… see videos of kiting pros. In this post I shall give yo two videos. One of some complete ‘newbies’ to the sport of kiting and one of the ‘pros’ doing some amazing flying. The difference, I think you’ll agree, is staggering. See if you can see which is which.

I am sat here at the end of the weekend. I’m a little tired. Perhaps a little short in terms of temperament. But there is something that has been rubbing me the wrong way for a short while now and that is the purpose of social network sites.

The main part is, what exactly is the point? The ones I have experience with are Orkut, Facebook and MySpace, with the experiences being relatively similar. The main motivator is that of procrastination and band wagons.

Phase one begins with various people mention the social networking site, send an invite or provide a url and I sign up. I fill out the various fields, add some photos and customise things to a certain extent. Usual time frame: 5 minutes to 2 hours.

Phase two is executed with the ’social networking’ which roughly, for the untrained, translates to ‘finding every single random reason that could possibly deem someone worthy of friend status”. For instance, go to school with someone? They are your friend – even if they may have bullied you at some point. Know some one as a result of an evening out 2 years ago? They are your friend. Bump into someone on the train? They are your friend. The rules that govern a friendship in the virtual sphere that is the social network differ considerably to those rules that are in real life. It is like a series of Pokemon – gotta catch them all no matter how random. Facebook refines this approach slightly giving the users an option to say how you know each other. To be fair this phase can be fairly interesting, you get to see what people are up to and doing and as the momentum of the sites popularity spreads the friend confirmation messages come flooding in. Dizzy with the illusion you readily accept the invites and you feel good. Usual time frame: 5-12 days.

So far you’d assume it is all going well, and it is. Unfortunately the beast that is phase three creeps in. Several things happen in this phase: boredom and the realisation that most of it is bullshit.

The boredom comes from the same issue you can have with seeing the same friends at the pub almost every day. No one and I mean no one, has such an amazing life that means the conversation is fundamentally the same if you chat to them every day. Repetition is ok in moderation but can become painful quickly. The same is true for these sites but is magnified by the “I’m bored at work so I’ll quickly see what is happening” factor. I don’t think I have managed to retain interest in these sites for very long, tried three of them and they have all failed.

The bullshit lies in the old school kid thing of “I have more friends that you”. Now, anyone with a sound background in reality will know that it isn’t the number of friends you have it is the quality of the friends. [Indeed, the more friends you have the more you have to either upset or pay for when it comes to that illustrious wedding day.] Swiftly returning to the subject in hand, the problem with these social sites is that they encourage high friend counts. Either through the “Man, my friend XYZ has N friends, I must have about that number” or through the “My existing set of friends based upon my group around me is woefully low, I need to dig into the annuals of school, university and work people to notch it up”. This whole situation is propagated because you can see everything about everyone and can only end with you feeling a little inadequate. This inadequacy then causes you to work harder to improve your ’space’. All this spirals until you realise that these sites don’t actually enrich your life in any way and you are better off without them. There is an exception to this rule and that is those people who thrive on the reassurance that they are popular. You can tell those people by the frequency that they update their page or write comments on other peoples ‘walls’ or ‘comment list’ after phase two is over. The other problem is that with people updating their every move the mystery and suspense of the pub evening out learning about what other people have been up to is destroyed. I have faced the same issue here – I post something on darkrock and everything I have to say is a repeat of the text here. It is a pain for me and boring for others as I repeat things. So yes, these social networks are bringing people together in an information based sense but it is also slowly killing the feature rich conversation that so many people enjoy in our drinking houses. Kind of ironic don’t you think.

Phase four kicks in with chronic boredom and usually becomes starkingly apparent with the insults or jibs that get written on peoples comment lists. I am at this stage with facebook. I have nothing really to say that be relevant so I shall say something stupid. This phase can last anywhere between an hour and several days.

Phase Five is the stage where you say, “fuck this for a game of soldiers” and not log in again.

Phase six is where you log in 6 months later and realise the world is still rotating but things haven’t changed all that much except a few profile pictures and a gallery or seven.

There is a kind of dubious goodness to one of the social networks I’ve mentioned – MySpace. Although the site is just about the worst implementation of of a website I have seen, it does allow people to have a picture gallery, a video or two, a blog – all things I don’t need because I have flickr, this site and google video to give me a better service. I can understand that desire but the social network side is just retarded.

Having had this thought process on the phases of social networking and been fairly damming, it did cause me to have a good long conversation with a friend I’d not spoken to in ages. This admission occurred in phase two and is therefore allowed.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of UK facebook users suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened…

This is a post on the thread on flexi forums. Delicious? I thought you’d agree.

Heh.

Good film, worth a watch. Bailey and I watched it this evening and during the film, one person asks another if they are in love with the person they were going out with. The person replied that they were in a serious relationship.

This got me thinking, I really do dislike the phrase “a serious relationship”. It paints pictures of a boring non-spontaneous relationship that is restrictive and lacking in fun. I wonder how many of my friends deem themselves in a serious relationship, I might have to ask them. Personally, I want a fun relationship. A spontaneous relationship. An alive relationship. I think I’d go mental if I ended up describing my next relationship [working on the basis I will have one at somepoint] as serious. I might even be told to grow up and act more mature.

