straw bale housing..

Above is a straw-built home built by Merten Homes in Fort Collins

http://www.s-house.at/SB05.pdf

http://www.uktechnologylive.com/tag/bale-haus

http://www.fuentesdesign.com/

menthol beach by comune

"MENTHOL BEACH" from Corey Smith on Vimeo.

roxy - erin comstock

favorite rider by far!

Macallen Building - LEED Gold

The Macallen Building, Boston, MA

LEED GOLD

Boston's first LEED certified condo development. This building implements a green roof, uses steam from the stormwater lines to heat the water and captures rainwater for irrigation. It is saving 600,000 gallons of water annually and uses 30% less electricity as compared to a conventional building.

best car driver ever..

Ken Block is the shit.

love sucks.

No I'm still not over you, but right now.. this is how I feel:

Collapse

I am currently reading the book, Collapse. It talks of how societies choose to fail or to succeed and highlights past societies that have failed, such as Easter Island, the Anaszi and the Mayans. It also talks of past societies that have survived and current societies in peril. The author highlights the five factors that are involved with any societal collapse. Four of the five factors that may or may not prove significant to societal collapse are:

• Environmental Damage
• Climate Change
• Hostile Neighbors
• Friendly Trade Partners

But the one that ALWAYS proves significant is:

• The society's responses to its environmental problems.

Here are some quotes from the book that really are significant and open your eyes to our current situation:

• "When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future."
• Talking of the Anasazi Society: "Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environment, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable "in the short run", but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that societies without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated."

Milwaukee Art Museum

Only seeing this building from the highway driving to the airport, it was truly amazing. I did some research on this architecture phenomenon and hope to visit next time I'm in Wisconsin.

Quadracci Pavilion

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The graceful Quadracci Pavilion is a sculptural, postmodern addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum completed in 2001, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Calatrava, inspired by the “dramatic, original building by Eero Saarinen, …the topography of the city” and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie-style architecture.

"Thanks to them, this project responds to the culture of the lake: the sailboats, the weather, the sense of motion and change.”

The structure incorporates both cutting-edge technology and old-world craftsmanship. The hand-built structure was made largely by pouring concrete into one-of-a-kind wooden forms. It is a building that could have only been done in a city with Milwaukee’s strong craft tradition.

Architecture highlights

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Windhover Hall is the grand entrance hall for the Quadracci Pavilion. It is Santiago Calatrava’s postmodern interpretation of a Gothic Cathedral, complete with flying buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and a central nave topped by a 90-foot-high glass roof.

The hall’s chancel is shaped like the prow of a ship, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking over Lake Michigan.

The Museum’s signature wings, the Burke Brise Soleil, form a moveable sunscreen with a 217-foot wingspan. The brise soleil is made up of 72 steel fins, ranging in length from 26 to 105 feet. The entire structure weighs 90 tons. It takes 3.5 minutes for the wings to open or close. Sensors on the fins continually monitor wind speed and direction; whenever winds exceed 23 mph for more than 3 seconds, the wings close automatically.

According to Santiago Calatrava, “in the crowning element of the brise soleil, the building’s form is at once formal (completing the composition), functional (controlling the level of light), symbolic (opening to welcome visitors), and iconic (creating a memorable image for the Museum and the city).”

Highlands Sustainable Home

Check out this home which is currently in its early stages, but has big goals to achieve!

http://kramerconcepts.com/

The Denver Highlands Sustainable Home:

• Passive Solar
• Modular Construction
• Geothermal Heating & Cooling
• On Site Food Production
• Infill Site

Wall Street

I went to see the movie, Wall Street the other day and it has totally solidified my wants to live off the grid, self-sustainably, much like Thoreau did in Walden. The fact that one unsubstantiated rumor can cost thousands of people their job and put many others on the line is quite scary. Why would our entire country be based on a stock exchange system which is controlled by greedy, self-absorbed people that would throw anyone under the bus at any time?

And what about media control? What if the American people were totally oblivious to the state of the economy? We the people would go about our lives. We would work. We would still continue to consume.

