But I wanted to recommend a few that you may not have heard of, content management systems that just rock. Everyone needs choices, especially in technology.

WordPress

You probably know about this one. It is awesome. I have used it for years and I’ve bought some of the best open source commercial add-ons for it because it’s a mainstay. But I want you to know that even WordPress can make your life difficult when you want to customize a single page or section. It’s great when the plugins work and solve the problem, but sometimes they just don’t and you’ll be building something outside scope that can take you a while. So you have to keep the ROI in check. Good planning will tell you how WordPress will make you happy and make you sad.  WordPress.org

ModX

I hope you know about ModX. Because it’s genius. It takes the good parts of a CMS and adds in a feature called snippets. These are chunks of code such as PHP or Javascript code and insert it into a post easily. You can store these snippets and use when you like with an easy tag added in the page editor. Unlike WordPress, ModX makes this easy and makes it more attractive for some projects.  Get revolution from ModX.com

Concrete5

Concrete5 looks so beautiful. The method they use to log in and break up a page, which allows on-page editing is something you’ll really be able to sell your clients and friends on using. Buy the add ons, support a good open source system and you’ll see how everybody wins. Concrete5.org

Fork

Another extensible open system. The name itself encourages you to open it up, tinker and continue development. Fork-cms.com

SilverStripe

Like a few of the others, this system presents no limits to how you want your site designed. It offers modules and widgets to cleanly extend your site’s capabilities. They also have a vibrate community and some very professional training videos. silverstripe.org

Wolf

Wolf CMS has the php coder in mind. You can publish regular text of course in the CMS editor to make your pages, but the real benefit comes because you can add PHP code, loops and things right in the editor. This is often shunned by other CMS’s, but it is a welcome feature. So you might expect as this is built for coders, it might have an interface that you’d want to avoid. Not so, in fact it offers one of the cleanest admin sites I’ve seen. wolfcms.org

Symphony

I’m not sure this would be my first choice, however Symphony is unique in that it uses XSLT as the templating background. The system is efficient and the way it handles dynamically resizing of images is unique and quite clever. symphony-cms.com

Whichever you go with, make sure you find the sources of support that help you the most. If you want to pay to get an annual support package from the company, that’s one thing. If you’d like to just know there are a few hundred people lurking in that CMS forum, then you can post questions as you build and tweak your next website using the CMS that suits you best.

It’s just that I keep finding myself going back to all the writings and the videos that I’ve looked at over the years. My first computer was an Apple IIc. When my parents brought it home, I just about fainted. I do believe it was the best present they’ve ever shared with us. I think of how expensive it was and I know at the time my dad stretched his money to get one of the better ones from the shop. They got it for all of us and they chose a special combination of components. They put thought and effort and money into it and I deeply thank them and love my mom and dad for that. Back then computers were so new, most people didn’t really have the mindset that it would be obsolete in a few months. That wasn’t a notion. Computers were a new experience and you wanted to squeeze it for all it could do. You weren’t regretting or thinking of your next computer really. I wanted to dig in, figure it out. I saw them walk in with those boxes and I seized on them. I hooked it all up myself with all the confidence in the world at age 10 or whatever it was. My life would never be the same.

Around that time, I read an article in some magazine about Apple and Steve Jobs too. It was probably at the dentist’s office or maybe my parents’ Reader’s Digest. In that article it talked about the beginnings of Apple and while reading suddenly I was transported in that garage with Steve Jobs.  Even though I was still a boy, I was suddenly feeling like that young entrepreneur. For the first time I saw this image in my mind of how new important things were invented and that stamped something onto me permanently.

After a short while, I learned how to use the word processor, I copied little BASIC programs I saw in pamphlets or library books. I played the little physics and history games, I programmed the turtle and played the hell out of the action games. My friend Eddie and I would play at his house and we shared all the games we had, whatever we could copy. I’d save up the $10 or $15 every couple weeks and buy new games. In seventh grade I went on a double-date to the mall. What would have been my first date, I was actually stood up, so while my friend and his date went to the cinema, I bought myself an awesome Karate game with my movie and popcorn money.