… a MMRPG.

A Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game.

I listened to a documentary on Colin Murray’s show last night on Radio One and it delved into the weird world that is Scientology. This caused me to read more into the basis of the whole ‘religion’ and the more I read the more it sounded like a MMORPG like WoW or any other. For instance, from the Wikipedia Article

Scientologists who are deemed to have achieved the State of Clear may continue onto what is termed the Upper or OT (Operating Thetan) Levels. These courses are available by Church invitation only and prospective candidates are vetted by the Church based on their contributions to the furtherance of Scientology and their behavior in accordance with Scientology principles. The contents of these advanced courses are held in strict confidence within the Church and individuals who have read these materials may neither discuss nor disclose what they contain without jeopardizing their standing in the Church. Presently, there are eight such levels, OT I through VIII, although Church management has promised to release a ninth OT level once certain expansion goals are met.

So you have levels? In World of Warcraft you shout DING into the guild channel or party line when you get enough XP to level. Do you in Scientology, phone up your mates and should “DING!!!” and do they say “GRATZ” back? What is with the bold sentence [my doing] above? Is it like an expansion pack? Church Of Scientology: The Burning Thetan, in this edition we raise the level cap and you can get shiny new epic gear!

All I can say is that most people in the world are fucking nuts. It seems that Scientologist seem to want to take it that bit further AND pay for the privilege.

Maybe I am just stressed.

Went to the beach again this weekend just gone with a number of kiting chums. On the Saturday we have visitors from the Sky Pirates which seemed to be wise for them as it turned out to be the best day out of the two. We ended up having about 3 hours or so of wind, of which one of those it was spot on blowing really nicely. My 11 G2 was lit up nicely and I finally feel as though I have clicked with the kite, I understand it now and can fly it without too much fear. I was practising my jumps with it and feeling really happy. The wind dropped off about 3ish and with the tide approaching we packed down and went to the caravan. Not much was done other than to watch some TV, chat about kites, get warm and dry, have food and drink beer. These were all conducted with professionalism and in no particular order!

There was no real wind on the Sunday. Even the arc was falling out the sky which is generally deemed a bad thing because those can float in the sky with very little. We gave up about 1ish or so and drove back to Birmingham. In the evening a number of us went to watch Hot Fuzz which is an excellent film and one I plan on going back to see again at some point soon.

On Monday I bought a new kite, well second hand, but pretty much brand new.

It is a 16m Venom in Red and Orange and should complete my range of arcs for flying with. I now have a 9m, 11m and 16m arc. The bottom end for the 16 is much lower than the 11 and the top end about 20mph or so. The advantage of the kite is the floaty-ness of air you can get with it, the lower end grunt and the speed of the kite through the air.

I took it out yesterday for about 10-15 minutes for a cheeky fly and used the bar and lines I use for my 11m G. Normally I’d have to use a bigger bar but the 50cm bar I already have worked really well. I had a play powered up, and then tried it half de-powered. Even when half de-powered, the kite at the zenith [above my head, pulling the bar in gave me enough power to go about 3-4ft up. It didn't drop me and I came down nice and smooth. Turning was fast and responsive and the kite glided through the air nicely. I can't wait to have a play with it on my board at the weekend!

Found some photos of what it looks like in the air:

Now all I need is a 8.5 blade to join my fixed bridle part of my quiver and I am sorted. For those interested I now have 4 kites, a mountain board, a kiteboard [water], harness and various other stuff to go with it.

There was a number of us that went out for some food to celebrate Nats 26th birthday. We went to Pizza Express and during the conversation, I mentioned to Mike and Helen (who have previously played a bit of my Nintendo Wii) that my mum was up for the weekend. My mum and I ended up, just before she left, having some time on Wii Sports particularly the tennis game. She loved it. She didn’t want to leave because she enjoyed it so much. As she was leaving she said she was going to see how much my brother was going to sell his Wii for, or she was going to find someone who had one she could practice on. Her parting words were “I’m going to practice and beat you next time”.

Amazing. Nintendo has another convert – a 53 year old mother who never saw the point of computer games in the past.

So, fast forward to the conversation last night, pretty much everyone around the table either wanted one, or really wanted to have a play on one. There was even people saying that it wasn’t possible to obtain Wii at the moment, that they are like gold dust. I was slightly gob smacked, these are people who have shown little to no interest in gaming let along actually owning their own console. Well to do my duty I shall have to let people come and have a play on the Wii and see what happens. I just hope that they get consoles, Nintendo release Tetris Wii with multiplayer online support and I can start taking names and crush them in the online Tetris arena. [I'd like a port of Tetris DS, a great game]

I am also quite excited about SSX Blur, a Wii specific version of the SSX franchise.

Best. Wedding. First. Dance. EVER. Lauren and Webbie please watch this, good idea eh? I’d join in!.