Walaber's Trampoline is a remarkably good trampoline game. It's no substitution, but I spent many many hours with it yesterday and it was both hilarious and enjoyable. I can't tell if it's making me miss it more or less, but it's the closest thing to a fix I've got....

Obviously jamming on the keyboard is nothing like actually doing tricks, but the timing and thought process involved is refreshingly familiar. And the way the control is structured, you're really able to create just about anything you can imagine. Derek showed it to me, and we spent a little while recreating one of our favorite games, where he calls out some ludicrous and dangerous trick and I think about it for a minute and pull it off (possibly only nearly).

Anyway, the beginning of the game is a little slow and awkward, but still really compelling to mess around with--and it only gets better when you start throwing crazy stuff later on.

Self-aggrandizing post in case anyone missed my last post or one of the updates:

I updated that post again with some slow motion copies.

And while I'm here: If I get some more footage of different stuff (which is the plan), should I post it here again? I know it's my journal, but there's a limit to the amount of self-serving with which I am comfortable. Also, if you guys are interested and I do post more videos, does anyone have any format preference(s) or other restrictions?

I've been posting snippets of things privately with the intention of going back to flesh them out when I have more time, but the "more time" part is proving to be fairly elusive.

I have many more important things to say (some of which may even yet be said), but right now I'm going to tell you about Thursday.

I decided I wanted to do a triffus. And I did.

I have the first few tries on film and I want to do some editing and compressing, but who knows when that will actually be completed. I've also been sitting on a fancy movie post for about a month and half; I got pretty far with a redesign on the Z-Trip project from two years ago; I still haven't graduated; I have a stories about breakdancing at a hiphop show, thursday night chicken experiments, a beautiful package from Hong Kong, and various sundry other tales.

But none of those are done. And I don't know when I'll have time to finish them. And I'm excited about having pretty cool tricks to show, so I'm just going to post what I have without putting it all on hold until it's done. Maybe it will be done soon. Likely it will not.

I made xvid copies for myself and they're not perfect, but they're done. If they don't play, you can install the xvid codec, else I will soon/eventually/hopefully get around to making more easily playable versions.

• My first triffus [ xvid avi - 2Mb ]
  Triple front flip, with a half twist on the middle flip. Jump, front flip, barani, back flip, land.
• Full in rudy out [ xvid avi - 1.25Mb ]
  Double front flip with two and half twists (one on the first flip, one and a half on the second flip).

Nothing too special. I'm just excited to have recent footage, and it was recent enough that I'm still proud of myself for doing them.

Update: I'm so crafty. Here are some vanilla mpeg versions that should play on all systems without anything special at all. "Large" is full 720 x 480, and "Small" is half resolution with more compressed (though not very noticeably inferior) audio. Just for Aaron, I changed the music to what's playing during the update instead of the original post.

• Two triffus attempts [ Large :: Small ]
• Full in rudy out [ Large :: Small ]

Update 2: Now that I'm no longer at work and don't have to be so crafty about it, I used some fancier tools and remade the mpegs. The files are a little better looking and smaller in filesize, and a problem with the pixel aspect ratio has been fixed.

Update 3: Jason suggested encoding them in slow motion, and it seemed like a good idea even though I'm now back at work and forced to be crafty again. The demonic slowed down sound was lame, so this batch is silent, making the big ones slightly smaller than the last batch. Also, the deinterlacing made them just a very little jerky (but fixed some ghosting problems), so I opted to just deal with it. How much can you honestly expect from 7.5 frames a second anyway?

• Two triffus attempts - Slow Motion [ Large :: Small ]
• Full in rudy out - Slow Motion [ Large :: Small ]

You know what? You actually wouldn't even believe how many triples I did today. And no death at all. Not even a single crash. Nothing went even a little wrong. It was really really strange. And awesome. I just kept landing on my feet. I seriously did like twenty of them. To my feet. One, two, three, BAM--standing.

I kick ass.

(I did some other noteworthy stuff too. But I'm trying really hard to not go on too long about this. I don't have a good track record for keeping my head about me when I get started with this stuff. I am Jack's overworked sense of self-control. I just figured if I didn't say anything I would get in trouble.)

Tomorrow is triple back or death. Or perhaps triple back and death. Or perhaps some other combination thereof.

Triple back or death!

I landed it today. But I didn't feel nearly as good about it as I should have. Distracted, maybe.

I just wanted to say that I had a really fantastic day today.

