This is what happens when you move the focus to your tumblelog for too long, your main site gets neglected and then when you next look at it is all screwed up. It seems like I’ve lost my carefully structured categories somewhere along the way (and this site has been upgraded gradually) — and I am not alone. As I haven’t imported all the old Blosxom posts (yet) I am not sure what do — start from scratch or try and import the old Blosxom posts again to regenerate the categories. We will see; for now I have just given the categories generic names so at least I can get some idea of what they are (ie arts/music should probably be the largest one). As for tags, they are a waste time of anyways, so no chance of wasting even more time on trying to get them back.

Note to self, back up and sanity your sites once a month.

• Missing categories (David Cumps)
• Missing categories (Matt Hayward)

Rolling down that hill (in a transparent inflated ball).

Alain Robert is not the first human spider to climb tall buildings: George Willig, “Spider Dan” Goodwin and the more obscure Tony Deutchler did climbs in the 80’s and 90’s.

Even further back there are stories about Bill Strother doing a climb in 1921 in Augusta and Jack Williams doing climbs in 1917 and 1918.

The sculpturist Enrique Alferez also did some climbing to support himself:

Passionate, opinionated and extroverted, Alfrez made a strong impression on all who met him. He led a remarkable life and many of his adventures have become legend. The facts themselves are dramatic enough. Early on he was taken into the band of infamous Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa. In Chicago he earned a living climbing the Wrigley Building wearing a pair of tennis shoes to raise and lower the flag. He was mistakenly declared dead in Mexico in the late 1930s; his obituary was published in New Orleans and he was mourned in the French Quarter.

The parkour are following in the footsteps of the greatest urban athlete of them all: climber Alain Robert - The Man Spider. His website is full of charming English like:

Is he out the law?

It is very difficult to obtain authorizations to climb a tower with naked hands, then to each one of its rises, Alain is taken along to the police station. Because of the mobilization of the police officers to the foot of the tower, a handrail must be written.

In France, Alain climbed nearly 20 buildings and the object only one complaint was which did not come to anything. By chauvinism or respect for the performance, the French font has sympathy to our man spider. But it is not the case in the other countries and Alain Robert knows the time of a few hours or a few days the prisons of the whole world.

We did swing around lampposts and climb roofs in the town when I was a kid - but that’s where we stopped. The kids from Lisses south of Paris did not stop - they continued to hone their skills and so invented the sport of free-running:
moving around the urban landscape as it was a combination of an army obstacle course and a ballet stage.

The Guardian presents href=”http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0%2C10488%2C1026383%2C00.html”>Sebastian
Foucan in a recent article. Foucan and David Belle (of the brilliant href=”http://www.le-parkour.com/rushhour.ram” title=”rush hour video
download”>BBC advert showing free-running [RealPlayer download] are the stars and founders of “parkeur”.

The French websites dedicated to the sport are almost like obstacle
courses themselves - the unofficial parkeur
site is slightly better than href=”http://www.parkour.com”>parkour.com (annoying music alert on both).
London-based urbanfreeflow’s site
is designed in a way truer to the spirit of the sport.

Forget surfing, this is fresher and there is no need for a wetsuit (just a
pair of good shoes).