Silent Understanding

We all have that one person whom we have a ‘silent understanding’, where silence isn’t a problem, and the lack of words subconsciously forms a deeper connection while in thought. Some of us may have more than one person, or even a ‘silent group’ perhaps, but some one-on-one silent understanding surpasses them all. There’s just something with that one friend, where words aren’t needed to converse, or explain, and the silence, the expressions, the eyes, and even the subtle nods can deliver 30 minutes of conversation in a fraction of that time. This sort of bond, however, relies heavily on the strength of friendship. The person has to know you, what your actions mean, and how you feel, in order to interpret the silence correctly. They have to know you well enough in order to know what to say, what not to say, or to not even speak at all. A silent understanding takes years to master with one person, but once you’ve got it, breaking the silence no longer becomes a necessity.

This is Alex, hoping that the snowflakes don’t ruin your day.

Newsspot – Defying Gravity With Creativity

Better late then never, they say! For once, I’m gonna believe this statement, seeing how long it’s taken me to get this up, but it was a wait that had to be permitted. I’ve been all over the place today, and something’s been niggling in the back of my head, although I have no idea what that thing is. Today’s post is about that new sport which I’m sad to admit I’ve never heard about myself. It’s a freakishly awesome concept for trampoline and adrenaline junkies such as myself, si I’m hoping to try it out when it hits the UK in around five years time. Yes it really does take that long to get stuff over here. Anyway, I have to say, this sport really jumped out at me, seeing as I’m a parkour and trampoline fan myself, but I haven’t done either in a long, long time. See for yourself, and tell me what you think of this crazy new blend of sport below!

Video: NY Times Videos – Defying Gravity With Creativity

Defying Gravity With Creativity

Mathieu Belanger for The New York Times

Trampoline’s New Frontier: Professional trampolinist Julien Roberge is hoping to make the wall trampoline an extreme sport.

By ERIK OLSEN

Published: January 29, 2012

QUEBEC — One by one, five athletes hurl themselves off a wall beneath the sweeping arches of what once was the St.-Esprit church. Sixteen feet below, they land on a trampoline, snap back toward the wall and send themselves outward again.

The vertigo-inducing activity, performed here at Quebec Circus School, a training program for the circus arts, is known as wall trampoline. Part gymnastics, part parkour, it is a nascent sport that has few participants — they call themselves bouncers — and a rule book that is still being written. But the inventors of wall trampoline, toiling in the chamber of the repurposed church, have big plans for it.

“The ultimate goal is to have wall trampoline be in the X Games,” said Julien Roberge, 23, a computer science student and professional trampolinist.

The hope, he said, is to hold the first competitions in conjunction with skateboarding contests, events brimming with the kind of freestyle energy that Roberge wants to bring to wall trampoline.

“Maybe we could recruit people like that to start training on it,” he said.

To demonstrate, Roberge hurled himself off the top of the wall, executing one and a half flips and a full twist before bouncing off the trampoline below and using the wall to propel himself upward into a double flip with a triple twist. Each bounce brought its own percussive whoomp that echoed through the building.

“Using the wall is very different; you have to be aware at all times of exactly where it is, and your timing has to be perfect,” he said.

Building an extreme sport from scratch is no easy task. First, there are the rules. The fewer the better, Roberge says. He and his fellow bouncers say that traditional trampoline, as practiced in the Summer Olympics, is constrained by specific moves and guidelines. They want to create a competition that is looser and open to innovation.

“In traditional trampoline, it’s almost like you need to be in the army to perform because it’s so strict,” said Oli Lemieux, a professional trampolinist who lives near Montreal. “This is much more freestyle. That’s why I like it.”

But Roberge, who trains with members of Canada’s Olympic trampoline team and is considered one of the country’s top bouncers, acknowledges that there must be an organized way to judge an event. He and his fellow trampolinist Ignacio Adarve have written criteria for judges to use to assign points to moves and tricks. In a typical contest, bouncers will perform a series of 10 consecutive tricks, each following a bounce on the trampoline. The highest marks will go to those who perform the most difficult acrobatics.

