freestyle Award. My friend Terry Chui apparently said some very nice things about me and my site, and they sent the award to me.

All of these demonstrations of appreciation happened at times I really, really needed them. The adulation in Paderborn happened when 1)my beloved cat Pancho had just died, and 2)my mother was in the middle stages of dementia. I had a lot of stress. I wasn’t entirely happy. The comment at the video premier by Ben happened when I’d had to leave that group’s gathering weekend early, because my mom (in memory care) had fallen and cracked her skull open.

So my point is that if you appreciate someone, tell them. Don’t wait. Tell them. I’m sure Geddy wishes he’d shown appreciation for Neil’s drum solo when it was actually happening. Everyone needs to feel genuine appreciation. It is better than money, better than gifts, better than trophies.

So Terry, NeverWas guys, Monty, Ben, and anyone else who has just shown me that appreciation – thank you. In ever case it lifted me up more than you could know.

ambassador of freestyle award

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Excess Cognitive Load

On the way to work this morning I was thinking (again) about my use of technology. Appropriate use of tech. That kind of thing.

The fact that I was thinking about it (again) is indicative of a problem.

For most of my life, up until probably 10 or 15 years ago, when you bought a product or service  you just looked at it and decided if you needed or wanted it. Mac or PC? Which one do you like. Churches Fried Chicken or Kentucky Fried? What mood are you in and what chicken seems like the right one to eat?

We didn’t have the internet to let us know if the CEO of Churches was a scumbag. We didn’t know if the head of the computer company had frequented Epstein’s Island. We didn’t even know that island existed, much less what depravities and crimes the world’s elite were committing there. Walmart, of course, had completed much of its project of destroying Small Town America, but Amazon had not yet crawled from the primordial ooze of tech-bro-genesis to kill off brick-and-mortar stores.

I find that now I spend a lot of time thinking about my use of technology and my choices about commerce in general, evaluating them against an ever-shifting rubric of acceptability. What does it say about me, in my own mind, if I buy a new MacBook vs. a PC? What if I use Bluesky vs Twitter?(that one’s actually easy). Am I a bad person if I each Chik-fil-A every so often, given their politics?

And here’s my problem. I don’t want to be a person who just doesn’t care. At the same time I realize that maybe my poor human organic brain and the psyche it generates are not equipped to be on constant alert for this stuff. In short — it is exhausting.

After deleting all social media from my phone over a month ago, I find that I’m not really missing it at all. I’m especially not missing the constant invitation to drama and outrage. I don’t miss Instagram at all. I don’t miss Mastodon at all. I look at the Bluesky account for my gaming podcast once a day, and have no compulsion to check it more often.  I’m barely using Facebook at all. This leads me to believe that a massive part of the cognitive overload problem is the damned cellphones. This is not a surprise.

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MacBook Neo

I’m typing this from a brand new MacBook Neo.

While I love the Linux box my friend David built me, and I’m using it a lot, the truth is I need a dependable Macintosh computer. I like the Apple ecosystem. I also trust it for doing things involving money transactions, and it’s nice to have a computer that can talk to my phone and my iPad.  Frankly, I also like nice computers.

So after less than 24 hours I report that I’m impressed. This is the “base model”. Minimal. 256 gig storage. It has 8 gigs RAM. This is not a machine for doing heavy video editing or other compute-heavy things. It’s a great machine, however, for doing most of what I do — writing, blogging, reading blogs. It’s light. The case is metal and smooth and nice. The trackpad is BUTTER. I can’t even tell you how often I sit down at a “good” PC laptop and the trackpad is so bad as to be unusable.  My MacBooks are never like that, and this may be the smoothest one yet. Phenomenal.

I paid $699 for this machine. Sadly, I waited until the price went up by $100.

If you like Macs, and are on a budget, and don’t need a total powerhouse machine, I’d recommend this computer.  A great deal for a sub-$1000 laptop.

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No-Comply with Babylon System

I have been a customer on micro.blog for several years. I run my skateboarding-only blog there, as well as my science fiction reading blog.

Micro.blog is primarily a blogging platform. It is federated, meaning it plays nice with Fediverse systems like Mastodon, which means that from my account on micro.blog I can follow people on Mastodon instances and other federated services without being “on” those services. Which is what I do. It also allows me to follow other bloggers on micro.blog, such as Alan Jacobs.

Alan is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Baylor University, which is strangely enough where I went to college. Strange because I was a weirdo atheist at a Baptist university, though I have to say there were elements of the university that were and continue to be quite weird. But I digress.

Alan recently (yesterday) posted this article, undermining Babylon System.

In the article, Alan eventually gets around to some simple advice for undermining the destructive elements in our society.  He comes to this from his own viewpoint, which is his faith, but I can’t say I disagree with any of these methods. Small things that could collectively add up. I would add “building a personal website and not posting valuable creative efforts to social media or corporate sites that pretend to be free.” I like Alan, though I’ve never met him. Look, this post he wrote actually links to a page on Kim Stanley Robinson‘s website!

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Old Bastard Trick Tips 8: More Fun with Endovers

A few years ago (or maybe 10 years ago, actually) a much slimmer and younger version of me did this trick tip to encourage other old guys to learn some freestyle footwork for their skateboarding.

