TBT: Mom and I circa 1980 →

Published May 8, 2014  ·  All posts on May 8

There are more shots from this trip coming next in the series.

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Traitors in our midst →

Published May 5, 2014  ·  All posts on May 5  ·  

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

~ C.S. Lewis

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To be and to last →

Published May 3, 2014  ·  All posts on May 3  ·  ,

This entry is part 5 of 72 in the series My Journey
To be and to last

To last? That old lesson about the brightest flame burning the quickest is particularly true in Parkour. What use is a person who lasts five years and has to stop training due to bad knees and a broken ankle? How useful is a body that can’t move pain free due to years of neglect and abuse? The journey of Parkour was never meant to be a brilliant flash of spectacle and show, it was always intended to be a lifelong pursuit of improvement and one that doesn’t need to end once the body begins to show signs of age.

~ Chris “Blane” Rowat from, 50 Ways To Be and To Last in Parkour | Part 1 – Training The Body

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Ignore the show reels. Ignore the spectacular. Those MAY be inspirational to you, but your journey SHOULD be a long series of small, eminently POSSIBLE steps. Go to your first class and try anything; try SOMETHING. Stop when your body has had enough. Repeat. In a few months, you will have grown so much that you will hardly recognize yourself.

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Throwback Thursday: Munchins →

Published May 1, 2014  ·  All posts on May 1

Camping in Champlain New York in 1977.

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FedEx and scotch →

Published April 29, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 29

So it turns out you can get FedEx to deliver scotch

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Progress and change →

Published April 29, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 29  ·  ,

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

~ George Bernard Shaw

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Bruce and Terry →

Published April 25, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 25

“Who are these people? …and what are they doing in our photographs?!”

This one is from a “Highlights of the Caribbean” carousel tray of a 100 slides. I’m guessing the 70s from the outfits.

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Throwback Thursday: Land of Make Believe →

Published April 24, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 24

Mom and I in 1977, taken at The Land of Make-Believe.

…and the Internet knocks another one out of the park. This place we visited when I was six; Right, how could any of us possible remember where it really was. <type type type> “oh! There it was!”

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I shall succeed →

Published April 23, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 23  ·  

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

~ James A. Garfield

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Operable systems →

Published April 21, 2014  ·  All posts on Apr 21

Especially for complex, multi-purpose systems, the gap between how things are supposed to work and how they actually work can be quite large. (Ask any police sergeant about the difference between policing in theory and policing in practice!) A primary function of operators is to bridge this gap in ways that result in better rather than worse outcomes. The capacity of systems to be operated is what allows operators to perform this valuable function, sometimes called technical work.

~ Richard Cook from, «http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/10/making-systems-operable.html»

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More and more I’ve been getting a lot mileage from this idea: Make things easier TO USE, rather than trying to fully automate (i.e., so I don’t have to use them.) One cornerstone to accomplishing that is creating “affordences“.

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