Tag Archives: Instagram

Good v. Evil

Went for a bike ride. Posted a few words on Instagram about it:

Went for a bike ride with @spoke_n_words today. I can’t tell you everything we talked about – Instagram limits us to 2200 characters. I just used up 115. We talked about how that is part of the struggle today. That there’s so much to be said, and little place to say it anymore. And people have little time or patience to listen. We talked about my constant struggle to be on this platform and in this space when it seems to be hypocritical. If one is trying to spread positive mojo but resorts to using an inherently flawed or nefarious tool, ethically, is that a win? If you shouldn’t shop on Amazon because of their corporate practices – should you be reading and posting on Instagram in light of theirs – and by ‘theirs’ we all know I mean ‘Facebook’s’? Is it ok to use a bad platform for good? Is that even ethically possible? If you’re using the platform, are you not tacitly endorsing the business model? In light of what’s going down these days, does it make any sense to use tools ultimately designed to addict us with no concern for the outcome, by entities that only care about ad revenue? Can you institute change from within? Can you use the tools of your oppressors to facilitate revolution? I don’t know. I know I struggle with using this no matter how much warm fuzzy bike content I can pump out. There is a MUCH larger conversation that we need to have today, and it can’t – and shouldn’t – be had here. If you do one thing today, think about that – don’t blindly use these tools. Think. We also rode bikes, got dirty, drank coffee, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fought off pheasant and in general had the best time we possibly could conceive of having within those moments. And I took this one picture that really won’t convey that at all, but if you’re like me, one of the reasons I AM still on this platform is because very often, I’ll crack open this app and see something someone else has posted that will instantly remind me that I need to put the phone down and be somewhere else. That’s the revolution.

Celebrate Every Day

These are some pictures from my bike commute – in March of 2018. I called it the ‘Viewers Choice Commute’ because I’d posted up the night before and asked my 7-ish Instagram followers to vote on which bike/route I should take. I don’t remember how cold it was that day, but it was a good @winterbiketoworkday – Last night, when I got out of hockey at midnight, it was snowing pretty good – I was surprised at how much had come down and I was still on the fence if I was going to ride today. It was cold so the snow was nice and light – super fluffy like powdered sugar. I knew today was likely to be a great day to be outside – especially on the ride home – as the call was for crystal clear skies and full sun. No doubt would have made for great scenery.

I was still waffling though. I was tired. I didn’t want to risk getting sick – but still having the internal argument (which seems really silly now in retrospect). I checked my Instagram feed before bed. I’ll credit my wise Aunt @lindambourne for bringing it home with her sage comment on my Instagram post, “Seems to me you celebrate this day more than once a year already.” Bam. There it was. Truth. The reminder I needed. The reminder to get out and get some whenever you can, but that those moments aren’t necessarily going to align perfectly with the rest of the Universe. What’s important is that you observe them when possible.

Props to anyone who did ride today, whether in the freezing cold or balmy climes. You are a singular badass. And if you can’t make it tomorrow for some reason or another, you’ll still be a singular badass. I award you each 1,000 Internet Bike Points. They say discretion is the better part of valor – which is my fancy way of of saying ‘it’s old and I’m cold’. I opted out today and am totally at peace with it, thanks Auntie Linda. And thanks to others who offered thoughts and words of encouragement as well.

Tune in to Neurotic Cyclists of Instagram next week when I try to decide if I mount my paniers on the front or the back of the bike and discuss the pros and cons of each in Part 1 of a 6 part series.

They Got Instagram Now, Too

Back when I started dumping my social media accounts – for various reasons – the one I held on to the longest, almost a year longer than the others, was Instagram. I liked that it was primarily photo based and that seemed to invite people to post a different kind of content. There was little to almost no negativity – in my feed anyway – and it seemed to be a much more civil place than the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

I mostly followed outdoor gear and bike companies as well as athletes and my actual IRL friends, so it’s not surprising I didn’t see much else. Apparently it was there though, and continues to grow. I finally nuked my Instagram account a few months ago, primarily for personal reasons, but it seems that it has gone the path of Facebook now as well, so in retrospect, I’m glad I got out when I did.

An article in the Atlantic, Instagram is the Internet’s New Home for Hate, doesn’t paint a very rosy picture.

“Instagram is teeming with these conspiracy theories, viral misinformation, and extremist memes, all daisy-chained together via a network of accounts with incredible algorithmic reach and millions of collective followers—many of whom, like Alex, are very young.

“Following just a handful of these accounts can quickly send users spiraling down a path toward even more extremist views and conspiracies, guided by Instagram’s own recommendation algorithm.”