In working with my first computer, I became more technical about things over time. I started paying attention. I learned that when things don’t happen as you expect, to go back and see what you did. You look at the links in the chain of events. And making mistakes there’s no mess, just try again. I remember and appreciate the simplicity of the computer that I started off with and how I found it easy to learn these fundamentals that I use now everyday in my life and job. The same way I’d lie in bed going over how to solve a problem in a game, I do to this day just on different sets of challenges. I don’t take these tools for granted and I find myself feeling a bit sorry for others who don’t seem to have the ambition or interest to try new things and look problems right in the eye.

I thought as a little tribute to Steve and his company and their inventions, I would list a few of the many lessons I gained from that little computer my parents gave me. They’ve come a long way since that Apple IIc and so have I.

• Find the ways something works and go to the edge where the line is drawn, note the capabilities and faults
• Something failed? Repeat. If you can explain in words what’s happening, you can solve a problem.
• Look at all the pieces, and assume they will fit together somehow and just get started assembling.
• Try everything just for the fun of it. Luck and discovery are FUN!
• Press all the buttons at all the different times.
• Share something you learned right after with as many people as you can right now!
• Encourage other people to try new things by showing them your enthusiasm
• Experience for experience sake
• If you don’t like something, move on, but don’t expect to be getting away that easily
• Enjoy your obsessive focus, even when others misunderstand
• Get mad, huff and puff, and come back tomorrow, you will be better

I’m grateful for Steve and Steve starting Apple. When I learned about them, I had a new feeling of pride in inventiveness that I didn’t have before. I connected real people with the inventions that I loved. Before me, young men probably would have started their journeys on the stories of Ben Franklin or Edison and many great fictional characters. I truly did grow up with the story of Apple as my adventure began.

I’m almost ashamed to tell you this lest I ruin a good stream of thought, but for a really long time, I really couldn’t stand Apple products. I was mad because they were always getting media attention despite all these mistakes I could see, things that I would never let get by. I wanted to tell people, “No! Stop listening to the propaganda, look at this, why would anyone ever do this?” And I would point out something mundane but that mattered to me. I think of that and I am reminded that we all can embrace our preference and taste and our expression of that makes us unique. And it took me a while but I see in my work that an intense fixation and follow through is the only way certain things will be shaped as they must to meet your approval.

It’s quite nostalgic for me to think of Steve Jobs. Back then and now I can always imagine that when you have a massive undertaking that’s never been done before and is so scary and intimidating, it’s like Steve is speaking to me…”Mike, just take it into the garage. What seems impossible now to even understand, soon enough you’ll control, master and then refine.”

I’m also inspired once again by Steve Jobs.  His genius and his flaws are coming clear and creating a connection for me again. It helps me forgive myself and others for our flaws and just continue. Intensity or abrasiveness doesn’t always mean what you think they mean. And I’m inspired by the real notion of impermanence. It’s one thing to hear from the Dalai Lama or in a book, but Steve was this hero that I didn’t really know I had until he was gone. And then I realized that’s exactly who he always has been. And as a hero, in some ways he was better than I even understood because he tells us we’re going to die and we better not waste our talents. And we better follow what we love. His new message to me is don’t let yourself be satisfied or dissatisfied for too long.

I suppose now Steve’s story is one I can pass onto my son. And just maybe I can forge that nostalgia of mine into a little inspiration for him. And happily, it’s Steve’s computer that enables my son to talk to his grandparents thousands of miles away across the oceans every single day. Our family computers are mainstays and that’s what Steve imagined long ago. He might not have been the only one, but he was one of the few who really pushed and built it into the culture even when he certainly must have had doubts about it. He must have been lost at some point in all the problems and complexity. But Steve and the team at Apple persisted. And then Steve was smart enough to usher in the era by inspiring all kinds of people. A great product still needs the right kind of charismatic leaders to show us the way, make us suddenly see the potential in something new and unfamiliar. The vision had to be planted everywhere. Steve did that.

