We received bad news last week. Tom Donnelly, the trainer that taught myself and Mike snowboard instructing died during the week, the day after his fathers funeral. He was the BASI examiner who I was training with most of the season in Wanaka.

I never forget when during heli-boarding in the Harris mountains in south island. The guide (a skier!) said that a ledge was fine to jump off, he ollied off it and found it to be a huge jump. It ended in his puffer jacked de-puffering, the cracking of his mobile and the destruction of an iPod… he always knew where the best hits were at TC, even down runs you’d been down 1000s times before and never even noticed!

He asked not to send flowers but to give money to his favourite charity (Angela Donnelly, 13 Harberton Park, Belfast, BT9 6TW).

You’ll be missed man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkIj1lyNysU

Off to snow planet tonight for some snowboarding. Its open 365 days a year. I asked them how many people came on christmas day and they said it was totally packed out! Bizzare!

Oh in tech news McAfee FAILED the 100% virus scan at VB. Virus Bulletin tests a load of virus scanners for “100% virus detection”. They failed to detect viruses running on Vista, ironically enough Microsofts’ OneCare also failed.

The 2006 season has started early in NZ! They were expecting snow early and they got it! Here are a couple of pictures of Snow Farm in the South Island of New Zealand. Ok one of them isn’t! Its of the Bra fence! If you go to wanaka and travel towards Queenstown from Wanaka to go to Cardrona or Snow Farm/Snow Park you’ll see this fense. I just went on the snow farm website to see if they have any pics and I found the true story about it: The Cardrona Bra Fence true story. Its quite long and kinda tradition to leave a bra on the fence

Here is quite an interesting article about search engine optimization. The guy who wote it has worked for a number of search engine companies, so you get some interesting insights to how the closely guarded algorithms work! http://www.webmonkey.com/06/16/index3a.html.

Techy:
Java Posse
A great podcast discussing java news and interviews, created by a guy from Kent University

The Twits
Technology chat

Security Now
Hosted by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporta they talk about personal internet/computer security. Its really for the home user wanting to know more about cryptography etc but they have some useful stuff. I did listen to one episode and they kept going on and on about one time pad encyption. They said it was 100% impossible to crack. Which … yes is “technically” 100% full proof, but you still have to transfer the plain text pad to the receiver of your encrypted message and if that gets intercepted without you knowing you code is broken. So I wouldn’t call it 100% myself… they did get around to mentioning this near the end but not after I had shouted at my ipod a couple of times saying “no it isn’t what about transferring the pad!… etc…”. After receving a couple of strange looks from people on Clapham Junction station I swapped tracks to the Simpsons

Info:
New Scientist Podcast
New Scientist has a number of articles and news from the mag in the podcast and has some really good interviews with knowledge matter experts.

FOXCAST: The Simpsons
Well think this one is quite self explanatory.

WOW what a year to go and do the Rookie Snowboard course! For those who don’t know I did a snowboard instructor could in new zealand last year and it was… AMAZING! really good fun and learned so much, not just snowboarding, which have really helped in my professional career as well. You can see all my rookie posts by clicking Rookie Academy in the catagories.

ANYWAY the reason I say its a great time to go is because the UK -> NZ exchange rate at the moment is amazing! Its currently cheaper than when I paid for it so you can get quite a good deal.

I’m hoping to get back out there this coming season. I did the course with my mate Mikal and he stayed out well popped back to the UK got a visa then went out

Todays cool site of the day: http://www.deviantart.com/
Some of the images on it are amazing my favouite sections are:

3d Wallpaper
Abstract Wallpaper
Icon Sets for programs etc
A mate from work showed me the site, he said most of the icon sets are on GPL but to get permission to use them usually only takes a quick email to say could I use them and the fame and recognition for the designers is enough

I feel a blog design update coming on which reminds WordPress (the blogging software I use) has been upgraded to 2.0.2 so i’m now going to attempt to upgrade it. Wish me luck!

Large:
Media Player (10.2mb)
Real Player (11.7mb)

Smaller:
Real Player (6.9mb)
QuickTime (6.3mb)

I’ll put the “wipe outs” vid up once i’ve converted it.

