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Tyson Cecka | NERDYmade →

Published March 4, 2020  ·  All posts on Mar 4

On Castbox.fm — Tyson Cecka | NERDYmade

How can the design and construction of Parkour obstacles and spaces influence training, creativity, and safety?

Designing Parkour spaces involves balancing permanence with adaptability to maximize creative potential and safety.

[… What] makes it really tricky with Parkour obstacles is that we adapt to the spaces that we’re in. We adapt really well to the spaces that we’re in. And so you don’t necessarily know what’s missing, or what might change when that space changes or improves in some way. I feel that you really need to continually challenge yourself in coming up with new ideas or trying out new things. Because you will be extremely surprised sometimes by how much potential that offers up.

~ Tyson Cecka (11:10)

The conversation explores the intricate process of designing and building Parkour obstacles and spaces, emphasizing the role of adaptability, safety, and creativity. There is a focus on how portable obstacles can evolve over time, providing a dynamic and ever-changing training environment. This contrasts with permanent structures that, while durable, may limit creative exploration once their design becomes familiar.

A key point of discussion is the importance of fastening and securing materials like plywood to ensure the structural integrity of obstacles. Tyson highlights how beginners often overlook these details, leading to potential failures or unstable equipment. The dialogue also touches on the value of fostering a community of builders who can share experiences, troubleshoot problems, and inspire new designs through collaborative learning.

Takeaways

Portable obstacles — Enable evolving and adaptable training environments that keep athletes engaged.

Plywood fastening — Essential for ensuring the stability and longevity of Parkour structures, often overlooked by beginners.

Community collaboration — A supportive builder community accelerates learning and design innovation.

Dynamic design — Spaces that shift and change encourage creativity and long-term engagement.

Beginner considerations — Well-built, stable obstacles enhance confidence and facilitate smoother progression for newcomers.

Resources

Tyson Cecka’s @tysoncecka

Sturdy Made (Facebook Group) — Online community for Parkour builders to share ideas, projects, and plans.

Art of Retreat — Annual Parkour leadership and education event where the conversation took place.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Nerd decanting wine →

Published December 20, 2015  ·  All posts on Dec 20  ·  

2L Erlenmeyer flask, $17 icluding shipping. College chemistry lab for the win! (I note my 750ml bottle of wine isn’t 750ml.)

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Sometimes I consult for large corporations →

Published July 24  ·  All posts on Jul 24  ·  ,

So Verizon’s new CEO sent me an email…

Where shall I begin?

First — You can’t simply reply. I get it. It’s hard to have a mailbox on the Internet these days. So many bounces, to deal with (I’m serious.)

Second — So when you go to drag-select, copy and paste that “s.sampath@verizon.com” email address, you discover it’s not what it seems.

Pasting into your email client’s “To” field, you actually create a list of multiple recipients: The first recipient is “s”, then the second is “sampath”, etc—none of which are the email address you meant to copy and paste. So you have to type it into your email client. Not a big deal, but probably enough to stop most people. If they really cared, they’d just give us an

<a href="mailto:s.sampath@verizon.com">s.sampath@verizon.com</a>

and let us just click or touch it, et voila!

Okay, but why can’t we copy and paste? Because in the HTML source in their email, it’s actually:

If you can read HTML, you see there are HTML entities jammed in various places in that email address. I had to lookup the entity &zwnj; — that’s a Zero Width Non-Joining space. Meaning it’s not visible (“zero-width”) and it’s job is to keep whatever is left and right from “joining”… in the sense that complex characters can join to make a glyph— For example: An ‘a’ and ‘e’ can join to make the single character ‘æ’ if your language supports that. (But, of course, English does not have any joining characters at all.) I’m confident this is just an artifact of their bulk-email-sending composer software; it’s common for such things to “defend” an email address in the middle of text from harvesting looking for emails. So this wasn’t maliciousness on Verizon’s part.

Third — …but it’s ironic that, in a message that contains, “It’s not just better service — we are setting a new standard, beginning today,” I have to flip between windows as I retype that email address.

Fourth — Because I’m a level-39 nerd wizard, I do reply to these things. (I mean, I start a new email message addressed to that email address.) And because we (said wizards) are quick to anger and regular Internet users (ie, Sampath) are tasty with ketchup, I send things like this…

I’ll followup when I get my 17.5%.

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I don’t often laugh out loud →

Published December 2, 2024  ·  All posts on Dec 2  ·  

But when I do, it usually because of some deeply nerdy, cutting snark. Like this:

As someone who has read thousands of academic papers, I’ll answer those questions as calmly as possible.

NO.

~ “dynomight“, from Please show lots of digits

slip:4udydi1.

…and then it goes on, CAPSLOCKed, for several paragraphs. The only thing better than math-nerds, is when a math-nerd who is also a reason-nerd stomps on the vanilla-variety math-nerds. This stuff? This stuff makes the world a better place.