“Given the velocity of the recommendation algorithm, the power of hashtagging, and the nature of the posts, it’s easy to see how Instagram can serve as an entry point into the internet’s darkest corners. Instagram “memes pages and humor is a really effective way to introduce people to extremist content,” says Becca Lewis, a doctoral student at Stanford and a research affiliate at the Data and Society Research Institute. “It’s easy, on Instagram, to attach certain hashtags to certain memes and get high visibility.”

“In December, Wired reported that Instagram had become the “go-to” social network for the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm notorious for meddling in U.S. elections. A report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee declared that “Instagram was perhaps the most effective platform for the Internet Research Agency” to spread misinformation. “Instagram has the power of Twitter to broadcast out, but the infrastructure of Facebook supporting it,” says Jonathan Albright, a researcher at Columbia University who directs a center on digital forensics. “It has the best of all platforms.”

I’m glad that I left Instagram before I came across any of this stuff. I’d seen traces of it on Facebook, which is what prompted me to get off that finally. I think that quite possibly I could have continued to use both these platforms without encountering too much of this kind of content – I was pretty particular about who and what I followed – but at it’s core, I think my decision to leave was based around the fact that by using those platforms, I was tacitly endorsing both their business models and their standards of conduct – neither of which I felt comfortable doing anymore.

Nanoscape

My buddy and fellow cyclist Geoff Williams (gewilli to his peeps) has a side gig going on posting artwork from Electron Microscopes. Fascinating stuff. He recently had a print exhibition at the Chazan Gallery in Rhode Island. Check him out on instagram and twitter. I hear he plays a mean fiddle as well.

From the Gallery Exhibition Website:

For over 20 years Geoff Williams has been honing his craft as an electron microscopist. Each image that he collects is an expression of his sensibilities. The dynamic interplay of shape and grayscale values speaks to him. From that first image Williams collected on a scanning electron microscope (SEM) until now, he has been consistently striving to master a technique that engages this scientific tool towards a goal of sharing this world through his personal lense.
Williams’ images provide a tactile and striking view of samples we may or may not encounter in our day-to-day lives.  These samples can come from very diverse sources, from food to tiny fragments of the custom bicycle making process, to broken or discarded bits. Williams strives to present them as inspiring visuals, hoping to draw in and engage the audience in a way that is not possible in any other expressive form. The unique three dimensionality of these SEM works has the potential to decouple any a priori connection a viewer might have, while at the same time fostering a powerful de novo relationship to the subjects.

Watching

I didn’t look or listen for anything in particular, I just let the details of this particular moment in the neighborhood come to me: the quality of the air—heavy and warm, the incoming summer storm kind; birds; two couples having a conversation down the sidewalk; the clinking of dishes coming from inside the house to my right; distant hammering from a construction site somewhere in the blocks behind my house.

David Cain, The Alternative to Thinking All the Time

I happened on this quite by chance recently.

My oldest daughter has a job at the local fried chicken joint now. I often have to go pick her up. Her shift ends at time ‘X’, but really she has stuff to do after so I’m never sure when she gets out exactly so I sit in the car in the parking lot and wait.

Usually it’s around 9pm on a moderately busy street corner of a semi-residential section of town with a riverside park across the street. These summer nights at dusk by the river, there’s all manner of stuff going on.

Initially, I’d surf instagram on my phone, read a book, sometimes try to meditate, but eventually I just got round to watching and listening. Doing exactly what he describes here. Immersing myself in that moment and the goings on at that exact time, tuning out all the other irrelevant noise – stuff that is either unimportant or I can’t do anything about at that time anyway – and often yes – I’m sort of startled out of it by her opening the truck door.

I always feel really refreshed, awake and present after.

Au Revoir, Facebook.

I’ve deactivated it for time periods before, but going full monty this time. Over the past few months I’ve pretty much jumped off all the social medias, including the Plus here, but have decided to gradually come back to some, in a more curated fashion. Found overall that spending less time in front of screens was a really beneficial exercise.

I’m still going to have some reservations about not having a Facebook account, things that kept me from deleting it before. A couple of Groups I was managing, and a few other things, but for the most part I won’t miss it. I’ve made arrangements to share photos with family via Flickr and I have been keeping in touch via more ‘conventional means’ like email, text, and old-fashioned voice phone.

I had hung on to Facebook for a long time primarily for Messenger, but I’ve learned you don’t have to have a Facebook account to use it. People from Facebook can still connect with you on it provided they have your phone number. It also works with Instagram – just learned this today – which I plan on keeping because I enjoy it quite a bit. Something about it being image-based, and there’s less politics and drama. I hate that they’ve started fucking with the timeline chronology, but, oh well.

