Hungarian for Iceman.

The word is that Travis might do this trick at the X-games tonight over dirt. Crazy, but if anyone can pull it off, I guess he can. Years ago I made a little flash sequence of him doing the same trick on a mini bike on the Alpinestars website.

Outside the office today.

Luke, the official -273 photographer who bounced down under to New Zealand for another season on the snow, finally got some decent pow.

Fresh off his P2 at the Hungarian GP, Kimi Raikkonen representing -273. Watch for KR as he switches disciplines and tackles the WRC Rally Finland next week.

Thanks to Adrian Chapman for the heads up on these photos.

We are proud to announce the collaboration t-shirt we made for www.zerohedge.com the finest financial blog (and part time radio show) on the web. Grab the ZH logo tshirts here.

After being well hot all day, up to 37degrees, a big storm hit. I shot out of the window with my little camera and put it together in After effects.

Cruising around today in 35 degree weather on my scooter in a T-Shirt, I was thinking how you really dont even need a big engine. My 50cc takes me above the speedlimit everywhere except the Autobahn anyway and smokes cars through town and off the light.

The 50cc Solo is a motorcycle designed for the Japanese commuter and student market, boasting retro styling reminiscent of the classic bikes of the pre-WWII era and the ability to customize the bike to the buyer’s individual taste, through a selection of different colors and finishes on the frame, tank, bars, grips and other parts. By mixing and matching parts, Honda claimes a total of 285 different combinations. The Solo is a product of Honda’s “N Project”- a line of bikes designed to appeal to Japan’s large youth population. The bike only ever went on sale in Japan.

The Honda FTR has a 250cc engine, and is also pretty smooth once tricked out a bit.

The New Magnetosphere -273 Tshirts are now available, but we only have the stock  you see above for sale online.
So if you want one……

Years ago when I lived in England, I used to snowboard on a dryslope sometimes. Not nice dryslopes like they have now, but ones made out of triangles of metal with brushes like on a toothbrush coming out of them, placed over concrete. I even did a few contests. The first one in Ipswich I got to the finals then landed hard on my coccyx on an over rotated half cab and started tripping out, so retired. The 2nd one I entered I won, which was the British University dryslope championship, and the third one was in Sheffield where I massively overjumped the bottom jump early in the contest, (didnt even crash as I was a young buck and just sucked it up) but the compression as I bent my legs thrust my hand into the steel matting and broke it.
Anyway, after that I pretty much stuck to the snow, but if they’d had dryslope surface’s as good as they do now I think I would have been back. Which brings me to this:

Pre Registration is up and running for all three events at
www.westbeach.com/snowflexseries

Photos courtesy of Jools Smith

Yea, sounds fairly boring, but they just rebuilt it so we thought we would take a look and it was actually pretty good.

Did they or didn’t they land on the moon? Whatever the case, I hope they had better equipment than this guy did in the museum!
My old MKii Golf GTi was better equipped and although it could get wheelspin in 3rd it was a long way short of making it to the moon.

After a couple of months of indecision, with Portugal, Lebanon, Bali, Brazil, Madagascar and everywhere in between being discussed as options for our honeymoon, we finally bought some tickets to Costa Rica. We found some cheap flights and as we had heard a lot of good things about the place and it is also way cheaper hanging out there for 3 weeks than anywhere in Europe we finally booked them. Costa Rica looks amazing, with coasts on both the Caribbean and Pacific, brilliant surfing, rain forests, Volcanoes, perfect beaches, good food and a different way of life. Pretty excited to head off there in just over a month .

Reuters (London) – published July 02, 2009

Costa Rica is very nearly paradise, not just for holiday-makers lounging on its beaches, but for its citizens who are extremely satisfied with their lot and also have a tiny carbon footprint.

The combination has earned the central American country first place in a new Happy Planet Index (HPI) published on Monday.

While leaders of the developed world attending G8 talks in Italy worry away at economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), deflation and their implications for economic recovery, the second edition of the HPI lauds alternative standards that provide a new twist on the old adage that wealth does not buy happiness.

Costa Rica stands out for the highest levels of reported life satisfaction, a long life expectancy of 78.5 years and because 99 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources.

The United States is placed 114th out of the 143 nations surveyed, with an HPI result of 30.7 and was found to be “greener and happier” 10 years ago than today–as were China and India, ranked respectively 20th and 35th, with scores of 57.1 and 53.

Photo of a strange bike Yann saw in California.

Messing around in 3DS Max one day with modeling and Vray Rendering.

I never posted the full version of this article I wrote a couple of months back and as it seems as relevants as ever, here you go:

Let’s start with some definitions. I won’t repeat the ones in the dictionary but for the sake of this post, essentially constraints are limits or forces acting on something, but they are variable and it is possible to overcome them. A restraint is a fixed fundamental limit that cannot be altered. If we take the example of the government being faced with constraints and restraints, they have been elected to overcome anything in their path, “Yes we can!” but actually, there are things they cannot do.

You only have to look at nature to understand what is going on. Day follows night, spring follows winter. The tide goes out before coming back in again. Death follows life, before the cycle can go on and things can be reborn anew. The dynamic balance of opposites, change and the cycles of time are inevitable and essential for continuity.

Within this closed system we call Earth, infinite growth is an impossibility, UNLESS you allow things to take their natural course. A cherry tree blooms and then dies and after falling to the ground, the blossoms return to the soil and become nutrients for the surrounding environment. Through it’s death, every last particle contributes in some way to the health and continuity of its own ecosystem.

In the world we live in, particularly the world of politics, failure is not allowed, everything is done to prevent it, so things grow to extremes before being put on life support and eventually dying anyway. Politicians focus on watering a dead plant rather than allowing it to die and planting new seeds. They focus on their short-term ability to deal with constraints, rather than the long term geological restraints all of us are essentially restricted by. This focus on specific constraints pushes us into Hegel’s dialectic, whereby they present a part of the problem, which can then be maneuvered into a solution of their own making, usually for their own benefit.

The resources of the world are running out, with top soil depletion, oil, coal, gas, fresh water, fish populations, etc…, etc…, all being pushed beyond their limits to try to sustain an unsustainable system. We all need the necessaries of life to the same extent, thus things, which are equal to the same thing, are also equal to one another. We are all subjected to the same fundamental laws of mathematics. The ridiculous notion of endless growth for the sake of short-term profit for a few, is sacrificing our chance of long-term continuity. Unless the arrogance and egotism of man, which has helped build up such a fantastic, but complicated and fragile interdependent system, is put aside and instead changed into one of understanding of our true nature and position within the greater picture, the course we are on will lead to disaster.

In order for humans to survive and prosper, the politicians and business leaders of the world must first admit there can be no more business as usual, they must accept the restraints we are all subjected to, of physical limitations to continued growth in a closed system and that the only option is to downsize everything. Instead they focus on constraints, which allow them to prescribe remedies and keep up appearances in order to maintain the illusion that they are in control of things. By admitting to their inability to control forces bigger than themselves, they would help a transition into a more sustainable future and encourage people to take control of their own affairs.

Now, will this happen? In the words of Jeffers, not a f@#cking chance, because it shifts power from the government and companies into peoples own hands.

So where does that leave us?

Another piece from the Archive