• Ragdoll Cannon (game)
• My Four-Year-Old Son Plays Grand Theft Auto
• ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME TRAVELERS – 2010 gadgets redesigned for 1977
• Making a tiny star on Earth? – Scientists at the LIFE project in California expect to develop controlled fusion (and thus an almost limitless supply of safe clean energy) within the next 2-3 years. !
• 8 Month Old Deaf Baby’s Reaction To Cochlear Implant Being Activated (video)
• Stuff no one told me (but I learned anyways) – Sharing cheap yet deep knowledge since a couple weeks ago
• Norton Cries Wolf – Insight into Symantec’s alarmist and disingenous report on child internet usage, which has been credulously reported by NZ media such as Stuff.co.nz
• Black on Beck – Does Glenn Beck have Nazi Tourettes? (video)
• Your Videogame Driving Skills Don’t Apply in Real Life (video)
• Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide
• Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
• Great Literature Retitled To Boost Website Traffic
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
• Is Bill Gates delivering a new Einstein letter?
• In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All – The NY Times investigates Sweden’s radical parental leave laws, and their effects on traditional gender roles.
• Is Meth a ‘Smart Drug’?
• My once-in-a-generation cut? The armed forces. All of them.
• Gimme back my son (video) – ffs give him back his son, jeez
• Warner Brothers Sued for Pirating Anti-Pirating Software
• Best Cry Ever (Wookie Song) – Fearfarts Remix (video)
• The Empathic Civilisation (video)
• World’s most and least touristy places – Google map color-coded by level of touristiness, based on distribution of photos on Panoramio.
• Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (video)
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative – This catalyzing article by Wired Mag has tapped into a growing wave of anti-facebook sentiment and spawned the race for a replacement
• Can you build your way out of traffic congestion? – *spoiler alert* The answer appears to be ‘No’.

I think it would be much more intuitive to be able to edit a site’s saved user/pass settings just by right-clicking on a username or password input field and selecting something from the dropdown menu (maybe ‘Edit Saved Passwords’ or something like that?). Then you could bring up a list of the saved usernames and password for that site with the option to add/delete individual usernames and maybe edit others, as well as changing whether the browser will ask for a password when submitting that form. It may be better not to display the passwords for security reasons – I’m unfamiliar with the specifics but I’m sure each browser manufacturer employs security experts who could come up with an elegant solution.

While you’re at it, you could probably use a similar system for editing the search history for any given search form. This is much less of a concern but could be a cool feature.

Thoughts?

• The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook
• Ground Zero – Google Maps + Javascript = Nuclear damage simulation.
• Street Accountants (video)
• Cleanternet.org | campaign for a cleaner and safer Internet (video)
• Antipodes Map – Apparently my flat is on the exact opposite side of the world from Vilaude in Northern Spain.
• Meet the ‘sabre-toothed sausage’ – A guided tour of a naked mole rat, one of the world’s strangest mammals
• How Dr. Seuss would prove the halting problem undecidable
• Why women are starting to pay for sex
• Potato gun, lightning, and sonic magic: Unconventional speed tests for the browser (video) – Google Chrome team up with a few creative minds to bring Chrome’s speed to life.
• Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? – Since abandoning drug prohibition in 2001, Portugal has seen an astonishing decline in drug abuse.
• Pot, meet kettle: a response to Steve Jobs’ letter on Flash
• Clever Crows, Complex Cognition? (video)
• Only Christians should be exposed to ethics? – Australian religious leaders object to non-christian students being taught secular ethics while their christian counterparts are taught scripture.
• jCharacterfall (game) – A small, addictive jQuery game that may improve your typing skills.
• I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin
• Logorama – The Logo Design Movie That Won an Oscar (video) – This 16-minute movie took 6 years to produce, and has some sweet animation.
• Time for an Intervention – ‘Dear Christchurch, you really just can’t go on picking mayors because you’ve heard of them before.’
• Cows on Treadmills Produce Electricity for Farms
• Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose Billions – While politicians and pundits distort climate science any way they want, serious industrialists cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.
• The trustworthiness of beards
• A handy guide of what to do if you make first contact with aliens
• Engineered Virus Harnesses Light To Split Water – A possible efficient method of generating hydrogen?
• Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
• How Wikileaks shone light on world’s darkest secrets – Wikileaks has had more scoops in 3 years than The Washington Post has had in 30.
• Digital Economy Bill: The Now Show gets it spot on. (audio) – An hilarious, accurate and important dissection of the UK’s version of Section 92A.

