Variations on the theme of re-birth

Clive Gerada is a Malta-based artist who has just published an exhibition called “Unrealized” on FaceBook

I want to share one of Clive’s pictures from the show here, as it rings a bell for us.  Strikes a familiar note.

Incoming...

Clive Gerada shows in “Unrealized” a series of selectively masked portraits.  His credits hint that he knows all of the characters he has portrayed. His notes say “The bare thought of “Unemployment” has given me the idea of creating a series of 13 “Unfinished” portraits, which resemble the human being when s/he feels unrealized or incompleted, or unable to fulfill his wishes to fulfill himself as a human being.”

My take on this is that Gerada refuses to give in to a spirit of malaise. Rather, he examines the feelings of in-completion by a reckoning based on “I am what I do” or identification of one’s worth being inextricably tied to one’s occupation, job description, etc.

By taking a closer look at the ‘condition’, the artist affirms his own ‘employment’, is the working artist plying his trade in a very public way.

Photo by Natalia

The concept of a figure struggling to free itself from the confines of the medium (the ‘condition’) has been around for a long time. Michaelangelo expressed it vividly in his ‘Slave” sculptures where he shows us the figure struggling to free itself from the inert sculptor’s stone.

The images here struck me personally as a metaphor for starting a new era in one’s life, with blind spots and information gaps that can seem daunting at first.  You have to gather your wits about you and tackle the challenges as they come up.

As with any creative, passionate act, all the effort and energy that goes into the construction of a new web-site can be seen as pushing of the envelope, stretching in all directions to finally arrive at a certain place where you feel fully employed, fully engaged and on fire with enthusiasm!

Making some progress w skyaak.com

Happy to say that we’re making  progress with the all new www.skyaak .com.

There’s still a ways to go yet…and confidentially… we are having so much fun experimenting with all our new toys that we will probably just keep on mashing it up, dialing it in, tweaking and the like.

It could take a little bit to massage it into shape.

So stay posted, it will be rapidly morphing in the coming days.

Royal Flush of Domain Names

Got the exciting news this morning that the domain names for our new skyaak.com site are in the bag. Now we have a Royal Flush to work with. Should be a sweep.

Check the website-in-waiting.

Still shy and blushing in its hatchling status, the ALL NEW skyaak.com will be striking out bold as brass in the coming days, so hang on tight!

Looking at the skyaak logo

A recognizable logo is fundamental in the graphic continuity of brand development.

Skyaak logo is here

Look at an early animated logo  here.

Just visited a cool site that showcases some famous logos (evolving!)

Name that skyaak skyline for free DIY deuce

Brendan w his skyaak model 3 overlooking the distant metropolis of Melbourne skyline.

Name that skyaak sky-line.

Leave a comment w locale id to grab a DIY deuce comp.

Stumped? Enjoy our instant delivery crash-free product disbursement system anytime.

Working it out w GoDaddy @ WordPress

Check the Skyaak R&D sister site. This is strictly an experiment, in a total state of flux.

We are going to use the WordPress platform as a launch pad for the brand new skyaak.com.

WordPress has all the support, plug-ins, CSS, et al to juice up a world-class site.

For example, GoDaddy talks to WordPress. WordPress is a plug-in feature of our spanky new GoDaddy host and by proxy server. So hang on for the ride, folks. This will be fun.

Skyaak DIY deuce Work-Out!

It’s pretty hard to imagine what a glider might look like gliding without seeing it airborne.  So I invited a couple of young Skyaak enthusiasts ( Charlie Clarke and his brother Mike) over this afternoon to work it out with their DIY deuce units and took the opportunity to put together a few short video clips. The video shown here is typical of the many throws and catches between us.

Charley also decided to build his own deuce today.  It took him about 15 minutes from the word go and he was ready to launch his freshly-minted unit on its maiden voyage!

If you want to experience the sensation of Skyaak ring-wing flight before your very eyes, you can right now.

Grab the Skyaak DIY ‘deuce’ model that you can print on regular 8.5″ x 11″ paper, dope with clear tape, customize, cut-out, build and fly for the one-time cost of $2.00. Just remember to make a copy of your download before you cut it out so you can go on to build a whole fleet if you want!

Building more Skyaak Ultra-Glows

This scintillating video shows Dylan hot-wiring the Skyaak Ultra-Glow guts. He has placed a ‘pod’ against the disco light so you can see how the pod sucks up the LED light. This discovery lead us to invent the idea of inserting a tiny replica Skyaak inside the shaft so as it travels back and forth, from the rear to the front in response to the G-force at play, it carries the LED light with it on its traverse! To see what the heck I’m talking about, check out the clip excerpt below.

Dylan, Shawn, Cassie and I are getting together next week in Saskatoon to hang out at LED HQ after work for a couple of hours. I’m flying off to Nova Scotia the next morning and thought it would be fun to hook up with some of my city pals before I take off.  We are going to build some more Skyaak Ultra-Glow units. As you recall, the Ultra-Glow is a Model 3 outfitted with an LED array for night-time play.

Fully-rigged Skyaak Ultra-Glow head-on detail.

