Antispin

As promised in my earlier post, I’ve thrown together a quick video on the subject of ground-state moves. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

I came across this talk by Nigel Marsh about work-life balance and how it’s not dramatic change, upheaval and radical re-thinking, but rather the little things in life that help you achieve your ideal work-life balance.

I shot this a good while back – about a year ago, in fact – in Bali but never got around to putting it up. It’s a beautiful tattoo a friend has – what makes it special is that it is done by using individual dots instead of continuous ink through a machine. It’s much more intricate and generally gorgeous. I think you’ll agree!

I want to introduce folks to a concept I’ve been thrashing out in my head while teaching. I call it ‘ground-state’ moves. The Lead-up While playing around with a bunch of new stuff that I had seen in various videos on YouTube – Rastaxel, PoiBoy, Drex, Alien Jon, G, etc – I came across countless moves that looked awesome and appeared to flow very well and were actually very simple at the core. ...

These are the videos that have caught my eye and my heart this week. They’re awesome in many ways and well worth watching! Anis Mojgani is a truly inspirational spoken word poet. Some of his monologues will bring tears to your eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuydRgVxWg4 This tune has been stuck in my head all weekend and it’s incredibly catchy! You should listen to it.

After ages and ages of playing with my camera, getting some great shots and really enjoying them, I realised that all I did was dump them to my hard drive, edit them and then utterly fail to share any of them! So, in order to remedy that, here are a bunch of cool shots that I took at various stages but have forgotten to reveal, until now It’s great to dig through and find shots you’ve forgotten about! ...

After ages and ages of playing with my camera, getting some great shots and really enjoying them, I realised that all I did was dump them to my hard drive, edit them and then utterly fail to share any of them! So, in order to remedy that, here are a bunch of cool shots that I took at various stages but have forgotten to reveal, until now It’s great to dig through and find shots you’ve forgotten about! ...

I came across thus poster and it’s long overdue. Especially after all the cyclists being killed by lorries. I remember reading about a woman being killed while undertaking a lorry on a left hand corner and the papers and relatives blaming the driver for driving unsafely. The trouble is that people don’t have common sense and cyclists have a habit of being entitled idiots who assume the road revolves around them. ...

I’ve been watching a bunch of TEDTalks of late and I would love to share them with you people!

So I’ve separated my portfolio from my main blog installation in an effort to make it more of a concrete ‘photo blog’ setup instead of trying to shoehorn it in along a regular blog. Speaking of which – here’s a good starting point for photo blog goodness! A quick shot of a street sign on the Strand  

Sean at Gyropulse posted this and it’s frankly amazing! Here’s what he had to say about it: This collaboration is sure to wet your eardrums, and will continue to do so for well over an hour. As described by Dirty South Joe and Flufftronix, Luvstep is the sound of electronic gruv glide inside lazer guided lullabies. It’s a return to innocence through experience, best expressed with headphones or in bedrooms. ...

I got to play with some rather hefty Moonblaze-style heads last week and they were excessively fun! The flames were enormous, the chain rig was pretty sweet and overall it was great fun to play with them. However, I did come across something that is, I think, quite a serious issue in poi head design sometimes. The kevlar was so loosely woven that the heads started to disintegrate as the fire had spread to inside the head. ...

I came across a very interesting article on the Guardian’s site which talks about how LSD can make you come to terms with yourself and is not a purely escapist drug, as many believe. An illuminating read, to be sure! https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/22/lsd-acid-trip-self-knowledge For myself I used to face terrible scenes of torture, rape and other kinds of human cruelty. I do not know why, but I found myself imagining them again and again both in meditation and with drugs. ...

I recently threw together a downtempo-ish compilation of tunes to take to a chilled evening with friends in a most haphazard way, but they **worked** really well together. So I’m going to try suggesting a set of an hour or so of tunes each week that’s worth listening to!Here goes!1. Heyoka – Sonidas de la Cabeza 2. Nanda – Yoda Knowledge 3. Bonobo – Recurring 4. Royksopp – Silver Cruiser 5. ...

As an interesting mind/attitude exercise, for the next week, I plan to note down one awesome thing that I saw, heard or experienced that day. You should do the same. It’ll be interesting to see what tickles you and makes you go “yeah that was great!”. To look over a week’s worth of things that made you smile might reveal things about yourself you might not have otherwise found out! ...

A ferrofluid is a made up of nanoscale ferrous particles suspended in a carrier fluid such as an oil or even water. They behave in a similar fashion to non-Newtonian fluids in the sense that you can do some rather funky stuff with them. Here’s an art installation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me5Zzm2TXh4 I like science!

A couple of days ago, I was reading Mittani’s article on TenTonHammer about the Glorious Internet Spaceship Game, EVE Online. It was concerned with the concept of a crisis of choice as faced by people in a position of limitless possibilities. Essentially, when faced with limitless choices, people are unable to choose anything or choose wisely because the opportunity cost of choosing a path is not choosing any of the others. ...

Thanks to the antics of the questionably sane National Express coach drivers on the 12-hour ride down from Aberdeen – namely putting the air conditioning on ‘cold’ when it was sub zero outside – I now have some horrendous viral infection. It could be bird flu or Ebola or AIDS for all I know! There is no possible chance it’s the Common Cold. That’s too easy. Thanks, National Express. I hope you’re happy. ...