• 70km-wide scale map of the solar system
• Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
• Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
• Radiohead – 2+2=5 (video)
• The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (video)
• I think my argument is so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it (video)
• Five browsers and the modes of transportation they resemble
• The Last Advertising Agency On Earth (video)
• HTML5 & CSS3 Browser Support Checklist
• How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers
• A Template For Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever (video)
• Lessons of a $618,616 Death – Two years after her husband’s death from cancer, Amanda Bennett examines the costs of keeping one man alive.
• Here’s a bargain: five dollars to overthrow the US government – Are you a political subversive? If so, please fill out this form and send us $5.
• Destiny Church pastors replaced after walk-out – More than half the Brisbane congregation walked out of last Sunday’s service over concerns the church was becoming a money-making cult. Win!
• Snatch Wars (video) – Darth Vader + Bricktop = comedy gold
• When using open source makes you an enemy of the state
• Algae to solve the Pentagon’s jet fuel problem – US scientists believe they will soon be able to use algae to produce biofuel for the same cost as fossil fuels!
• This is the Title of the Story Which is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself
• The annotated Rodney Hide: treating parliament with contempt – Rodney Hide lied to the House yesterday. Relentlessly and repeatedly.
• Google Offers Cash For Bugs – Google is offering hackers up to $1337 if they find a new security flaw in Chromium.
• Born Poor? – “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”
• Selleck Waterfall Sandwich – I am lost for words
• 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop
• Why do people often vote against their own interests?
• Study shows Kiwis want to see cigarettes banned by 2020 – Hey you know what works really really well? Prohibition! People used to do lots of drugs, but then they made it illegal and nobody does drugs anymore and there has been no downside whatsoever!

• Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution – Important developments in biology herald a possible paradigm shift
• Beatles infographics
• The future of UX design has arrived
• The most useless machine ever!
• Colonel Sanders Botches KFC Ad Voiceover (video)
• Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
• The universe is a REALLY big place – The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
• Boots hit by mass homeopathy ‘overdose’
• Animator vs. Animation (video) – Yeah, making flash videos kinda feels like this sometimes
• The Killer Elite – If you enjoy good war journalism, I highly recommend this article from an embedded Rolling Stone journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• US Blockading Costa Rican Sugar Unless It Agrees To Draconian IP Laws Citizens Don’t Want
• We don’t give a damn about the monarchy – Prince William’s entourage of British gossip columnists has been shocked to discover that Kiwis no longer care about royal visits
• A Risky Proposal: Gay marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the Supreme Court
• Goodnight Keith Moon
• Two Gentlemen of Lebowski What if William Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski?
• The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore – The story of a modern outlaw folk hero
• Small Talk With A Web Designer
• When skyscrapers signal a downturn – The ‘irrational exuberance’ in the markets that accompany the construction of super-tall buildings is often a sign that a recession is on the way.
• Kant Attack Ad (video)
• NZ’s cyber spies win new powers
• The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart
• Global healthcare spending Vs. Life expectancy – The US is off the chart (and not in a good way)
• Uranium Is So Last Century: Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke – Nuclear scientists are rediscovering Thorium, a cleaner, safer, more abundant, more efficient, less weapon-proliferating alternative to Uranium
• Star Wars Weather
• Browser Pong (game)

‘Prime Minister John Key told reporters that an agreement with the ACT Party had been reached and the policy would be incorporated in to legislation due in parliament in March…

Mr Key today said the altered policy would incorporate “significant aspects of ACT’s three strikes policy.” An offender would receive a standard sentence and warning for their first serious offence. The second offence would usually lead to a jail term with no parole and a further warning. On conviction for a third serious offence, the offender would receive the maximum penalty in prison for that offence with no parole.’

Imposing harsher sentences for violent crimes (or ‘sensible sentencing’, as its proponents call it) has long been one of the ACT party’s key policies. Their argument appears to be that harsher prison sentences will act as a deterrent to potential criminals, thus reducing the crime rate. It sounds like good common sense: the worse the anticipated punishment for an action is, the lower the likelihood that a rational agent will pursue that action.

The only problem is that it doesn’t resemble reality. For decades, study after study has shown that harsher sentencing has if anything an adverse effect upon recidivism rates, and precious little deterrent effect. For instance, an investigation by Chen & Shapiro (2004) shows that ‘harsher prison conditions cause higher rates of post-release criminal behavior, behavior which is also measurably more violent.’ (Click here for a summary of their findings)

However, one cherry-picked article is hardly convincing on its own. Much better evidence is a report commissioned by the Department of the Solicitor General Canada compiling ‘fifty studies dating from 1958 involving 336,052 offenders and producing 325 correlations between recidivism and (a) length of time in prison and recidivism or (b) serving a prison sentence vs. receiving a community-based sanction’.

