Blog: A Day In The Life
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Monday, 13 April 2009
Not The Sheffield Parkour Diaries
A little video from a few days' training with the lads back in Sheffield while home for Easter:
It's not the diaries. Honest.
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 12:49 
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Connecting with Rev. Josh Through Aslan
The internet is such an extraordinary thing. While I was googling for a good picture of Aslan for the video I posted last night, I came across a blog post about a guy who had gotten himself an Aslan tattoo:
I left a comment on his blog, saying I thought the tattoo was cool and that I shared his admiration of Aslan. I tend to comment on blogs when I find them randomly, but never expect a reply - you never know when a blog is redundant or still in use. Anyway, today - I received a reply. He commented after me to thanks me for the positive comment and he wondered how I had come across his blog, so I told him I was looking for a picture of Aslan for my parkour video and linked him to my blog post with the video. He went on to comment on the video post on my blog to tell me that he had posted a new post about the random incident of connectivity between us. His post explained how I had found his blog, that he realised he can't have known me because I was from the UK (he's American), that he had never heard of parkour before he saw my video, and that he enjoyed my video (which he had embedded in the post) and compared it to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. He finished by warning blog-reading teens not to go out and try parkour, and explained that I referred to it as "training" and mentions the bail I talked about in the post.
This guy is called Rev. Josh, and his About Me says:
"I am an ordained UCC clergyperson serving as an Associate Pastor in the Connecticut Conference. I am also into fantasy, science fiction, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons... Contradictory? You'll have to decide for yourself!"
I love how the internet brings people together like this. Remember the time I was contacted by a guy who found my secret message from Danny Wood and Paul Maunder? And you know who are always at the heart of it all? Google! It was the same for Dave Gorman who ended up flying all over the world simply because someone had entered the words 'Francophile Namesakes' into Google. For more about this see this post. Speaking of Dave, I recently discovered he has a blog, which he updates regularly - it's worth a read (and even a subscribe if you like what you see). Also check out his awesome photography portfolio (again, which he regularly adds to) on Flickr.
If you were wondering why I have a fascination with Aslan, then I suggest you read the Chronicles of Narnia. I recently read them all (as you know if you read my Pyrenees post) and even though they're written for children they're really enjoyable and thought-provoking. They helped me understand my beliefs and opened my mind to new ways of getting my head round why things happen and what there is beyond the scope of the plain-thinking view of existence. It's hard to explain but the stories put situations into a different context and use analogies to explain things that most people fail to comprehend about faith. C.S. Lewis was a genius who gained a Triple First from Cambridge, and had a thorough understanding of theological concepts and a brilliant way of telling a story. I have to admit the books are, for the most part, rather dull as not a lot happens until the very end when Aslan the King of the Beasts and son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea comes and sorts everything out and explains everything. My favourite book was The Magician's Nephew which is where two children from Earth enter into an uninhabited world by means of magic rings made by the boy's Uncle, and they witness the creation of Narnia by Aslan. This tallies with the story of Genesis and even has a tree of forbidden fruit and shows the temptation in personal greed.
This has been a crazy post. I somehow managed to refer to four of my own blog posts, as well as four other people's blogs. Two of these people I have never met. I never plan my posts, so I tend to drift off the point and write way more than I intended. I'm working on cutting them down!
I had a great Bank Holiday Monday - I spent the day in the park with my Sister Kate and my four-year-old niece Olivia. Here are a couple of photos I took of Olivia:
With under four weeks left in Sheffield I have lots of people to see, so I need to arrange days to spend with friends I haven't seen in ages and those I won't be seeing much any more. If you didn't see yesterday's parkour video, you can watch it here. Oh and check out the new 'Post to Facebook' links which appear at the bottom and the sides of each post - click one of those to share that post on Facebook by either sending it as a link to one of your friends, or posting it directly to your profile feeds to share with anyone who visits your profile.
To close I would like to quote Rev. Josh:
"Be safe & be good to each other"
Labels: Computers, Faith, Featured, Google, Internet, Parkour, SPKD
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:01
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Let's Go On An Adventure, I've Got Lots To Show You
Last week you saw the revival of the Sheffield Parkour Diaries. This week I'm bringing you a parkour special edition of the recently-revived diaries with episode 15, edited by yours truly. It contains 90% parkour and just 10% silliness and promises to be entertaining and inspiring. This is a showcase of the movements we have accomplished during this week's training, and features training at the University of Sheffield English Department and also Tapton Flats, an abandoned estate outside the city centre of Sheffield. I hope you enjoy the video.
It's been a great week of training. Tuesday was horrible weather but a great session nonetheless, then we met up again on Friday and had the sickest day of training I've had in ages (in glorious weather too) and again on Saturday when we did some cool stuff even though we were very tired, but enjoyed the company of the group, talked about parkour and other stuff and had a great day.
