Yes sirs and mams, I know I haven't updated in quite a while, since March! I guess the website has been somewhat self-sustaining since then, I hope...haha. Anyways! Since it's been so long it's about time I went through another period of working on the site and updates and everything. It would seem individuals want more tutorials!

Ahh, but for what? What would you like to see a tutorial for? Or, is there anything conceptually that you want elaborated? Head on over to the feedback page and shoot some my way! I'll see what's in high demand ;). Thank you very much!

Notice that the website has been off for a week or two (for the most part)? My host has been transferring servers. So sorry about that! But we should be set for quite some time now. Thanks a lot everyone. A bunch of bugs that I've found over the past few weeks (before the downtime) have been fixed. Hopefully new content soon. Enjoy! :)

Tada! After a couple months of works, here is your new site! Quite a few improvements over the old one, no? Hopefully you'll find this resource even more helpful than the last iteration. There is a bunch of new features! Why not try out, have a look around? If you want to access some of them, quickly make an account on the site and you'll be able to do anything and everything! We also hit 100,000 visitors! :)

Check out the two new tutorials for Front Flip and Parafuso, and also the new article "Style vs Technique!"

If you have any problems, leave feedback and I'll get them taken care of. Check out the "Using This Website Effectively" article for more information on the site and it's new features. Take care! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Alright ladies and gentlemen, the new version of the site is almost ready! I have been working (surprisingly) tirelessly on the new version of the site. I think you will all enjoy some of the changes. The account system that I talked about in my last news post has been created. You have lots of things you'll be able to do with a small little account. It's very non-intrusive; you can sign up, log in, log out, and change options quite easily. You won't even have to reload the page! Thank you, AJAX! Haha.

So far, you can keep track of any notes you post, any advice your request, and anything you highlight in the guides, notes, journals, etc. What? Did I just say you can save highlights, just like you'd highlight something you're studying? ;)

And tutorials themselves have been both simplified in some areas, and expanded in others. There's more emphasis on breaking down the tricks into simple steps of things to do. We'll see how that goes. :)

It's coming soon, get ready folks! :)

Well for the past week or so I have been working on the major overhaul of the site and might I say it is coming along (surprisingly) marvelously hahah. The home page has been simplified with more emphasis on consolidating the latest updates from any section of the site. A greater emphasis on user content as well. Lots of fun (but simple) new jQuery effects to help keep things slim when they need to be and expandable when you want them to be.

I'm thinking of adding a user account system now. Not a big elaborate user registration or a gimmicky Facebook-like profile crap. This is Just the Skills after all so the emphasis is primarily on tricking techniques. But when it comes to adding notes to guides, submitting advice requests, resources, and leaving notes/advice on other people's requests (which I hope to implement) it would be useful to have a quick account system. I'm thinking just username, e-mail, password; a fast little pop up box that you can log into or register in within 10 seconds, and then submit whatever you need to. This will also alleviate the current approval system I have in place where I must approve each submission to keep spam/bad content from the site.

With a brief account system, I could also give more abilities to users in terms of being able to rate or leave notes on various pieces of content around the site. So I want to know what you guys think! Would you use it? Is it absolutely unnecessary? Is it a good idea? Is there anything that would be nice to do with this system? Go to the Feedback page and leave some thoughts. Thank you very much!

I have finally been motivated to work on new versions of the tutorials on the site, and might I say they're coming along quite nicely. Things are being arranged in a more logical order, and lots of excess/redundant information is being stripped from the guides. I'm hoping to revolutionize online text tricking tutorials...I say that as if there aren't only like 2 or 3 sites like this on the Internet ahah. But hopefully it will help set the standard for methodical and not to mention good, consistent knowledge for tricking sites to come. :)

The website has been updated to it's new layout. Less colorful in some areas and more colorful in others. A little easier on the eyes perhaps? Tell me what you think if you feel so inclined.
It's sort of just a superficial update, no real content updates, because I'm so unmotivated! Not only am I unmotivated to train but also to update the site. We'll see what happens with that. Hopefully soon more, more meaningful tweaks will be in the works. Stay posted. Enjoy! :)

