sk8

x-sports
Skateboarding is hard.

Really hard.

It is one of those pursuits that allows humans to demonstrate insane skills.

Like:

Untethered high-lining (Dean Potter)


Proximity wingsuit flying (Halvor Angvik)


Triple corks on skis (Bobby Brown)


Quad corks on snowboards (Billy Morgan)


Big wave surfing (Garret McNamara)


Jumping into water (Laso Schaller, Dana Kunze)


Free soloing (Alex Honnold)

Skateboarding is very technical. The simplest trick is an Ollie. You basically just pop the board into the air using your feet. This is the basis for all street tricks. Unfortunately, mastering an Ollie takes a long time.

First you need to be comfortable riding your board. If you find balancing hard, try riding tight trucks. Once you get the hang of it, loosen them and enjoy the added sense of maneuverability. Now you can start to practice Ollies while stationary. Then while riding. Yes, you need to be patient.

Now, I thought that decades of snowboarding would help. Well, they do a little bit. Still took me some time to feel safe cruising. As a snowboarder, the unfamiliar freedom of being able to place your feet anywhere on the skateboard needed some time to understand (but this then turned out to really help my surfing!).

On a snowboard, I can pretty much do everything switch, also at high speeds. However, riding switch or fakie on a skateboard feels super uncomfortable. Yes, patience.

So, just to get the basics down takes ages. You can be skateboarding for quite some time and everything you do looks easy and unspectacular to bystanders.

Now imagine the level of skill you need to be able to do this:


Or this:


Or this:


Or this:


Or this:


Skateboarding is also hard because it is done on concrete or asphalt, with edges and corners looming everywhere. It is really intimidating to know that if you have to bail, you won't be landing in water or on snow.

For some insane reason there is an unwritten law, that dictates that street-style skateboarding is best executed without any kind of protection:

And don't search for "skateboard slam sessions" on YouTube.

So, why bother? Simple, it is just so much fun! Even the beginner parts;)

It is about a philosophy, an outlook on life.  A simple feeling, a state of being. Watch skate legend Rodney Mullen's TED talk. Or watch him perform at the age of 50:


Or listen to this geezer:


Or watch Tony Hawk reenacting his 900 at the age of 48:


And then there is vert and big-air skateboarding next to street...


For me, at 44, I just want to be able to cruise around town (meaning I need to be able to Ollie up a curb at some point) and learn to ride a bowl/mini ramp (i.e., frozen wave). All this while not getting hurt. The idea is to bridge snowboarding and surfing with skateboarding. It's about developing a new kind of intelligence in my feet and legs.

Still a long way to go:


My board has a wide deck, wide trucks, and soft wheels...

the center of the universe

information is physical
Just a random thought:

Earth is literally the center of the universe in terms of information processing.

Or at least, as far as we are aware of.

Because:

In the beginning, information processing manifested itself on molecular basis utilizing self-replicators a few billion years ago, as the emergent process called life unleashed itself.

Then, not too long ago, the neural networks assembled by the process of life became conscious and self-aware.

And currently, as these sentient beings bring information processing to a non-organic platform: binary computation.

Finally, as the cognizant beings push the limits of information processing into the quantum realm, employing the technology that emerged from their own information processing capabilities. This unlocks unprecedented new levels of computation.

--

Edit: made a meme out of this:

What is Real?

am I even real?
Met the wonderful Lucy Hawking at TEDxSalford by chance (Science and Storytelling, The Consciousness of Reality). This led to an amazing opportunity allowing me to contribute a science essay to her newest children's book:

George and the Blue Moon
Lucy and Stephen Hawking
Penguin, 2016

Staying true to my little hobby, it was called:

What is Reality?

And it started like this:

Every day you wake up. Returning from the wonderful adventures you may have been having in your dreams, you become you again. The memories of who you are and what you have been up to in your life come back. And you also realize that there is a world that lies outside of yourself, simply called reality. Then you get up.

This all seems very ordinary and not very exciting. However, all of this is linked to the hardest question that humans have ever asked themselves: What exactly is reality? What is this thing, made up of space, time and objects, we live in?

And ended like this:

But for the moment we can comfort ourselves with two answers to the question, ‘What is reality?’

One is that reality is a much bigger, richer and more complex thing than we ever dared to dream.

Or a short answer could be, ‘I create my reality!’