Bay Court Hotel, Anglesey

January 29, 2010

Went out for a drive today to blow the cobwebs from the S62 V8 as it’s stood unmoved for five weeks now, and we came across this place out in Benllech, Anglesey.  Couldn’t resist snapping off a couple of shots, indeed I wish I’d had a bit more time to explore.  I love derelict old places like this although I’m sure the neighbours have a different view on things.

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Clicking the bottom two will embiggen, or alternatively head over to my Flickr feed!

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Venus on the Motomag

Here’s a quick entry to pimp my friend’s new site: Now, get off my stage.  Ry’s writing under his pseudonym has appeared in many places (including Revolt Magazine), and it’s awesome to see him consolidate this into one place which is going to be regularly updated.

“If you are interested in what I do in LA and what happens here on a somewhat daily basis here it is. I’ve created a blog under the pen name Venus Vandevender. It’s basically about my odd jobs, the people I meet and the situations I manage to get myself into.”

If you fancy reading tales (tall or otherwise) from a guy living in LA who has literally seen and done it all then this is more than worth your time.

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Best turndown in BMX?

January 25, 2010

There have been a couple of fun questions posed recently on Dig Magazine’s site and on TCU regarding two of the most subjective (i.e style over substance) tricks in bike riding – tabletops and turndowns.  Sad thing is, even I overlooked this guy when it came to the last question – Keith Treanor.  Keith was one of my absolute favorite riders from back in the 90’s, ever since his section riding to Operation Ivy and Gorilla Biscuits in S&M’s ‘44 Something’.  So anyway, I stumbled across this photo recently and I think, for me, that’s the question definitively answered.  Click to make big, and check out Keith’s part below. Chris Moeller seriously needs to come good on that old, old promise of re-releasing the earlier S&M videos.
  
 

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

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Firefox Add-Ons for 2010

January 25, 2010

I flit back and forth between Safari, Chrome, and Firefox but always end up using the latter as my ‘main’ browser for one simple reason – the plugins.  While Chrome may be quicker and Safari launches faster and has better text rendering, Firefox can’t be touched for one simple reason – the vast array of community-contributed plugins that are currently available.

I did document my favourites back in 2007, but here’s an updated list now that we’re living in the future:

  • AppTabs.  This is handy mainly for Fever, and while previously I used a Fluid-generated SSB for this it makes more sense (and saves on memory I guess) to have it right there in Firefox.
  • AdBlock.  Despite the fuss surrounding its use, I find it a no-brainer of a plugin.
  • Delicious Bookmarks.  I’ve been using Delicious for a long time now, and I’ve got bookmarks neatly arranged by tags so that I can have a specific ‘Daily’ section, ‘Social’, and so on.  It’s extremely convenient having this arrangement right there in your browser, and the service plays nicely with Quicksilver too (via the Social Bookmarking plugin).
  • Download Statusbar.  The default download dialogue in all browsers seems to suck, but this plugin for Firefox gets it right.  It’s unobtrusive and offers at-a-glance progress for whatever you happen to have downloading at the time.
  • Fission.  Purely cosmetic, it changes the progress indicator so that it’s in the Address Bar a la Safari.
  • HttpFox.  I’ve been using this instead of the ‘Live HTTP Headers’ plugin which has been out of date for a while now.  It comes into its own when diagnosing problems with a particular website.  Provides real-time output of the entire protocol exchange so that you can see exactly what your browser is doing and each server’s response to every request.
  • Omnibar.  Integrates the search and location bar, kind of makes the overall appearance a bit tidier.
  • Web Developer.  The swiss army knife of plugins, this is handy for anything from CSS teardowns to analysing page load times.
  • GrApple.  Ok, so this isn’t strictly a plugin per se, it’s a theme for Mac OS X only that makes Firefox actually look like an Apple application.

And here’s the end result:

Exciting stuff!

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Life o’ Fids

January 21, 2010

Still trawling back through the old email archives, there’s some quality – and long forgotten – shit in here:
08/04/1997
“hi nick – i went to marseille skatepark last weekend. it ruled.
here’s a photo of fids and a girls ass.
later – will”

That picture of Fids is nothing short of classic.  Click to make big.

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Dirt

January 20, 2010

Back around ‘96 / ‘97, myself and Ben used to update a little website that we named ‘Dirt’, with some reviews of BMX videos, music, and information on various ’scenes’ around the UK.  The inspiration came mainly from Kieran Chapman’s eWire e-zine, and while it was fun to do at the time we lost interest [...]

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Hard Drivin’

January 18, 2010

The past couple of years have seen the rise of a strange branch of motorsports, an uneasy alliance between the ‘Xtreme’ generation of sports sponsors and the motoring world that’s resulted in a new event in the X-Games and chaps like Ken Block (I still have a Blockhead cap somewhere, cheers Dennis!) earning the respect [...]

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Skate and Create

January 15, 2010

So this post was inspired by a little video that I came across recently, which includes Ian MacKaye (amongst others) talking about how life as a skateboarder changes your perception of the world around you.
It’s funny because it’s this exact same conversation that I’ve had with so many other people (BMXers mainly) through the years.  [...]

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Eyup now then lad

January 14, 2010

The Budweiser ‘wassup‘ advert sparked quite a few parodies back in its day – including some from the company itself, but there was one in particular I was especially fond of in which the ‘wasssuuuup’s were replaced by Yorkshiremen saying ‘ey up’ instead.  Fast forward a few years and a conversation with my girlfriend resulted [...]

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These Arms Are No Longer Snakes

January 13, 2010

2002 – 2010, thanks for the music!

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