There are only four things to do in Finland: snowboarding, drinking, racing cars, or killing Russians.

The season is over and unless you have the money to fly to a different hemisphere, or you have a local snowdome, your snowboarding days are temporally over. At least that’s the traditional perception, because it doesn’t need to be the way, you could always try snowboarding on a different surface.

This week we take a scientific look at the alternative off-season snowboarding surfaces to help you select the one that’s right for you. We’ve used a rigorous scoring system to determine which alternative surface is the most viable by tracking the two most important factors; usability and danger. Here's how the scoring works…

Surface Usability Factor

1 = It’s like riding a carpet through a Velcro factory

10 = It’s just like snowboarding

Surface Danger Factor

1 = As dangerous as snowboarding on a fluffy combination of cushions, feathers and kittens

10 = You will die

Half of the fun of art is what the artist’s say about themselves and their work. The artists that produce snowboard sculptures are a particularly good example of the breed.

Dean Lauze 

Medium – Orcas

What the artist says…

Dean is a classically trained, professional multimedia artist. He has been operating a successful Arts company, D’Arts, since 1987. He has extensive experience with large and small-scale murals, most drawing and painting mediums, printmaking, sculpture and graphic design

Reality…

Seems like a nice enough chap… until you find out that he painted this mural in school gym.

Fucking hell!

Computer simulators have been used for years to train jet pilots, astronauts and carjackers. Today this same technology is being used by the snowless and mountain-free kingdom of Great Britain to train small children to snowboard.

The fascinating medical history of the most smiling man in snowbusiness

I've only reviewed one book on this site before and despite that book’s promising cover the actual ready bit was a bit disappointing. Thankfully Chris Klug’s ‘To the Edge and Back’ is the opposite; it’s a book with a bad cover that turns out to be a surprisingly good read...

Last Resort No.4 - Cyprus
It’s a Last Resort because you can no longer find it on the Internet.

When you think of holidays in Cyprus it usually conjures up visions of fat English holidaymakers drinking too much and toasting themselves crimson on the beaches of Ayia Napa, but Cyprus does have a winter holiday option.

Before we start the story of Mr Koch’s quest to snowboard down the seven highest summits on each of the seven continents, it’s worth pointing out that Stephen Koch has a funny name. Throughout his life Koch constantly and deliberately mispronounces his own name so that Koch rhymes with ‘crotch’, however Koch is a German name and if you actually say it correctly its pronounced ‘cock’.

It’s also worth pointing out that the story of the seven summits snowboarding quest has a bit of a strange reoccurring theme. So without further ado let’s take a looks at the story of Koch, Dick, Bonar and Tackle...

There’s rarely any specific Valentine’s Day coverage in the world of snowboarding news, and if there was any at all this year it was swamped by the tsunami of Olympic coverage. Snowboarding blogs are not the only ones that apparently gave Valentine’s a miss this year, for example the florist that was supposed to deliver flowers to my girlfriend decided not to bother, so I spent the following week in a world of trouble. Having narrowly survived death yet again I think it’s time someone gave the world of snowboarding romance a bit of coverage, so today we take a look at snowboarding themed wedding advice...

For your average punter, understanding snowboarding tricks is a thankless task and now that the tricks are getting ever more complicated it’s becoming difficult for even seasoned snowboarders to understand what is happening. Sean White’s recently unveiled visual assault of swirls and flips, the Double McTwist 1260, is just the latest example. During the Olympics a few of news organisations had a stab at explaining these tricks by creating a variety of visuals. Today we take a look at these attempts and to top things off we give out some virtual medals...

This amazingly bad movie poster just appeared on Photoshop Disasters. 

Favourite user comment… “The more I look, the more it feels like I injected vinegar behind my eyes.”

Good news for us is that amongst all the visual mess there is some snowboarding to look forward to, although it would appear the guy is snowboarding on a shag-pile carpet. Here’s the trailer which sadly has similar production values to the poster and features a logo plagiarised from Indiana Jones...