Since i’ve been back i’ve been working on the rookieacademy.com website and producing some promo vids for them using the footage that I got while I was in NZ. I also setup a discussion board for them, which so far hasn’t been used that much, I think mainly because all the ex-rookies from this year have been communicating via mass emails… hey ho, give it time Also been getting back into Maya and creating a space station, should have some piccies soon.

I’ve also been working on a Travel website bit like Expedia.co.uk but a bit simpler hopefully that will be complete mid-january. I’m also getting a mate to help me out on it.

Just after I came back to the UK, and signed up to a Digital Compositing course at Escape Studios in Shepherds Bush. Now for all those who don’t know what Digital Compositing is… here’s the dictionary definition:

“The digital blending together of a background plate and one or more foreground elements to create one seamless, well-integrated film image”

It starts on January 9th and goes on for 8 weeks, part of which you work on your show reel which ends up being your CV really on how good you are at digital compositing and giving pointers on what to and not to put in your show reel too. I’ve been wanting to get into a more media role for some time to get out of doing constant programming. When I look back on the stuff i’ve done so far i’ve found working for media companies like the BBC or print/design companies more fun! Hense doing film & video work over the past couple of years.

Well after 3.5 weeks of filming ‘Harry Potter Goblet of Fire’ they managed to compress my bit into 2minutes… maybe which even for a multi $$$ movie is quite amazing, yes they were very tech shots but hey! well I supposed i’d better get used to it.

Well Christmas is a coming! so HAPPY CRIMBO EVERYONE!, have a great new year if I don’t see you!

well off to bed so I am ready for the swimming pool… I mean slopes at TC…

wish me luck… I think I may need it!

All the skiers passed there exams last week (except one person who didn’t make it, another dropped out before the exams started) so its been a bit of a party atmosphere… they are now starting to concentrate on their BASI exams.

The mountain was closed today so I took the chance to dive over to Queenstown to finish off my medical which I need to do to get my Ozzy visa. Thats been sent off so should get something soon.

Today we got asked to stand by the trainers we wanted to teach us and infact it was quite evenly spread. I choose fatty because he hadn’t trained me for quite a while and he is one of the NZ examiners which is always useful before the NZ level 1 exam anyway i’m off to sleep… up the mountain tommorow teaching some friends of Mikals.

But hey look on the bright side its snowing in the saddle! Anyway we’re all heading down to Muzzies at noon to do some video MA, so at least we are doing something.

Anyway today I headed off to the Doc for my medical in queenstown. It was a lot more basic than I thought… blood test, urine test, answer a couple of questions… open your mouth etc.. oh and a chest x-ray, unfortunatly I have to go back for the results so thats another day off!!!! oh well.. got MA (movement analysis) tommorow and a practise teach. Gonna run through some lesson plans tonight with Mike before I hit the hay…

Mike was telling me about the conditions on the mountain today, he was basically wakeboarding on the beginners slope… hope the snow holds out for the exams! it was a nice 20oC today down in town, I was sun bathing in queenstown.

Overall its been a good week, it was good to get out of TC for a bit and try a different mountain at Cadrona. Its also quite good to see the examiner teaching in a slightly different way… quite good in that respect. The only thing that was a bit anoying was that most of the information we had been told before, so it was just re-doing the same things, but Rookie said they were going to put the CSI earlier next year which makes better sense.

We were introduced to how the board moves (as if we didn’t know them already), and we had exercises on each of the planes of movement. We then had to run a lesson that had nothing to do with snowboarding but fitted the lesson structure (Introduction, Analyse Students, Student Goals, Plan lesson, Present Information, Check understanding, guided practise, feedback & summary). So we did … “how to juggle with snowballs”, which was ok… and then we were given demos on the Level 1 progression (introduction, one foot orientation, skating, straight running and j-turns). We were doing so well we didn’t end up doing the evening session as we did it during the day instead.

The rest of the week we were doing rider improvement and the level 2 progessions. We were being assessed throughout the whole week on our riding and then on friday we had a mock test. There were 9 people in our group of which 2 failed their mock exam and I got a boarderline pass… Only one person got a really good pass.