The report found that:

‘Under both of the above conditions, prison produced slight increases in recidivism. Secondly, there was some tendency for lower risk offenders to be more negatively affected by the prison experience.

The essential conclusions reached from this study were:

1. Prisons should not be used with the expectation of reducing criminal behaviour.

2. On the basis of the present results, excessive use of incarceration has enormous cost implications.

3. In order to determine who is being adversely affected by prison, it is incumbent upon prison officials to implement repeated, comprehensive assessments of offenders’ attitudes, values, and behaviours while incarcerated.

4. The primary justification of prison should be to incapacitate offenders (particularly, those of a chronic, higher risk nature) for reasonable periods and to exact retribution.’

Moving closer to home, these opinions are shared by our Chief Justice, Dame Sian Elias. In October last year, Dame Elias gave a controversial Shirley Smith address on the current state of criminal justice in New Zealand. Journalist Colin Espiner called the speech ‘the most insightful and damning summary of justice policy in this country since the Roper Report’ but ‘political suicide’, and predicted her imminent disappearance from the top job for opposing the judicial policies of both major political parties. Dame Elias’ address outlined the considerable shifts in New Zealand’s attitude towards tackling crime during her forty years of involvement in criminal justice, and how increasingly punitive sanctions against offenders and more victim-focused judiciaries have not made our communities any safer. Rather than summarise her arguments further here, if you’ve got the time I recommend reading the text of the speech itself.

The three strikes law is intended to dissuade convicts from re-offending by making the prospect of future imprisonment less appealing. If such policies work then we ought to observe an inverse correlation between sentence lengths and crime rates. However as the above reports make clear, this is not the case – in fact the inverse appears true. As Lord Bingham once pointed out (Elias 2009 – p.5), ‘the problem with incarceration that in all but a small number of cases at some point the offender must re-enter society.’ In practice, prisons tend to function as ‘monster-factories’, by locking up society’s most aggressive and at-risk individuals in a place where they will reinforce each other’s behaviour and teach each other more effective ways of breaking the law. The result is that offenders are usually more dangerous when they come out than when they went in.

One of the most significant problems with ACT’s model for reducing crime is that violent offenders are not rational agents (indeed, humans seldom act completely rationally, but that is another matter). The typical offender is male, often of low intelligence and poor education, has a family history of ineffectual parenting and often emotional, physical or sexual abuse, and comes from a background of poverty, poor housing, instability, association with delinquent peers and unemployment. Given what we know about the psychology of violent offenders, it is unreasonable to expect the average convict to make the kinds of rational decisions that an abstract theorist might expect. Furthermore (and this will be controversial for some), since criminals tend to come from bleak socio-economic backgrounds and unstable families, one could infer that it is largely their background that influences them towards criminality rather than personal choice. Therefore, it is unfair to punish them for something that is largely outside of their control. A better solution would be to fix the cause, not the effect – i.e. to work on building better families and communities.

The United States was the first place to enact three strikes laws, and hence they represent the best opportunity to study its success. Undoubtedly the state with the harshest three strikes law, California implemented a system in 1994 which usually requires a sentence of 25 years to life for a third offence. According to Wikipedia, ‘early studies of three strikes laws found negligible impacts on overall recidivism rates amongst the general population’, although the Wikipedia page does acknowledge room for error in the cited statistic. Furthermore, ‘incidence of murder, rape, and aggravated assault has risen from 2002 to 2008′ in California. Knowing that such laws have not been effective overseas, why would our government choose to implement them other than to curry favour with a population prone to knee-jerk reactions and misinformation?

‘As a society we create our criminals; we, as a whole, are responsible.’ — Shirley Smith

Separate from the attempts to lower recidivism, another common rationale for harsher sentences is retribution. Such arguments place emphasis on victims of violent attacks, and a need to ‘see justice served’ by exacting revenge upon the perpetrators. However it is difficult to see how the desire for vengeance is worth the price. The average cost to the taxpayer of keeping an offender in prison for a year is nearly $100,000 (which may be contrasted with the average cost per day of an offender on a community based sentence of $10.04). Furthermore, New Zealand is already second only to the US in the proportion of prisoners to the total population, and is facing a looming crisis because we do not have enough prison beds. A desire for revenge against murderers and rapists is understandable, but we must not lost sight of the fact that while violence is a cost to the community, the incarceration of offenders is also extremely costly. If longer sentences lead to an increase in violent crime, significant costs to the taxpayer and one of the largest incarcerated populations per capita in the world, is the satisfaction of our base desire for revenge worth it? And if so, how many more violent crimes should we be willing to allow per year in order to ensure that convicted criminals are satisfactorily punished?

