Don’t lead me,
I’ll may not follow
Don’t follow me,
I may not lead
Walk beside me,
Lets try to get our
Ez on mind,
Ez on mind
x2

Ez On Mind
x4

Side by side,
space in between
You got you,
and I got me
We got each other,
respectfully
Stride, stride with me

Don’t lead me,
I may not follow
Don’t follow me,
I may not lead
Walk beside me,
Lets try to get up
Ez on mind,
Ez on mind

Ez on mind…

You gotta have eyes wide

You gotta have the slow stride

Don’t leave me

salmonella dub /j-cut / need for speed

In our latest installment of Aught Lang Syne, NPI is going to look at the best and worst trends in our culture from this decade. John S will tackle movies and TV, while Tim will explain sports and, of course, fashion.

TELEVISION

The Best Trend in Television: The Demise of Laugh Tracks

The slow, steady, not-yet-completed demise of the laugh track is probably the best overall trend of the decade in television. In the 1990s and the early part of the Aughts, nearly every big, successful sitcom was accompanied by a laugh track: Seinfeld, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, Becker, The King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Currently, though, most new sitcoms air without laugh tracks. Even among existing shows, the comedies that are critically praised tend to be canned laughless. The entirety of NBC’s Thursday night lineup—the traditional home of the most popular sitcoms—is laugh track-free. ABC comedies Modern Family, Scrubs, and Cougar Town are also not accompanied by disembodied laughter. None of HBO’s comedies—Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, Extras—have laugh tracks, either.

There are, of course, some holdouts: FOX’s only two non-animated comedies—Brothers and ‘Til Death—do have laugh tracks, but neither has much of an audience. CBS, though, has five sitcoms with laugh tracks (Gary Unmarried, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Accidentally on Purpose, and How I Met Your Mother), and all have some degree of success. In general, though, the trend is certainly waning.

The arguments against the laugh track are obvious. If they aren’t to you, then go read Chuck Klosterman’s essay “‘Ha Ha,’ He Said, ‘Ha Ha.’,” from his latest book, in which he calls the laugh track what it is: The sound of dead people laughing. More important, though, is that the trend away from laugh tracks is part of the trend away from traditional, multi-camera sitcoms, and towards the more original, innovative ways of filming comedy. This isn’t to say that all traditional sitcoms are bad—How I Met Your Mother, for example, is a good show—but that the trend away from laugh tracks represents the breaking of the sitcom mold. The new, original sitcoms that we’ve seen this decade—Curb, Arrested Development, The Office—simply would not work with canned laughter.

The Worst Trend in Television: The Demise of Opening Credits

Where have all the credit sequences gone? I’m not entirely sure who to blame for this one, but it seems that every new drama that airs on TV foregoes a traditional credit sequences for a simple title card. I believe it was 24 who dumped them first, but Lost, Heroes, FlashForward, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and The Mentalist are all current network dramas that have ditched any extended opening sequence.

Now, I get why they do it; it saves time. It made sense for 24 to ditch credits (although they did have a brief “Jack Bauer Voiceover Introduction” during the first season), since each hour of the show covered an hour of “real time.” Each episode had to squeeze as much action into to the allotted time as possible.

What’s so dispiriting, though, is how quickly this trend caught on. Every show realized it could gain slightly more time by eliminating credits. It almost became a way for shows to signal that they had a big story to tell*—it seems that the only shows on TV with credits now are sitcoms and procedurals.

*Correlated with this trend is the trend of doing “previously on” before every episode; this used to be reserved for special two-part episodes, before serialization became the norm. This trend is neither good nor bad.

So what’s so bad about this trend? Well, for one, it now means that the credits extend into the actual show, often pretty much until the first commercial break. Even more upsetting, though, is that opening credits are now a lost art. It was ten years ago, now, that The Sopranos premiered, with an utterly transfixing opening. This credit sequence is over 90 seconds long, but I almost never skip through it on the DVD or DVR. Even intros that aren’t as blindingly cool as The Sopranos’ can be integral to setting the tone of the show. Dexter’s theme, for example, is a playful blend of the mundane and the macabre, just like the show itself.

This trend is also related to network television’s trend of scheduling shows to end at 10:07 or 9:03, instead of the hour; in the current television climate, networks need to squeeze in as much advertising time as possible. Only shows on basic or premium cable can really afford credits now. Luckily, though, the best trend of the next decade is probably going to be the end of networks altogether.

MOVIES

The Best Trend in Movies: The Superfluity of Theaters

We’ll cover this more in-depth later in the month, but it really hasn’t been such a great decade for movies. More important than any creative or artistic trend, then, has been the trend in how people watch movies in the Aughts, namely that movie theaters are now entirely superfluous.

Now, I don’t want to dismiss the sanctity of the theater experience, or importance of your local movie theater to your childhood: Some movies ought to be watched in big groups, with big screens. And having a personal attachment to a local theater is fine.

But come on. First of all, it seems like 95% of all theaters now are owned by Loews—not exactly a local flavor. More importantly, though, no movie theaters, even huge multiplexes, can hold every movie. In the past then, movie distributors have essentially controlled what movies people see, particularly in the more remote parts of the country, which may only have one or two local screens.

By the end of the Aughts, though, pretty much anyone can watch pretty much any movie, more or less as soon as it comes out. The proliferation of Netflix and other online rental companies, as well as the ease with which films can be downloaded, both legally and illegally (not that NPI condones piracy), mean that viewers are no longer beholden to the movie theaters’ decisions on which films to show.

There is, also, the convenience factor. Home watching has a myriad of benefits in this respect: You can watch any time, you can pause at any point, you can rewind if you fall asleep, you don’t have to wear pants, you can watch in bed, etc. DVDs, DVR and OnDemand have also benefited TV, but they haven’t fundamentally altered it like they have with movies: People always watched TV at home.