The actual exam on saturday we were split into two groups and we won the stone, sissors, rock game so we got to choose if we went first or second. We wanted to get it out the way so we went first (it had dumped 12cms during the night so it was powder day!). We were expecting -19oC including wind chill but it ended up being a very nice +2oC. The examiner then picked decided what level the group had got too (ie “They have just completed J-Turns”) and we in turn had to continue the lesson for about 15mins.

… anyway… during this one of the other group turned up looking a bit shocked and he had just fallen off one of the rails and puncherd his leg which was a bit messy… five stitches! and before he had a chance to do his exam!!! anyway luckily the examiner had already seen him ride during the week so another member of the group did the demo for him and he just talked through the lesson… he passed Then Chloe from my group hit her knee on the boardercross track while we were waiting for our results… Dillon our examiner just thinks he’s cursed… every exam he does someone manages to break themselves…

Anyway here are my exam results… Dillon asked if we wanted to be marked as “Level 1″ rather than “CSI” so that we could get some meaningful feedback so i’m ok in the lesson side, just need to work on my riding. Two weeks to go before my Level 1 exam… ARGH!!!

In the afternoon we headed over to the sadle, we had about 2cms fresh snow the night before but it was sticky as anything. The most sticky snow I have ever had. It was like hitting earth every 2 metres or so, was really technical… then today we did a bit more freestyle and we took it in turns to guide our group down the mountain trying a range of different exercises. The afternoon was abandoned by the trainers as it was more or less raining on the mountain (it was definatly raining at base camp) and as our NZ CSI exam starts tommorow we came down and needed to get everything dry in time. Then headed off to the cinema!! its an amazing little cinema saw Batman… they have an interval half was through the film and I ordered a really nice pizza and they make really nice cookies during the first half so you can have just baked warm cookies during the second half… anyway then headed back for bed… CSI exam starts tommorow… ARGH! at Cardrona too… i’ve only once been there but its a much easier mountain to ride on than TC.

Wish me luck!! i’m off to bed…

Had a reading day today and i’m going up tommorow to practise my demos we have our CSI (NZ Certified Snowsports Instructor) starting wednesday the structure of the exam is as follows:

Day 1
AM: Introduce 4 movements and board performance concepts
PM: Introduce the teaching cycle & Level 1 Progression

Day 2
AM: Rider improvement (focus pedaling+steering)
PM: Introduce class handling/safety & Introduce level two progression
Night Session: Introduce MA formula & Introduce teaching children

Day 3
AM: Rider Improvement (focus pressure + edging)
PM: Introduce guest service elements & Practice teach levels 1 & 2

Day 4
AM: Examiners to present level 1 & 2 model answer
PM: Formal assessment (presentation of one exercise/drill to last approx 10mins)

Heres some photos from Friday, my board had around 3cms on it when I came out after lunch… 3cms in 1 hr!

They also opened Matukituki, Magnum and Sundance for the first time on Saturday.

Today was my first time at a pot noodle for lunch… not bad but had to finished it off with a chocolate cake from the restaurant (well its kinda still my “birthday week” )

I think the photos speak for themselves but we have some awesome footage and were waiting for the DVD from the heli-ski place too. Yes Helen I was in a helicopter all day! Rusty was our pilot (hope his name didn’t sugest his piloting ability! which it didn’t) some of his landings right at the top of the mountain had to be inch perfect! Some of the ledges were tiny! half the copter hanging off a vertical drop, at one point you could see the virtical drop from the foot well windows! crazy but amazing fun!

Some pictures from my Party last night:

Well i’m going to let the photos speak. Hover over the images for descriptions!

Got a big poster signed by a load of rookies, boot dryers, a packed lunch made by Jen my housemate, snowboard multi-tool, cards and a chocolate cake. Great day! Snow on my birthday, who would have guessed it!

Think of four points one under each toe and each heal edge. If you number them 1 to 4 so that your (if your a regular rider) left toes are 1. Right toes are 2. Left heal is 3 and right heal is 4. The range of movement when making toe side turn would them be 1, 2. Then 3, 4 to go onto your heal edge so your moving your posture/weight/centre of gravity over these points when you move down the mountain.