Deleted my twitter account as well. Hadn’t used it as more than a link-reposting device in months and frankly, looking at it these days just bores me.

I think I will be dipping my toes back into Google+ some, though it will never be like the early days. Just poking around I very much dislike a lot of what’s been done with it, even in the short time I haven’t really been paying attention. It seems that it’s even harder now to find that genuine engagement that made it so exhilarating in the beginning. I find there’s too much being ‘pushed’ at me now, with suggestions, ‘things I might like’ or other upsells.

Collections, though good in theory, only works if everyone uses them, allowing you to opt out of portions of people’s content. Unfortunately I find most people don’t use them, or at least the ones I wish did, don’t.

So my Facebook goes dark 14 (or less) days from now supposedly. Perhaps I’ll do some sort of countdown here, because, reasons. Whatever.

The Red Island Ripper

In just over a week I will try, along with some other crazy mofos, to ride my bike across Prince Edward Island, along the Confederation Trail. 297kms. In one day. It will be both the farthest I’ve ever ridden in one ride and the longest I’ve ever been on a bike. The trail itself is not that long and doesn’t run the full island, so we’ve tacked on 2 road sections at the beginning and end to make it a true ‘tip-to-tip’ ride. If you’re so inclined, you can view the route here.

I’m not sure I can do it, but that’s probably not the point.

A year or so ago, my buddy Andrew Titus had this crazy idea, that somehow became a plan. Initially the idea was to do a big bike ride the day before the Brookvale Ultra, and then do the run the next day. Sort of a crazy man’s duathlon type thing. I’m not the ultra runner he is so I would have done, like the 10k. Somewhere along the line when looking for the ride portion, it occurred to someone to just ride across the whole island.

Over the span of the year there have been many people who signed on for the endeavor but for various reasons (injury, time commitment, schedule) have opted out. Indeed, even Fearless Leader Andrew, who was initially going to do the ride and run can no longer do the run portion due to injury/timing. So it’s become mostly about the ride. As it stands we’ve got +/- 5 riders slated to go, with a few still to confirm for sure. What started out as a ride/run has become mostly just a ride. I think there’s currently 1 rider who anticipates also doing the run the following day. We’ll see what happens next year if it becomes an annual thing.

To say I have ‘trained’ for this would be a lie.  I have ridden my bike when and as far as I can. The general consensus I’ve always heard from more experienced riders than I is that anyone can pretty much do 2x what their longest ride has been. I’ve done 160k.

More importantly I have tried to get my head straight approaching the whole thing which I think is probably more important when you’re looking at spending 12-14 hours on the bike. I think a huge chunk of the work will be mental.

It’s not that long really. Tour riders do 300k in a day. And do it in 4 hours. They average 50k an hour though. We’re looking to average 20k. Not that long. Ha.

From the recon we have, the trail is predominately the hard, packed red clay PEI is known for (hence the ‘Red Island’ moniker) and crusher dust trail, relatively flat and rolling. I’m thinking that my Giant Defy Advanced will be the perfect bike for the ride with the inclusion of some puncture-resistant 28mm file-tread tires on it. (Bontrager AW3s). I’ve spent the past few months riding it and trying to focus on and really dial in the fit for a long day in the saddle.

We’ve got a good buddy, Matt Tibbits, a distance runner himself and crew veteran to several other local ultra runners, who’s volunteered to step up and drive our SAG Wagon and meet us with food, water and kicks in the ass at various pre-planned points along the route.

I don’t know what I will get out of it. What I hope to get out of it. I hope it’s a beginning. A beginning of something that remains yet unclear. I’ve spent the last 2 years trying to change the way I approached life and the living of it. Last year I tried the Elgin 120 MTB race, and failed. It was still a massive learning experience, and positive overall. Though initially hesitant I finally decided to try this. See what happens. I’ve resolved to start doing things with unsure outcomes – something that was previously foreign to me. For many years I thought to be extreme meant I had to do so in far less healthy and beneficial ways.

The experience is much clearer now. That word extreme has an entirely new meaning.

My wife, though tacitly supportive, doesn’t get it I don’t think – and I don’t blame her. Pursuits of this kind are a relatively new interest for me. I think she sees it as selfish, and in some respects, she’s right. I try to walk the line between being a good, present Dad but also trying to be an example of how to live your life – to pursue the things that are important to you and make you happy, because ultimately that makes you a better person for those close to you. It’s still hard. It’s cliché, but it is a balance thing as a million internet posts attribute – and I know sometimes I don’t always get it right.

