I’ve been watching my kids skateboard for nearly a decade now. We’ve been back East, we’ve skated in the US Heartland, the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast. It’s been a lot of fun and I can tell you that I wouldn’t trade places with anyone in the whole wide world.

We’ve met so many interesting people from all walks of life and everyone has a common thread, skateboarding. I’m actually not sure why and how I got so interested in the sport. Early on, I got on my son’s skateboard and nearly broke my arm just rolling down the driveway. Occasionally, I’ll walk over to him at the skatepark and take his board and act like I’m going to show him something. It usually draws a lot of eyeballs since all the other kids know me and have never seen me skate. Casually, my son will take the board from me and go do an elaborate trick so I don’t get embarrassed. Then, I typically walk back to the sidelines and say something like “You know I showed him how to do that”.

One endearing quality I’ve observed in all the skate parks we’ve visited is the admiration the parents have for their kids. Some sit stoically and proud, others twitch and hold their breadth on every trick and once in a while you’ll see a parent jump up, pump their fists and scream “yeah” as if their favorite team had just scored a touchdown in the super bowl. It’s usually followed with “You know I showed him how to do that”. It’s funny how things work out in life, of all the things I could teach my kids, skateboarding was NOT one of them.

Sure, it’s not easy driving to the parks each day, taking care of the occasional bumps and bruises or just generally finding the time. It’s really weird though, you see I feel as if I’m the one that wants to go to skatepark now and I’m always disappointed when one of my sons says “no, not today dad”. Then, I have to get creative, I’ll make a comment like “seems like there might be a lot of people to show-off for today” and if that doesn’t work I’ll escalate with a possible trip to Chipotle or Tokyo Joes afterwards. Finally, if that doesn’t work, I pull out all the stops with some new bearings, wheels or even a brand new deck, but clearly that can get pricey and only happens once on a blue moon.

It’s really hard for me when I’m away from my kids on a trip or something, but it’s comforting to know that even when we are apart we are still together in spirit. I know when I return, I can always count on them and I know that they know, they will always be able to count on me. It’s that unconditional love thing. I’ve really enjoyed watching my kids grow up and can’t wait to see what they do with their lifes in the future. So in part that’s why being a “zombie skateboard dad” is the greatest job on earth.

The first time I read about the underlying concept of web 2.0 was a little over a decade ago in the ending chapters of “Weaving the Web” by Tim Bernes Lee. This is a fascinating book on the history of the web and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the original vision of the web.

The final chapters of the book are about bringing semantics to otherwise disparate content. Over the years, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has made progress with formalizing interoperable standards, but we still have a long way to go before we realize the vision of the Semantic Web.

However, it’s interesting how we are now starting to adapt these principles in are our daily lives. An example might be our use of YouTube to broadcast our skate videos through RSS. Now our SK8NE1 subscribers can be notified and review our latest materials in their RSS readers without even coming to our web site. Here’s an example of a video you would see in an RSS reader:

Another interesting trend has been an increasing number of blogs. It seems like it was only a few years ago that Google bought Blogger and applications like MovableType and WordPress were just starting to get momentum. Today, blogging is part of the mainstream and an intregal part of the way we get our information.

In many ways, blogging and RSS are synonymous since most people syndicate their blog’s content using RSS. Embedding the display of your YouTube videos in your feeds is a powerful way to add rich media to an otherwise text only post. We now live in an on-demand world. Social networking and personalized web spaces allow people to receive information based on their preferences and most people subscribing to our blog seem to be primarily interested in our videos.

To that end, we plan to add more and more videos to our blog posts and are now embedding the entire posts in our feeds. This means that if you subscribe to our blog we’ll automatically send our latest posts directly to your designated location and you don’t even have to come to our site.

I wanted to see if I could place a YouTube video in a WordPress blog posting so I could reduce any additional bandwidth costs of serving up large video files. I started by creating a YouTube channel called, you guessed it, SK8NE1. Then, I exported an old (i was about eight) short (15 seconds) video clip to DV format (60MB) and uploaded it using the Google Gears upload application. Here’s the result:

Note: We changed our WordPress settings to full text to see if the YouTube video above would show up in Google Reader after the ping indices were updated.

I think it looks pretty good so I may start using YouTube to do the “heavy lifting” of my skate videos. Over the next year or so I’d like to put up some short training videos on skate tricks I’ve learned over the years. Digital video files can be enormous and if I get a lot of people looking at my videos it could cost me (my dad) some bucks! Enjoy the short clip, I’ll plan to put more up soon. Please let me know what you think!

When I was six my dad purchased a beginner skateboard ramp at Target for my birthday. He said it cost $19.95 and was the best present he ever bought me. It’s funny how 6 years later I still have it and enjoy doing tricks with it on our driveway. My brother and I spray painted it last year and it now looks like it is on it’s last leg, but this ramp goes way back with me and I may never be able to let it go.

Last Christmas, I got more skateboard ramps and a grind rail. I believe that this time the cost was $89.00 and he (Santa Claus) purchased it at Sam’s Club. The new ramps have helped a lot since I can set them up in different configurations. My street tricks have never been that good because most of the time my dad takes us to the concrete skate parks around town and I just like skating vert, but these low cost ramps have gone a long way in helping me develop some street skills when he is traveling or playing tennis.

Over the years, I’ve picked up the names of different skate tricks from the people at the various skate parks, but I’m not always entirely sure how to spell them or if the trick names used amongst skateboarders are consistent. My observation is that most people do use similar names, but there appears to be local slang and different vernacular used from park to park. So here’s a picture of my latest Faky Air 180, or is it Fakie Air 180?

Just in case you are wondering….I landed it!

This is the 2nd year we have made the trip up to Longmont to participate in the Rumble at the Ranch skateboard competition. The event started in the afternoon on of 6/21. It’s part of the 2008 Mountain Madness Series which is suppose to bring you the best in Colorado grassroots skateboard competitions. We always have fun meeting all our skateboard friends at these sort of things, but we should probably just do that once a year rather than meet for a “so-called” competition.

Here’s the problem, and it’s an issue with most of the mountain madness series competitions. Rarely, are the judges unbaised on their scoring. Most of the time, they are from the community where the competition is being held and are friends with the local skaters. You can see them high-fiving each other when the locals hit their sketchie tricks and ignoring the unknown kid’s skate routines.

I don’t want to come off as a “sore loser” because I actually won 3rd place in intermediate bowl. I just think this shows how far we need to go here in Colorado. It’s too bad there isn’t an organization that can qualify judges and make sure that they are being objective for all the participants. To me, it seems like this would be a good role for skatecolorado.org to take on since they appear to be sponsoring the competitions. Does anyone know of a national association that is talking about this topic? I’d enjoy hearing from you. Until next time: SK8NE1?