Well, none of them learned a damned thing, but today I was revisiting those videos and wanted to post something about the utility of endovers.

Since the time I made this video I’ve discovered that a lot of really good skaters can’t do endovers. I was working with one guy who is a serious ripper and he actually fell right in front of me trying to do this (riding forward, bringing the tail around the heel side). I thought to myself “how can he not be able to do this” considering what he can do. The answer, of course is that he started skating in the mid-1980s and by then people thought putting their feet on the ground during tricks was cool.

But I digress…

Once you can do Endovers, they are very useful. Not only do they allow you gain speed, but you can flow into and out of tricks nicely. Hell, some tricks themselves are basically endovers. So here are some example of tricks with endovers integrated into them…

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Killing Off Social Media

I deleted my Mastodon account today. Going to delete a few other things too.

I feel like social media, federated or  not, brings out the worst in me. Actually, I think it brings out the worst in everyone, but I can only control what I do. I got rid of all the apps on my phone and my iPad a couple of months ago. Now is time to remove the rest of their presence in my mind. Going to leave a couple of other online forums as well. I don’t think we were meant to submerge ourselves in the oceans of opinions 24/7. It is just too easy to drown in there.

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Accessibility

I’ve run this blog through a number of accessibility checkers and it fails miserably.

I’ve done a few things to make it more accessible for people with vision issues. Simple things. Making sure links are underlined and are a different color. I’ve been using HTML headings properly, putting alt text in, etc. But it fails really badly for anything that would help a non-sighted person.

Gonna look into this. I need to do more reading and research about this. The WordPress them I use is really old, and I find that most WordPress themes both confusing, horrible looking, and probably not accessible.

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Some Reading

Book Cover for the novel AnnihilationA few days back I wrote this post about our trip to the bookstore, during which I bought three books.

Yesterday (Sunday) I had fished the novel I’d been reading (The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues). I’ve been reading so much space opera the last few years. I love it, but I’ve been feeling like reading some other sorts of science fiction, so I grabbed the copy of Annihilation that I bought and started reading.

So, a few things…

  • After all these years of reading on a Kindle I was actually nervous about reading a physical book. That seems weird to me as I write this, but it’s true. The Kindle is so easy to read on that it feels like cheating. I was concerned that even with reading glasses my eyes would get tired, that I’d constantly lose my place on the page, that I’d miss being able to read with the lights dim.
  • Most oldschool space opera is pretty simple. The plots are simple. The prose is fairly simple. Frankly you don’t have to concentrate on them as hard as you might for something like Neuromancer, which is just more stylized, noir-style prose, that requires you to really appreciate the language and descriptions in a more intentional, patient, and thoughtful way.
  • I love space opera. I can pick up nearly any space opera novel written in the 1960s – 1980s and go to my happy place. Something like Annihilation – well – it isn’t space opera. It reminds more so far of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. So when you pick up a book that really kind of defies categories you don’t know if you’ll like it, and for me it feels like I might be wasting my time. I think that’s why series are so popular. Read the first book. If you like it, the next 3 or 4 books (or 50) will probably also be enjoyable. That’s why I love Star Wars novels. They drop you into a universe you are already familiar with, and have characters you already know.
  • I knew a little about Annihilation before I bought it. I’d seen some videos on Quinn’s Ideas about the Southern Reach series. I didn’t remember any details at all. The one thing that stuck with me from the videos was the notion of cosmic horror, but not “fun” cosmic horror like Lovecraft, but modern, disturbing, get-inside-your-head and make you feel the oppressive atmosphere cosmic horror. I’ll be honest. I feel like we have enough horror in our lives already. I don’t really want to dwell on it when I’m trying to relax with a book. And yet I did purchase this book. Maybe something “out there” was compelling me to buy it. I’m babbling. OK – simply put – I wasn’t really sure I’d enjoy reading something that isn’t a little uplifting.

Most of these concerns turned out to be unfounded. I had no trouble with my eyes, reading, or immersing myself in the story. I’m halfway through the novel at this point. It’s well-written. I did not find myself disoriented because I didn’t “know the universe” already. While it is not a happy book, and it is certainly has that Lovecraftian feel in the exploration of a super weird space and all the anxiety the comes with that, it lacks that particular quality that makes something “so dreadful it makes you sick and oppressed-feeling but you can’t put it down.”

Looking forward to continuing reading Annihilation this week.

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Going Forward

Going forward I’m not going to comment on other people’s blogs if I think they somehow don’t meet my “standards” (whatever that means). I think all the bloggers I follow are of good intentions. Sometimes execution of an idea does not go the way you might want it to go. People are imperfect. I know this firsthand.  I’ve seen good people in the web get absolutely harassed because they didn’t articulate something to someone else’s liking.

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Deletion

I rarely delete a post, but a recent one — I just deleted it. Nothing horrible. I just felt after some conversation and consideration one of the links was not true to what it said it was. Basically, talking about punk rock and then selling punk rock tshirts = a serious contradiction of the message. It becomes content marketing at that point, which is not blogging. It’s just shit.

See, I can admit when I’m wrong!