I was just reading the last magazine of the season from those part-timers at Whitelines and in it there was an article by Chris Moran about the current state of snowboarding fashion. At the end he asked; “If anyone has any ideas as to how to make snowboarding irresistibly sexy again, please write”. Well Chris, funnily enough, we have the answer…

A few weeks ago I went out to the Burton European Open and somehow managed to avoid mentioning the actual competition in any of the coverage. I didn't do that purely because I'm a contrary git; when I agreed to go on the trip I fully intended to find some way of writing something interesting about it, but I just couldn't find any angle. I didn't just struggle to find something to write, I struggled to even have the patience to watch the event, and judging by the coverage of the bloggers that went to the US Open last week I'm not the only one to hit this problem. The main thing my trip confirmed is that snowboarding is a horrible sport for spectators. In fact along with the day I once wasted at a cricket match and some hours spent watching my life tick past at a major league baseball game, attending the BEO is now in my top three worst spectator experiences of all time...

After all the excitement of recent weeks and the sudden proliferation of posts, we're finally back to our more sedate weeklyish article rate. This week to simulate your eyes I've arted a pretty poster depicting some of the very first snowboards; a time when snowboards still weren't called snowboards and when they were so savage they all had to be controlled by leash....

Nokia gave me a phone for the Burton European Open coverage and now it's time to give it away. I promised to do this before I got the phone and after a few days of playing with it I'm regretting that decision, but my mistake is someone else's gain...

A couple of weeks ago we mentioned an art competition Nokia and Burton are running. That competition is now at the public voting stage so we decided to see how things were progressing. There was good news, bad news and sphincter-looseningly-terrifying news. The good news is that 391 people entered into the competition, the bad news is that I had to wade through 391 entries to write this article, and the sphincter-looseningly-terrifying news is that now it has come to the public vote some of the most intense crap we've ever seen is somehow winning the vote. Democracy is taking one hell of a beating, and it needs your help...

I've been here since Sunday getting into the spirit of this event. It's the first time I've gone out of my way to go to one of these competitions. Here's what I've found so far...

This week, for a rare change of focus we've headed off to the Burton European Open in Laax, courtesy of Nokia, to attempt some live event reporting. So far things haven't got off to a great start, the first two days of qualification have had to be cancelled due to high winds and a dumping of fresh snow. The only thing happening on the course today was me cutting some fresh tracks right down the middle of it.

So in a change to our anticipated schedule of dry event reporting and tedious interviews, we've decided to pay homage to the other great feature of the BEO...the fact that it all takes place on a mountain called Crap.

There's a whole hour of winterwanderwegging Crap to the right.

And this great feature of Laax, along with a lethal combination of puerile minds with too much spare time, inevitably started us thinking of other dubiously named mountains, resorts and ski trails like the gloriously seedy...

So, in what must be the best piece of event reporting from the BEO you're going to get, we brought all the names into one convenient format, and are proud to bring you - The Übermap of Dirty Ski Resort Names...

I'm flying off to cover the Burton European Open (otherwise known as the BEO - pronounced BeeYeow!) at the start of February courtesy of some fine fellows at Nokia. There you go readers, proof that all you have to do is write a blog for 5 years, and put in approximately 1,600 hour's (the equivalent of 200 working days) of work and things will start happening for you. Before you all rush off to start your own blog though, there's a much shorter-term opportunity to get an even better deal for just a few days of effort you might be interested in...

If you've come up with a cunning plan to create the greatest snowboard company ever seen, the first thing you'll need is money. Traditionally your options were limited to breaking open your piggy bank, borrowing money from your friends or family, prostrating yourself in front of your bank manager, taking up some sort of  criminal endeavour, or being publicly humiliated on Dragon's Den/Shark Tank. Nowadays though there's a new option for any poor-orphaned-friendless-pround-honest-shy people out there: crowd funding. 

Take your brilliant idea, stick it on a site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and sit back while billions of potential investors throw cash at you. So far 43 snowboarding ideas have gone through this approach and here's our 10 favourite doomed attempts...

It's amazing humanity survived the early part of the last century  When they weren't busy filling their time with intermittent bouts of genocide, all-encompassing global conflicts and inventing weapons that could kill the planet, here's how people relaxed...