Whilst I agree with conservative ‘sensible sentencing’ advocates we ought to do everything we can to prevent violence, imposing harsher sentences has been shown time and time again to actually worsen the situation. As Shirley Smith pointed out, ‘the threat of imprisonment does not deter, and prison does not reform’.

Further reading:

• ‘On the ‘Three Strikes’ Policy and the SAS in Kabul’
• ‘Act MP Accused of Misleading Public on ‘Three-Strikes” Effectiveness’
• ‘Police, judge attack three strikes policy’
• ‘The Effects of Prison Sentences on Recidivism’
• ‘Does Prison Harden Inmates? A Discontinuity-based Approach’
• ‘Blameless Babes’ – Dame Sian Elias’ Shirley Smith Address

This photo was taken aboard the private spacecraft. At this point being in space was still pretty new for me, so I was fairly excited about it.

This picture is of me with the NASA space shuttle that took me to the International Space Station. This was my first time doing a space walk. It was pretty neat.

In this picture I am hanging out with Rob and Chris who are two other astronauts. We are attaching a new truss segment to the ISS and beginning to upgrade the power grid or something like that. I like this photo because you can see my house in the background.

Anyway I hope you like my pictures. I am glad I brought my camera and got the other astronauts to photograph me in space, otherwise my friends would never believe that I really went to space in my dream.

However if you don’t want to wade through all that, you can just check out the following.

Most memorable moments from the 2009 season:

Beating my previous record  for earliest turns of the season: Mt Cheeseman – 10th May

The skies started puking in early May delivering over a foot of fresh snow, so Alan and Ryan from the Snow.co.nz forum organised a daytrip up to the mountains to check out the conditions and get a few turns in. We drove up to the skifield gate and hiked/snowshoed for 45mins to get to the lodge. There were a fair number of skifield staff/club members around preparing for the season, as well as a couple of ski-tourers with skins. From the lodge we hiked another 15mins or so to get a wee 30 second run. We followed that up with a wee kicker session before skiing back down to the car. There were heaps of rocks around; my new Volkl Gotamas (which were being used for the first time) were pretty scratched up, but nothing too major. Ryan’s snowboard edge took a pretty big pounding though.
On the whole a good day out – nothing compared to a good mid-season day, but fun all the same – plus I beat my previous record (Queen’s Birthday Weekend) for earliest turns of the season by 2 or 3 weeks!

The Temple Truck breaking down again, and again, and again: State Highway 73 – 6th & 7th August

Through July to early September, I spent a lot of time carrying out Temple Basin food resupply missions. A typical TB food run involves waking up at dawn and heading to Trents to spend a few hours working through a several thousand dollar shopping list. After loading about half a ton of supplies onto the truck, I head to Growers Direct to pick up more groceries, then drive two hours up to the Basin, usually arriving around sunset. I then spend the next hour or two sending the food up to the lodge in the goodslift while fending off keas, then commence the hour-long walk up to the field by the light of my head-torch (or if I’m lucky, the moon). Whilst the food run (usually Thursday) is a long hard day’s work, you get all your volunteer work out of the way in one go, and get to spend the next few days skiing without having to worry about more chores. It’s a fairly good gig.

The fly in the ointment is that you have to do it all in the Temple Truck. This ancient behemoth is notorious for its unreliability, and has broken down on me more times than I care to remember. (Admittedly, the first time was my fault – let’s just say that I’ll never forget to check the oil again).

This season provided a few hairy episodes, including a couple of trips undertaken with one headlight and no indicators, horn or interior lighting. (Ever worn a headtorch while driving so you can see the speedometer? I have). However undoubtedly the worst of the season was the Fire & Ice food run, which involved 2 days’ work (dawn to midnight), 8 hours driving the Temple truck, 5 tonnes of food and alcohol, and 2 truck breakdowns.