We would not live in fear.

"Insanity - When people continue to do the same thing and expect a different result." So lets change our actions. Lets control the media. Let us live more simply.

Against the Grain

You can take me anywhere, anytime, anyway.

To the trailer park, to the Manhattans.

I'll be ok. I may not fit in, but that's ok.

Maybe it's ok that I don't truly fit in ANYWHERE.

I will always be a floater.. from one group to another.

Guess you need to mix it up in life, eh?

man i love motocross..

Probably one of the best races of the Outdoors season! Canard & Pourcel battle it out.. these two have been so fun to watch all season. Both so talented and in it to win it. Also, in the 450 class, Windham takes the 1st overall for the first time in three years! I grew up watching this guy and am blown away that he still kills it.

chili shred!

Dangerzone Season 2 Episode 24 - "Chillin' in Chile" from Nick Visconti on Vimeo.

new beginnings

As a lost and sometimes frustrated recent college graduate, I often wonder what it is that I want to achieve in life. I have been boating through some rough waters with a loved-one and that feeling of being unsettled has only sunk in. A huge college debt and parents in need has inhibited any plans to travel or to snowboard hundreds of days a year. However, I will not let these circumstances bum me out. Thinking within, I would rather make myself a better person, rather than the goal that I want to achieve. I have decided to constantly remind myself of the person I want to be in this life... and it goes:

• Appreciate every moment with your loved ones.
• Stop thinking, "Woulda, shoulda, coulda". You can't change the past.
• Be generous with acts of unselfishness.
• Don't be envious of others.
• Surround yourself with good-hearted people.
• Keep your glass half full.
• Live simply.
• Take chances.
• Dream big.

...And I'm dreaming of Crested Butte. :)

into the unknown

"... I take in a deep breath"

-Imogen Heap, Candlelight

Exponential Times

= Scary Times

My Own Edit!

Shots from the 08/09 and 09/10 season.. mostly taken by and fully edited by bjo.

(he rocks)

Amanduu from Beej on Vimeo.

..on a brighter note

Some favorite songs of mine. The music videos suck, but least the songs are still awesome.

College Graduate

Graduation is a time of celebration. It's a new chapter of your life completed. Most people are ecstatic. They're excited to start a career, make lots of money, get married, have kids, blah blah blah.

I see graduation as a transition. A transition where the real world slaps ya in the face. A transition from sleeping in to waking up at the crack of dawn. From snowboarding frequently to being a frequent weekend warrior. A transition to minimal free time and social isolation (aka home).


But like the saying goes, "All good things must come to an end". Now I must pay off this debt that I am swimming in and get to work. I can cope with the real world.. I'm just terrified.

Foxy!

Watch this and get f*in crazy and weird.

A Favorite Author of Mine Once Said..

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

--Henry David Thoreau

The "Wooden Spiral"

Hundertwasser's Waldspirale, "Wooden Spiral"

This building, located in Darmstadt, Germany, is one of my favorite buildings with a green roof. All of this is from the imagination of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian painter and architect.

No two windows are the same and all of the corners are rounded off in these apartments along the roof and walls in an application of Hundertwasser's dogma "gegen die gerade Linie" or "against the straight line." Waldspirale is a loud testament to Hundertwasser's hatred of straight lines and his allegiance to nature

Hundertwasser once said, "If man walks in nature's midst, then he is nature's guest and must learn to behave as a well-brought-up guest."

down

riding a roller coaster
up, down and around
feelings of joy and anger
emotions being bound
...but i am like water
and cannot drown

Up In the Air

I love flying.. to look at our Earth from the air is truly amazing. I see the endless quilt of farms, the many rows of houses, the coastline separating the land from the ocean and while over mountain ranges, I pick the line I would take down them on my snowboard. Mankind has constructed some amazing buildings, but from the sky they seem so miniscule, so minut. We are one planet and one galaxy of many. We currently believe that Earth is the only planet supporting life in our galaxy.. and so much life it is!

if against me! still played these songs.. maybe i'd still go to their shows.