“It’s actually very subjective for the judge,” Roberge said. “If you do something that looks cool and people like it, then that’s awesome. You can win with a great new move.”

Roberge proposes having three judges, one each for difficulty, style and height, with the style judge giving out the highest number of points. Roberge says that will encourage innovation.

“We’re just kind of writing the book on wall trampoline now, so we have a lot more creativity and a lot more freedom of movement,” said Geneviève Coutu, 24, a former gymnast from Ottawa who trains at the circus school five days a week.

Anticipating a growing interest in wall trampoline, Quebec Circus School began teaching the discipline three years ago and brought in three coaches. The school’s general director, Yves Neveu, said it was at the forefront of the sport in Canada, a country with a well-established circus culture.

“I believe wall trampoline is important and is something, more and more, you will find almost everywhere,” he said. “There’s a good future for it.”

 

Well, there you have it! The full post can be found here, and I’m looking forward to see what you have to say on this! I don’t know about you guys, but I’m excited! I’m off now for a while myself, but I’ll be back for more quote, photo, tweet, and news business tomorrow morning! Sorry for now posting about my day, too, it’s just been rather dry and complicated lately, so I’ll leave it be for now…

亞歷克斯出！

The Evening Post – Issue 12

You know what? For once in my life, I’ve been right! The day went as well as expected. Well, excluding my headache from screaming children and dehydration, it did. It went as normal till around 17:00 really. You know, work, blog, twitter, foursquare, cook, play with little sister, and there my normal day ended. The abnormal thing that happened today, seeing as it isn’t a regular occurrence, was that Mum decided to take me with her to her fitness classes which she hosts. That, combined with a pounding headache, didn’t do me well, but I got through in the end, and here I am!

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If i had to pick a highlight out of my day, however, I would choose playing with my sister and her friend. The former requested that we would dress up to be different things, so that I could take pictures of us dressed as whatever we chose. Rubie, being the pretty little pink girl she is, dressed up as a princess, to no surprise. Her friend, on the other hand, had dressed as a fake Ezio Auditore from Assassin’s Creed II, although he did try and get as close to the original as possible. And me? Well I decided to go orginal, and totally Alex style with the classis ‘I’m from the future’ look. Complete with glasses, duffle coat, and gloves too! The smaller ones did eventually persuade me to come over to more ancient days, and after some rummaging around, I found my old green cloak from when I was 7-8. I have to admit, I still like it. After a few photos, we decided to call it a day, and removed our totally rad (and by rad, I mean nubbish (noob like)) disguises, and collapsed on the sofa. You see (and I loathe to admit it), I’m not the most active person out there, and although I weigh just 8 stone, and look like a 2D image, my fitness levels aren’t what they should be, and so after taking a few action shots, I was totally zoned out. This did have one good perk though, as I got to catch up on some Wall Street Journalvideos, and New York Times articles.

Image by wsifrancis via Flickr

I have to say, compared to english news, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Times (NYT) totally blow us out the water. The news is relevant, and the channels/categories are suited to what you’re interested in. Take the BBC for example. I like to catch up on UK news occasionally, but most of the times, the news isn’t really what I want to hear, and since most of the news is consolidated into one channel, it isn’t really appealing for me. The WSJ, on the other hand, have quite a few options, from what I’ve seen, and I mostly stick to the 2012 campaign channel, and the News Hub channel. As for newspapers, I just find that the NYT has a better variety and layout than the UK newspapers. Even the app for the NYT easily beats the english. Don’t get me wrong, I’d happily get the Guardian app or The Times app, but it doesn’t have the same sharing, reading, or even layout features. The Guardian app for iPad, on the other hand, is a different story. It has the most beautiful metro interface, and the editions are well laid out, and even compete with the NYT’s simplicity. What I don’t get is why they have a separate app for both devices, and how one is amazing, and the other not-so. But really, what can I say? They’re both two really different papers, as the news in america is drastically different from that of the UK. I just think that we could be doing better.