Of course, movie theaters are still important—few people want to watch Live Free or Die Hard on a 13’’ computer screen. And in the coming decade, standard movie theaters may be as common as drive-thrus are now (Raise your hand if you’re reading this and you’ve ever been to a drive-thru. Or even seen one. That’s what I thought.). But right now, at the end of the decade, we have the best of both worlds. If I want to watch Home Alone 2 right now, I’m probably about six clicks away. But if I want to watch Sherlock Holmes on a big screen (you know, so I can capture the full impact of the action and explosions, the way (Sir) Arthur Conan Doyle intended), then I can go to my local Loews.

The Worst Trend in Movies: The End of Original Plots

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what would happen when movies ran out of plots. I figured that there were only a finite number of stories to tell, and eventually people would just have to stop making movies.

Of course, I was a kid, so I didn’t think about sequels, remakes, and parodies. Sequels, of course, aren’t new, and arguably the greatest movie of all time was a sequel. What’s really been different during the Aughts has been the proliferation of franchises. It seems like every blockbuster is made with the potential of a sequel in mind. Superhero franchises abounded during the decade, but there were also sequels to Transformers, Charlie’s Angels, Shrek (two), Saw (five), Final Destination (three), Bad Boys, The Matrix (two), Pirates of the Caribbean (two), Pitch Black, Austin Powers, Mission: Impossible, etc. And that’s not even counting the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight franchises—since those were based on books—even though those were really one story spread over several films.

It’s not that sequels are inherently bad (I, for one, cannot wait until Paul Blart 2), but that the fact that films are now planned with sequels affects their plots: Oh wait, we can’t wrap up all those loose ends; we’ve gotta save some stuff in case this movie does well at the box office. And the fact that franchises are now how studios make most of their money means that they look for things they can franchise when they release blockbusters. A popular book series? A new toy craze? A Disney ride? You can bet you’ll see some movies based on it.

Sequels themselves wouldn’t be that bad, but they have been accompanied by remakes of old TV shows and old movies—some of which weren’t particularly good or memorable the first time around. When Hollywood does decide to remake something memorable, they generally find a way to alienate its most loyal fans or at least leave people wondering what the point was. Like sequels, remakes are not inherently bad, but more often than not, they are a symptom of a lack of creativity, and not a new look at an old idea.

Hollywood even seems to be making jokes about its own lack of ideas: Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, and Meet the Spartans were all released this decade as “spoofs” of tired genres, only to become a tired genre itself. The first two probably qualify as legitimate, if not exactly groundbreaking, satires, but the last five are more like a loose thread of pop culture cags and catchphrases. These movies, from the depraved minds of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, are to humor what Hitler was to the Jews. Josh Levin of Slate probably put it the best in his review of Meet the Spartans:

This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a “movie” and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization’s decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.

Somehow, these movies, combined with their affiliated sequels of course, have combined for revenues of $1.24 billion (that’s right, billion) during the Aughts. For movies in the Aughts, a lack of ideas often translates to success.

SPORTS

Best Trend in Sports: The Widespread Acceptance of Instant Replay

I suppose it’s the skeptic in me that made picking out a “best trend in sports” a lot harder than picking out a worst; we tend to overlook the things that slowly improve the way we experience life, and in this case, sports.

I really wanted to go with the introduction of the first-down line, but that happened in 1998.* My second choice—the adoption of instant replay in the NFL—occurred before the 1999 season. So we’ve got to go with a bit of a cop-out here and focus on the acceptance of instant replay in the sporting world.

*Can you imagine watching a football game these days without the first-down line AND the Fox Box? The field would look so bare!

Remember when replay was adopted in the NFL? Remember how it was against popular opinion? Remember how when officials ruled that Vinny Testaverde had gotten the ball across the goal line when it was just his helmet, most people were like, “Well, sucks to be a Seahawks fan”?* Remember how most people harrumphed at the idea of reinstituting the late-80s version of replay, how they said that it would just slow down the game and that human error was an important part of sports and that the world was unfair so you should just deal with it? How ridiculous does that all sound now?

*A truth, of course, especially in 1999, but an irrelevant one.

A decade later, the tenor of the debate has shifted dramatically. Now, we argue about how Major League Baseball and FIFA, in their respective neglect toward instant replay, have done their fans a disservice. Far from crying about time delays, we’re debating how to eliminate umpires altogether.

This is how well the Instant Replay Experiment has worked in the NFL. And not to sound too much like a technophile, but this is a very good thing. The people who believe that human error is an important thing in sports should familiarize themselves with the term “necessary evil.” Human error is never a good thing.

—We can’t really condemn Tiger Woods, honey. I mean, every marriage needs a little human error.

—Malpractice suit? Come on, Bill, it was just a little human error—part of medicine, that’s all.

—You know, I felt that way about the recession, too, Abe, but then I realized that Wall Street just had some human error. It happens.

Instant replay doesn’t eliminate human error from sports, but it limits it. And that might be the best thing that’s happened in sports this last decade.

Worst Trend in Sports: Monochrome Uniforms

Now, this is the section where I’m encouraged, if even obliged, to get a little preachy. And I can go so many different ways here: I can attack steroid usage, but that was really a product of earlier times. I can talk about officiating scandal in the NBA, but that’s not really a “trend,” is it? I can go on about how football players are dying from football-related trauma, but that, too, has been happening for decades.

So I’m gonna go with an issue that really strikes at the heart of how I enjoy my American football. I’m gonna go with monochrome uniforms.

I don’t think I should have to defend why monochrome uniforms are a travesty to the aesthetically inclined. I acknowledge that my attention to uniforms is unusual—especially for a male who also cares deeply about the intricacies of sports—but seriously, how can it not infuriate you to see professional football teams don monochrome monstrosities week in and week out? Football is the one sport—again, we’re not counting hockey or soccer here*—where teams can easily integrate multiple colors into a coherent uniform. Perhaps it’s just tradition, but sporting a jersey and pants of complementary but not matching colors works a hell of a lot better on the football field than it does on the baseball diamond or, God help us, the basketball court.