For me everything became a lot more stable as I was using the entire edge for the duration of the turn. I don’t think I’ve used any fore & aft pressure/weighting before to any great extent to it really did improve my riding. Anyway techno babble over (if you could understand it!).

SNOW INFO: The snow is getting very dodgy. It hasn’t snowed since the 31st and even then only 2cms. BUT it’s raining right now down in the valley so we are hoping were going to get at least 3cms up the mountain tomorrow… here’s hoping!!

After the training on the Tuesday night we were out on the mountain digging our snow caves. Unfortunately the snow was too dry to make snow caves so we had to make a snow “trench” instead…

Damit I knew it was a bad idea to go to the loo at night… now wheres our snow hole?!… Infact Matt did want to go to the loo in the night and the empty bottle you see in the picture of mike below was by the morning full of liquid… nice! … orange juice anyone?!

We slept right on the snow/ice I had a bivvy bag, under mat and sleeping bag. The general idea was that you kept your boot inner linings, fresh thermals for the following day etc in the sleeping bag with you. Anything that you want to stay damp and cold but not icy you have in your bivvy bag (so boots, jacket, trousers/pants etc).

We did manage to create a bar tho, with table, benches (made out of snowboards) and an ice chair.

If you look at this pic of Mikal you can already see the frost on Matts bivvy bag! (and the loo bottle!)

It got to around -6oC during the night. Not too cold for I was getting a bit cold by the morning. We didn’t build our hole in the ground that well. You should have a doorway at one point to let the cold air out otherwise it says at the bottom of your hole where you are. Unfortunatly the original place we had our door was facing the wind, so we had to fill it in and didn’t create a new one… DOH!

One jump for man on giant leap for mankind… well the snow holes had been made… hurray!

But the best thing has to be the sunrise in the morning. It was enough to get anyone up!

My frosty bag. Its supposed to be a brightish blue!

During the day we practised finding people/bags with avalanche transceivers in a mock exercise. What I didn’t know is when the transceiver points the direction you want to go it doesn’t point directly at where the signal is coming from. It takes you on an arc before you get to the person.

The last two days (Friday and Saturday) we were doing mountain first aid training. The training seemed to be a bit more in dept than the first aid training I have done in the UK. Basically because you may have to keep a patient alive for maybe 12hrs or more before help can get to you, unlike in the UK when you expect an ambulance to turn up well within 30mins. We were told a load of really gruesome stories of incidents that have happened. One was of a parent who had their child in a backpack doing some runs, after a while they thought the kid was being quiet so while they had another couple of runs. But when they got to the bottom they found that the kid had hyperthermia and in the end died. Also another interesting thing, if someone does have hyperthermia don’t put them right next to a fire or try and warm them up quickly, it will kill them, it has to be gradual as otherwise the mind thinks they are too hot and any warmth that is in the core of your body goes to the surface and you get even colder.

SNOW INFO: Quite slushy today but it started to rain at the base station, and snow further up the mountain, all in all 5cms by 5pm.

Earlier in the week we had some very nice lamb shanks… Mikal bit off a bit more than he could chew…

SNOW INFO: I didn’t go snowboarding today. We had 5cm in the main basin and 8cm in the saddle basin. But today the slopes have started to melt and areas are getting really dodgy from what the people who went up today have been saying… snow dance is continuing! Heavy snow is predicted for tuesday so heres hoping!

Yesterday I managed to twist my left thumb… friday I managed to twist my other one and my wrist! Not happy… i’ll take it easy over the weekend and everything should be sorted for monday.

A load of us went to “Star Burgers”, a takeaway burger bar who sell AMAZING burgers!!! if you come to Wanaka this is the place too go! Beef, chicken, fish, bbq burgers every type of burger you can think off.

SNOW INFO: No new snow about 0 degrees temp.

We ran out of food!!! Mike and Matt had to dive off the coach back from the slopes to buy…. well we wanted them to get some bread, milk and a couple of essentials, but came back with steak… wine… and lemon grass which is of course required in cooking steaks(!??!!). The wine went to good use and we now have none left.

