Archive for September, 2009
New Kiska Website



Been working on this for a while, but the new Kiska website has now gone live.
You can throw some of the boxes around. My best is 9 bounces.
Cosmic Rays Hit 50-Year High
Recently been reading a fantastic book called ‘The Sun Kings‘ about the start of modern astronomy and the impact on earth of the sunspot cycles. Whilst doing some further research into solar flares I came across this article posted today:
Galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high, a NASA spacecraft finds.
“In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” said Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. “The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions.”
The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls “a perfect storm of cosmic rays.”
“We’re experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, “so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age.”
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090929-cosmic-ray-max.html
Another article here on the the same topic.


Rumpled hipster
Haha. Thanks for the heads up jamie.
1 commentThe Dow Zero Insurgency
Four days after the Times story on high-frequency trading, Zero Hedge re-launched with a sleeker design and more advertising space, adding staff and posting phone numbers to “offices” in London and Zurich. Zero Hedge has seen its page views triple since July. It began selling $37 Zero Hedge T-shirts, modeled by a rumpled hipster in a green camouflage cap.
London tan
Had to hop over to the UK for a few days for work and managed catch up with my sister Cla one evening and some other peeps which was nice as we don’t see each other much.
The weather was well hot in the Uk for this time of year.
More photos later.





My sister Cla and her friends Sarah and Sarah






this dude busted me taking his photo I think, although camera was in the same spot as the shot above.. Got a brilliant zoom on it..

home alone, missing the wifey!

Mash has been one of my favo(u)rite shops in London for about 20 years..
MP -273
Ahh Konichiwa! Sup Martin! Hope Tokyo is treating you well. Some nice pics from CHW from the European tour they went on.



San Clemente and a few others


San Clemente is a really nice small surf town about an hour south of L.A. We stopped for breakfast.


The waves looked perfect

Just outside of Oceanside we saw these fools. American History X is bleak as hell.

So many empty stores along Melrose.

I was considering getting a snowboard jacket at the Burton store, but it was over 100 degrees so after trying one on I was overheating so bad I had to bounce. Not sure why they dont crank up the AC to make it cold so people can try on all of the winter gear.





Venice/Santa Monica
Rolled up (Cant get anywhere in LA without rolling) to my friend Claressinka’s art show at her house in Santa Monica, to meet her and some other peeps, then caught up with my cousin for a minute.
Ended up going for a late night cruise the whole way down venice beach with Csaba. Lot of crazies and homeless people down there at 3am, but with a longboard you just fly by so fast they don’t bother you. First time I have ever really ridden a long board and although I missed being able to oli, the big wheels are wicked for getting speed.

Worcs Glen Helen 2009
Kurt Caselli returned to WORCS racing for his “local” round Sunday and probably wondered why he ever left. He took the lead just before the halfway mark and then pulled away to a monstrous lead. He led a very impressive KTM train that included Mike Brown in second, Brenden Ritzman in fourth and Justin Soule in fifth.
Was great to watch this kind of racing. The whole thing is fairly relaxed (off the track) compared to MX and SX and you can walk pretty much anywhere to watch. Was well hot, the temperature in our car read 109degrees and these guys race for 2 hours. Even the kids race for 30mins. I think I would last 10 mins.
No commentsHurley Pro ‘09 Lowers
Had a chance to stop by Trestles in socal to check out the Hurley pro. Surfing is big business for sure. 100k prize money to the winner and huge crowds. Kelly Slater got mobbed when he came out of the water.









California trip
Had to shoot over to Los Angeles for a week. Was a really interesting trip. More photos later.






costa Rica trip 6: Osa to San Gerado
San Gerado is up in the mountains in the middle of Costa Rica, a rainforest at about 1500m, still warm enough for a T-Shirt and shorts all year round, although the water in the river was pretty dam chilly. It’s really a stunning place, we stayed at a cute hotel called casa Mariposa for 25bucks a night, with a really friendly American couple running it.

Kaleidoscopically diffracted
As American culture and society became more complex with more moving parts, it became more distracting. Decades ago we reached the point where the level of distraction was so high that few were capable of navigating it with enough individual consciousness intact to reflect upon, much less question the nature of our national environment. Like the rest of the planet, Americans mostly respond to the world as it is presented to them each day. But the world as it is understood by Americans now comes through many layers of distorted filters, most of them purposefully distorted for economic financial gain by one overarching entity or another. So much so as to be atomized, kaleidoscopically diffracted. One cannot identify even the simplest object through a kaleidoscope. Bedazzled, disoriented and detached from reality, we are rendered effectively blind — thus easily directed and managed. So we listen to the few loud voices to the many and disregard any dissent as background noise.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/08/how-much-freedom-can-one-man-stand.html


