Snowboard Jumps

I bent over and lean my hands on my knees. For a moment, I forget where I am and I am focused only on my panting breath and a slight sting in my legs. I don’t even see the world around me, only a vague blur that is my surroundings in the background of my throbbing pulse. After a few moments, look up from the ground to view what is ahead of me. About fifty yards down the hill from me lies a sharp snowy incline which abruptly vanishes at the top. My brain does some rudimentary calculations of how big it is, how much speed I’ll need when I approach it, and how high it will fling me into the air. I then close my eyes and imagine the journey I am about to take. I focus on how I will need to contort myself before, during and after takeoff to spin and grab correctly and safely. I imagine it over and over and over, like a broken record playing the same clip again and again until my body almost twitches to perform the movement I am ingraining in my mind. Once satisfied, I open my eyes, take a deep breath and exhale. The world around me begins to fade out, and my only focus in life is the jump that lies ahead of me. I can feel individual snowflakes landing on my face, the pressure of a faint breeze against my clothes, and of course, gravity grasping the smooth base of my board, beckoning me to slide. Beyond these simple sensations, I think of nothing. I place trust in myself that I have planned my approach correctly. I take one last deep breath and sharply exhale, releasing a rush of adrenaline, and half a second later I turn my board to face down the hill.

I feel like I’m floating on thin air, falling down the hill in a smooth descent that gradually gets faster and faster. Without even thinking about it, my muscles twitch to move the board over the snow, keeping my pace just right. The smooth ramp that had seemed so small from my previous vantage point now grows larger and larger as I fly towards it. Suddenly, I’m no longer falling. The ground beneath me is pushing me upwards, exerting its force on my knees, defying the motion I’d grown accustomed to over the past few eternal seconds. I am pushed up further and further and my pulse matches the ascent. Briefly the image I had so meticulously envisioned flashes through my mind, and suddenly, the ground falls out from under my feet.

Time slows to a standstill as I become weightless, flying through the air. With my right arm, I reach across my body to grasp the heel edge of my snowboard near the nose, sending me into a corkscrew. I imagine this must be what a helicopter feels like when it’s spiraling to the ground, only without the sense of panic. For what seems like an eternity I am just flying and spinning. In this moment of sheer ecstasy, the whole world has disappeared around me, and I simply fly. Contemplating life’s problems, responsibilities, and troubles is as alien a concept to me as a blind man trying to contemplate color. It’s as if I’ve entered a parallel universe where time has no meaning, gravity is non-existent and mere concept of daily tribulations do not exist. So I float on, spiraling in this momentary nirvana I have found, ten feet above the earth.

But the time has come to return to reality. My eyes refocus on the world spinning around me, and I lock on to features to gain my bearings. I’m about to land, it’s time to let go of the board. As I release it, I focus on the snow conditions where I will land, and slowing my rotation to get me straight on the mountain when I land. Suddenly the ground, as if infuriated by my defiance of gravity slams into my feet and binds me once again to the earth as I glide away.

Game Reviews

After I wrote my blog about Dragon Age - Origins, I wanted to search the web to see what other people had to say about the game; whether they confirmed my observations, or whether I was the only person in the world that didn't think this game was the best thing since sliced bread.

I found the greatest wealth of information on Metacritic, but much to my dismay, many of the "respectable" gaming sources gave it very positive review.

So much for the experts.

Then I decided to look through the user reviews so I could really build a meta-analysis of what real users had to say. But then I ran into a whole new problem, which I should have anticipated; people don't know dick about shit.

On a scale of 0-10, 0 is essentially... well 0, and 10 is essentially 100%. By that logic you would think a score of 10 means the user found absolutly nothing wrong with the game, and conversely, a score of 0 should imply no redeeming factors of the game. This is of course, not the case. I saw countless 10-score reviews with sentences like "sure the game has its faults, but overall I think its good". That sounds more like a rating of 7 or 8 to me. Similar stories take place on the other end of the scale too. So overall I basically throw out any review with a score of 10 or 0, because for most games (a few exceptions... Deus Ex was one of them), these scores are outliers of the data set, written by people who have a grudge against the game, or are so smitten by it they cant write an unbiased review.