So to close up this goodbye to Steve Jobs, I just wanted to say the reason I write this is that I believe we should take note that inspiration is as priceless as it is simple. And we need the simple to get through the most challenging times and inspiration to help us embrace the things we don’t completely understand.

Great form here.  As I watched it I thought that any kid wanting to get into flatland these days has a pretty big workload ahead of him. Even so, this sport must continue. You can see by these types of moves just how fun and mesmerizing flatland can be. These kinds of edits can just keep coming. I’m NOT getting tired of them one bit. The second music clip is very dope. Wish there were more of it.

Because of the annoyances embedding converted PDFs has become somewhat popular, taking a PDF, converting it using a 3rd party service and them embedding it using Flash or a unified Javascript / HTML player.

These are somewhat improved over a straight PDF embed and download. But you’ll find some services are better, faster or cheaper than others. And if you’re taking the time to optimize, upload and embed your document, you want it to be available for the future and easily accessed.

Scribd is arguably the most popular doc embed services. They went from a Flash player to a very capable HTML5 player. It works well and renders fast. It also has a great full screen feature. But for downloading and printing, your visitors will have to login to the service which is annoying, jarring and takes them away from your site. It’s not that the reasoning of Scribd isn’t clear, it’s just not the model many of us would like.

In any case, I wanted to keep this short and offer you a few ways to get docs online and embed them to get around the PDF problem. One only hopes these technologies don’t introduce a host of new problems for you.

• Scribd
• Issuu
• docstoc
• doocu
• edocr
• flexpaper project
• yudu
• doxtop
• google docs viewer
• axmag - selfhosted
• youpublish
• pressmo
• flexpaper
• calameo
• flippingbook (page-flip)
• flipbuilder
• pageflip-flap

Since I did pretty well in Joplin last month in the intermediate flatland class, I decided to move up to expert. There’s a lot of talent in that pool, certainly guys worlds better than me, but I have a few stable tricks I can pull off.  I thought I could manage.  I got 19th of 22.  Could have been better. Nervousness kind of got me. And this is the 2nd time the DJ had technical difficulties and my run was silent. But I think what really gets me is I go too slow. In flatland its a personal preference, but at a contest your speed matters. In some cases the speed will help your stability, as well as it looks good to the crowd and probably the judges.

A friend Joe Cicman shot my run.

A few videos and photos came out of the weekend. I know all the riders agree with me that for flatland, there is no better location and surface than the one we had in Indy. It was inside the racetrack of the Indianapolis speedway on the weekend of the 500. The surface for both the comp and just for practicing was massive, clean and flat. Everyone who wanted to ride around had enough space to spread out. We had free Red Bull the whole time.

Since I lost my memory card from the last contest I made it my mission to get another picture with pro flatlander Terry Adams. Look for his qualifying run below on video. See what you can accomplish when the DJ has your back!

Couple photos from my trip.

[Show as slideshow]

If you want to see a couple winners from the expert class, peep Joe Cicman and Mitch Hall below. And lastly, I made it into the Ride BMX magazine website, which was the perfect endcap to an amazing weekend.

I learned quite a few things this trip. It’s a good thing to not try to have expectations for things. Instead just let the situation pull you into the moment to enjoy.  As much as I wanted to score better, that really didn’t matter. And I can see how hard a job it would be to judge this sport, because riding style, the person all create a sort of impression that you must subjectively and objectively rank. I think I maybe did better than a couple people above me, but I’m sure others would have the same feeling about themselves vs my run.  I see it as an opportunity to share what I do, grow, learn and express myself.  The universe really doesn’t care about bicycles, so it’s up to you to create the enjoyment riding ground and find your own reasons why riding is important.