*Less for athletic purposes than for uniform ones. Hockey uniforms are so strangely configured—shorts, really?—as to be irrelevant in uniform discussion. Soccer uniforms place more focus on ads than on team, which, in my book, is enough for soccer to be expelled from “sporthood.”

Most people consider the birth of monochrome uniforms to be 2002, when the Seattle Seahawks, upon moving from the AFC to the NFC, ditched their traditional royal blue and kelly green color scheme for one of navy and “storm” blue, completing the transformation with blue helmets, blue jerseys, blue pants, and blue socks. The Seahawks were indeed the first team in the modern NFL to make a monochrome look the norm; they’ve probably worn their blue jerseys with white pants, but I can’t find any evidence of it on Google.

But I’m going to go further back and, somewhat unfairly, blame the Denver Broncos. In 1997, the Broncos introduced their now famous “Modern” uniforms:* a new, more aggressive logo with a navy jersey, white pants, and thick orange stripe—more like a very slight parabola—along the side. The Broncos themselves did not take the monochrome route until fairly recently, and they still only do it occasionally. But Denver’s template was imitated ad nauseam throughout college football, often by teams with lighter accent colors, such as yellow or silver, that didn’t stand out on white pants, thus leading to a monochrome look at schools such as California, West Virginia, Boise State,** and Washington State. The Denver Broncos thus unwittingly introduced the concept of the monochrome, and the Seattle Seahawks cemented it in professional football.

*This is how they are identified on Madden video games.

**Boise State does not have the “lighter accent color” problem the other schools on this list do. I postulate that the Broncos went monochrome to completely blend into their smurf turf. I’m not kidding.

In the last seven years, over half of the NFL’s teams have sported a monochrome look at least once, and several have done it frequently. The Buffalo Bills also went monochrome in 2002 and have sported the NFL’s worst uniforms ever since. Both the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Baltimore Ravens—younger franchises that had appeared to carve out a distinct niche with more feminine colors—went all-black, as did the New Orleans Saints.* The Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, and Minnesota Vikings all updated their uniforms this decade to more stylish, stripe-infused looks that generally work well, except when they go monochrome. The two teams that should be paying homage to the best uniforms in NFL history—the Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans—are the only two in the league** that have gone monochrome with two different colors, which is especially upsetting since their “normal” uniforms look so much better. Of course, this is a bit of a theme here: Teams with respectable uniforms need to slum for a week or two in the Whitechapel of ugly monochromes. The Rams—whose navy and gold update at the beginning of the decade made for perhaps the best look in football—decided to screw contrast (before bizarrely deciding to wear white pants all the time for the last two years, which in my opinion is almost as bad). The Eagles and Patriots have each dabbled in monochrome, although thankfully only once apiece; the Jets have done it more than they’d like to admit.

*Note how all of these uniforms are worsened even more by the dreaded “leotard effect,” wherein a team’s socks match the color of their pants, making it difficult to tell where the pants end and the socks begin. Since the Jaguars and Ravens have black helmets, as well, their all-black uniforms look especially hideous.

**It’s possible the Dolphins have worn all-orange in addition to all-teal. I seem to remember this happening, but can’t find any proof online, which is probably a good thing.

The nadirs of the Monochrome Movement came when two of the league’s most traditional franchises—and two of its best dressed—each jumped the monochrome shark: the Redskins have done it twice in the last two years, and the Bears took the bait in 2002 and again in 2006.

Pretty much the only teams to resist going monochrome are the ones that can’t because they don’t wear primary colored pants (the Steelers wear yellow pants, the Bucs pewter, etc.). Or maybe these teams are the last ones with a sense of propriety. And that’s why I’m prouder than ever to root for the Giants, who have never lived up to their nickname of “Big Blue” on the field.

FASHION

Best Fashion Trend: Stylish Glasses*

*Throughout this section, “stylish” generally means “black, relatively thick-rimmed.”

Look, I wanted to write about the worst fashion trend, so I had to come up with a best one, too. And I know I’m not qualified to write about fashion: I like T-shirts, jeans, and track jackets. And I don’t even wear glasses.

But there was a time when people who needed glasses were resigned to the fact that they were going to look terrible. Remember She’s All That and how Rachel Leigh Cook was ugly and unwanted and all, and then Freddie Prinze, Jr. took off her glasses and we realized, Wait, Rachel Leigh Cook is actually attractive? That’s how we used to feel about glasses.

And that’s not true anymore. Now, you take a girl (or guy, but I’m gonna stick with girl for my purposes) that looks good without glasses, add stylish glasses, and she looks even better. Why? Because glasses still connote intelligence along with the added element of attainability, which means that attractive girl just transformed into an intelligent attractive girl that’s back in your league.

Who doesn’t love a librarian?

Worst Trend in Fashion: Everything That’s Happened with Hats

And I mean everything.

You have to understand where I’m coming from here: When I was a kid who went to a Catholic school where hats were strongly prohibited,* I couldn’t wait until I got older and started doing things socially—you know, having one of those social lives—so I’d have an outlet for all the hat-wearing I wanted to do.

*Even on dress down days you had to pay extra to wear a hat.**

**Are “dress down days” known nationally? Do kids who went to public school understand the concept? If not, here goes: On a roughly monthly basis, we were allowed to pay money to wear regular clothing. That money went to charity. Forgetting when it was a “dress down day” was a humiliating oversight that lingered for days—the athletic analogue would be airballing a free throw.