One thing I feel I ought to mention is that I had a pretty bad fall on Tuesday. I wasn't hurt, injured or damaged in any way, but the potential was there. I did an arm-to-arm (as seen successfully executed in the video at 4:46) at Tapton Flats and it felt really good so I was raving to Will and Danny about it; they seemed a little less enthusiastic and weren't really up for giving it a try - for some reason this irritated me and I made it my mission to persuade them that it was fun and that they should try it. I was just on a buzz from this movement I'd seen, done and enjoyed. I started to get a little arrogant about it, which is odd, and did it again, but somehow slipped on take-off, missed the other wall and slid down it to the floor. It's probably a 10 or 12 foot drop from where I took off, and I slid down the side of the wall I'd failed to catch the top of, landed on my feet thinking myself lucky. I came down from the buzz and chilled myself out. The other guys tried it eventually (with a little more care than my second attempt) and found it fine.
This led me on to the point of discussion with Danny that parkour gives you a sense of immediate recovery. In a situation where you fall or slip (even in normal life situations other than training), your inner parkour comes into play and adjusts your body to where it needs to be to prevent injury. You just suddenly become aware that you are falling and in potential danger and you immediately and sub-conciously do whatever it takes to stop yourself; whether you need to put your arms and legs out, take a drop or force a roll, you just do it. This is like an extension of natural reflexes such as shutting your eyes to shield from something, ducking from something, putting your hands in front of your face or whatever. Parkour just gives us that edge, from all the practise of movements and being in unusual positions where accidents can easily happen, we're just used to adjusting quickly to defend ourselves from pain.
I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video; I think it's a great piece of software to use, or at least it would be if it didn't crash every two minutes. I'm not kidding. I would be dragging a clip into the storyboard and then click to view the next one and ... FREEZE. Damn. I'd have to Ctrl + Alt + Del it and end the process. Then open up again, locate the project file, wait for it to load, hope that it worked and that I hadn't lost too much in the process. It's so temperamental! And incredibly hypersensitive. It just doesn't like you clicking something while it's doing something else, and instead of just ignoring you it simply freezes and there's no solution other than to close it down by means mentioned earlier, and waiting for it to load up again. That's the last time I use WMM for anything. I've used Adobe Premier and Adobe Premier Pro before (Pro was just annoying, as if they'd removed the useful features) but it's a massive application to run so not really the best option for me at the moment. I've heard good things about other software, so if anyone has any recommendations (except Paul telling me to get a Mac) they would be more than welcome.
Here are my photos from the week's training. View the photoset here.
Labels: Computers, Parkour, SPKD
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:46
Monday, 18 August 2008
SPKD: Back by Popular Demand
This is my 50th Post! My blog has been going for just over two years now and today I've reached number 50. Here is a video made from clips taken on one Saturday jam day. It's kind of a Sheffield Parkour Diaries revival, back by popular demand (episode 14). It's made by Danny Wood and features his new parkour rap. I hope you enjoy the video, because I did - it's hilarious!
I now have a feature where you can only see selected posts by category by means of tags (see the tag list here). There is also a tag for 'Featured Posts' - these are a small number of posts which I have selected to be featured, so if someone wanted to look at the best posts of this blog since it began, they will be able to get them all in one page with the less-good ones out of the way. Also check out my blog archive and video archive.
The website is practically finished now. I keep adding bits and changing bits but it's basically all there now. Have a look around and see what you can find! Try searching for something using the Google Search bar near the top of the sidebar - check out the cool Javascript I used to make the default text 'Google it...' disappear when you click inside, and then reappear when you click away. Awesome, eh?
Oh and I forgot to mention I got into uni. I got the grades I needed (although not what I wanted - I was four marks off a B in Maths!) - pretty gutted about that as I put so much work in to try and get a B but at least I got my uni place. I also got into my first choice halls (Cambridge Halls, just off Oxford Road in the centre of Manchester - 6 minutes from uni, the parkour meet-up spot and the train station!) so I move in in about 5 weeks.
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 10:55
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Sheffield Parkour Dairies | Week 11
Yesterday's jam was very eventful, and regardless of the fact that there's hardly any parkour in the video, we got a fair bit of training done, including the huge achievement of mine and Will's of the standing arm jump at the end. I used Danny's "Parkour Rap" in the vid, see his myspace for more songs.
The video includes a dedication to Shane's brother Danny, who, as many of you will know, died two weeks ago at the age of 16.
So without further ado, I present to you my first edition of the Sheffield Parkour Diaries, Week 11:
Cliffhanger is billed as "the outdoor event for outdoor people" and takes place next weekend (14th & 15th July) in Graves Park - there'll be come-and-try-it climbing walls, high ropes courses, the British Bouldering Championships, a World Record Dyno Competition and many other outdoor activities and such. The Sheffield Parkour guys will be running a demo on a purpose-built course and showing the public what parkour's all about. I'll be filming for next week's diary: Week 12. See here next week for the video.
Oh and I've sorted my Lisses trip. We're going in the last week of August. It's me, little Danny, Scott, Sam and Kai. Can't wait, gonna be an excellent experience.
Comments on what you think of the diary would be appreciated (either on here or YouTube...or both!)
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 23:48