I’m really appreciative of how the weekend went down. It will always be a great memory for me, meeting some new friends, and more conversations with guys I wanted to know better. It’s special being around great and talented people who share your passions, and of course riding 2 days just like I was 16 again.  So happy my friend went with me to share that time, that was a huge thing for me. I’m also lucky we were able to stay with Tim and getting put up at Jake Jackson’s apartment at the last minute.

This video below has less than a thousand views. That’s on the high end for the content it contains as compared to similar. It represents a vast array of human skills applied to bicycle stunt riding in the discipline of flatland. It takes place in a contest format  in Japan where riders meet up, share their skills and technique maybe win a little money. A little showing off, creative expression. As awesome and difficult as flatland is, it’s quite unknown and barely seen. But it takes a lot of energy and persistence to learn and requires a level of commitment most people just don’t have. In short, these people are more skilled and talented and peristent than 99.999% of the rest of the world.

And then we have THIS video below, featured on the front page of youtube giving it has 1.5 MILLION views. What can I say about this video other than it’s absolute crap. You can tell that in about 7 seconds or less.

Here’s where I was encouraged to write about this.  I ran some numbers. If everyone of those viewers of the second video watched it all the way through, that’s 7.5 million minutes spent or 125000 hours, OR 5,208 days, OR if you like, spread out it’s 14 years wasted on that talentless clown in the second youtube video.

It’s really hard to try to make a point about this without getting into the useless argument that one form of entertainment or expression is better than another. So I’m going to just be the alpha male and pounce on this. The bike video is better than the Ray William Johnson video in absolutely every way without question. There’s nothing good about the 2nd video at all. Nothing funny or worth remembering. I’m not enjoying it during the experience and after it’s a big pile of regret. After analysis and discovering the 14 wasted years thing, it’s another nice kick in the balls too.

To compare it to something else, let’s say you need a house built. 20 guys working 8 hour days for three months can handle that easily. At that count you’re looking at 14400 man hours, all together 600 twenty-four hour days.  That’s less than 2 years stretched out.

It doesn’t matter what I say people should do, but the question remains, why does crap get so much attention when we all claim to care about quality? I realize it’s just 2 videos but it’s enough to offer a warning to all of us. We should be seeking out things even in our mindless entertainment that will create an impression that bursts open our imagination. Demand the good stuff and we won’t be as vulnerable to the pull of all the crap begging for our attention. And those people making crap will be less encouraged to do so.

With that out of the way, I’d like to happily report (as a BMX flatland fanatic) that the following 2 videos have 9 million and 1.5 million views. Bravo people. I think the music helped both of these videos a lot though. Without the music, the views would be dramatically different.  That speaks to where content creators can be putting a lot of emphasis on.

I’ve seen a lot of people in my circle quit their sites because they decided that they couldn’t keep up. Even I threw in the towel once. Have you been there?  If you started and then quit a blog, it’s probably because you had an expectation for what  you thought this whole blogging lifestyle was about.  And when your habits caused you to veer further and further from that initial picture your mind drew, the tension built and it was easier to cut the rope than climb up it at that point.

You envisioned you had the time and had tons of ideas to share. (And you saw dollar signs right? Well I admit that I did. ) But when it comes to going through the motions, blogging isn’t all that fun. Staring at the computer screen, editing yourself over and over, finding that your idea was not as funny or original as you thought.  It’s a challenge to create a projection of what you want to share in the form of a written piece.  That’s why micro blogging is suitable for more people. Because you are constrained to a thought instead of a big concept and you are easily forgiven for posting stupid crap. You know at the beginning you won’t be consumed by constructing a tweet, you’ll just fire it off. You never get that feeling of dread that you’ll be trapped by it for hours or days.

It reminds me of those mind tricks you play on yourself to stop procrastinating.  The idea that you don’t need to dwell on committing to a whole hour to your upcoming project. Commit to 5 minutes only. And the mind trick is that your momentum will take you through the next 35 minutes and your procrastiation melts and is reborn into progress. Tweets and micro posts work because you don’t procrastinate on them. They’re so easy it’s sick.