But by the time I reached that point in life, nobody wore hats like they used to. I’m not talking about wearing hats backwards, which is fine even if having a forehead like a billboard prevents me from indulging in the movement, or sideways, which nobody ever really thought was cool. I’m talking about two particular changes in how hats were worn. The first is that people no longer pulled hats down so that the apex of the brim was roughly parallel to the ground. Instead, you quit about halfway through putting a hat on, and just left the brim pointing upward on about a 45-degree angle. Everyone I knew at college did this when they wore a hat. But this prevents the hat from performing at least two of its three main functions, which are 1. to block the sun; 2. to block rain; 3. to look cool. In my book, it violates all three.

The second trend is that the people who did pull their brims down to the roughly parallel to the ground area no longer curved the brim at all. They kept it flat, as evidenced by Joba Chamberlain. This not only looks ridiculous—as evidenced by Joba Chamberlain—but it’s very uncomfortable. Flattening the brim applies extra pressure to the front of the head.

And then, this whole style was aggravated by the fact that it became trendy to leave the New Era sticker on top of the brim. Now, for the life of me, I can’t understand who’s looking for that in a hat. The only way I can conceptualize the genesis of this trend is that someone bought a new hat, forgot to take the sticker off, wore it to some social occasion, had his faux pas pointed out by friends hoping to mock him, and then shrugged it off by explaining it was all on purpose—which I admit is a far smarter way to handle the situation than I could have instinctively come up with.*

*And I know this because one day, I bought a new pair of jeans, forgot to take the size sticker off, wore them to school on a dress down day, and had my faux pas pointed out by a friend who used it to mock me for like a week.

There’s no rational reason for leaving the sticker on the hat, just like there’s no rational reason to leave the sticker that repeats over and over again your waist size and length on your jeans. It’s  mindful conformity to an arbitrary standard of what is cool right now that makes no statement whatsoever about fashion, culture, or society. And it’s moronic.

All I want is to wear a hat like a normal human being. But first, I need normal human beings to start wearing a hat like I do.

The Second-Best and Second-Worst Trend in Fashion: The Rise of the Ironic/Culturally Allusive T-shirt

I love wearing T-shirts that I find funny, but there are few things that upset me more than someone else wearing a T-shirt that I know they think is funny but which actually isn’t funny.

MISCELLANEOUS

Worst Miscellaneous Trend: The Decline of American Gum

There was a time when someone asking me if I wanted a piece of gum could make my day. Gum—yet another prohibited substance of a Catholic schoolboy’s upbringing—was a way of tasting a candy-like substance without all of the negative health benefits of actually digesting candy. And even as I matured from Fruit Stripe and Bubble Tape to Big League Chew and Bubble Yum to Bubblicious and finally Doublemint, I enjoyed gum for both its taste and its being an outlet for my nervous energy. It does, after all, taste better than a toothpick.

Over the course of the Aughts, though, the quality of gum in this country plummeted. Traditional brands like Doublemint and Juicyfruit and Big Red were no longer good enough; gum had to do something else besides taste good and be an outlet for nervous energy. It had to give you alarmingly fresh breath or whiten your teeth or, according to most gum advertising campaigns, have some sort of sex appeal. This has led to gum like Dentyne Ice and Orbit and Trident White and Stride and Eclipse and 5; in other words, this has led to gum that appears to care much more about nifty packaging* than how it actually tastes; in fewer words, this has led to gum that sucks. Have you ever had a piece of Orbit and enjoyed the experience? For how long? Five seconds? The best thing about Orbit is that it loses its flavor almost immediately; the worst thing is that it has an aftertaste with more endurance than Messalina.

*Seriously, Cobalt? Cobalt is an element! It’s on the periodic table. How can it be a flavor of gum? And a good one at that?**

**Other flavors of 5 include Elixir, Solstice, Zing, Flare, and Rain. 5’s policy on nomenclature is apparently to use common nouns, basic interjections or meteorological events.

Doublemint? That’s a gum you could take some pride in. You know what flavor Doublemint comes in? It doesn’t even name one. It doesn’t care if it doesn’t whiten my teeth or only freshens my breath a moderate amount or rips out my molar fillings; it only cares about tasting good for more than 15 seconds.

What is gait? (In my own words, just like being asked by a teacher to define a word …), gait is the way how your legs/feet move when walking or running.

So yes we also need to know what is our gait to get the proper running shoes.  Again, gait can be measure in most running, or sport shops that sell running shoes.  But then, you are in the woop far away land of the bush and you couldn’t be bothered to go to the city just to have your gait checked by the machine and video but do not intend to buy a new running shoes yet.  To save you from travelling, and or gas, or effort to go ask the running shop and give you an idea what your running gait is, follow this steps:

Get a worn out running shoe(s), the most worn out it is, the better. Simple.  There are two steps in checking.
Put the shoe on top of a table, heel facing you at eye level and picking it up and looking at the sole.

Overpronation – When shoes tend to lean inwards.  Pick the shoe up and look at the sole, if the sole is worn out on both inside the heel and at the side of your pinky toe.  Best shoe recommended is Stability shoes.

Neutral – Shoe is worn out evenly all throughout the sole.  Pick the shoe and examine that the sole is worn out on all of the sole surface.  Best shoe recommended is Neutral cushioning shoes.  This is me.

Underpronation/Supination – When the shoe tend to lean sideways outward.  Pick the shoe and side of the hill outside is worn out.  Neutral Cushioning shoes.

Best explanation so far from the net I have read is this that explains how does the gait mecahnism of your foot affect your running or walking read here.

So the running shop is right, I need to wear a neutral running shoes. However, I still need to go to a podiatrist and check do I need an orthotics? I hope not!

Did you know that? The ideal landing position is slightly toward the outside edge of your foot, just behind your little toe. Your foot would then naturally roll slightly inward while pushing off over your big toe. The slight inward roll of your foot is called pronation and provides some cushioning during the running stride. A small amount of pronation is normal and desirable, but excessive pronation can also be the cause of injury and stride inefficiencies. While motion control shoes will temporarily solve the problem, it is like putting a band aid on a cut that will never heal. It solves the immediate problem but it not a long term cure.