I don’t think my kids get it – but I haven’t really talked to them about it yet either. ‘Dad’s going to ride his bike.’ They can’t come this time. That bums them out. I hope that when I come back I’ll have better insight and a story to tell them that may make more sense, even if it’s not until they’re older and facing their own challenges.

I hope to share some of the prep and buildup to the ride, as well as the ride itself via instagram and Facebook so if you’re interested, follow along. #RIRPR2017

Andrew recently sent me a relevant quote from a book he’s reading, Simon Donato’s The Boundless Life: 13 Lessons Learned the Hard Way:

…sometimes what lifts us up and allows us to be our best is not going it alone for glory, but sharing the experience with people who matter to you.”

Let’s see who comes out the other side.

Poets of Instagram

I’ve really grown to love Instagram as a social media platform, it’s become one of my favourite places to visit online. It’s currently the only social media app I have on my phone.

I enjoy the nature of it – the fact that it’s primarily visual. I’m pretty selective with who I follow and for me, it’s a visual hit of inspiration whenever I check in. In some cases, folks have gone one further and are using their Instagram accounts as more of a blog, including lengthy, well-composed posts as the captions to their photos. Indeed some of them have an Instagram account as their sole online presence, nothing else, not even a personal website.

That said, I thought I’d share a few of my favourites – people I feel are really doing something different, unique and inspiring with the app.

Captain Winter

Eric Larsen (@elexplore) is a polar explorer. That’s a pretty cool job title. I don’t know the all the details of exactly what that entails, but I think the general gist pretty obvious. He’s a guy that digs the cold and winter. He’s on a one-man-mission to try and get you to as well. His Instagram feed is full of fun and inspirational photos and commentary about trips to the coldest, whitest areas of the planet.  He throws around some great stay-warm tips as well. As a fellow fan of winter, I know how much fun it can be. I also have discovered lately, that the more I get out in winter, the more I enjoy and embrace it. Conversely, when I’m not able to get out due to the to-do list or schedule, it’s a lot harder to tolerate winter and morale suffers. When the calendar is crunched and I can’t fit in a snowshoe, sometimes a choice post from Eric will suffice and keep the winter mojo going to the next outing.

The Bicycle Craftsman

To anyone who’s been around in bikes for a long time, Richard Sachs (@therichardsachs)will probably need no introduction. The guy has been hand-building bike frames since before it was the new artisanal thing to do. In the world of bicycle as art, he’s an Old Master. Although he’s been building some of the best bikes in the world for almost 40 years, he recently ‘reinvented’ himself, for lack of a better word. He built a new, solitary shop and returned to building bikes the way he’d started, one at a time, by hand, with hand tools. In the process he has been sharing his reflections on the industry, life, his craft and topics like passion and drive, all via his Instagram feed, often accompanied by some great photos of both bikes and process. You don’t have to be a fan of bikes to appreciate his posts on inspiration, drive, and why we do what we do.

Honourable Mentions

A few other cats also holding it down on the ‘gram and continually turning out inspiring content:

  • @slimwonder – Repping the Dads and bikes set, with bebop flava. #sockgame always on point.
  • @allhailtheblackmarket – Punk rock, discontent, skating, bikes and art. Through the disgruntled lens of middle-age.
  • @coldbike – Another winter nut. Bikes, Dad skills, kids, adventure.
  • @outsideisfred – Shenanigans.
  • @hotsaucecycling – Elite World Cup Cross Racing. Shoestring budget. Canadian, eh?
  • @targetsalad – Good espresso pulls. Mule Deer. Dad life. The World’s Most Interesting Bike Club.

Why Facebook Algorithms Are Like Gambling

I used to hate the random postiness Facebook algorithms used to fill my feed and the fact that it changed every time I viewed it. Now I enjoy it.

It’s the social media equivalent of pulling the arm on a slot machine. It’s your online VLT. You can come up short or hit the jackpot each and every  time you refresh/reload the page. Damn, that adrenaline rush. Can you feel the winning? Definitely sounds like something that would fit perfectly in Vegas.

CAN YOU FEEL THE WINNING?

If you don’t like what you see in your feed you can change it up. You get to adjust the amount of crazy you see in your feed to suit your needs or even mood at that particular moment.

Too many political crazies? Reload. Cat post brain explosion? Reload. One too many Jack Handey-esque inspirational sunrise memes? Reload.

You never know what you’ll get. Just keep reloading that page until you’re happy with the results.

