Category: Uncategorized

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Kinda missing this…

I’ve had a good time riding in Pandemic Parking lot the last 19 months (or whatever). Just relaxing, “feeling the flow” as they say. I was looking at my seldom-looked-at Flickr account this morning. Yes, I still keep my “Pro” account there.  I have a lot of good images stored there.

Anyway, looking at some of my longboarding pics today, I was thinking of my friend Eric Sanders, who is all about the flow. Eric, it is so good, isn’t it?

Here’s a picture of me just riding my longboard. Frontside carve. Is there any better feeling in skateboarding? The pure simplicity. But man, if you really dig into this feeling, it is deep. Soul-level deep. I think I need to do this a lot more.

longboard carve
Carving around on a longboard. Click for full size.
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New Goals

OK, yeah, the 2020 goals didn’t work out that well. In fact, they worked out so badly I didn’t do any new ones in 2021. That’s called being in survival mode. And I still am, but I feel like some goals the the last 2 months of this year might not be a bad thing. So here they are:

  • Finish reading 6 more books for the year. I will still not reach my reading goal (as seen on my Goodreads account) but it will be better than zero more.
  • Skate as much as possible. Gonna go ahead and state some skating goals for this year and 2022 as well. (see next post)
  • Game
  • Not lose my mind

Those seem like reasonable goals to me.

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Lyrics

Actual lyrics from the Police song Reggatta de Blanc. Great song.

The Wikipedia entry for the recording of this album is amazing. Can you imagine anyone doing something so seat-of-the-pants now? Well, maybe, but still.   Following up a great album by going in with pretty much no new material and making this album?

Anyway, here’re those lyrics…

One, two, one, two, three, four
Bamba, arriba
Dos cervezas
Ay-yay-yay-yay
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha (where’s my echo?)
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Cha
Eeyo-eeyo-eeyoyo
Eeyo-eeyo-eeyoyo
Eeyo-eeyay, eyyayo
Eeyo-eeyay, eyyayo
Eeyo-eeyay, eyyayo
Eeyo-eeyay, eyyayo
Eeyo-eeyay
Eyyayo, eyyayo, eyyayo, eyyayo
Eeyay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay
Yayo
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Birthday Skate

Today was my birthday. Well, it was 57 years ago. I guess today is the day we celebrate my birthday. Anyway, I had a good day. Only three more years until the next scheduled colonoscopy, so I got that going for me.

As always I taped a few clips. I am still in my Pandemic Style mode. Parking lot with lots of little chunks of crap in it from recent work? Check. Gorgeous Texas sky with church steeple of the church were I got married in the background? Check. Sound of freeway? Check.

I have been listening to the Police a lot lately. Got album 1 on LP a couple of weeks ago with free MP3 download. I have album 3 on LP already, from 1982? Still sounds great. Waiting on album 2 in the mail. I had 1 and 2 on shitty cassette tape when I was in highschool. Those first 3 are genius. Not a massive fan of their work after that, though were were some great songs so I’ll probably procure those as well.  The music in these videos, amazingly, is from my big red blue tooth speaker. It is pretty incredible.

Anyway, here are some shots of me rolling around.

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Reading

I’ve been spending my evenings reading recently. I tend to read in bursts. I’ll read 3 books, and then not read anything for 2 months. I made a decision not to allow social media, youtube, and all the rest steal my life from me. I’ll let books steal my life. Mostly science fiction. Mostly older science fiction. Mostly science fiction novels of less than 300 pages.

I’ll be honest. I don’t really miss the social media. I’m not totally avoiding it. I didn’t take the apps off my phone. I decided I should be able to exercise my human mind and will to simply read most of the time, rather than just dicking around on the internet.

It’s a better way to live.

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In Praise of My Microphone

I’ve been doing podcasting for quite a few years now. Of the last 14 months or so I’ve been working from home, and my podcasting gear has proven a real asset. In particular, this relatively inexpensive microphone, the Audio Technica AT2020 USB.

I have a Rode Procaster as well. A nice dynamic mic that I run through some combination of a mixer, audio interface, and Cloud Lifter. It sounds really good. It’s a $250 mic, and requires all the rest to make it work.

That AT2020, frankly, sounds just as good. Actually, there’s always this little bit of line noise in the Procaster that is there regardless what the setup is. The AT2020 is just about silent. No appreciable noise at all.  Great mic. I’ve had it plugged in 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the last 14 months. Sounds fantastic.

Audio Technica AT2020 USB microphone.