On this day

March 28th

Out of sight, out of mind

6 Days Ago

The pile of unread books we have on our bedside tables is often referred to as a graveyard of good intentions. The list of unread books on our Kindles is more of a black hole of fleeting intentions.

~ Ross Andersen, from Stagnant and dull, can digital books ever replace print?

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Digital is great for consumption, but consumption is not the only reason for having a book.

Having the books physically take up space in my environment is a key feature of books! My anti-library—the collection of books I’ve not yet read—serves the important purpose of reminding what I don’t yet know. Also, when I have a spare moment the books’ proximity draws me to them; This enables me to affect my future self (albeit only slightly) by setting in sight things that would improve me through their reading.

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Opportunity with Morgane Michael

March 28, 2022

How do creative endeavors like podcasting and writing a book evolve and create opportunities for growth and connection?

Exploring how passion fuels creativity in podcasting and writing a book.

There is an outcome that is super powerful that the present version of you can’t even conceptualize for the future.

~ Morgane Michael (4:33)

The discussion begins with Morgane sharing her journey of writing a book and starting a podcast, emphasizing how passion and a sense of purpose drive their creative efforts. The conversation highlights how pursuing projects like these involves balancing a full-time teaching career and personal responsibilities while staying true to one’s creative vision. Morgane discusses the interplay between inspiration and discipline, reflecting on the importance of aligning work with personal fulfillment.

Craig and Morgane explore themes of growth and reflection, focusing on how intentional journaling and self-assessment help shape creative endeavors. They touch on the role of habits and the tension between routine and mindfulness. Insights include the importance of creating meaningful content, building connections, and recognizing the long-term impact of seemingly small actions. The conversation also covers Morgane’s vision for future projects and her interest in amplifying voices through conferences and workshops.

Takeaways

Creating work to inspire — Passion and alignment with personal values drive meaningful creative projects.

Balancing habits and mindfulness — Finding harmony between routine and intentionality can fuel creativity.

Adapting processes for sustainability — Recognizing when to slow down or adjust helps maintain long-term energy.

Growth through reflection — Journaling and self-assessment allow for a better understanding of past successes and future directions.

Expanding platforms for others — Amplifying the voices of collaborators and guests brings broader impact and connection.

Learning from setbacks — Challenges can lead to new opportunities and unexpected outcomes.

Exploring diverse formats — Experimenting with different ways to present content enriches the creative process.

Resources

Burnt Out to Fired Up — Morgane’s book focusing on educator wellness and strategies to overcome burnout.

KindSight 101 podcast — Morgane’s podcast dedicated to educator wellness and community building.

Portfolio Career podcast — David Nebinski’s podcast (episode 198) feature Morgane Michael.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Exploration with Panda Ilén

March 28, 2022

Exploration with Panda Ilén

What connections and influences exist between Parkour, bouldering, and theater?

Combining theater and physical disciplines creates new dimensions for expression and skill development.

Happiness, honesty and exploration.

~ Panda Ilén (19:33)

The conversation explores the intersections of Parkour, bouldering, and theater in shaping movement practices and self-expression. Topics include the influence of environment, seasonal changes, and the impact of community versus solitude on training. Panda reflects on how bouldering introduces new ways of thinking and moving, which also informs their approach to Parkour.

Theater emerges as a complementary discipline, with a unique ability to channel movement skills into creative performances. Seasonal challenges, particularly in Nordic winters, and transitions between locations further frame the discussion, shedding light on the importance of adaptability in both practice and life.

Takeaways

Transitioning between locations — A return to community strengthens both Parkour and personal fulfillment.

Winter as an influence — Seasonal conditions shape both the mood and style of outdoor training.

Bouldering insights — Problem-solving and unique movement patterns from bouldering enrich Parkour lines.

Theater’s connection — Performance art brings additional depth and meaning to physical practices.

Filming for memory — Capturing movement on video is more about personal reflection than public showcase.

Movement community — The presence of others can amplify the joy and progression in physical practices.

Environment and creativity — Urban, natural, and built spaces all offer distinct movement opportunities.

Resources

Helsinki Winter Takeover video — A popular winter Parkour video featuring snow-based movement.

Gerlev International Gathering — Event where the host and guest initially met, including Parkour and performance arts.

Panda Ilén @pandajumps

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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A gift

March 28, 2022

I felt like I had a choice, and I had to look and choose. Do I go into nothingness, I give up, I quit, I walk off the cliff ahead of me, I just run off it and scream and that’s it, or do I accept that everything’s been taken away from me, but it was never mine to begin with? We come from dust, and we return to dust. We don’t have anything except what we’re given, and it’s a gift. Life is a gift.

~ Andrew Foster

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Conversation as a spectrum

March 28, 2022

Communication between two people falls on a spectrum, and that spectrum has more than one dimension. In fact, I imagine it has many dimensions.