I've been posting less from home on account of not having a keyboard. Ted got a laptop a few days before I left, so I'm typing this now on his old crusty keyboard. Late late late last night I tracked down my all-time favorite keyboard (the one I'm always talking about and dragging around with me and that has recently ceased to work, leaving me without a keyboard--see above). So I bought a couple of them to hang onto and I found out just a little while ago that they shipped and will be here Friday. I would try to tell you how irrationally happy the thought of that keyboard makes me, but I'm not sure you'd understand and I'm not sure we'd still be friends if you did somehow understand.

I got a hooded sweatshirt a few days ago and I can't stop wearing it. I've never had a hooded sweatshirt before. I wore it again today. It fits me very well, if I might say so myself, and I'm constantly excited to wear it.

I've got about 100 gigs of wavs on my computer and I am listening to them on my stereo through a digital connection for the first time ever. Right now. The first song of the first experience is just ending. It sounds so so so much better than it ever did before. I feel like I've won something; everything sounds so sweet.

I got an email tonight from a girl that I was, until about twenty minutes ago, sure had stopped wanting to talk to me. She was complaining that I hadn't written to her lately. And she said she could tell I was happy to be back today. Which, while true, was almost as nice a revelation as finding out she wants to keep talking to me. I don't remember the last time someone told me I seemed happy. Nothing wrong with that.

But all of that is just the cherry on top of the real reason I've been in such a spectacular mood all day.

I got to go to TRAMPOLINE again. Oh MAN I missed it so much. And it was goooood.

I did full-in full-out with the throw-in mat and it was BAD ASS! It was so awesome, ya'll. I never thought I'd be able to do this trick. And today I made it on try three. And four. And five.

Essentially.... "Making it" being relative anyway. See, this is a massively bigger trick than I've ever tried before because you can't twist unless you're essentially straight. So to twist on both flips, you have to do two essentially straight flips in a row--double lay-out--something which ought to be beyond my skill level and a trick I've never been able to come close to before. So that was today's warm-up. I bounced about as high as I could (which is h i g h now) and tossed an ugly and worthless arched thing that was only a double by technicality. Determined, I bounced a little high and tried a little harder. And what do you know? Maybe I do have some potential here because there it was. A little pucked, but essentially straight. A few more tries and I'm doing something almost respectable here.

Now, step two: twist the first flip. I've done this before [WMV--sorry, I've (perhaps not) temporarily lost all the sources from that project, so I can't reencode it into a real format right now], but never at the top of maxed out jumping, and never with any attempt at flipping straight-bodied afterwards; I just kind of fling it around. Turns out today I can do it the way I need it to be done and I start to think about step three.

Twist the second flip. Now, I've never done this successfully before [previous best attempt: WMV], so I get a little worried and a little down on myself and wonder if I'm not just setting myself up with false hope here. I spend a lot of time thinking it over and seeing it in my head and decide that twisting the second flip out of nothing will be harder than twisting the second flip out of a twisting first flip. I consider just going for it, but sensibility kicked in and I try instead to just do a half twist out and land more on my back. I'm scared.

But I do it and after the first flip I find myself looking for the timing on the second twist, approximately finding it and coming out of it all somewhere between landing on my face and rolling onto my back.

But it was close enough for me to see where it needed to be, so I hop up and prepare to twisting good ole number two. I go for it, find it, come out of the second flip short and add a half twist to avoid a stomach landing. Full-in full-and-a-half out to back. Interesting, but not going to cut it.

Time to really get into it and commit to getting both flips around to my feet. This is a big trick, Ryan, so you need to go bigger on it. Okay, let's do this. And there it was. I put myself into it and executed both flips and both twists and came out perfectly in control to hands and knees. That counts, I think. I knew where I was the whole time, and pulled the thing off without anyone looking on worrying about my safety at any point. That should count.

Now class is over and I'm tired, but I need to try it one more time. I'm going to do it. I get a little afraid because I took a few minutes to catch my breath, but I smile it off and start bouncing as high as I can. One feels great, two is off a little and I realize I'm not used to doing anything from this height, let alone my biggest trick, three is the bounce that counts so I let 'er rip and my body does everything I need it to do in the air and I feel awesome and land on my feet, leaning forward slightly and catching myself in a four-point. That totally counts.

I still need to stand it up. But I feel like I will. Maybe tomorrow, maybe thursday--it doesn't really matter to me at this point. I've started.

Not a bad half an hour of accomplishments, I think, and so I've been riding that all day.

Today I am in love with everything.