Month: October 2022

Freediving Coral Gardens on the Windward Side of Bermuda

After a hard day’s work helping my friend refit his boat at the boat yard in Bermuda (Spar Yard), I took a shower to wash off the bottom paint and fiberglass bits, grabbed my fins, wetsuit, and snorkel, and took a little bit of evening me time to freedive the nearby coral gardens, which is what I named the place. Basically I walked about a half mile up the road, found a side cut through some bushes to a rocky coastline, and jumped in to see what was around during the setting sun.

I was not disappointed…

Making a Bushcraft Sail in the Florida Everglades

A while back, in 2009, I did a five day canoe adventure in the Everglades National Park with a friend of mine. Along the way, I got tired of using just the paddle for propulsion, so I built a bushcraft sail. And… it worked! This is just one of the many small projects along the way that’s lead me towards sailing, but in a small, maximally efficient use of materials, time, and resources.

On building a new blog site in the post social media world.

I’m not new to blogging. In fact, this is a return after a very long hiatus. My former blog, http://davesnewadventure.wordpress.com , was where I collated my adventure articles from my bicycle expedition over a decade ago. I also have a Youtube channel, http://youtube.com/adventuremaniac, which I’ve had for almost 14 years now. I left all of that to pursue an entrepreneurial path, which interestingly, brought me back here.

The problem now is trying to avoid Big Tech, their censorship, and re-invigorate the former internet by participating in the growing decentralization movement away from massive digital, monopolistic platforms that can censor and erase you at their will.

So, I’ve been exploring alternatives for a while now. The insane censorship I witnessed from 2020 through 2022 only reinforced my rebellion against the big tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc. New alternatives, like Odysee.com for video – I got a channel there, https://odysee.com/@DavesNextAdventures:8 , hosting your own blog site, and Minds.com for microblogging, etc are popping up.

I’ve been on the internet since 1994. From 1994 till 2015, it was mostly a Wild West, a fun, freewheeling, freedom loving atmosphere. And then it seemed way too many people migrated to the Big Tech platforms. At first it seemed like a smart market choice.

And then the hammer dropped in 2020. With COVID came censorship. With the election, came shadow banning. And now here we are, where the Big Tech platforms trump their numbers with bots and algorithms, while real people flee en masse. It’s a huge mess, but in that chaos, seeing the small solutions that can scale massively is really the only path I see forward.

So, I’ve come back to blogging. Once upon a time, I used to post my thoughts on Facebook. I haven’t touched that cursed platform in over two years now. I long ago deleted my Twitter and Linkedin accounts. I still have Youtube, but I haven’t uploaded anything substantial in a decade.

Sometimes it’s best to get back to basics, like the basics of what made the Internet great.

Make Internet Great Again!

You could find a host provider, or create your own, make your own website, and spread the word amongst friends and family. Grow it organically. Sure, it may take longer than mucking around with Google SEO, but I think the last time I actually used Google extensively was half a decade ago. Now there’s Duckduckgo, and other new, non censored search engines popping up.

It’s all about creating new habits that take you away from the dominant platforms, and put you back in control of your creative expression. Don’t let them take that away from you.