Arcology

"Arcology" - Used by famous architect, Soleri Paolo, meaning architecture coherent with ecology. Paolo was an author, visionary and pioneer of new human spaces. He was the first architect to design buildings and communities with keeping our habitat in mind.

His idea was that there is an inherent logic in the structure and nature of organisms that have grown on this planet. Any architecture, any urban design, and any social structure that violates that structure and nature is destructive of itself and of us and inversely, these that are based upon organic principles is valid and will prove its own validity, i.e. it's vailidity to live.

Paolo's conception of Arcology is a visionary of cities designed to maximize the interaction and accessibility associated with an urban environment; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment.

Why has it taken so long for man to start building communities in this way? Imagine a community where everything was accessible by walking, biking or alternative transportation. A community that shared gardens and grew all the fruits and vegetable they needed. A community with recycling & composting programs and education of sustainability. A community connected with the environment... and why not make this a reality?

Here are some of his quotes I found interesting:

"The photosynthetic veneer, the vegetal world, must not be overlaid by a man-caused opaque veneer."

"The real is the present. The practical is in most cases the past, a frozen imagery of the real not fully becoming. The American dream is the present as practicality rather than the present as real."

If everyone lived the "American dream", it would take over 20 planets to support us...

"That which can be described can become obsolete."

A community in the current era, the first LEED Platinum Community in British Columbia called the Olympic Village:

Cricket Campus Rail Jam 2010

Last Thursday was the Boulder stop for the Cricket Campus Rail Jam. They didn't come to Fort Collins so it was off to Boulder! Images of two-sevs on and frontboards filled my head... until the guys went in Heat 1. No one was really landing anything and I knew the setup was way too steep and flat landings were inevitable.

Girls were in Heat 2. Attempts at the down-flat-down were given, and all failed.
Check out my attempt (lol) ---->

Feeling pretty bad about my heat, I was not expecting to make it to finals. But sure enough, #27 was called. Thinking I would rather just start drinking than ride, I walked up the scaffolding slowly. My goal was to just land a couple of solid tricks. 4th place and a spot at the finals in

Portland was how the night ended and it was better than expected!


Hopefully next year CCRJ will hire someone that knows their Physics and Trig. :)

isenseven 2010

Isenseven 2010 Teaser #1

The Art of Consumption

Depicts the 1,000,000 plastic cups served on US flights every 6 hours.

The largest monument made by man? A landfill.

"Sustainability is a mindset for working in a collaborative and sensitive manner with the environment. Humans must recognize that we are not as separate from nature as we often perceive ourselves to be - we must work with, not against, the principles of nature in our production."

In Loving Memory

Last Wednesday, a good person in this world passed away. Devon Arnold was one of the most genuine, light-hearted and intelligent people we knew. He never was seen without a smile and made the lives that he had touched so much better. He has left us with so many good memories that will never be forgotten. He will be missed dearly, but we also know that he wouldn't want us to mourn over his death. We must celebrate the life he had lived. With that said, "Cheers Devon! Thank you for all that you have left us and may you occupy the hearts and souls of many."

Durango & Wolf Creek

• Well our trip to SW CO was a success! On our way there, we stopped at Pagosa Springs to soak in the hot springs. This place had 23 different pools and all were different temperatures. There were ones used to meditate, to swim and just to relax. After 5 hours on the road, we did just that.

• We then made it to Durango. Durango is a beautiful town. The people are genuine and good times are had. Everyone was dressed for the beach. Some in their costumes decorated like shark, jellyfish or lifeguards.. and the occasional chick rockin nothing but the swim suit.
• Friday & Sunday we went to Wolf Creek. We arrived a couple days after the big storn and there were still plenty of fresh tracks to be found. Not a steep mountain, a snowboarder must keep their speed through flatter parts, as I had learned the hard way. No one was on the mountain though! With the old fashioned tickets the liftees punch and no lift lines, this mountain is at the top of my list.
  
• This trip was spent with old friends and full of good times. Durango, we will return soooon.
  
  

Betta Jibba?

Ima Betta Jibba fort collins CO from Beej on Vimeo.