It can get a little frustrating when you’re actually trying to find a specific post that you’d seen earlier and want to share or comment on. Chances are if you reload enough times – like maybe try a good half-hour or so of reloading, it will pop up again. I mean, you’ve got the time, right? You could go to the persons’ profile that made the post originally, or search for it, but that’s a lot of heavy lifting.

Just reload. Reload and get a new batch of stuff uniquely curated for you. Don’t like who Facebook thinks you are at that moment? Reload.

Facebook understands. Facebook gets me. Their slogan should be, Facebook: we put the ME in social media.

Soon, Instagram will be the same too. Time thinks it’s a good thing, so it must be ok. Life is a gamble. Shouldn’t your online experience be too? THE THRILLS!

Tired of guys posting about the strange and annoying quirks of Facebook and Instagram when you’d rather see a cute puppy video? Reload.

Enough Pictures of Bikes Leaning Against Things

I’ve taken probably literally hundreds of them. We all have. After awhile you struggle to come up with new ways to be creative. Bikes laying down. Bikes propped up with sticks. Propped up with helmets under the pedals. Done ‘em all.

At some point I started trying to get myself in shots more. 90% of the time either because I’m a loner or because I’m riding in weather conditions that others find ridiculous to ride a bike in, I find myself riding alone. It seemed to me that getting a person in the shot was the key to creating something infinitely more interesting. Experimenting with point-and-shoot cameras and timers was mildly entertaining.

  1. Set up camera on a tripod/Gorilla pod/top of a rock/fencepost.
  2. Center bike in the shot within sprinting distance.
  3. Hit the shutter.
  4. Run.

Most cameras max out at a 10 to 15 second timer. That’s not a lot of time. You get some decent shots, but you also end up with a lot of pictures of you running to your bike. Or in the process of climbing onto it. Rarely do you actually look like you’re riding.

iPhones are great, and there are apps that give you the benefit of extending the timer, in some cases up to a minute or more. But you still have to get on the bike and ride it, and then, are you still in the frame? Are you at the point you wanted to be at for the photo? Additionally I’ve struggled with getting iPhones to accurately capture scenes, particularly weirdly lit ones. Below are some examples of the same setup I shot with a bunch of different presets/and or ‘slider jockeying’ on the iPhone. Though some are nice, none of ‘em are completely capture the details and lighting that were there like I saw it. Some post-processing might help, but I find more often than not that once you start down that road, things just start looking weird, or forced.

Recently I stumbled on the Instagram and Flickr of Marc McShane who has been taking some great ‘selfies’ – for lack of a better word – of himself and the bike. I hate the word ‘selfie’ as it seems to imply an arms-length shot of someone ducklipping at the camera. These are self-portraits in the traditional, artistic sense. Marc’s shots impressed me because they’re art. They are stunning.

I knew he was triggering the camera remotely somehow probably vs. using a timer but I didn’t know how. There’s some gadgets that let you trigger an iPhone remotely, but they are usually bluetooth or infrared and therefore pretty limited in distance. You’re only going to get maybe 10 feet from the camera. After asking him, Marc told me his secret – hope he’s not pissed I’m revealing it here – he uses a radio transmitter flash remote. Says he’s triggered from up to 100 yards away. He commented that you can get iPhone apps that will trigger a DSLR from aways, but as he says, “then you just end up with pictures of you holding your phone.” The radio transmitter is small and easily hidden or mounted to a handlebar even.

When I was in middle school, my parents gifted me a SLR camera for my birthday. I took tons of pictures with it, through high school and even took a high school photography class and developed my own film. In a classic case of youthful indiscretion, at some point I sold it – probably for something that at the time seemed very worthwhile (beer money), but in hindsight was just stupid. Wouldn’t be the last time.

So now I’ve begun the search for a new tool to update my selfie game. I’ve started looking at used DSLRS – a mind bogglingly deep pool of various brands, years/models/makes and features. Asking photographers what they shoot with is akin to speaking to someone about religion or politics. Brands of camera are a highly polarizing topic amongst shutter geeks. It’s been suggested I check out the smaller 4/3 cameras – which somewhat appeal to me, as the bulk of carrying a full blown DSLR on a bike is not appealing, yet the 4/3 cameras still have the option of interchangeable lenses. Marc also mentioned cameras like the Canon G16 which, though really technically still a point-and-shoot, have better zoom options, more features, and the all important flash shoe, which is required for a radio transmitter.

So the quest begins. Hoping to generate more photos of a person on bikes in the future vs. just some of them leaning against things.