Where am I going with this? Well it’s a message to myself and to you. Don’t get hung up on what you think a blog needs to be or the expectation that your blog needs to be something like popular or constant. Just be. If you have a desire for a site or blog or curated collection, look within and watch the downside of what your attachment to what you think it should be too early.  Better  just build in a direction and see what forms. Like drawing.  Shade a little here, a little there. Let the image emerge instead of kicking yourself because it’s not what was how you hoped.

I’ll get this out of the way quick…YES I ride back brakes. Nobody does anymore hardly but I like having them for all kinds of reasons. Sure they can get in the way and may even provide too much of a crutch, but right now, those don’t outweigh the positives (for me). I can understand the freedom of getting rid of brakes entirely, but I’m not quite done with them yet. I know I’m not alone but I’m in the minority in flatland certainly.

I realize now just how much I’ve been missing out on the lighter modern frames. Lighter is better. That’s one of the things I like about the Waltz. It’s definitely on the lighter side, even of the newer frames. The heavier bike you’re swinging around you’re definitely expending more energy per hour.  I can tell right now I can maneuver this thing in ways that would have been too strenuous on the other bike.  I have been able to recover mishaps easier. It’s nice to feel like I’m working on the combo more than just straining to hold the bike up. A heavy bike is demotivating. Flatland is all about repetition, so there you go.

So how does the new bike work out for me? I dig it BUT there’s room for improvement. Here’s my full photo gallery and then I’ll give a few more thoughts.

[Show as slideshow]

The Flatware Waltz frame designed by Odyssey and Terry Adams is constructed well. I like the tubing. I’ve gotten used to the new setup and geometry in just one session. A couple more I will have tried nearly all the stuff I normally do. It’s all so smooth.

I made the right choice going with the taller and wider Flatware Chase Gouin bars. The shape and design is so right. Wider for me means more leverage in maneuvering. Too narrow and your balance can get thrown off (my opinion). I know my comfort zone and with longer arms, it makes sense.

Problems with my choices?

I’m glad you asked. The Flatware Waltz is right on the edge of being too short for my height.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m keeping it and I’ll enjoy it to the max, but I’d bet adding a half inch to the front and then to the back would work well.  I’m 5’10″ and I’d argue anyone my height with a shoe size 10 or over should get a longer bike.

I’ll be looking at a something between 19 and 19.2 next time. You’re going to want to go with 165 cranks for this setup, unless you like your heels hitting the back pegs. If you like longer cranks, this is gonna be a noticeable thing for you.  I jam up back there and my pegs aren’t even that fat.  That tells me the back or the entire bike is too short (at least for somebody with size 11 shoes. Let me make the only other strong criticism. The dropouts on this thing are done wrong. They are notched for grinding for larger axels but once grinded are way too thinned out. Best to just have the larger axel

I’m giving the Waltz a rating of 7.5 / 10.  If it also came in a longer size like 19.2 with proper dropouts it would easily be a 9.5 / 10

I learned a lot from shopping, making a couple mistakes not knowing what to get. I’m better prepared now. Expensive lessons though.

After reading a lot of bike checks, I knew I wanted to show my full parts sheet and prices in the table below. That way you know what’s up. Plus EVERY time kids see me ride they ALWAYS ask,  “How much was your bike?” Now I can tell them to go here and see how ridiculous we all are for loving this expensive sport. I thought about including links to online stores but I don’t want to recommend one retailer over another (unless somebody wants to give me a gift card kickback for promoting them!) Prices should be pretty similar online everywhere.

A one-of-a-kind synthesis of awesome you always knew would work. The Darth Vader Samurai armor (yoroi) and helmet (kabuto). Too bad there’s only one of these in the whole worl….Wait did I say rare? I mean on the shelves at Toys R Us in Japan. Far from lifesize, looks to be about 8 inches tall. But this kit would look pretty good on the shelf. Right next to your Freddy Krueger Conquistador!