EDIT: Also apparently I forgot to change one of the directory links which was causing an error on the guide related pages. It's been fixed now. Thanks to those who pointed it out! :)

I think I might have hit a creative block as far as how I want to lay out the actual tutorials in the new version of the site. I just don't have a clue how I want to do it! Ahaha. Total block here. I'll figure something out eventually of course. I wish I had a creative mind lol.
However, the layout for the actual new site in general is finished of course. Yay! Stay tuned. Sorry updates are taking so long. But here's a new little training video for you to watch: 8-15-09 Training. Tada! Before this I hadn't had an actual tricking session since like the end of May. Yea, I still don't train consistently/regularly, but more often now. Weee! :)

I'm dedicating more time to finalizing the next version of the website. The changes are going to be a lot simpler/less than I thought, which I suppose is a good thing. But I need ideas for what you guys, the end users for whom the site is designed, would come in beneficial. Most of the site is going to be the same generally content-wise, so now's the chance to recommend additions to the site to improve the current functionality.

Other than some of the layout and design, the largest change will tentatively be in the guides, as they'll be reformatted into more structured/expository tutorials, so they'll be beneficial both for beginning users who may not be familiar with some of the concepts I often refer to, and also for advanced users who are looking to dig deeper into the understanding of techniques. Often times though, these two things aren't that different!

Send any little or big suggestion you have to the feedback section, very simple. And thanks to everyone who's given feedback so far. :)

It's seriously retarded. In other news, unfortunately the new version of the site won't be ready the day I was hoping (June 14th, which marks the 2nd anniversary of the site as Just the Skills). Oh well. But we'll see what we can't get done anyways ;).
I'm still not tricking regularly yet, I have a performance with friends in a few weeks, after that my body will be free to take whatever I throw at it, and by then it should be conditioned to as well. Yes!

Taken forever to update right? Sorry about that. Pretty busy lately: school/exams finished up, truck broke down for 4 weeks (cracked cylinder head, shot radiator/waterpump/head gasket, if you're a car techy you probably just cringed reading that haha) pretty expensive repair bill but I got her back today :). That and working on our house. And preparing a public discourse. Then I'm going out of town for a few days this weekend. Then all my stressing is over and it's summer time! (Although I need to get my trucks a/c fixed haha)

And hopefully then I'll be updating things more regularly. Oh yea, then I'll probably be tricking regularly too! Back is basically healed, knees are totally healed, shins are fine, just need a bit of "oiling" and I'm primed to go! Time to relearn half my skill set haha. Should be fun! I'll keep you posted, whoever you happen to be.

I haven't updated in a while. Probably because I've been quite busy haha. I've been trying to think of new ideas for the site though, but I'm unfortunately not very artistically minded, even though I want a more visually appealing and polished look for next time. So who knows. But sorry I haven't updated much, other than Advice Line entries that have popped up now and then over the past few months.
I haven't started tricking consistently yet, go figure ha, I'm playing it almost too safe but who knows. Even if I started again this moment I'd still be crappy so I might as well try to thoroughly condition myself beforehand. Can't make any promises of course, but if you're reading this, you're awesome!

Well let's see. A couple weeks ago I wrote a new article and put it on the site, check that one out if you want! :) There have been a few new entries on the trick advice line. And hmm I guess there's just not too much else to say.

Although, I am starting work on a new version of the site! Of course the current one is perfectly fine (I rarely say that too haha), but I've thought of new creative ways to make it look and work even better, and hopefully streamline information for all! :) Stay posted...I hope you all have Javascript enabled ;).

Oh yea, it was asked if I had a Youtube on which one can watch some of my videos. Certainly! I'll probably incorporate Youtube more actively into the site in the next version.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Skilzat99X

I didn't want to make a Jacknife tutorial without a better example video. But the people have been calling for a new tutorial! So I finally delivered, and now there's a Jacknife tutorial. It's still good enough to use as an example, but not quite as good as I'd like. Once I get a better video I will substitute, I may also have to tweak the tutorial a little and add stuff here or there.

I've been going over a couple little concepts I could write articles about in my head, so hopefully within the next few days you'll have a new one of those as well. :) Take care!