The photo above shows what you will see at the last split second as a totally rigged up Skyaak Ultra-Glow comes zooming in on you. At this moment, you might want to step aside and grab it out of the air by the shaft. I always make a point of explaining to Skyaak newbies that they have to gauge the strength and velocity of their throw according to the distance between players. It is not good to over-throw it, because the receiver needs to have some reaction time in order to catch it.  After all, it is possible to vary the speed of the throw and it’s good sportsmanship to consider these things. Especially for night-time play. I mean, any jerk can over-do it and wreck a good time by being too rammy. Think finesse. Think completion. Yeah right. Here comes the latent coach in me again. What can I say, my Mom is a retired school teacher. She must have influenced me in some deeply subliminal way!

In the meantime, you can get a little taste of Skyaak fun when you order the DIY deuce. The concept here is to get the design into people’s hands for just a couple of bucks so you can get a bit of a feel for the Skyaak technique. Itchin’ to see what all the buzz is about? You can try it out right now if you want.

One nano-second after finger-flick of DIY deuce

Skyaak Ultra-Glow R and D Advance

Skyaak developer Dylan Cooke shows the latest Skyaak R&D advance, an LED light array that enables night-time play.

The request from the Feature Producer at Z Tele for a Skyaak ‘Ultra-Glow’ sent me scrambling into Saskatoon over the weekend to hook up with Dylan, who you will remember is one of the key developers of the LED accessory kit that we plug into the basic Skyaak Model 3 chassis to render it in brilliant light.  This of course takes the Model 3 to a whole new level of sophistication, making it glow for night-time play.

We have tried it out and found that the best way to throw and catch it successfully is simply to wear glow-in-the-dark bracelets so the guy throwing it has something to aim at. It’s pretty lame to just throw it wildly off into the dark!

You will see for yourself once you get into this that the object of Skyaak play is to make complete throws and catches. It’s not that great to chuck it into the dirt.  Much better to actually get it into your partner’s hands so he or she has a chance to feel the rush of the incoming energy transfer when it is snagged out of the air.

I just ran into a friend of mine who said that he bought a Model 3 two years ago and has put two summer’s worth of play into it. He reported that most of the time his Skyaak stays in the air.  That is, him and his two boys play with it lots and seldom throw it crazy. They make a point of taking a second to get focused and deliver it smartly into their recipient’s air-space. I’m sure it doesn’t always work out that way. There are times when you will crash it. Just try to be sensible and play in the grass so it has an optimum chance to survive the rough landing unscathed.

Remember, the Model 3 has been designed specifically to endure a lot of hard play, but you have to do your part like with any other flying toy to ensure it’s safety. For instance, in the R&D of the proprietary ‘ring-wing’ we burned through about seven different types of plastic until we arrived at the one with best flexibility, spring strength and shatter resistance. The object is to go hard, but try to fling it accurately enough so that your partner has a fair chance for completion of the pass. Think finesse.

I guess I’m getting a bit off-track here. I was  going to chat a bit about my time with Dylan putting together a couple of the Ultra-Glow accessory kits.

Dylan and I had a great time putting together the kits. I brought all of the components in that we needed to build the basic Model 3 chassis and Dylan whipped out his LED parts, tools and gadgets. Previous to this, I had some reservations about the viability of hand-building the Ultra-Glow accessory kits. It seemed that it was such a labor-intensive, complicated process that it would end up being cost-prohibitive. However, after we put our heads together this latest time we invented a few real time-saving process(es) that promise to streamline the production line. In fact, we are now confident that we now have the technology and techniques in place to make endless replications of the Ultra-Glow kit on demand.

It just goes to prove that perseverance really does pay off, big time. Dylan and I are both very comfortable in a production-line environment. It’s fun and satisfying to design jigs and templates that speed up and standardize production. For us, this organization of parts and process is one of the most rewarding parts of this whole learning curve.

Of course the MOST rewarding part is to get out of the lab to rock our Skyaak in the nearest park on a sunny day! And now we can go hard right into the night with the flick of a switch that cranks up the Ultra-Glow function! Woo-hoo! Are we having fun yet?

Skyaak, Canadian Ring-Wing Glider Demo Video

After I posted the video that shows the “Ultra-Glow” model in Dylan’s hands, I realized that you might actually like to see the Skyaak in action, being thrown and caught between real people in real live action.  It’s pretty difficult to imagine a glider gliding without seeing it…airborne.

This video was produced about three years ago now. Although in the grand scheme of things that is obviously not that long of a time-span, somehow it seems like forever ago.  High on my wish-list at this moment is a totally fresh new look for the Skyaak demo video. Don’t get me wrong, this video shows some pretty good footage of what the Skyaak is capable of.  It’s just that I’ve been spoiled since it was made by watching some of my more athletically-inclined friends SMOKE their Skyaak Model 3…exceeding 45 kph airspeed and executing some real power-house throws that nearly knocked me off my feet at the receiving end!  I am not kidding about this. Brother, catching this unit barreling in on you is like airborne bull-fighting!  You better have quick enough reflexes to step aside and grab it out of the air. Not that you will get hurt…no-one has yet…but it looks (and feels) SO much better if you have the hutzpah to pull it off!

There are a couple of clips in this video here that give you a lasting impression of the potentially explosive energy that can be channeled through a good clean, well-executed throw. Remember, it’s not really about brute force, it’s about finesse. The occasional person that can combine both effectively is where things get scary…I mean exciting.  Just you wait, I will be tabling some footage of high-performance Skyaak rumbles when I have the opportunity as it gets out to the right people. It will knock yer socks off when you see what kind of speed, accuracy and inertia can be coaxed out of the Model 3 in the right hands.

Speaking of which, maybe that person is YOU, or somebody you know…