Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I officially call this week a Diggnation week.  Not that I have anything to do with Diggnation except being a fan, but you’ll get what I mean in just a second.  First, on Monday, while shopping at Carrefour supermarket, I came across Michelob lager bottles.  Michelob is an American brewery which used to sponsor several Diggnatino episodes, and Kevin and Alex even did a tour of the brewery.   Not a particularly great beer (here in Europe we are blessed with a variety of excellent beers), but not a bad one either.

Secondly, I was waiting for a fresh episode of Diggnation to come out and give me an atmospheric reason to chuck the first bottle and enjoy the second.  And what did Diggnation do?  They came up with probably their best live show episode ever.  Episode #246 in Austin, Texas.  It started off slowly, but it turned epic with Leo Laporte streaming a live TWiT show while crowd surfing (fast forward 40 minutes or so).  And then it went even crazier with Robert Rodrigez himself showing up at the show and doing a brief interview about an upcoming Predators movie.   In the words of Alex Albrecht: “What??!!!”

P.S.: If you watched a few episodes of Diggnation and haven’t got hooked, don’t worry.  I skipped quite a bit of Diggnation history.  Until I saw them with my own two eyes back in Amsterdam.  The guys are awesome!

One of the things that I’ve been saying for as long as I can remember is that it is always interesting and exciting to watch a person do something he is good at. And your interest in the subject is irrelevant – it’s all about how that person does it and that only. And ‘it’ can be anything. OK, maybe with few small exceptions, but those don’t count.

Another thought that I support, but always try to avoid is that in order to be good at something, all you need is strong will and a lot of effort. Equipment, financial injections, and stuff like that can only slow you down.

In support of these two ideas, I offer you the link to a video – Russian climbing.

It is a pretty long download and will last for only 8 minutes, but YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SEE THIS! Actually, you might have seen something similar in Jackie Chan movies, but who believes the cinema these days? Jackie Chan is doing what he is doing for the movies and he uses a lot of trained professionals and equipment to achieve the effect.

In this clip though, you’ll see guys doing some really amazing things without any equipment what-so-ever. Really, really cool stuff!