Been quite a while since any updates huh? Well, I've added a little Notepad system to the website. How does it work? Basically, users can add notes of whatever form about any step of any trick on each tutorial page. Just go to a tutorial and pop open the new box at the bottom of each step. You'll notice right now they're alllll going to be blank, well that's just because I just made it and nobody's added anything yet silly! Haha.

This isn't a huge feature, but it's another convenience for sharing experiences with others; the general proliferation of knowledge. Good stuff!

I've finally added a new little write-up in the Author's Corner. This one is pretty interesting I'd say, especially for beginners. I'm hoping that I expressed the thoughts clearly enough. If you don't totally understand what I'm saying send me a message in the Feedback section so I know what areas to clarify. Thanks.

There's been a call for more tutorials. First I need to actually record myself doing something haha. Which implies getting back into doing more stuff. Stay tuned! Also stay tuned for more articles and such, thank goodness for no school!

Oh dang, looks like I edited one of the site's php files in a way that produced an error, and didn't fix it. So apparently for a couple weeks the tutorials weren't working :(. Sorry about that!

And thank you to the fine gentlemen (Hite, blackout, NoMore, dredsmcgee) who sent feedback to me and alerted me of this, you guys are awesome! :)

As you can see in a couple places on the site, we now have a logo! A brand spankin' new designed by me logo. Nice concept, hmm? You like? I hope so! I'm somewhat proud of this design. I might put it on a few shirts, don't know if I plan on selling any yet.

Hopefully you'll be seeing this at the start of some new videos soon to come. What will it look like at the start? Here's a preview!

You'll notice the main page has been rearranged. The latest articles are now shown on the main page. Also, the session tipline thingy has been changed to the Author's Corner. What's this? It's quite similar to what it was before, but now this isn't about me having sessions and posting what I've learned though (although I may do that time to time). I'm just going to write little mini-articles or bits of information on little principles, misconceptions, or interesting Tricking-related facts. Yaay. Sorta like a little editorial. Ho ho ho.

One idea I'm tossing around in my head is that of making the Advice Line replies videos, narrated by me, detailing the persons problem, while using their video and perhaps supplementary clips and illustrations to show what's going wrong. That might actually help a little more than typing up text, but I may do them both. Mwaha, I'm trying to jam pack this site with good information. I've been considering adding little video narrated cliff notes for certain articles, but that idea probably wouldn't be as useful haha. We'll see what happens!

Leave any ideas you have about anything in the feedback section, if that's your hearts sole desire.

Well there's been a few updates over the past couple weeks but I haven't posted a news entry for them. So let's begin.

First of all, a new article is up on the Articles page. My best one so far, very explanatory, with lots of visual aids, and tools to help you understand. Check it out. I've also categorized the Articles into 4 different sections, so people who are looking for something more specific can easily find it.

Hmm, I forget what else I've done haha. Little changes here and there, lots of them for SEO, my ranking is climbing fast now mwahah! Expect to see some more changes soon in the future. I'm trying to now turn this site into a very reliable and somewhat scholarly source for quality, user-friendly, unbiased, and free Tricking information. Sweet! Leave any tips in regards to this in the feedback section. Thanks a lot.

So how are things doing? I think my shin splints are basically gone. Woo!
My weird hamstring/glute strain type action is gone, as I think I said before. Sometimes I get a little weird tenderness in that area while sitting or after kicking, but it's not really a hindrance. If my stretching regimen goes will, it should be gone without a memory. Woo!
Today I got a cortisone shot in my wrist. Will this be the fixer upper I've been waiting for? It's quite possible it might be. So if it does work, and my impingement is gone after it takes effect, I plan on a few weeks of light stretching and training for my wrists, gradually increasing in intensity. Then I'll be able to do all those fun moves I miss again. :) Woo!

Now my knees...heheh. Crap! They just don't wanna heal that fast. I dunno why, well I mean I guess it would help if I did absolutely nothing with them except walk, but sometimes I have to show someone something, or I get the urge to kick haha. Foolish me, oh well. I've got back on joint supplements, so this combined with rest and perhaps heat/ice therapy (which one would work better? hmm), it should get better in the not too distant future.

So after all these ailments are gone, and my body is ready, I'm going to be tricking up a storm! WOOO!