If you pronate  severely it is suggested that you should consult with a physical therapist to find out of there are alternatives  to motion control shoes in your specific case.

Found another fix if you are prone to Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome! Or you have ITBS or you had ITBS and you ought to know and should not come back.  So we’ve done the standard, phsyio, rest, ice, compression, massage, cross training, foam rollers and now…drum roll please …tada! Run properly with the correct strides.

The flaw stride presented are common stride that causes ITBS.

Yes so I need to correct my stride.

Flaw in my stride number 1
One hip drops when opposite foot is on ground
Stride Fix
Increase step width. Practice running along a straight line, making sure your feet land evenly on either side of it.

Flaw in my stride number 2
Thigh internally rotates during ground contact
Stride Fix
Actively engage the muscles of the buttock and the outside of the hip while your foot is in contact with the ground.

Jaki Byard foi um dos pianistas mais criativos no jazz. Tinha total domínio do piano e era capaz de tocar em qualquer estilo. Prova disso é esse fantástico disco gravado em 1960 pelo selo Candid, onde Byard explora diversos estilos, do antigo stride ao experimental tocando nove faixas em piano solo, todas composições suas. Este foi o primeiro trabalho solo do pianista que ficou famoso ao acompanhar o grupo de Charles Mingus e de participar de gravações memoráveis de Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

O disco é uma lição de piano e é difícil destacar uma faixa já que o disco é brilhante. Particularmente gosto da primeira faixa “Journey/Hollis Stomp/Milan to Lyon” que combina os estilos mais antigos do jazz no piano e é dividida em três momentos. “Pete and Thomas (Tribute to the Ticklers) lembra em alguns momentos o piano de Fats Waller e é outra ótima faixa. E o bom e velho blues, presente na faixa “Blues for Smoke”.

Apesar de não ser considerado um dos titãs no piano, acho que Byard ao lado de Bobby Timmons e Sonny Clark são pianistas geniais por sua ousadia e criatividade e não somente pela destreza no instrumento. Tenho certeza que este disco comprova isso.

1 – Journey/Hollis Stomp/Milan to Lyon
2 – Aluminium Baby
3 – Pete and Thomas (Tribute to the Ticklers)
4 – Spanish Tinge No.1
5 – Flight of the Fly
6 – Blues for Smoke
7 – Jaki’s Blues Next
8 – Diane’s Melody
9 – One, Two, Five

Jaki Byard – piano solo

(Jaki Byard não gravou muito como líder e é bem difícil achar seus discos. Como líder, um outro ótimo disco é “Jaki Byard Experience” que conta com Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Na mesma linha temos o “Rip, Rig and Panic” liderado pelo Kirk e com Byard no piano. Como acompanhante no grupo de Mingus, destaco “Black Saint and the Sinner Lady”)

I wanted to start with the trite phrase, “There’s nothing more frustrating than…” but it wouldn’t end with the truth.  The truth is sports injuries are frustrating.  More frustrating I think is injuring yourself doing something menial like getting up from the floor after picking up lego.  You know, those amazing building blocks that manage to spread themselves the entire length and breadth of what ever room they’re played in!

I rad a quick 5 km yesterday and was proud of some of the sprinting I was doing along the way.  I worked on feeling the movement of extending my kick and keeping my arms relaxed but working with my stride.  I was concentrating on them and the rest of my joints during the run.  I wasn’t expecting to have knee troubles later in the day.  Learn to expect the unexpected.

When we run, we ignore pain.  It is the only way to sustain the run.  There are aches and strains as we stretch.  There are groans in our bones as we begin to set the pace.  Our muscles resist with a sigh as we speed up and demand more.  The lungs respond in kind to deliver the oxygen needed.  We can stop the pain if we stop running but we don’t.  We run.  So, if we get a pain, we ignore it.  We alter our pace, we change our gait.

Perhaps, I knew the faster pace was going to have repercussions to my joints.  Perhaps, I was thinking of the concrete under my feet coming just a little too hard against my bones.  Perhaps, I was thinking of my friend who separated his intercostal muscle 5 minutes into a half marathon and had to be carried off the course by his wife and two small kids.  He had been suffering from a “bad back” for months of running and hadn’t complained enough to someone who could help, his doctor!

Strange pains happen for a reason.  I had a strange pain getting up from cleaning the lego last night.  I could barely walk by the time I was home putting kids to be and icing was the wrong tack.  I think before I go too much further I am going to have to commit to seeing my doctor about it.  Knees don’t get better on their own and I am not likely to give up running anytime soon!

My very first post! I guess it is only fitting to describe how I got into running. My addiction to running all started back on the playground of Woodglen Elementary school in suburban New York… where all true passions blossom.

You should probably know. I come from a long lineage of tall women. I am currently 5′10″ my mom is 5′9″ as are most of the women in my large Irish catholic family are.. aunts, cousins, etc. (This excludes my twin sister Carly, who is around 5′2″.) As you can imagine I was always the tallest in my class out of the girls and boys. I had long lanky legs, and whenever we played manhunt at recess or ran the mile for the state required physical fitness test… I always was out in front.. simply because of my long stride.

A good friend Lindsay nick-named me “Strider” (she had an extensive vocabulary for an 8 year old) and it stuck. My mom put my in different running clubs around the county until I was old enough to run for the Middle School Cross-Country and track teams. Then, eventually high school.

With each practice, each run, each race, each mile… my love and obsession with running grew stronger. I became very close with a core group of runners and my coaches. I’ve learned to use running as a stress relief, my own personal therapy time. It has created a relationship with my mom, a life long runner as well, that people can begin to imagine.

Now as I squeeze into the packed corrals in Central Park or Boston, I am far from the stand-out long legged 8 year old on the playground. My name isn’t in the papers and I’m not standing on any podiums. I’ve learned to love running for myself.