Day 1′s breakdown happened at the Arthur’s Pass railway station when I stopped briefly to visit the toilet. When I got back to the truck it wouldn’t start. I spent the next hour defending two tons of exposed food from half a dozen ravenous keas with a ski pole, while trying to get the truck going again. To compound my frustration, the AA refused to help me because my membership apparently doesn”t cover vehicles that size (Never mind that the size wouldn’t have made a difference in giving me a jump or tow start – fuck you AA!). Eventually I managed to get a tow start from the friendly local DoC ranger (Cheers Chris, you’re a champion!) and finally delivered my supplies to Temple Basin (minus a few loaves of bread – casualties of the kea war). On arrival I was informed that after unloading I’d immediately have to return to Christchurch to get the truck fixed and pick up more alcohol. Not only that, but during the two hour return journey I could not under any circumstances allow the truck engine to stop or stall, as I would not be able to get it started again on my own. Fortunately I arrived shortly after midnight with the truck intact.

I spent most of Day 2 waiting for the truck to be fixed, and finally managed to get on the road in the late afternoon with nearly two tons of beer on the back. The trip went smoothly until Flock Hill, when I suffered a complete gearbox failure while coasting down the steep incline. Luckily, I managed to pull into a siding not 200 metres from Flock Hill Lodge, and was able to use their phone to call for reinforcements. The next few hours were spent guarding the precious load and trying to keep warm while smaller vehicles ferried the alcohol 40 minutes up the road. I finally arrived at the Temple Basin lodge around midnight, where I was treated to a well-earned beer .

Tracking out the fresh pow before the student hoardes arrive: Temple Basin – 1st August

The morning of the 80s Party heralded back-to-back shallow pow runs in fresh, beautiful, untracked snow with barely a chunky spot in sight and barely half a dozen punters on the field. Stoked!

Knocking off the Grand Traverse: Temple Basin – 9th August

Brian and I trekked from the top of the Elevator Chute, across the top of Upper Bills (just under B’limit) to reach a point just short of Cassidy peak at sunset, culminating in my longest Temple Basin run to date – 10 minutes from the peak to the bottom of Temple tow (including the Cassidy bridge crossing on skis). Although my skiing was a little sketchy due to loose boots and sticky snow, I managed to hold it together and make the descent without bailing nor losing the ear-to-ear grin from my face. A fitting end to an epic Fire & Ice weekend.

Hikers in Upper Bill's. Snaking past them was sadistically fun.

Poser

View of our line from the bottom, just after sunset

Winning a t-shirt in the Gnomes Freeride Competition: Temple Basin – 22nd August
Downhill Basin (the originally intended site for the comp) was out because there wasn’t enough snow to allow a good line, so the comp was moved to the top of Upper Bills. Everyone got one run to show their stuff. We had earlier been advised against ‘hucking our meat’ off big drops if we were unsure about sticking the landing, and that the judging would instead focus on aggressive, fluid, controlled riding. With that in mind (plus my comparative lack of ability) I chose a real mellow line with no airs, and a quick dodge between some rocks at the start. I didn’t see my entire score card, but from what I did see I could tell that I had done pretty much as expected – a good score for control but a poor score for my line. I ended up coming 14th (out of about 20), and Neil picked me out for a T-shirt spot prize due to my years of service (cough), so I was stoked with that.

Simmo's line (click for big version - and I mean BIG)

Actually getting to sleep in my car: Broken River – 31st August to 2nd September
My plan for the winter was to spend the vast majority living in my car and exploring each of the 12 Chill ski fields. Foruntately/unfortunately that didn’t happen – I ended up getting regular volunteer work, accommodation and food at Temple Basin, so I stayed there instead. As a result my investment in a car electrical system, roof box, curtains, mattress and camping stove were largely wasted, and my planned ‘Great Winter Roadtrip’ turned into a ‘Great Winter Ski-Bumming at Temple Basin’. However I did get three awesome days and two nights camping out in my car at the bottom of the Broken River access road.

The original plan was to try to make it to Cragieburn, Cheeseman and Mt Olympus and thus finish off the Selwyn fields that I hadn’t yet visited. Due to weather I ended up only managing Cragieburn and Broken River. The two Cragieburn days were dominated by strong winds. There was a fair amount of fresh snow on the ground, but the winds had redistributed it so that ridges and exposed points were extremely icy. The upshot of this was that the basins, gullies and chutes were filled to the brim with powdery goodness, and any ski tracks were quickly erased by the gale-force winds. Hooray, unlimited freshies!