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Spatial →

Published May 26, 2024  ·  All posts on May 26  ·  

Without over-explaining how the soup gets made, I’ll just mention that this, and the third, things for you to savor this week are exceptionally nerdy this week. I’m not sure whether I’m more excited by the contents of this essay (which to be fair, I only skimmed) or the fact that it’s from like 1992.

[I]n having a body, we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the spatial arrangement of items around us is not an afterthought: it is an integral part of the way we think, plan, and behave.

~ David Kirsh from, The Intelligent Use of Space

slip:4uueki1.

Those four sentences are a good start at explaining what it means to be human. I heard Ido Portal (on a podcast) say something like that… about our legs for moving, arms for manipulating, and our spine for orienting ourselves. Just some random thoughts today around space (not “outer”) and ourselves.

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Incredible →

Published May 13, 2024  ·  All posts on May 13  ·  

The linked post is an Apple-specific, nerdy deep dive related to technical details in recording. In the specifics it’s about people ripping on Apple for certain claims about something being “shot on iPhone.”

I much prefer the other way of looking at this same rig, which is that it is incredible that this entire professional workflow is being funneled through a tiny sensor on basically the same telephone I have in my pocket right now.

~ Nick Heer from, How Apple Shot ‘Let Loose’

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Heer is so spot-on here. Hear! Hear! I love this sentiment. When I take a moment to mentally zoom out, I’m knocked out by the incomprehensibly-advanced super-computers which are now everywhere. If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

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A few things in view →

Published March 16, 2024  ·  All posts on Mar 16

Taking a fresh look at Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work. Book is smashed open to a quote from Russell Brand—with a notecard where I’m about to add this quote to my collection. I’m a bit of an audio nerd—I don’t stream from services, rather stream from the countless CDs that I keep in the ‘ol digital library. I like to start from a movie soundtrack, and then spread out into all the artists. Rubik’s cube, glass of water. Pink postit reminds me: “There are no miracles, there is only discipline“

Derivative →

Published January 21, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 21  ·  

I write a lot about “looking back”. (A lot: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 21 more posts, plus “looking back” has another 17 posts.) I clearly believe—I really do—that looking back is best for assessing things.

And yet… stress, unhappiness. (Important: Words left unsaid.)

By all objective metrics, I’m as successful today as I could hope to be a decade ago. I’m happily married, well inside the richest 1% globally, have found my tribe and earned some respect in it. I should be able to relax and take some satisfaction in my current situation. And yet the thought that in 5 years my life will look exactly like it does today fills me with dread.

~ Jacob Falkovich from, Unstriving

slip:4upuui1.

My title is a nerdy reference to a small detail in the article. But it’s also a nerdy reference to how I feel that everything I write is simply derivative. Nonetheless, I’m looking back. I’m assessing my progress. I’m making some plans and I’m cutting red tape.

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Work only we can do →

Published December 31, 2023  ·  All posts on Dec 31  ·  ,

No, this isn’t about AI. I mean the work that we want to do. That’s why only we can do it. I want to sift through a certain amount of things. (For example, I like to sift through all dogs.) I want to find things that are interesting and surprising. And I want to have way more books than I can ever read.

Because the meaning isn’t going to emerge on its own—you have to create it. The algorithms and tag searches and bookmarklets will only get you so far; afterwards, it’s work only you can do, work the machine has no need for. The reader is your own personal anthology, but you are the editor: you are the sum of its parts.

~ Mandy Brown from, Three definitions of “reader”

slip:4uaowi1.

RSS Tip: Every Substack publication has an RSS feed. Go to the front of any Substack publication—the page after you ignore the sign-up dialog. Then copy the URL, and add /feed onto the end. (If the URL has an “?gobble-dee-gook” on it, trim that off before adding that /feed ) Add that edited URL to your favorite feed reader. (RSS nerds: Nope the RSS feed URL is not listed in any <link> tags. These are stealth feeds.) Ta-DAH! You’ll find the entire posts from the publication appear in your feed reader. This of course will only work until everyone starts doing it. Then Substack will modify those feeds to just be an excerpt of the article . . . and that’s still awesome, because that’s how web sites work on the Open Web. Protocols, not platforms.

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Bias →

Published October 2, 2023  ·  All posts on Oct 2  ·  

These stories illustrate two truths. 1) I’m a big ol’ nerd, and 2) the goodness and badness of memories fade over time, but the badness fades faster—that’s the fading affect bias. Some bad memories even become good memories, while good memories rarely become bad memories.

~ Adam Mastroianni from, Underrated ideas in psychology – by Adam Mastroianni

slip:4ueepu1.

Like Mastroianni, I’m clearly susceptible to this bias. One thing that I use to fight it, is to write myself honest thoughts after things happen. A lot of the pleasure from something is the anticipation—the imagining of the enjoyment from some expected experience. That’s pretty easy to remember to journal and it happens without effort in the days leading up. But after the fact, I usually take a big chunk of time and decompress. What did I really think when I got hit in the head that one time at that thing? …or when I fell? …or got sick? The best adventures are when I look back and think: “ugh, that sucked. I’m glad I did it.”

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