And that’s where I am today. Taking it one mile or one stride at a time. I guess I owe Lindsay a big thanks for the nick-name.

-Strider

At se uden at kigge… Hvordan kan man det?
Det er meget enkelt – forestil hvor tonen ligger på klaviaturet. Du har spillet den rigtig mange gange – det skal nok lykkes for dig endnu en gang – men denne gang prøv at lade vær med at kigge.

Lav et lille eksperiment med din venstrehånds bas linje.  Se de for dig – men uden at kigge. Gå videre – bliv ved med at se bas tonerne – og spil melodi med indlevelse i din højre hånd.

Er det lykkedes. Godt. Lad være med overreagere – its business  as usual, du kunne det jo i forvejen. Bare spil videre – din tro på at det lykkes igen er nu blevet styrket lidt – både hvad det angår andre musiknumre, og andre vigtige områder i livet

Prøv at kanalisere hele din sjæls kærlighed og følelser gennem begge dine hænder. Fremfor at føle at akkompagnementet er sjælløs – et rigtigt venstrehånds arbejde Mærk varmen som strømmer gennem dine arme og hænder direkte på tangenterne. Hvordan føles det – godt og dejligt? Kan du mærke noget? Prøv igen en anden gang.

Det kan hjælpe at sænke tempoet ned til absolut minimum. Og så lad det blive der – den må ikke stige gennem øvelsen, ellers kan hele idéen med at give plads til følelser risikere at gå tabt. Følelserne skal have plads – de må ikke jages igennem. Du kan så eksperimentere med at sættes tempoet langsomt op i takt med at du bliver fortrolig med denne kanaliserings-øvelse.

Stride piano er en stil hvor venstrehånds akkompagnement består skiftevis af bas og akkorder. Dvs. en umpa-umpa stil, hvor man f.eks. spiller grundtone-akkord-kvint-akkord. Målet er at få skiftet mellem bastoner og akkorder foregå så præcist og letspillet som muligt – så opmærksomheden og fokuseringen sker på højrehånds melodi og evt. ekstra harmonisering. Det kræver øvelse at oparbejde et godt stride venstrehånd.

Øvelserne består i at spille venstrehåndsdelen for sig – og lade højrehånden ligge på klaviaturen i en position. Opmærksomheden og fokuseringen skal langsomt skifte fra venstre til højrehånd indtil man kan spille med venstrehånden uden at kigge. Processen er langsommelig og kræver daglig øvelse for at nå gode resultater.

I øvelserne indgår opmærksomhed rettet skiftevis på:
- afslappede skuldre
- præcise fingeranslag ladet med energi – og ikke bare landet svagt på tangenterne
- åndedrættet først kontrolleret – så mere naturlig
- perfekt håndposition – let bøjede, elastiske og elegante håndled og fingre
- smil og positiv skulderklap ved tegn for fremskridt – for positiv tilbagekobling

Man kan ekspreimentere med at spille bastoner lige fra staccato til mere legato – vær opmærksom på at selve rytmikken ikke skrider.

Akkorder (septakkorder) kan variere fra grundformen til 1,2 eller 3 omvending.

Ved at forøge afstanden mellem bas og akkord kan man øge effekten af forskellige instrumenter, dvs. kontrabaslignende bas plus klaver akkompagnement. F.eks bas i kontraoktav og store oktav, akkorder i lille og 1.oktav eller i 1. og 2. oktav – alt efter musiksmag.

Til sidst lidt om fingersætning til stride. Prøv kun at have 1 position til dine bastoner, dvs.  spil I, III og V med forholdsvis 4-rde, 2-den og tommelfinger.  Er det nemmere end at have 3 forskellige positioner og spille I, III og V med den samme finger?

Walk your tail off for the animals at the 9th annual Stride for Strays walkathon! Enjoy prizes, a Halloween costume contest (and other contests), demonstrations and a fun day in the park with your dog while raising money to help ACT end pet overpopulation in Tampa Bay.

Stride for Strays
Saturday, October 31, 2009
9 am – 12 pm
Al Lopez Park, Tampa

Register online by October 30 to be eligible for prizes. Create an online fundraising page to make it easy for your friends and family to contribute.

Form a team and raise even more money for the animals!

Lately I have been doing training around the Microsoft prescribed threat modeling practice.  Today, in providing such a training, I realised the majority of my work has been focused around “what” the components are, but not as much about -how- to actually do a threat model.

To that end, I hereby offer some more pragmatic tips around the actual practice of threat modeling.

-

Not all Entites are Created Equal

In the world of threat modeling we like to identify and quantify “things”. These things range from, assets, actors, data sources, data flows, to processes and roles.  The purpose of knowing what types of entities these things represent is simple; Every entity represents and inherits different types of risk. Additionally, How and why entities talk to other entities represents risk.

In order to document entities and their relationships in a given context, Microsoft prescribes the usage of Data Flow Documents (DFD).  These DFDs are only a small handful of entity types that they’ve found describe the various “things’ inside of their systems.  Specifically they include; External Entities, Process, Data Store and Data flow.  A custom item to DFD is the red dotted line which represents where data is sent from one trust location to the next.

A simple data flow might look as follows:

Given the above, you can see how a user requests a login, the servlet passes the request to a login process, the login process authenticates to the database, and then flows backwards to the user who requested to login.  So far, this should be pretty straight forward.  But you might be wondering, okay after I created this how do I figure out what vulnerabilities I need to mitigate?  This is where the rubber hits the road.  Or, in other words, where the design hits STRIDE

What it Feels like

STRIDE is a classification system that Microsoft uses to identify risk types.  It stands for, Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Escalation of privilege.  By default, by simply BEING one of the aforementioned entity types, you inherit risk. For instance, by simply being an external entity, you inherit the risk of being spoofed and needed to be proven (repudiation) as that item.  On the contrary, data that is in transit (data flow) might be tampered with, read by someone who shouldn’t, or may be denied access to even work.