The weather during the second day was horrible, and the word on the grapevine was that everywhere was closed but that Broken River would be opening at 6pm for night powder skiing. I spent the day idly mooching round Castle Hill and hanging out at Flock Hill Lodge, then when dusk came I made a move up to BR. It had been snowing most of the day and was getting pretty Epic – over a foot of fresh pow on the ground, woop woop! Everyone was completely stoked, with powder-day grins from ear to ear. I bumped into a few familiar faces while there – these days it’s getting pretty hard to visit a club field without spotting someone I know. I guess the club field community’s pretty small.

Sleeping in the car was reasonably comfortable, albeit a little cramped and cold. The new car battery setup only managed to power my laptop for an hour unfortunately, meaning that I needed to run the engine for a bit to allow me to finish my Deadwood episodes.

On the way up Cragieburn on the third day, the CHARDIS’s snow chains struggled to pull the car up the road, and broke a few links. I tried to persevere but the chains on the front right tyre ended up ripping themselves apart and wrapping themselves around the axle of the wheel. I had to remove the wheel in order to pry the chain loose, which proved to be an adventure in the fresh snow on a steep hill. Eventually I got it off and managed to get a tow up to the field from a helpful dude in a 4wd. That’s the last time I buy cheap shitty chains off trademe – next time I’m getting some snow-sweats.

Watching the Black Diamond Big Mountain Competition: Temple Basin – 5th & 6th September

Screw rugby and cricket – what could be better than reclining in a deckchair with a beer on a sunny skifield and watching some of NZ’s best freeriders slay a few epic lines?  A highlight included watching Neil Williman and Sam Smoothy hit the huge cliff near Main chute, and compete over who could claim the biggest drop.

I managed to stick my first ever 180 that weekend as well, which was also pretty rad

Enjoying a beer on the summit, at midnight, under a full moon, with a group of pro skiers: Temple Basin – 5th September

The evening of the Big Mountain Comp was clear with a bright full moon, so instead of partying, I joined Ross and a small party of pro skiers to climb to the top of Hot Pocket. We left the lodge at around 10pm and climbed from Temple tow with ice axes in hand. The snow was pretty hard, which made for fun climbing if not for good skiing. We had had a beer on top of the ridgeline overlooking the Mingha backbowl at 11:30pm, and skied down at midnight. It was an amazing night – I am completely stoked on it.

Enjoying a well-earned beer on the summit

Club Championships: Temple Basin – 12th September

The photo says it all really:

Sticking my biggest ever air: Temple Basin – 13th September
“ok here we go… hmmm going a little fast… stay balanced… hit the kicker… HOOOOOLY SHIT THAT’S HIGH… hold it together… spot the landing… absorb the impact… keep your skis together… don’t eat shit… alright I’m not gonna fall, sweet… ok time for a celebratory fist pump… fuck yeah!”

‘Breaking hearts and saving lives’: Temple Basin – 19th September

Saturday the 19th (International Talk Like a Pirate Day and Aoife’s birthday) was the also beach party day, and the weather turned out perfectly with sunny blue skies and light winds. We had a bbq outside on the veranda with a badminton net (complete with coke bottle shuttlecock), and all the staff were wearing Hawaiian shirts. The most exciting event of the day (for me at least) was injuring myself in an act of derring-do:

It was pretty icy in the morning on Temple tow. I was manning the rental dept, and rented some gear to a Danish girl then taught her how to use the ropetow, and she got to the top first time. I rode up with her, checked she was ok, then skied back down. I was hanging around the bottom and noticed she was taking her time, so I rode back up to check if she was ok. I got about halfway up the tow and she just started sliding down out of control from the top, lost both her skis and slid at breakneck pace towards a field of rocks. It was terrifying, she was screaming and looked like she was gonna nail herself. She mostly missed the first patch of rocks (thank god), while I hung on to the tow and willed it to go faster. As soon as she was almost level with me I jumped off the tow, bunny-hopped some rocks and skied over to her as fast as I could and grabbed her to help her stop, but we slid together for another five metres or so until I could get us to a stop. She had broken her wrist on a rock and had to be helicoptered to a hospital. While we were treating her I noticed that my arm had a fair bit of blood on it from the icy slide, cos I was only wearing a hawaiian shirt at the time. It was a really bad graze and took a month to heal, but it was totally worth it for the manly story.