Information could be flowing predominantly from person A to B, evenly, or in the other direction; this can be imagined as one dimension of the communication. The tension—antagonism, slight repulsion, a neutral first meeting, mild interest, intimate whispers—can be negative or positive; this can be another dimension. Communication can be durable (recorded, written, notes taken, etc.) or ephemeral; that’s another dimension. It can also vary in the dimension from private to public.

It’s interesting to consider how real scenarios could be characterized using those dimensions. Consider: An interrogation involving torture, an interrogation of a subject with their rights observed, a private investigator seeking to solve a case, a journalist interviewing a war criminal, a journalist interviewing a cultural icon, two friends talking while sharing a meal, single-serving sized friends on a plane (hat tip to Chuck Palahniuk), or lovers sharing pillow talk. The scenarios, like life, are endlessly varied.

All of that is a reductionist analysis; how do I simplify the real scenario to find some principles that are durable across scenarios. That’s useful. But I could also turn my analysis around. While having a conversation, I could consider those principles as a way to guide my efforts to create a certain kind of conversation.

Direction of information flow? …should I be talking more or less? Tension? …is there, should there be, more or less? Durability? Privacy? There are certainly more dimensions, and therefore more principles, than those I’ve listed. And the insight gained from understanding every principle could be evaluated in the context—the right-now in each moment’s context—of every conversation.

What would happen if I continuously (as often as is possible in a conversation, but also by reflecting on each conversation and planning for the next), made conscious adjustments? What would happen if I did that over 100, 500, or even 1,000 conversations? Now that’s a good question.

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Complete tranquility

March 28, 2020

People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: You can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: Complete tranquility. And by tranquility I mean a kind of harmony.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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Happiness first

March 28, 2019

Social conditioning may have convinced you that sacrificing your happiness to maintain a certain bank balance, to send timely payments to corporations to which you’re indebted, or to pay for someone else’s needs and expenses is the proper way to live. Perhaps your parents played a role in this conditioning as well, teaching you the importance of being responsible and holding down stable employment.

~ Steve Pavlina from, Happiness First, Then Everything Else

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There’s a lot of value to the idea of, “and now that you are moving, you can steer.” Lots of metaphors here: A ship’s rudder doesn’t work unless the ship is moving; A car cannot turn around unless it is moving; etc. But there’s a vastly bigger picture that, “you can steer,” will never reveal.

It doesn’t matter how fast I’m “moving” or how well I “steer” if I’m on the wrong eff’in continent.

Steve often writes phoofy new-age mumbo jumbo stuff that I can’t even read. Why do I keep reading [you might ask]? Filter bubble. Perspective. Articles like this one which challenge the reader to wipe off the entire board and consider redrawing the plate tectonics.

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Code of conduct, and Principles

March 28, 2018

[We] spent weeks drafting the core principles that would support our classroom. We scribbled them down, and over the years they have become clearer and more concise:

Defining humanity, both masculinity and femininity based on the strength of your relationships and the contributions you make to society.

Developing relational skills with teammates, parents, siblings, teachers and friends and learning to maintain and sustain strong positive friendships.

Developing empathy toward others so that you can be supportive and understanding.

Practicing good sportsmanship before, during, and after practices, games, and events, and in life.

Defining success in life as being relationally successful and having a cause bigger than yourself.

Acting with integrity in every area of your life

Contributing to society by taking it upon yourself to get invollved in actions and projects that make the world better in some way.

Becoming an advocate of justice and an ally with others by speaking up on behalf of others and against injustice.

Refraining from committing acts of injustice, including bullying, harassment, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of hurtful behavior and not accepting or tolerating this kind of behavior in others.

Refraining from violent behavior and learning how to resolve conflict in a postiive and productive manner.

Developing a coherent narrative by making sense of your life experiences, good, bad, and ugly.

~ Joe Ehrmann, InSideOut Coaching pgs 166-7, https://www.librarything.com/work/11172773

And…

COACHES’ CODE OF CONDUCT

The purpose of our coaching is to help boys become men of empathy and integrity who will lead, be responsible, and change the world for good.

Be mindful never to shame a player, but to correct him in an uplifting way. Affirmation!

Believe in every player. Remember, “In youth is where miracles are made.”

Protect our players. Be big enough to build up, not tear down. Our kids are getting attacked from many places that we don’t often see and of which we are not aware.

Remember our job is to put our players in a position where they can develop to their fullest potential through proper teaching and nurturing.

Each player is part of our family, deserves every chance to succeed, and deserves the utmost respect.

Coaches can disagree in meetings but never in front of our players or anyone else outside our family. Disagreements are saved for private meetings.

Our players are student-athletes and we are teacher-coaches. We hold ourselves accountable as teachers of young men and the lessons they need in order ot navigate masculinity and life.

If you do not know, say so and get approprate information. Don’t bluff our kids! They know the difference.