I performed a super-scientific study where I looked through some other games I've played, and read the reviews there too, and it seemed to support my discovery. Maybe sites like Metascore should provide a breakdown of what percentage of people rated which games at which number, rather than just the weighted average they do at the moment, and then the user could sort based on the criteria they wish to base their evaluations on.

Review: Dragon Age - Origins

I've been looking for a good RPG to play now that I finally got the MMO monkey off my back, so I went to Gamespot to see what they would recommend. At the top of their "best RPG's" list, was Dragon Age - Origins, coming in at a staggering 9.5/10; the only one on the list with a score that high. So I downloaded off steam, booted it up and started playing.

When you start in, you can choose one of three races (Human, Elf, or Dwarf) and one of three classes (Warrior, Mage, or Rogue). Warriors can be tanks or dps, mage can be dps or heals, and rogues can be meele dps or ranged dps. I decided to roll up an elf mage first. It starts off with a pretty rich storyline where the mages have to go though a deadly trial by fire type event to prove that they wont get corrupt by the antagonists of the storyline, the blight. You run around a castle for a while, talk to NPCs, pick up dumb little items, and level up a few times. Pretty standard fare for most RPGs.

Finally you get out of your "start zone" and end up at a little camp, where one would hope the real meat and potatoes of the game would begin. Much to my dismay however, this never really happens. The game has a feel of how Stanly Kubrick would direct Lord of the Rings back in his 2001: A Space Odyssey days, with poorly written combat sequences. For the last 6 hours I've played this games, and here is the breakdown of what you spend your time doing in game.

70% Listening to (or skipping though) tedious interactive lore encounters with NPCs
10% Loading screens.
10% Running around zones trying to complete unclear quest instructions.
5% Combat.
5% Trying to get your party to do what you want, and using skill points upon level up.

It's all well and good to have a rich story line, but this game takes it to painful extremes. After about an hour of playing, I grew so frustrated standing around listening to another mysterious magus character talking about how strange the forest is, I began skipping through lore text just to get to some sort of a real gaming experience. But since the lore is so ubiquitous in the game, I got quickly confused as to what was going on. Choosing weather to be bored out of my mind and informed, or only slightly bored and very confused is not a decision you should have to make constantly while playing video games.

Bottom line, unless you are a fiend for lore, pass on this game. I'd give it maybe 2/10.

Traffic Accidents Suck!

So on the way up to Breckenridge today, I was fortunate enough to smash the fuck out of the front of my car on I-70. Here's the short version of what happened.

Going about 20 MPH in the left lane, the car in front of me suddenly swerved to the right, revealing three stationary cars, one of which was facing backwards on the road. Of course, I instantly hit the brakes, and much to my dismay, I continued to travel forwards at roughly the exact same speed I was going before the brakes. Smashed into the guardrail and one of the cars. After making sure everyone was good, I started to get my bearings on what was going on, and get this; the bitch in the car at the very front who started the whole thing (the one who was facing the wrong way) turns around and ditches us.

Oh well. That's why it's good to have insurance I guess. Anyway, when we got down to Silverthorn, we decided we were still going to go riding, up at Keystone. So we went to target to get some stuff to McGuiver a replacement mirror for the one that got smashed. Using a cosmetics mirror, a roll of duct tape and some double sided wall mounting foam pads, we came up with a kick ass mirror.

Shredding the Pow

Winter break is almost here! I guess I've stared enjoying it early. Went riding for about 5 hours up at Eldora this morning. Given that I've been on a two year hiadus (more or less) from riding, it feels great to get up there and catch some air or cruise through powder, which was in abundance today. Not that anyone cares but I'll recount the tricks I did.

