adam downereditorial design

portfolio 2011

photo by mehan: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mehan/

“if s h e

s p i n s f a s t e n o u g h then maybe the broken pieces of her heart will stay to g e t h e r “

The Dismemberment Plan is a Washington D.C. based indie rock band formed

on January 1, 1993. Also known as D-Plan or The Plan, the name

comes from a stray phrase uttered by insurance

salesman Ned Ryerson in the popular comedy Groundhog Day. The band members included Eric Axelson -bass-, Jason Caddell -guitar-, Joe Easley -drums- and Travis Morrison -vocals and guitar-. Axelson, Caddell, Morrison and original drummer Steve Cummings formed the band while attending various Northern Virginia high schools -Axelson, Cummings, and Morrison attended Lake Braddock Secondary

School together in Burke, Virginia-.

Cummings left the band after the

recording of the Plan-s debut album

! and was replaced by Easley, who had attended

Woodson High School. That cemented the band-s lineup for

the rest of its existence.

Aside from a brief interlude in 1998 and 1999 when they were signed by Interscope Records, the band recorded for local label DeSoto Records. Their breakthrough album, Emergency & I, was actually created during their time at Interscope. However, they were dropped from the label shortly after its completion, and thus took it back with them to DeSoto, where it wound up being released. The EP for "The Ice of Boston" is the only item of theirs Interscope actually released during their tenure there. The band somehow managed to avoid being in debt to the label, effectively being able to record on a major label budget with no consequence. The band referred to their situation in a

later interview as "slipping through the cracks".Following the massive underground success of Emergency & I, the band received an even higher profile after being invited to open for the European leg of Pearl Jam's 2000 tour. A co-headlining tour in 2002 with Death Cab for Cutie (cheekily called the "Death and Dismemberment Tour") also worked well to raise both bands' profiles and cross-pollinate their fanbases, as well as forge creative ties between several members. Later that summer and fall the Dismemberment Plan started to debut songs for their follow-up to 2001's Change. In 2002 the band put all the music tracks from their last two albums on their website, encouraging fans to remix the songs. The result was 2003's A People's History of the Dismemberment Plan. On January 19, 2003, however, the band announced on their website that they

had decided to break up after a few tours that year. A final show was planned for July 28, 2003 in Washington D.C.'s famous outdoor show space, Fort Reno Park. However come show-time a heavy rain threatened to damage their electronic equipment and drove off all but the most devoted fans, leading the band to add one more final show. On September 1, 2003, they closed out their career with a sold-out show at the renowned 9:30 Club, dubbed the "one last slice" show. Morrison took the post-Change songs with him for further work, and released many of them on his first album, Travistan, released in 2004. Eric Axelson started a band called Maritime with former members of The Promise Ring. They released three albums: Glass Floor in 2004, We, the Vehicles in

2006, and Heresy and the Hotel Choir in 2007.On March 1, 2007, the band announced they would be playing a one-and-off reunion show on Saturday, April 28, 2007 at Washington D.C.'s venerable Black Cat nightclub. The event was a charity concert benefiting Callum Robbins, son of J. Robbins, frontman for DeSoto Records labelmate Jawbox. Fan reaction to the decision was overwhelmingly positive, and tickets to the concert sold out within minutes of being offered online. In response to the high demand for tickets, a second show was announced for April 27. Travis Morrison has stated that the band probably won't be getting back together, "except to drink

beer". On September 13, 2010, The Washington Post's Click Track reported that the band would reunite for a tour, in support of Barsuk Records' reissue of 1999s Emergency & I. "We're not planning a new record," bassist Eric Axelson told Click Track. "But we're doing these shows and taking it day to day after

that."

-----------------------------------

TheDismemberment Plan

“ f u c k your skin, n o b o d y needs it, t h e r e s b o n e s , m u s c l e a n d b l o o d “

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P.O.S

“ f u c k your skin, n o b o d y needs it, t h e r e s b o n e s , m u s c l e a n d b l o o d “

P.O.S retains his punk rock influence in songs like “Kidney Thief ”, which contains a sample from “Out of Reach” by the now defunct band Baxter, and “De La Souls”, which contains a sample from “Argyle” by the punk band The Bouncing Souls. He has described his music as “rap to skateboard to”. Using raw drum

loops, punk rock bass guitar riffs, and sharp wordplay P.O.S. has crafted

a unique style.