Catching the ultimate snow day: Temple Basin – 23rd September
The 23rd was hands-down my best day of the season. We’d had about 10-15cm of fresh snow the day before, and it was snowing on and off that morning. Shortly after I arrived at Downhill, the sun came out for an hour and I got some sweet turns in good vis before heading in for lunch. It socked in during lunchtime and delivered about 5cm which covered up most of the morning’s tracks. Then as we were heading outside again, the sun reappeared as suddenly as it had left, and we had 4 hours of bluebird freshies! The afternoon snow was if anything even more fun than the morning’s, and we thrashed it till 5pm. I got the last tow out of Downhill back through Lower Bill’s, and had a sweeeet run through Cassidy chute. Then, to top it all off, it started snowing again less than 5mins after I arrived back in the lodge. Perfect

Favourite shot of the season: Hucking in Downhill Basin

The epic snow was enough to tire out even Willy

Playing snowboard instructor: Temple Basin – 27th September to 2nd October
During TB’s final week we were overwhelmed by the arrival of 26 kids between the ages of 5-16. The mountain became a noisy place filled with, in the words of Dylan Moran, ‘miniature drunks’, whose only purpose seemed to be converting sugar into violence.
Whilst we had a couple of ski instructors, there were no qualified snowboard instructors on the hill. As I used to snowboard before switching to skiing a couple of seasons ago, I grabbed a board out of ski hire and gave the kids some lessons. It’s a pretty cool feeling when one of the kids comes up and says thanks for the lesson, and that the tips I gave him really helped his snowboarding.

TB’s final open day of the season: Temple Basin – 4th October
After a season of cajolling, Hugo and I finally managed to drag Aoife up to Bill’s Basin and show her the field’s full potential.

Aoife laying down some turns in Cassidy Chute - not bad for someone in her first season

Aoife and Hugo, coming out of Lower Bill's

Staff-only powder day: Temple Basin – 5th October
After the final TB open day, the staff finally got a day to themselves to pack their bags, tidy the lodge, take down the trip cords, and of course ski the empty slopes! I spent a couple of hours at Downhill taking down trips and picking out pow between the ice patches, then headed back through Lower Bill’s with a pack full of tools.

Fresh pow on closing day, and not a punter in sight - woohoo!

Skiing on Halloween: Mt Olympus – 31st October
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
Mt Olympus announced a final weekend of skiing over Halloween with a forecast for blue skies and corn snow. Paul invited me to join him so I ignored my dire financial situation and tagged along.
The access tow wasn’t running so we had to hike to the lodge. The walk’s difficulty showed me just how much the last month had cost my fitness. The spring sun was boiling, everything was exhaustingly hot and the snow was spring corn, which melted and became very slow after lunch in sun-affected areas. The riding was still pretty sick though.

Final 2009 Winter Tally:
Snow days: 43
Ski fields visited: 6

Cheers 2009 for an awesome ski season!

• Style versus design: Why understanding the difference is what it’s all about. – “Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built.”
• Kiwiright (video) – A 12 minute documentary about how NZ’s copyright laws have been contorted to benefit the financial needs of corporate rights holders and no longer benefits the public nor the artists who create the work itself.
• The Physics of Space Battles
• Inside Afghanistan – Fighting Alongside Stoned Afghan Soldiers (video)
• Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.
• How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
• Atheist bus ad campaign hits a nerve
• The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it’s working.
• Google Chrome – Features (video)
• Everything is OK Montage (video)
• Canadian record industry faces massive liability over copyright infringement – Ah, sweet sweet irony.
• Photos Taken From Unusual Angles
• Dutch scientists grow artificial meat in lab, see end to the need for factory farming within a decade.
• ikea lamp (video) – Hilarious ad directed by Spike Jonze
• Macho Trap Shooting (video)
• Link This Bookmarklet – Hooray! Quick linking ahoy!
• Is Global Warming Unstoppable? – Scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
• The Zoomquilt II – A trippy flash animated collaborative art project
• IEBlog: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers – Check out all the hilarious vitriolic comments from pissed-off developers.
• 38 Ways To Win An Argument — Arthur Schopenhauer – Advice for budding Sophists (or forum trolls) from one of the philosophical greats.
• Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again – Optogeneticists are figuring out how to control brain neurons with viruses that carry genes taken from pond scum, activated by beams of light.
• The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”
• I’m Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment
• Most. Realistic. War Game. Ever. – A sneak peak at Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, currently in development.
• New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it’s no friend of the earth – The Guardian blows the whistle on NZ’s ‘100% pure’ reputation.

Ah, the final days. 2009 was a bit of a weird season, in that the two months that are usually the best of the lot – August and September – were the two worst snow months. We had an awesome early season, then once I really got stuck into skiing the weather warmed up. Then, once all the skifields had closed for the year, the temperatures dropped again bringing epic snow during October. Unfortunately by that time I had run out of money and was back in Christchurch, so I didn’t manage to get much skiing done during those glorious final days. I did however manage to grab one last hurrah at Mount Olympus on their final weekend – a fitting end to a truly Great season.