*note, all tricks are ones I landed smoothly

1 FS 360
3 FS 180 Indys
2 BS 180's
2 BS Boardslides
5 Stalefish airs

By the way, stalefishes (sp?) are my favorite grab. Here's how you do them.

1) Get some air
2) With your back hand, grab the heel edge of your board. the closer to the middle, the better.
3) Tweak the hell out of your back foot so that it's farther forwards than your back.
4) Untweak your back foot and release the board.
5) Ride away and try not to get hit by all the girlies throwing panties at you.

Skullcandy... Really?

Having re-geared myself for what may be my most epic snowboard season to date, I've been looking at random smaller items I need (bandana, replacement lenses, headphones, etc). About a month ago, my old headphones finally kicked the bucket, so I needed a new pair obviously. For snowboarding, I find ear canal buds work best. They block the most sound, stay comfortable for the longest time and stay situated better than any other ones I've tried.

So there is this company called Skullcandy that makes headphones targeted towards certain subcultures such as snowboarders and their ilk. I figured hey, I'm a snowboarder, I need new headphones, and I got 30 bucks to plop on some new ear buds.

These are by far the worst quality headphones I have ever had in my entire life. First, the rubber earpiece is far too rigid to adapt to the contours of the inner ear to be even remotely comfortable. They are cheaply constructed, and the earpieces fell off on several occasions with minimal impact. Lastly, and in my opinion by far the most important, the sound quality is complete and utter shit. I'm at a loss for words to accurately portray how bad their sound quality is. The bass sounds like what you hear from those rice cars who blare their subwoofers at 120 decibels. Highs are, well, non existant. Mids i guess are ok, but nobody listens to music for mids.

After fiddling with the equilizer settings on both my MP3 player and my computer for close to an hour each, I finally gave up on these pieces of shit. Even though I was almost flat broke, these were about as good as having nothing at all. Went back and bought a mid level pair of Sonys, which are infinitely better.

Closing thoughts: The ONLY reason to EVER buy a pair of these headphones is if you want to buy something that you think will make you LOOK like you fit in with a crowd that you don't. If you want even the slightest bit of value from a pair of headphones, please... for the love of god, steer clear of anything bearing the Skullcandy name.

Religious Conspiracy Theorists

Thinking about religion from an atheist perspective often presents problems. Not having ever been deluded into believe in a deity, it's hard to grasp what really goes on in the mind of the believer. Sometimes I feel I may have an insight into whats going on in there, and I like to write it down. It may be right, it may be wrong, but it's a possibility.

One of the traits of conspiracy theorists is to find meaning where there is none. To take something simple, perhaps mundane in explanation and weave an elaborate web of explanations to explain things that don't sound right to them. Take the Kennedy assassination for example. To use a scientific term, a shitload of research has been done on the subject, and it points strongly to the story of Oswald shooting him from the Texas Book Repository. Simple, serene... boring. The conspiracy theorist can't understand how something so profound in its implications could be explained by something so simple. So they tell a story of lies, deciet, deception, trickery, cover-up, and so on.

Personally, I can understand this urge to make things more meaningful. In some sense, I even do it. A squirrel follows me home for ten minutes, and maybe I think he likes me, rather than the fact that he sees the corner of a power bar falling out of my backpack. Sometimes it's an interesting, or even comforting thought to think things are more meaningful than they are. It doesn't mean they are however, and these thoughts should be treated as such.

But given that I can understand this innate human desire to "blow things out of proportion", theists seem to be doing the same thing. The explanation that the universe just began without a purpose, creator, direction, that life is nothing more than a chemical scum with opposable thumbs, doesn't sound very fun. Perhaps the human capacity for religion is simply an extension upon the tendency to create a story where there is none. Could religion be nothing more than an unconsious creation of a conspiracy theory to make the lives of believers seem more interesting?

Again, I don't know. It's an interesting idea, but I'm certainly not going to go out and declare a fucking jihad on anyone who disagrees with my point of view...