SNOW INFO: No new snow over night getting really quite icy in places at between -2 and -3 degrees.

Went to my first Swiss Ball class today with Mel and Jen. Kinda strechy! good fun tho. Got another 5 sessions to go.

Mel and Jen got back from there night sleeping in there snow hole. Ironically the snow hole was warmer than our house!! (NZ people don’t belive in central heating… or insulation for that matter!). A couple of people got wet while they were making there snow hole so had a cold night, but everyone seems to have had fun. Just a bit chilly if you wanted to go to the loo in the night

SNOW INFO: Had a dusting of snow last night. A lot of the powder has gone on the main slopes but its not as icy as it has been.

Oh yes and I fell asleep on the coach home and someone took a photo… maybe it will appear on the blog tommorow… you never know … at least it snowed a bit today but most of the day there was quite a bit of flat light which made things challenging. The TC pistes have all these natural gullies, half pipes and jumps, its just one massive terrain park.

Mel and Jo (my house mates) who do skiing (boo hiss) are doing their back country course this week so they are sleeping out on the mountain tommorow night (they’ve packed enough food for about 6 weeks tho!). They need to dig a snow hole and sleep in it and during the day are doing avalanche awareness. Hopefully it won’t be too cold as I have to do it in a week or so!

SNOW INFO: Overcast today with about 2cms of snow in the afternoon, about -4 degrees

Part of the evaluation envoles checking to see if you “look the part” so you dont have tatty trousers, boots gaffa taped up etc. Matts goggles and board pants were … hmm… well not great so he went out and got some new kit and then pranced around the house:

When they got back we headed off for a walk around Wanaka lake before dinner got a couple of shots of the lake:

Oh and i’ve got my copy of Harry Potter don’t think i’ll be reading the BASI manuals much this week

SNOW INFO: No snow this weekend last snow fall was on the 14th July which was – Saddle Basin: 25cms, Main Basin: 18cm at the top and 8cm at base. But everything is more or less open now except the terrain park and Race training bar. But hey, with Treble Cone as it is with all the natural gullies and jumps you don’t need a terrain park!

Here are a couple of pics so far, we prolly have more video footage but we’re still editing it…

First couple of pics coming to Wanaka:

Well you would look like this too after 36hrs! :

Its a really nice house we’re living in, everything you need… good double garage come workshop, 46inch TV with DVD and skyTV. Washing machine, dryer, Dishwasher… and even a coffee maker! I’m living with Mikal (mate from Uni), Matt (mate from work), Jen and Mel. There is also a flat under our house where Tim and Jo live. Everyone is on a Rookie Course. These photos were taken by Jen!

The official day Treble cone was going to open was the end of June but due to lack of snow we couldn’t go up so we ended up going to Caldrona, another local resort that was getting snow, so while we waited for the snow Rookie started us on theory and days out:

A night out at in Queenstown with the Rookies (These photos were taken by Jen!):

The sky and landscape here is amazing! and has to be seen to be believed! heres just one sunset out the back of our house, but doesn’t really give it justice… “frodo you must throw the ring into the great fires of mount doom!” well you can see why they wanted to film it in New Zealand!

Everyone has still been taking the mic on the rugby! .. oh and we had our first experience of the “small town” yesterday. Mike got asked for ID at the irish bar in the high street and that they only except passports. Mike took a bit offence and left, then in the even we were sitting down for a meal at a local restaurant and the manager came over and asked mike for ID ))) … it was a classic, the manager had been told about the irish bar incident earlier on in the day… moral of the story… news spreads fast in a small town and Mike has sure made an enturance

Hopefully have some pics tommorow, trying to get a small vid together too…

We are staying at mountain view backpackers in Wanaka, not many people there at the moment just a load of snowboard/ski freaks looking for accomodation for the season, we have met chole who is also doing the snowboard instructors course with Rookie who is also saying at mountain view.

Well we lost at the rugby… boy has everyone been rubbing it in here!! Anyway until the next blog!

Francis

Hopefully our board bags will turn up later on today but at the moment we are just hanging out in Wanaka and soaking up the views. Everywhere you look there are mountains.