Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions

Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More

This was my second heelflip attempt of the day.
I was pleased I at least got the full rotation
even if I didn't land it.

I am determined to keep skating for as long as possible, though, since my last post in May 2024, about reigniting my kickflip battle at age 54, I've probably been skateboarding less than I had hoped. Still haven't landed that elusive kickflip either.

Strangely I've been wanting to film myself skateboarding again but have been reluctant to do so because it can be a bit of a hassle trying to create interesting content, not to mention a lot of editing, if you want to capture the full journey of learning a trick. I really hate editing.

Looking at my camera equipment the other day I was thinking what is the most minimal setup that I can put together that would make it easy to film skate videos anywhere?

I landed on using my Samsung A13, Android phone, mounted on a GoPro selfie stick that has a tripod base in the handle, and a wireless mic I bought some time back for filming skate content and being able to talk without being near the camera.

In an effort to not tie myself to a desktop computer to do my edit, I downloaded YouTube's free beta video editing app to my Lenovo, Android tablet. Using Google's Quick Share feature, transferring clips from my phone to my tablet is a breeze. I can literally edit anywhere and upload directly to YouTube too.

Below is my first video filmed and edited with this complete setup. The edit is deliberately minimal as I'm still learning the new video editing studio. I may get fancier later on but that's why this video doesn't have my usual intro or outro.

Rather than just film a one and done video, I decided to go for a series of ten episodes, filmed every Second Sunday (my partner works every second Sunday for the entire day so it's a good day to film and edit all in one go). Ten episodes gives me a goal and an end point, where I can stop or start a new series if I choose.

I've set myself the challenge of getting better at Braille Skateboarding's seven tricks that make up Volume One of Skateboarding Made Simple. I've never mastered all these tricks even back in the 90's when all I did was skate. You didn't need to know these for mini ramp skating.

To keep the videos short, and to cut down my edit time, I'm limiting my tries to three to five per trick. I may do a few extra if I land a trick badly, or get close to something I haven't landed but I'm not going to film a persistence in the video. Ideally between videos I will spend time doing the persistence attempts and hopefully have some improvement by the next video.

I hope you found the video interesting, and you watched through to the end. I'm trying to talk more all the way through to hopefully give a more authentic look at my typical skate sessions. Not particularly easy for me, because I'm not really a chatty person at all.

I promise I won't make you watch me sweeping and do warm ups every time. I just hadn't done either by that point, and the camera and mic were all set up ready to go. I wanted to make a start before I lost my enthusiasm for making the video at all.

It may not come across in the video but I did enjoy filming this and I felt good about where I was at with my attempts at each trick. Especially getting my heelflip attempts to fully rotate. I'd say that's the hardest thing out of all these tricks.

I will be posting the entire series of videos here as I film them. If they're a little too basic for you then I understand if you decide not to watch, but I hope you'll check in maybe at episodes five and ten just to see how I'm doing.

The main thing is that I'm skating again, and enjoying riding my board. Hopefully that comes through.

Comments

Occupy Wall Street - Movement for Change of... Something?

I've been kind of following the Occupy Wall Street 'movement' from my position of apathetic denial of what's actually happening in the real world - that you can see if you pull back the curtain or disconnect from the Matrix. In particular I've watched vlogs of the Melbourne, Australia, Occupy Movement through the eyes and camera of You-tuber Sean Beadlam . Sean is quite a hard hitting comedian whose humor is topical, political and often based on the injustices faced by the oppressed. He also focuses on the media and how they'll beat up a story to get their 'angle' rather than provide balanced reporting of the whole story. Although not one of his comedy routines this video below from Occupy Melbourne is a good example of Sean's work with several juxtaposes of the Occupy movement with media and Sean's use of technology. Although Sean isn't the only source of my information, you would think that a guy like him would have...

