I'm going to a place with no internet connection, and after that I'll be spending some quality time behind the Great Firewall of China where I won't be able to access the fun bits of the internet. Any legal notices will be dealt with when I return. See you in the New Year.

Tip tip: How do you find Will Smith in the snow?...

For the past two weeks we've been running a competition to create snowboarding-themed pie charts. We received some really strong entries and today we pick the winner...

It's almost Christmas, the festival where we all celebrate terrible clothing design. Here's what happens when you combine garish woolwear with snowboarding and skiing...

A few weeks ago we took a look at some eye-watering vintage ski fashion. Even amongst that bewildering array of heinous gear there was one designer that really stood out. Please allow me to introduce you to the work of Pucci...

Also in this week's edition: Emergency arse wiping solution, Shaun White (again) & some resplendent moustaches...

Roroc have finally responded to our question about their claim to be "the fastest selling snowboarders helmet in Europe". It turns out they're not...

Here's some really nice work coming out of the unlikely source of the south coast of England...

Due to the prevailing weather conditions, ski resorts might seem to be unlikely places to find swimsuit competitions, but they do have one major thing going for them: they're total sausagefests, so there's an almost endless supply of horny blokes desperate to leer at scantily clad ladies. Unfortunately they also have one major drawback too: they're total sausagefests, so the supply of willing exhibitionists is limited. And there's no place more limited than wherever the hell this place is...

Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce you to the work of Chelsea Peterson aka Zebra Paperclip. It's an incredible combination of photography, arty titles, song lyrics and stream of consciousness writing. I've not edited any of the following....

Two weeks ago I asked Ruroc to share the evidence behind the claim in their Facebook Ad to be "The fastest selling snowboarders helmet in Europe". It's a basic advertising standard that if you make a claim like this you have to have some evidence to back it up. The question sat there for a while gaining quite a few likes, but there was a lack of any response from Ruroc. Today I noticed that they have finally responded - they deleted the question...

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat David Malcolm's excellent photographs of Whistler. The guy's practically nocturnal. Over the years he's produced some amazing photos of his home resort...

Here are ten reasons why they just might be...

Here's a bunch of incredible pictures, mostly from the Pinterest board by Poppy Gall showing some of skiing's most incredible fashions of yesteryear...

Also in this episode, some tat from ebay, we find the perfect jacket for winter & Travis Rice's huge woody...

As I was cruising through Chelsea the other day the Pullman Editions store caught my attention. I immediately ordered my driver to pull over the Rolls so I could take a closer look, because I was a little surprised at how familiar they looked...

Darwin was a brilliant man and his discovery of evolution changed the world for ever, but it did have one unexpected drawback; it spawned the snowboard evolution sequence...

Roger Cox. And just to add a dollop more innuendo he's the Outdoors Columnist. I like the way they add his name to the start of all his articles, it makes every article a winner. Here are my three favourites...

For 9 years Eden Seriña strived to become the first female athlete to represent the Philippines at the Winter Olympics. As part of her quest and to drum up the sponsorship she needed, she ran a website, a Facebook page and blog. Unfortunately she didn't make the cut...

In the 80's Swany Gloves produced a range of gloves for kids called Freezy Freakies. When the gloves got cold additional images appeared. It was basically the opposite of Global Hypercolor, but unlike Global Hypercolor it didn't just highlight your sweat patches and unlike Global Hypercolor this fad made practically no impact on the wider world. Maybe it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Also this week: How to pronounce Obergurgl...

A couple of weeks ago we shared some impressive vintage car ads that two guys produced for Pontiac, that featured some awesome cars and lecherous blokes. Since then we found a site called Vintage Ad Browser and another batch of ski-inspired vintage car ads from the 20s onwards (skip to the end if you just want to get drunk). Things start of well with some seriously high-class vehicles, but by the 70s the options had seriously deteriorated...

This might just be the most significant contribution Australia has made to snowboarding since they gave us that fat lad that hangs around with Danny Kass...

The Freeze Festival has been running for years in different guises in various spots around London. I think they must plan the thing each year using a map of the city, a blindfold and a dart. This year it's gone south to Clapham Common and there's been a few changes. Here's why I'll be going...

Also this week: A mind-blowing Japanese computer game, a snowmobile with guns and the worst Christmas present ever...

Yes, that's a skier strapped to the top of a land speed car. Why? Who the fuck knows, but there's been a whole load of skiers who have given this a try...