Newsspot – Into The Heart Of Lightness

So, just before I retire from my computer desk, I thought I’d share this post with you from The New York Times. I found it rather fascinating, and I hope you do too. Here’s a snippet from the story, with a link underneath:

Into the Heart of Lightness

Doug Gates/Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Doug Wheeler’s installation “DW 68 VEN MCASD 11” (1968-2011), in San Diego.

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: January 15, 2012

 

THE artist Doug Wheeler tells two stories, both having to do with light, that go a long way toward explaining why he is so revered by many fellow artists — as a visionary and a relentlessly stubborn perfectionist — and also why his work has been seen by so few American artgoers over the last few decades, particularly those in New York.

The first story takes place at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where several years ago Mr. Wheeler created a complex installation he calls an “infinity environment,” featuring a light-saturated, all-white, rounded room with no corners or sharp angles, rendering viewers unable to fix their eyes on any surface. It invokes an experience of light itself as an almost tactile presence. As Mr. Wheeler continued to tweak the piece, a small boy walked up to the room and hesitated before entering, putting his hands in front of him because his senses told him that the square entrance was a wall, not simply a wall of light flooding his vision.

“I thought, ‘O.K., I can stop worrying so much and being mad about them letting people in too early,’ ” Mr. Wheeler said recently over coffee at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea, where he has just opened his first solo New York gallery show at the age of 72, remaking a cavernous interior into a kind of immaculate white vacuum tube — the city’s first infinity environment.

The rest of the story can be found here: NY Times – Into the Heart of Lightness

再見!

Of Unicorns, Pixies & Bird Calls

Hello audience! Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve just been insanely busy lately and keeping up my online social life has been a nightmare. I hope you’ll forgive me…please? Anyway, since you lot have been so patient I thought I’d reward you with a good post about two main things that’ve been going on since I last posted. Here goes!

Okay, so the Terraria 1.1 update came out the other day. No big deal, right?

Leave. If it’s no big deal then just press that back button and leave this sacred place…now.

Now that the softcore people have left I think I can begin explaining the update and what me and George have been doing with it.

The 1.1 update has heralded many new changes. Many of which are small, and some of which are big. So far, after our expedition, we have come to the conclusion that (even with overpowered ‘Hallowed’ armour) the 4 new bosses are pretty hard to defeat, and it took some skilled planning, bullet stocking, and sheer luck to defeat just one. The hallowed biome is also a big update, and adds a realm in which everything is ‘hallowed’. This, my dear readers, is a lie. The hallowed area is home to some of the most trying enemies in the game, and when I’m talking enemies, I’m talking Unicorns, Pixies, and Gastropods (don’t ask). The big upside is that all non-hallow enemies take double damage inside the hallow, whic makes it the perfect boss-fight setting. This is why, much to George’s dismay, I have transformed the area around our house into a hallowed area with holy water and hallowed brick. Don’t worry, I won’t give away all the details, but instead me and George will record a Let’s Play ‘Overpowered’ video detailing all the 1.1 goodies and yum-yums.

Oh yes, as you can also tell…George is back too…

Which brings me to the second point of the day! Twitter! Or, as the locals are trending it, #newtwitter! Now then, most people probably would disagree with me, but I think the old Twitter was slightly awkward to use for almost constant use, so to me, the new interface and mobile applications (I have Android and iOS) are a welcome update! There are some pictures below detailing the changes, but for the full list, look here: fly.twitter.com

As you can see, the update is well endowed with new features and a new slick interface that makes tweeting and finding the latest trends easier.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but be on standby (like your sky box) for a Photo of the Day!

Bless your face. If you coughed or sneezed during the reading of this article then bless you. Peace off, and may your toes stay clean.

Alex Out.

Follow me on Twitter! @_TheRealAlex_ and/or @Stairhopper