Riding The Wave

I spent a couple of hours yesterday trolling around Twitter trying to score an invite to Google Wave. I signed up initially back on the day it was launched, Sept. 30 but hadn't been officially activated yet, and was getting pretty anxious to try it out. But all that Twitterizing was unsuccessful. However, this morning I woke up to an honest-to-goodness email from Google telling me my Wave account was active... Talk about timing! Anyway, I have got it all set up and now I'm sitting here puzzled about what the heck to do with it. More forthcoming...

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Kickin' It Old School

I'm seriously and heavily into the Carolina Chocolate Drops these days... love me some African-American string band music!

 Here they are performing "Cornbread And Butterbeans":

Google

I'm really starting to drink the Google Kool-Aid, full on. I use practically every service they offer: Gmail, Reader, Voice, Picasa, Docs, Notebook... not to mention YouTube. Haven't really messed with Orkut at all. I'd love to try out Google Wave, but haven't received an invite yet. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that because I've been uploading a bunch of my digital photos that have been cluttering up my hard drive onto Picasa, and now I'm tagging each one of them as well. Quite useful, I think. My dad is not a fan of Google, but let me tell ya I'm sold.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

There have been... oh, so many things happening since last I blogged. Some good, some great, some abso-frickin-lutely horrible. I may try once again to get back on the bike (see previous post) and do some blogging... thinking also about starting up some other sort of online blog presence, but it's in the early planning stages. We'll see.
Anyway, I have switched to a new page theme, and I'll be monkeying with it for a while I'm sure. If anybody actually looks at this blog on occasion, let me know. I'll try and make it presentable.

Han Solo, P.I.

Got hipped to this yesterday, via MetaFilter: Han Solo, P.I. is a mashup of Star Wars and Magnum, P.I.'s opening credits scene. Here you'll see a side-by-side comparison of the two; be prepared to marvel at the similarity of each shot. I wish I had the talent to do something this clever...

Back On The Bike

When we were kids learning to ride a bicycle, we were told that if we fall off, we should just get back on and keep at it. Keep practicing. Keep doing. And I've not been holding up my end of the bargain lately. But I promise to myself that I will keep doing.

I've started reading a book called The War Of Art, which is a great little book about overcoming obstacles to creativity. And honestly, the main obstacle is our own minds telling ourselves that we don't really want to do things. That some errand or time-wasting activity is much more important that writing a blog post, or that some other suddenly-urgent thing (laundry? web surfing?) is a higher priority than doing what you know in your heart you can and must do, i.e. write/paint/exercise/etc. According to The War Of Art, that urge to procrastinate, dither and talk ourselves out of things is best overcome by ignoring it completely and setting up concrete, unbreakable routines to do what we know we must do. You wanna be a writer? Get up every morning and write. No, every morning. Do it! Well, that's what I'm getting out of it so far. And consequently, here I am writing a blog post for the first time in a month. So it's got to be worth something.

So anyway, here I am again. I may not blog here every day, but I will certainly be writing something. I have to.

And that brings me around to another meaning for the metaphorical post title... I am, literally, back on my bike. My oft-broken Jeep, Sherman, is out of commission for the moment, and I have been riding my bike a lot lately. I'm really enjoying it, aside from the fact that it's starting to get really hot and humid now. That pretty much sucks.

Until next time...

"There is no try. There is only blog, or blog not."

Lawnmower Man

It seems that lawn mowing season is now in full swing; for me, at least. I've only got two lawns to do this year (so far), which isn't quite as many as years past. But it'll do.
It brings to mind, however, an idea that's been percolatin' in the old noggin for a while, and that would be my long-standing wish to start not just one but a plethora of side businesses. Lawn mowing being one, of course. I'm a sort of jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kinda guy, so that's the way I think I should go in the future.
I've got a few ideas on what kinds of things I could do. None of these are really set in stone (nothing ever really is, I think...) but they're a start:

• Lawn mowing, of course. It is seasonal, which is a drawback. But it's moderately physical, which is good. And lucrative, too.
• Freelance writing. I'm in the very early stages of daydreaming about this. But it's something I'd like to try. My friend Angie has done it, which is encouraging.
• Blogging. Not this one, obviously (for my audience of... me). More and more people are doing it. Who knows, maybe I could turn my love of esoteric trivial junk into millions!! Or not.
• Web-based business. This is do-able. My dad does it. As for what I would do? Still in the planning stages.

I guess there are a few more things that pop into my head on occasion, but those are the most fully-formed ideas (not saying much, I know). I'm sure I'll be exploring this sort of thing a lot more in the months to come.