Welcome to Scruffian.com
It's February.

29th February

I have been having more fun with php here. I have that set as my homepage now so its easy to look at lots of websites. Please add yours if its not there. You can also design your own styles if you want. It counts the number of clicks as a vote for that site so you can see which sites are visited the most. I will reset the counter from time to time too.

28th February

I have been playing with php a lot recently. It can be really useful. I am quite excited about this. It has always been difficult to decide the best way to update with a lot of pictures. Scrolling is quite annoying, but then making a page for every picture is time consuming. This makes it very quick to update and I like the idea. Let me know what you think in the book.

24th February

Someone got away from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge on Tuesday with £50. Police are unsure how they will spend it. One of the burnt out cars was found in Leeds. That's Leeds near my house not Leeds in Yorkshire. There are always burnt out cars in Leeds. Now I know why.

23rd February

I am writing this at work in my lunch hour, which pretty muach makes the blog/news section of this site redundant now, so I might get rid of that.
It has been raining for about a week without stopping. Today it has been snowing a lot but I hasn't settled so it feels like a bit of a waste.
Went to a meeting about the skatepark last night. It was quite long winded. People don't seem to like getting to the point. Also people were suggesting having games at the meeting to make it more fun. I think I would have more fun if the meeting was short and then I could go and ride my bike.

Apparently moles taste pretty bad. I couldn't find out about this on the internet but I did find out about the Mole People. Sounds pretty interesting to me so I did some more research and ended up ordering this film.

There really is nothing else going on, what did you expect, its winter. Old front page picture.

19th February

July is a good time.

Rant:
Since January I have done about 10 hours a week at the trails. I have been working pretty hard this year but I guess it's paying off. This is almost your last chance to go and start some jumps.. Don't moan in the summer that your jumps are rubbish or that you wish you had dug more.

If you have not put in any effort this winter then you will NOT be welcome to any woods near my house. By effort I don't mean a couple of hours mooching around at someone else's jumps holding a spade and pretending to do something. I mean actually getting your hansd dirty and building something that you want to ride and other people will want to ride.
 It's nearly the end of February. There's not much time left.
I love Yak and Aiden, Will and Max, Dave and Iain and everyone who digs..

12th February

It rained. First rain of the month pretty much. And the trails were so nearly rideable. I mage some nice samosas. I have made some changes to the links page.

Digging in summer?

10th February

It needs to rain soon. I had to take the freaks off the front page as they were too freaky.

Went for a walk today and saw two trees in a field, some fungus, an old path, an even older dead oak tree and a very badly parked truck.

The shovel load has moved home.

9th February

The last few days have been really sunny but very cold. The skatepark was ok today. Nice and dry but I was riding badly. There is a good view from there. Also the graffiti is pretty funny. Usually graffiti on ramps  is rude and has swearing and stuff, but this is Crowborough which is quite posh so the graffiti is posh too:

1 | 2 | 3

In other news Noid Clothing has moved to Noidco.com. More changes to follow perhaps.

8th February

February is going quickly. I have been riding the skatepark at lunchtime some more. It's hard to take pictures of yourself. I am starting to enjoy the park a bit more than I did at first. There are some interesting lines. I also learnt something good:

I have a blister on my finger from my brake being set up badly so today I didn't want to brake much. I tried a couple of fakies without a brake and they went pretty well. I used to find fakies really hard and could only do maybe every other one right. Without using the brake I can do them almost every time. And they are more fun

Nothing else is really going on. Met someone today who doesn't ever use the internet. Shocking.

Jump Science. For Geeks.

I have also been thinking about rhythms/bowls. That is like a mini history of how I dig bowls. Those drawings are quite bad so let me explain:

1. At first you think you jumps in a row so you have the landing, then the flat ground, then the take off

2. Then you learn about the pump. When we discovered this we decided to make the bowl so it had no flat spots at any point. Like a bowl. Notice that this is meant to be symmetrical. This sounds good but curved landings are bad, so

3. Essentially the same but with a flatter landing and a bit less transition so its no longer symmetrical. There is also a spot with less of a transition at the bottom to give you a break inbetween jumps. This is ok but you are on flat ground so you tend to slow down between jumps, so

4. This is a bad drawing. Ignore the steepness, I have kind of exaggerated it. This is my new idea which everyone else probably already does. Basically I noticed that having the lowest point of the bowl in the middle of the jumps doesn't make much sense because you start to loose speed on the approach to the lip. This setup means you continue going downhill all the way to the lip, even if you are on flat ground. It looks like the bowl is deeper but that's just because I have drawn it badly, it doesn't have to be. The main point is i think move the lowest point nearer the lip.

What do you think kiddos?

5th February

Last night we watched Sleep Hollow. It is a strange mix between horror and comedy. Johnny Depp is pretty good in it. I made some popcorn for grazing. Becky pretended to make the sauce. But today she redeemed herself and made some nice spaghetti frittatas.

I don't very often feel like sitting at a computer typing because I do it all day, which is why updates here are few. Also I don't do a lot because I work all day so there really is not much to say. Hence:

Dreams [boring (don't read)]:

I keep on having dreams about trails. Last night I dreamt that I went to help Dave and Iain with their jumps. They were in a house and they were built a lot out of wood. There were some ramps up against a wall like quarter flatbank times two, and they thought that was a good line for trails. There were a lot of kitchen cabinets around too. I built a nice line of rollers and small jumps. It was weird.

The night before I went to some indoor ramps in Oxford. They were in a house too, and Kiddy was in the back garden. Only it was being demolished and turned into a terraced garden made out of breeze blocks like the old woman next door.

4th February

Last year I thought the jumps were getting knocked down soon so I didn't dig very much. The year before the jumps really were knocked down. This year it is different.  Well if that's not tempting fate then I don't know what is.

While everyone else is building jumps (I wish) Tim has been busy building something a bit different - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

I rode the skatepark a few lunchtimes this week. The kids roll in off the mud and then do the box so it's really muddy, and since its about as slippery as teflon anyway that  really doesn't help. This gap is fun though. Video stills are bad.

Yak has been having a hard time at the trails.

Those spread the vibe kids are getting good.