In Oct 2007 Microsoft released a diagram that better shows how that might look:

Keeping your Balance

• Using the STRIDE element diagram buys you some immediate traction on how to start looking at a DFD and making some informed decisions.
• Risks will further vary by understanding the actual type of element of each element, that is; a process which is a .dll will have different risks then one that is a windows service. Both can be spoofed, but the way in which spoofing could happen is different.
• The chart above was designed for Microsoft and it’s needs.  Build one for yourself to help YOU understand YOUR problems.
• The more experience your team has in security the better you will understand the various risks and threats to each element by it’s type.

* DFD image is borrowed from OWASP (http://www.owasp.org/index.php/File:Data_flow2.jpg)
* STRIDE image is borrowed from SDL Blog Article (http://blogs.msdn.com/sdl/archive/2007/10/29/the-stride-per-element-chart.aspx)

Walkabout. A shuffler never quite hits their stride.

His stride was graceful and intentional, taking in every sound and every sight that presented itself before him. The forest was thick and the air crisp from a torrential downpour the night before, and as he stepped lightly through scattered leaves and tall trees He couldn’t help but hear a soft whisper from His spirit that something very important and very special would happen today. And so, in the wetness of the morning and with peculiar expectancy, He journeyed forward.

The sound of rushing waters drifted past him and brought his attention to a nearby river. It was just in the distance and through the trees, difficult to see through the thick foliage that dominated the forest. It was unusually high and dangerously swift after the unusual amounts of rain, and the sky was overcast, causing a blue haze to form over the scene.

He had stopped when he heard the river and rested his hand on a thick tree beside him. As his skin met the bark, He closed his eyes and soaked himself in the moment, taking in and celebrating the peace and calm that had blanketed itself over the forest. In the stillness of the moment, the Spirit spoke clearly and directly, and He became very aware that something was waiting for him just ahead. He sighed deeply, one that leaves the body feeling refreshed and complete, and stepped forward.

The river was narrow and the bank shallow, the same one on which the old boat had drifted so peacefully and the same that had thrown it away so casually. He noticed how beautiful it was, the way the trees hung over the water on both sides and how their branches occasionally met at some points to form a leafy canopy over the water, and started his walk downriver. The water was deep, and because of the storms and rain it had risen to be flush with the river bank. Although he would have liked to have waded in the water, He resigned himself to walking beside it, and found much solace in the safety of the solid earth on which he found himself. As the river became increasingly violent he was made even more thankful, and these were the thoughts ruminating in His mind when He looked up and noticed the boat.

During storms, fragile branches of the old trees that lined both sides of the river would break free and fall swiftly into the river. They collected themselves over time, and so during rough waters the boat drifted too closely to the bank and had gotten caught in them. As days, weeks, and even years passed, and as the boat struggled to free itself, the branches and river worked together to ensure that it was unable to break through. The situation was, as far the boat was concerned, hopeless, and as He stepped closer there began forming in Him a very real compassion, the kind that starts deep inside and then explodes outward in a flurry of emotion and hope.

Before continuing on, He kneeled to the ground and removed his shoes. After carefully rolling his pant legs up above his ankles, He straightened up and walked over to the struggling vessel. As he approached and got nearer, the clouds above broke slightly, and for a brief instant light streamed through the trees and fell on the gashes and water and splinters and brokenness that now characterized the boat.

He kneeled once again, his knees now in the water, and ran his hand over a particularly large gash on the side of the boat. Although it did not penetrate completely, it was still a substantial wound and, as his hand felt the chipped and faded white paint and splintered wood, a sadness enveloped him. He could see the boat had been here for a while now, and He knew the struggle that must have ensued before it found its resting place.

He looked up and saw the bend in the river, the rushing of the water, and the swaying of the tall trees, and then looked down again at the branches that had captured the vessel. As the wind picked up slightly and the clouds once again overtook the skies, a tear escaped him and landed on another splintered place in the wood. He ran his hands over the craft one more time before carefully removing the branches from around and under His prize, and as he did so it began to move and struggle with the rushing of the river. As the old branches were swept away by rushing water, the skies began opening up again, and the wind picked up once more. The light from the sun flooded the boat and the branches and the course ahead and the tall trees began to sway and sing with the wind that blew through them.

The broken vessel had been freed and was carrying its new Passenger gracefully down the river and under those tall trees.

As the light from blue skies and bright sun rested peacefully over them both, He looked up and smiled. Sitting on a worn bench in a tattered boat, surrounded by scars and reminders of true suffering, He found beauty and purpose and was at home. The Passenger and His vessel rounded the bend in the river and continued downstream amidst trees and a light breeze with a very real presence of hope trailing behind in streams of pink and orange. Although the boat had changed, and even though it would never be the same, rough waters and felled branches had preserved it for a moment of true identity, when the Passenger of true suffering could recognize Himself and then set it free to be the thing it was meant to be.

J.S.

Diplomatic world and New York itself are abuzz this week as UN General Assembly and demonstrators convene in city… From VOA. Full story

This site may contain information about: populations cities. The blog is also related to: cities city.

Imagine if you will, if there was one arcade left in the entire universe. Literally, nowhere to go to play the classics. NO ARCADE. Nowhere to go where you randomly play with strangers and meet new gamers. The giddy feeling you get after you put in your quarters..lights flash..8-bit noises and the smack of buttons on palms – gone. Nowhere to go to show your epic skills and nobody to have tournaments against.

BAD THOUGHT. EVIL THOUGHT!

Unfortunately Nashville’s arcades have dwindled.. and one extraordinary arcade remains and gosh darn it, I want it to remain in business.

{Look at it’s glory!}

So help us save it!!

