Since I started riding a fixed-gear bicycle, people often ask me why? What’s the appeal? Well, one of the reasons that fixed-gears are so seductive is the direct connection one has to the distance traveled and the control of the motion. No matter the terrain or conditions, your body is always at work negotiating the ride. You are directly connected to your environment. Read more

Watching the studio clips from the making of The Black Album on Jay-Z’s Fade to Black DVD is so inspiring. Watching the energy of the creative process as it unfolds and bears fruit is rarely captured so vividly. It reminds me of watching BMX and skateboard “buddy” videos and how they depict just how much fun it is to be so good at something. Read more

In researching technological mediation (which many of you know has been my most intense intellectual jones over the past few years), I started looking internally a year and a half or so ago. Internally meaning cognitively, thinking that quite a lot of the process I’m trying to figure out is going on inside our heads. I first read about mirror neurons when David Byrne and Daniel Levitin were in Seed Magazine’s “The Seed Salon,” and I immediately knew I’d stumbled across something I couldn’t ignore. Read more

So, while I was in San Diego doing construction and selling cured meats at farmer’s markets (see my previous post), two of my bike friends back in Austin, Sandy Carson and Taj Mihelich, went up to Superdrome Velodrome in Frisco, Texas for some real wall-riding action… on their fixed-gears.

Apparently, the Superdrome is one of the steeper tracks in the country. Below are a few pictures. Check out Taj’s blog for the full story. Read more

I just returned to Austin from San Diego, where I was head-deep in the world of five-gallon buckets, toolbelts, aluminum ladders, and drooling paint cans. Yes, construction. You see, my friend Josh Beagle and his partners Ray and Albert are starting a meat-curing business, and I spent the last several days helping them build out their new warehouse facility. Read more

From my boy paWL (via Alaska, both of the legendary Hangar 18 crew), a positively put, election-related video. To be more specific, watching President-Elect Obama’s acceptance speech inspired Paul and friends to create something in response. They felt compelled to capture the spirit of that night in a way that would begin to explain the import of this election and how personal it was to so many people. At the same time, it asks everyone to look forward, keep the momentum established in the Obama campaign and THINK BIG about our future. Read more

When Daniel Pinchbeck invited me to write something for Reality Sandwich, I sifted thorugh the piles of pieces I was already working on (some of which have been developed on this site) and put this together. It’s sort of an amalgamated excerpt from my book-in-progress. Here’s a polemical taste: Read more

Wow, where does one start? The makers of the world convened in Austin, Texas one weekend in October to make, build, rebuild, battle, and exchange their stuff and their ideas. I even had visitors from two other states join in the fun. Perhaps the best way to approach a summary of Maker Faire’s controlled chaos, of this menagerie of goods and good-doers, of this DIY carnival, of the impossible to sum up is a list with occasional pictures… Read more

Earlier this year, Mark Lewman somehow conned Nike into funding the FREESTYLIN’ Magazine reunion book he’s been wanting to do since FREESTYLIN’ stopped printing pages in the early 90s. Having finally received my copy, I am glad he did. Read more