I've been to Tignes quite a few times. It's a good resort, reasonably priced, good snow, decent nightlife, big terrain and no nonsense. I'd recommend it. That's not how the Tignes marketing department promote it though, they want to try and make it a little more sexy. They decided they had a target market of "audacious people" and wanted a campaign that would appeal to them, which needed to be "sexy, offbeat, young, dynamic and original". Here's what came out of that brainstorm. Are you Tignes?...

Just 102 days left until Christmas. We've got it covered...

Can't wait for winter? Here's a quick fix for you...

Just, wow...

Here's a little trend in poster design we found with three talented artists getting in on the action...

In February 1959, nine Russian ski hikers trekked off in to the wilderness and died horribly in very strange circumstances. Now they've made a movie...

This is excellent...

Signal's design a snowboard competition is on to the voting stage and there's just 5 days to get your votes in. As we've seen before the voting on these comps is completely nuts, so to save everyone a lot of time and effort here are the results...

One of the problems with Facebook is that it makes you feel like everyone else is incredibly talented and their having loads more fun than you. In reality only a small number of people are doing anything remotely interesting at any point, but with a couple of hundred friends your going to constantly see someone having a great day, and the rest of the effect is just your mind playing tricks (this effect is only slightly counterbalanced by another small group of people who spend their time posting incredibly dull updates on their pets). The only known exception to this rule are the poor bastards who happen to be friends with Mike 'Aemka' Knobel, because he really is more talented and having more fun than everyone else, every single minute of every damn day...

A while back I managed to grab the opportunity to try Australian snowboarding for size. One of the unique things I experienced out there was snowboarding through their jazzy little snow gum tress. Here's a selection of Michael Scott Lees' excellent panoramic photography from around those mountains. How would you like a run through this lot?...

It's sunny, not the time to write about snowboarding, here's a look at vintage powered surfboards...

The top 10 things you should know about this week...

Here's a trend that needs to roll over and die. Most of these designs spawn from the site called The Keep Calm-o-matic that allows anyone to generate their own version of the Keep Calm meme. The site uses the word 'pithy' on the homepage and they're proudly responsible for creating over 6 million parodies, the shameless bastards. Today we take a look at some of this meme's lowlights...

Here's a look at the method of snow clearance that comes directly out of the sledgehammer school of walnut freeing...

Tired of your old snowblades or Duel snowboards? Looking for a new mediocre mountain riding experience? Why not try all new FATblades!...

Thinking about doing a regular series of this sort of thing...

1. Gif via Reddit

2. scooteRack via Wackyboards

3. Rock Skiing with Sylvain Saudan via Unofficial Networks

4. Indoor Dirt Biking

5. How Squaw Valley Won the 1960 Winter Olympic Bid by Unofficial Networks
At some point when I wasn't paying attention these guys decided to get into the field of high-class historical skiing journalism. Very interesting read: Get some.

6. Remote Controlled Pistie Beastie

7. Black Belt Test SFII Edition via AWSM

8. A History of Skateboard Pants by Jenkem
Click on the Jenkem link above to get the full size version.

9. Mountain Bike vs Snowboard via Unofficial Networks

10. GolfBoard via Wackyboards

Wintery women themed collages from Belgian artist Sammy Slabbinck...

A while ago we wrote an article called Multimedia Snowboard Tragedies, which included a look at the brilliant interactive and Pultizer prize winning New York Times article called Snow Fall. Us vs Th3m have produced a similar thing called Ice Fail...

Someone going under the pseudonym CircleSquareDiamond has been beavering away producing a set of minimalist ski resort maps and selling them through Society6. It's a simple idea (a bit of tracing), but it's done well and the end results are classy. So far they've produced 137 of the buggers. Here's a few examples and we've made a Friday game out of it too...

In an extremely unfortunate coincidence for the Loveland Ski Resort marketing department, it turns out there's another Loveland on the block. It's a self-styled "sexual themepark" in South Korea that offers an interesting line in sculptural art. It causes more than a bit of confusion when you try to run an image search for Loveland...

One huge problem with Russia's new proudly anti-gay stance that seems to have passed people by is, how the hell are they going to manage the opening and closing ceremonies? The organising committee must be shitting bricks as they furiously try to rework all their plans to keep in line with the new rules, with just a few months left to go. After all the Olympic ceremonies are nothing if not huge doses of camp pageantry. To illustrate my point....

As part of my ongoing quest to find the perfect car for snowboarding, I've found a few more ideas...