It’s easy, just go to Save the Arcades, register, play Zapataur, and donate your points to Game Galaxy. For more information just go to Game Galaxy Arcade. The contest ends early October so get to playing. You can donate as many times as you want. =)

They probably should have given MvC2 a proper cleaning prior to the shoot

As a part of Stride Gum’s campaign to “Save the Arcades” they are bringing some celebrities on board to help out with the cause and recently they held an event at the Video West Arcade in Glendale, CA with none other than Zachary Quinto of Heroes (Sylar) and the recently released Star Trek(young Spock) fame. Zach played some games and posed with fans for the event and he was even sporting a cool “Save the Arcades” T-Shirt. I think that this is a great way to help push the promotion and no matter how you view Stride’s promotion, either as a boon or a gimmick, it’s great to see them pulling out some star power to help promote the cause we are all behind.

More pics can be found at TrekMovie.com

[Discuss on the Forums]

8:14 AM
8/19/09

My heart’s, my heart’s like a kick drum. Ba bum-bum-bum-bum-bump. I’m exhausted, sore. As the strange army guy we worked with on Monday would say, emotionally starving. Or was it spiritually? Whatever.

I hate it when people think they know you upon meeting you. This man comes up to Brendan, Skylar, James and I at Assembly of God and introduces himself, tells us he was/is a drill sergeant at some military training base. He’s going back to Iraq next month. Now, that’s all well and good and interesting until he asks us what we’re doing after high school. So we tell him, and then he begins rambling about the army and how after an hour talking to his students/trainees/maggots/whatever he can see right through them.

Yes, great. So what do you see in me, Mr. Omniscient? Who exactly do you think you are, you cocky bastard?

Brendan asks him the same thing, albeit much more politely.

“So what do you know about me?”

He doesn’t break stride in informing Brendan that he believes Brendan to be an upstanding guy and dedicated to his community.

Well, obviously, moron. He’s only tired-looking, dirty, and at the volunteer base, sun-tanned and sweaty. However, one might take him for a demonic acid addict with a penchant for axe murdering.

Let’s just say I wasn’t so impressed with Military’s people-reading skills. He started speaking to us– four kids– about God and the military next. About how war is necessary, and if God has a strong-arm, the United States is it.

I can understand and respect the guy’s loyalty, but God is the only one who can judge who deserves to die and who doesn’t. And as Brendan very delicately pointed out, it seems like believing that is like serving two gods.

The Commander in Chief isn’t holy, sorry, buddy.

…….

Now I’m on to another thought process. Just kind of floating along, here. I had to go make the coffee and put my mom’s lunch in the fridge in the back room and now I’m wondering when Brendan will get here, so I’m a little distracted.

I’m so sore. I don’t want to have to walk from the bank to the relocated base at the Moose. I’m all bruised up and scratched. It’s a satisfied battered, but I feel like the hammer I smashed repeatedly into my hand yesterday hit everywhere else, too. And now Brendan’s here. Time to start another day.

Life in Full Stride Copyright 2009 Bryan Moore

It all comes down to pushing a single button, but when you press it makes all the difference.  I usually walk around the city trying to find things as they happen but every so often I will find a scene  that is just missing some thing.  I set up my shot and all the lines and movement in the picture is perfect  but I just wait there waiting for something to make the shot.  it could be as simple as the wind blowing a flag just right or I may sit waiting for the perfect person for the scene.

Some times I don’t know what I am waiting for I just stand there watching the view finder, with my finger on the release.  Shooting film I only take the picture  when every thing lines up, and it what I consider a majority of the art of photography is just knowing the right time to click that one great frame.   This shot was done at Union Square station, And is one of my favorite shots that I have done recently.   I like how the frame is broken thirds both vertically and horizontally, creating a sort of tic-tac-toe board.  Each of the spaces filled with different patterns  and actions.  This  all comes together with a man caught mid stride  in the center of the photo.  This guy  was just what I was waiting for in this scene not only was the rest of the hall clear on his side but he has a great stride and is dressed perfectly  to work with the  powerful lines and patterns of the shot.

I waited about 25 mins for  this shot  as people peered over my sholdertrying to see what I could possablying be taking a picture of.  in the end the wait was worth it but the longest I have ever waited for a shot was a little over an hour.  As it usally  is I had seen something happen and I set up and waited for it to happen again  but  it never did it again just the way I want.  But some shots you do them just for the thrill of the hunt, just waiting for the perfect moment to press a a single button.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

When it comes to saving arcade companies across the US, I never would have thought that a gum company would be spearheading an effort to save them. So I am quite surprised and pleased to see this effort that STRIDE gum is taking to save one of four arcades by running a contest where you can play an online game they are hosting and contribute your score to an overall tally that is tracked for each of the four arcade companies. You pick the arcade you want to support and your score is added to the tally. I have to say that in this age of big business bailouts it’s great to see one business coming to the aide of smaller businesses like this (especially where it doesn’t require taxpayer dollars to accomplish).

Two of the arcades that are on the list are ones we have featured here on Arcade Heroes in the past (ArcadeUFO and Game Galaxy) and I am surprised to see them on the list as struggling and I hope that all of the arcades on the list will weather the storm of the tough economy whether they win this Stride contest or not. At the time of this writing ArcadeUFO (which is in Austin, TX) is leading the pack with over 41 million points; the three other arcades in the running are Game Galaxy (Nashville, TN), StarBase Arcade (San Rafael, CA) and Star Worlds Arcade (DeKalb, IL). Naturally if you live close to any of these businesses, be sure to drop in and give them your support by buying some credits and playing some games. Don’t forget to get some Stride gum next time you have a chance to as well.

You can support your favorite arcade via Stride by going to this page and playing Zapataur.

[Help Save The Arcades With Stride] [Some press related to this - Kotaku / Gamewit] [Discuss on the forums]

Now that I have a book written and don’t know how to publish it, I’ve decided to reread it and walk more confidently, whenever I walk, in the hope that these things will render me successful.