Remember that parents are our parnters. We strive to work with each family in helping their sons succeed. “Every boy is a son to his mother and father.”

Love your players and the other coaches.

No profanity!

Know the difference between shaming and coaching. No screaming, shaming, swearing, or sarcasm.

Don’t be afraid to apologize! We all make mistakes. When mistakes are made publicly, apologize publicly; when mistakes are made personally, apologize personally.

We are nurturing successful people, not just successful athletes.

Treat all opposing coaches and their taems with the honor true competitors deserve.

Respect all referees, officials, and timekeepers. They are imperfect and trying their best just as we are.

Regardless of our wins and losses, we will be successful if we carry out the above items.

Because I am a role model who has the power, position, and platform to make a positive difference in the lives of my players, I commit to this code of conduct. When failing to live up to our standards I will allow for accountabiity and take responsibility for my actions.

~ Joe Ehrmann, InSideOut Coaching pgs 191-3

These are much bigger than my usual pull-quotes. …both in the sense of word-count and in the sense of potential value if they were more widely known.

Ehrmann is writing in the specific context of sports-coaching boys in primary schooling, but one could easily trim out the parts that are specific to sports and still be left with a very useful set of principles, and a well-thought-out code of conduct. If you coach– no actually, scratch that– If you are a human being, I highly recommend you read this book.

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pull-ups pull-ups pull-ups…

March 28, 2016

(Part 27 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

The more I work on this stuff, the more I’m certain I’ll never be done; I’ll finish this challenge, but, “move, exercise” is just an infinitely deep rabbit hole.

The past two weeks, I’ve been working on trying to increase daily numbers. Pull-ups remain the limiting exercise, so it’s a game of how many pull-ups can I do in a day. Last week, every day, I did anywhere from 1 to 4 separate workouts. I did circuits with small pull-up sets to a total of 24 or 25 pull-ups in each workout. (Circuits of pushups, squats, handstands and seated/resting squatted. But that’s all easy stuff.) So the number of pull-ups on each day last week ranges oddly from 24 to 96.

My forearm continues to feel better. It’s now a sort of “remember to be careful about that”, rather than a feeling of impending doom if I do one pull-up incorrectly. I’m continuing to generally push hard with training, but I’ve no qualms about pulling up short if the arm bothers me at all.

I’ll pass 5,000 reps of everything this week!

I’m planning only 2 workouts this week. They will both be the largest number of pull-ups I’ve every attempted in a day. I’m aiming for 120 reps spread into four workouts. This week would still be a slightly “light” week since it’s only 2 out of seven days with workouts. The following week, I’m tentatively thinking of trying two days with 125 pull-ups in each day. I’ve never managed more than about 70 pull-ups in a single workout, so I’m tempted to try to do one big workout to see if I can do 120 pull-ups in something silly like 40 sets of 3.

If I can do 120 reps on workout days, I can still finish this whole challenge in time (but with literally just a few days to spare.) That seems too finely-planned, so I’m hoping to get up to 125 reps on the work days. This is definitely going to be physically challenging to make it by the end of 365 days.

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Do elephants call, “human!”

March 28, 2014

The new research, recently reported in PLOS ONE, builds on previous Oxford University research showing that elephants call ‘bee-ware’ and run away from the sound of angry bees. Whilst the ‘bee’ and ‘human’ rumbling alarm calls might sound similar to our ears there are important differences at low (infrasonic) frequencies that elephants can hear but humans can’t.

~ from, Do elephants call ”human!”?

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Seems pretty logical to me that elephants would have different sounds for alerting to different threats. The big question, for me, is how much of a threat do they perceive humans to be; Do they actually understand how dangerous humans are/can-be?

Update:

And someone emailed me to point out, that yes, elephants can distinguish a lot about humans; from, Elephants recognise human voices.

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RFC for HTTP 700-series errors

March 28, 2013

oh. my. god. https://github.com/joho/7XX-rfc

This is, hands down, the geekiest piece of humor I have ever seen. HT to @dmuth who now owes me a cup of coffee to replace the one I blew out my nose onto my keyboard.

If you, my dear reader, care to do the ‘what the hell?’ deep dive:

  1. What’s an HTTP header?
    (it’s the glue that makes all the interwebs parts work together)
  2. What are the actual HTTP response codes?
    (200 good, 404 bad, 759 – Unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM !)
  3. What’s an RFC?
    (request for comments, i.e. “hey, uh, fellows, maybe we should do it this way…”)
  4. The HyperText Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
    (ie, prior art in RFC humor. Please notice the honest-to-gawd IETF.org URL on that one kids. Yes, the IETF like kinda determines how the intertubes work, and they have absolutely THE ugliest website.)
  5. An obscure HTTP response code joke
    (you do know to read the “alt-texts” on XKCD cartoons, right?)

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