Pt5. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

Finished: Three Cat Tails Acrylic on Canvas panels. Day five of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one , Part two , Part 3 and Part 4 if you haven't seen them yet. In the final episode of this series I get to paint the black and white layers that I thought I'd be painting on day 4 but delayed in exchange for adding more purple and green shadow. The black and white layers take the artworks through to completion. Then I finish each panel off with a dark blue border around the edge (to cover up the paint marks on the sides). Whilst I do continue to talk about what I'm doing as I paint this episode does contain a few quite moments of just me painting away because there isn't really a lot to say about the white and black layer. However I hope you'll stick with it to the end just the same. The series of artworks are available to buy so if you're interested contact m...

Software Stylus for Tablet Drawing

I own an Android Tablet that has available to it many great drawing applications. The trouble is, drawing on a touchscreen with your finger is like trying to sketch with jumbo crayons. As is trying to draw with most stylus pens which are only a marginal improvement over using your finger. Precision drawing on your average touchscreen seems like wishful thinking. However I've had this idea for a software stylus that acts like an extension of your finger and allows drawing with greater precision. See my rough diagram below. Essentially it's a pointer that follows your finger around the screen. Its angle can be adjusted so that from your vantage point it looks like the tip of your finger is coming to a point. Softnib concept sketch. You simply move the pointer around and the line is drawn from the point of the stylus instead of somewhere under your finger, where you can't see it. Obviously I haven't worked out a...

Who Even Reads This?

W riting this blog is largely both a labor of love and a discipline. Since about 2006 (the blog started in 2004) I have written a minimum of two posts per month. Sometimes I've posted more, particularly in the last 4-5 years, where I've tried to write and post at least one article a week without fail. Unfortunately it's not a niche blog, unless the niche is things that interest me. Which means my blog is either too broad to have regular readers or too niche to have anyone other than my mum reading it. Which she does (hi Mum) as we established back in January of 2014 in the post Ya Mum Reads it... That said, this blog overall regularly gets 6-7k views every month, mostly through people finding various articles through search engines. By far the largest traffic source is 'Other' which is basically unknown sources. I'm willing to bet a large percentage of that is the dead internet. Bots testing my comments to see if they're spamable or Illuminati spammers. Whil...

Pt4. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails Darker purple and green shading added. Day four of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one , Part two and Part 3 if you haven't seen them yet. Yesterday I said that I would begin on adding my black and white final layers today. However after looking at the paintings a few times over night I decided the cats could really use more shadow to give them just a little more three dimensional form. I had a strong feeling that adding purple and green shadows was what the images really needed. Especially the two larger images needed the purple shading on the background behind the cats to connect them with it - since those two particular images actually make more sense if you get the feeling that you're looking at the cats, laying on a blue floor, from above. At this point I pretty certain I'm ready for my final black and white detail layers - which I'll get onto...

Pt3. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails Darker shading and cream fur added. Day three of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one and Part two if you haven't seen them yet. In this video I mix a dark brown colour to add some shadow and stripes to my cats. You'll see how the brown tones the orange down quite a bit to make the colouring of the cats a little more believable. I also mix a light cream colour to fill in the transitions between the orange and white area of the cats fur. You'll see in a later episode more clearly what I mean once I add the white back in. Note how, when I add the cream, it initially goes on too thick and I have to wipe it back with a cloth and water it down to make it more translucent. The perils of mixing colours with white paint! Finally I finish up by adding in a few small details like paw pads and noses. It doesn't actually seem like I did that much today. O...

Pt2. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails background and base colours. Day two and part two of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one if you haven't seen it yet. After painting my initial base painting using the three primary colours, in this episode I demonstrate blocking in my backgrounds and the base colour for the three cats. This episode is a little longer than the last but hopefully is still interesting to watch. All the painting you see is in real time but obviously edited down quite a lot to show the 'highlights' and I explain what I'm doing as I go. I realize these videos aren't as exciting to watch as the more common 'speed painting' style videos but if your the kind of person that likes to watch over the shoulder of a real live artist at work then these might just be up your alley. Continue to Part 3 .

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog