Matthew Supert

So this summer I hope to get Megan on the back of the motorcycle and do some trips. Part of this involves here getting some gear, but it also has involved her having some sort of "backrest" for the back of the bike to lean against. My bike doesn't have a ton of options for this, but after doing quite a bit of research this winter I opted to go with the Givi system. It was cheaper than the BMW system (and the case looks better) and it didn't involve me purchasing an entire new seat for the bike. 

After getting the rear rack on the bike, I am not thrilled with how it looks, but it looks fine. It just detracts from the minimalism that I like on the bike. The Givi gear seems to be really well built. I just feel that the top plate they have is a bit thick and it unfortunately does not have any utility for strapping gear down when the case isn't on the bike. I may look into trying to fabricate a replacement aluminum plate which could be thinner, but we will see. Again, it doesn't look horrible. 

I can't deny the utility of the top case though. I used it riding to work last week and the 47l case can hold quite a lot. 

Last weekendI have the fun opportunity of playing in the Cavalcade of Bands at the Moraine Valley Community College. The event featured the West Suburban Concert Band, the Southwest Suburban Band, the Tinley Park Band and the Moraine Valley Concert Band. This was a really fun performance. All four bands performed about four pieces individually and then we performed four joint pieces. Can you imagine having 350 plus musicians all playing a song. The sound was pretty fantastic and it was a blast to get a chance to really listen and interact with all of the other community bands in the area. It is not something we get to do very often and I hope that this cavalcade continues. 

Rumor has it that the full video of the event may be available in a week or two so I will get that posted if it becomes available. 

I was having an interesting conversation here the other day. It started with the recent discussions about Ukraine and Russia's incursion into Crimea. Most of us have seen stories on the news referencing all sorts of Cold War topics and it got me thinking about the discussions that were ongoing at that time about the failure of Communism. I actually studied quite a bit on these sorts of topics in college since my major was political science with a focus on political theory. 

My topic of conversation then shifted to the problems we seem to be having so often over the past decade or so of mistrust. Mistrust of people with their government, with their teachers, with corporations. It just seems like everyone is angry or upset with everyone else, and to some extent there is some legitimacy to that idea. It all sort of came to an exclamation point in my head this evening when I saw this video from this afternoon from 60-Minutes about problems with our the stock market currently operates. It got me thinking that we have gotten to a point now in society that perhaps we can say that "democracy" (really republicanism, but we will say democracy since that is what the media likes to say) and perhaps our notion of capitalism has failed, much the same way communism has. Look at the story for example from the Washington Post where a kindergarten teacher quit their job because it is no longer about teaching.  

Now this is not to say that capitalism has failed when you look at it from a GDP or market perspective. We consistently see data that shows that the US GDP and stock markets are continually rising. At the same time however we see consistent data that wealth in the US is not being distributed evenly and that the problem is worsening. It makes me feel that we sort of should be questioning what exactly should be the measurement of success for our national concepts. It feels like from a policy perspective, when truly trying to look at policies that benefit the nation, we have seen increased evidence that the core ideas of the democracy decision making process. Is the final measurement of success really just the wealth of our nation as a whole? What exactly should be the measurement of that wealth? GDP? Culture? Test Scores? Art?  

Despite everything that has been going on lately, I have still been reading some books. The most notable of the books I have recently read have both been graphic novels. I read The Sandman: Dream Hunters, which is a wonderful novel in the Sandman universe. It is apparently volume #11 in this series, so I will have to go back and read the other novels. The book had a wonderful fairy tale sort of feel to it. 

I also read a book call Kabuki, Vol 1: Circle of Blood. This is a pretty adult graphic novel that follows a group of assassins  who are modeled after these TV personalities. It is a bit hard to describe from that angle, but really just picture a dystopian future where a shadow organization is trying to control the world around it. 

Jumping back over to novels I read an excellent indie novel called Bypass Gemini  which was written by Joe Lallo. I picked this book up as part of the Storybundle way back when. The book was a very pleasant surprise and was an excellent fun, light sci-fi read. 

I have to admit that I probably spend more time on my iPad these days than I do on my computer. The bulk of what I am doing on my devices is checking email, reading twitter or doing some other consumption practice. For better or for worse I have also found that the specialized apps for different services usually offer a much better experience compared to the website or the applications on most computers, including my Mac. So with that in mind here are my favorite iOS apps that I cannot live without. 

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So a couple if weeks ago Megan and I went to go see the Lego movie and it was one of those movies that just puts a smile on your face and makes you want to be a kid again. We had to go out and buy Megan some Legos.

Around that same time my mom also said she was going to start cleaning some stuff out if her house, so I had to make sure she wouldn't get rid of my old Legos. This evening we picked them up and had a blast playing with them while watching Spaceballs. Half the fun was going through the boxes and pulling out the other random things in there like a rubber triceratops, a Michelangelo head and a ticket from a Enchanted Castle.

Also, the show "The Goldberg's" is pretty amazing for a 1980's family sitcom.

Well, it has been a while since a book check in. Progress is still moving along slowly, but I think at this point I am getting to the conclusion point in this point of my story arc. I am working through the climax point in the book and I am approaching the final plot point. I really hope I can knock that out over the next week or two and then begin the process of my first round of edits. As I have mentioned before, the book at this point is little more than a collection of words. Most of the characters still do not have names, and I still need to do some major editing to reincorporate the religious aspect of the book that I haven't done thus far. 

I was struggling for a long while on how to incorporate some of the religious tones that I wanted to do, but I have found some great inspiration actually from a book I just recently read. Nightbringer from the Warhammer 40,000 universe has really laid out an interesting world where the religion in the universe is the guiding point around the social and military structure. There are some interesting points in that world that I think I will borrow upon to bring in to my book.  

So a few weeks ago, I posted about how i pulled out all of my old game systems and hooked them up to my TV. Since doing that I have done a little research on some of the great games that I missed from previous generations and also some of the really good Xbox Live Arcade games I missed from this past generation. I have to say that I am quite surprised at home many Gamecube games made it onto that list. I loved that system to death, but I sort of thought that I played most of the good games on it. 

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