In the end, my planned ‘Great Winter Roadtrip’ never really eventuated. I spent all of two nights in my car, with the rest of the season spent at Temple Basin or the occasional daytrip. I’m not complaining: I had a blast. Being a staff member at TB was a fantastic experience, and I’ll treasure the friendships I built up during those months living in a wee lodge at 1350m above sea level.

Final 2009 Winter Tally:
Snow days: 43
Ski fields visited: 6

Day #40 – Temple Basin – 3rd October 2009

The weather was extremely shitty all day: blowing and snowing, hard. I manned goodslift top in the morning while Anna ran the goodslift at the bottom. After lunch she asked if I could take over goodslift bottom in the afternoon, but I wasn’t keen to head down the mountain. Later I felt really bad about it, so I gave her a J as an apology.
Whilst I was a bit of a douche not to help her out, it worked out pretty well for me, as the skiing was ON after 4pm. The weather gradually cleared and the snow was amazing for those few hardy souls who braved the gusty winds on Temple tow. Sick chalky shallow cold pow, woohooo! I kept at it for a few hours before heading in for dinner at 7:30pm (dinner had been scheduled for 7pm, but the snow was too good to head in just yet). The best part was that the occasional gusts helped erase previous tracks, allowing me to get some fresh lines for hours. Temple tow was covered with ice patches due to the wind, but fortunately the old ice was a dirty brown colour compared to the fresh white pow, and was easy to spot and avoid.

After dinner everyone piled out for night skiing, but the wind had died down so Temple tow was tracked out pretty quickly. The hours I had spent on the tow before dinner proved very useful for nightskiing, as although the ice was hard to see under the night lights, I had already worked out which areas of the tow to avoid and didn’t need to spot them anymore. After nightskiing for an hour or so, I hung out round the brazier with some of the guys and watched the full moon rise. Then at around 10pm a group of us climbed up Temple ridge and dropped into the lower bills chutes. The snakepit had ‘all time’ snow, and skiing the sick pow in the full moon was a near religious experience.

Day #41 – Temple Basin – 4th October 2009

Last open day at Tempe Basin for the 2009 season!
I manned goodslift bottom in the morning to give Anna some respite (and allow her to get some pow turns in, after days of being stuck down the bottom!). In the afternoon I headed up to Downhill with Aoife, as I had promised that morning to finally show her Bill’s Basin. We did a few runs on Downhill amongst the windblown pow and ice pockets, then headed over to Lower Bill’s with Hugo. We made our way down through Cassidy chute, and I gave Aoife the tour as we went, pointing out the areas she’d never seen before. Oh yeah, and the pow in Bill’s was meeeeeeeeeeeaaan .

Aoife laying down some turns in Cassidy Chute - not bad for someone in her first season

Aoife and Hugo, coming out of Lower Bill's

Day #42 – Temple Basin – 5th October 2009

The end – or so I thought.

After the final TB open day, the staff finally got a day to themselves to pack their bags, tidy the lodge, take down the trip cords, and of course ski the empty slopes! I spent a couple of hours at Downhill taking down trips and picking out pow between the ice patches, then headed back through Lower Bill’s with a pack full of tools.

Fresh pow on closing day, and not a punter in sight - woohoo!

Thanks Temple Basin for an awesome 2009 season.

Day #43 – Mt Olympus – 31st October 2009

Just when I thought I was out, the snow pulled me back in.
Mt Olympus announced a final weekend of skiing over Halloween with a forecast for blue skies and corn snow. Paul invited me to come up with him so I came along in his car.
The access tow wasn’t running so we had to hike to the lodge, which showed me just how much the last month had cost my fitness.
I first realised that Morgan was there when I caught my first tow of the day and heard ‘A-GEORGE AND A-ROSCOE!’ in the distance.
The sun was boiling, everything was exhaustingly hot.
The snow was spring corn, which melted and became very slow after lunch in sun-affected areas.
The riding was still pretty sick.
Paul and I hiked up the top tow (which also wasn’t running due to parts of it being buried in snow) so I could get a good look at the field. Mt Olympus is an awesome field, probably my favourite clubbie after Temple Basin.
On the way down we gave a couple a lift from the Olympus access road back to Chch because they had two (!) flat tyres. Go figure.