P.O.S is a founding member

of the Doomtree Collective, a nine member group of MCs, Producers,

and DJs. His first EP False Hopes and debut album Ipecac Neat were originally released exclu-

sively through Doomtree. The album caught the at-tention of Rhymesayers Entertainment who, in 2004,

signed him and re-released Ipecac Neat. Since that point, his albums have been jointly released by both Doomtree

and Rhymesayers.In January 2006, his sophomore record, Audition was re-leased, raising his profile nationally. Since then he has mainly focused on Doomtree associated projects. In 2007 the whole collective released a collaborative album also called False Hopes, and in 2008 released the self-titled Doomtree. Live shows throughout Minneapolis and the country are

usually supported by other members of the collective.In February 2009 P.O.S. released Never Better. The album came with a unique form of artwork. The liner notes, which include six transparent slides, can be rearranged to put the listener's own personal touch on the cover and backing art. The first single "Drumroll" was received well among college

and alternative radio alike.P.O.S

“It is green outsideWhere it seems magical

And if nothing worksWe'll do nothing“

F o r m e d in 1994 in Hellerup, an

upper-class suburb of Copenhagen, they had a profound impact on the Dan-

ish indie scene, emerging alongside the likes of Carpark North, Swan Lee and Saybia, amongst others,

in 2003. At the 2003 Danish Music Critics Award Show, Mew won the awards for “Album of the Year” and “Band of the

Year”. Their first major commercial success came with Frengers, released in 2003, described as “a work of quiet brilliance, aiming for the epic without straying into the bombastic, offering cerebral arrangements while keeping things accessible.” The album was well received. After a European tour supporting R.E.M. they began to attract wider attention. Their next album And the Glass Hand-ed Kites was released in Denmark on 19 September 2005, in the United Kingdom and rest of Europe on 26 September,

and in the United States on 25 July 2006. The album re-ceived critical acclaim, with Mew described as making

“dreamy thunderstorm pop”. They were MTV Asia “Buzz-Worthy” as of January, 2006, and at the

DMA06 (Danish Music Awards) they took home 4 statuettes.

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On 11 April 2006, Wohlert left the band to spend more time with his girlfriend, Pernille Rosendahl from the now dissolved band Swan Lee, who was to give birth to their baby boy in May 2006. The two would later go on to form a duo, The Storm.The band tours with Nick Watts (formerly of UK indie band Headswim) as their keyboardist, and Bastian Juel (who used to act as a studio and live bassist for Swan Lee and also played bass on Tina Dico's EP Far) recently joined them as their live bassist. However, he is not an official replacement for Johan and the band has said they will return to the studio with just the three original members.The band finished touring for And the Glass Handed Kites in the summer of 2007. They returned to Brooklyn, New York in May 2008 in order to begin recording their next record, and tapped Rich Costey (who produced their breakthrough album, Frengers) once again as producer.The band's fifth album No More Stories / Are Told Today / I'm Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I'm Tired / Let's Wash Away was released on August 17, 2009 in Scan-dinavia, August 24 in the UK, and August 25 in the US.In 2009, the band supported Nine Inch Nails for vari-ous tour dates across Europe.On October 25, 2010, Mew released their first compilation album entitled, Eggs Are Funny, which featured 14 songs from previous albums as well as one new song, "Do You Love It?". The track list was compiled of what Mew consider to be their "best work".On an episode of HBO's Eastbound and Down, airing 10/31/2010, "Comforting Sounds" off of "Frengers" played over the end of the show and into the closing credits.

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Early years 1993 : 1997At the Drive-In was founded in 1993 by guitarist Jim Ward and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala (then

credited simply as Cedric Bixler). The two derived the name from Poison's hit song "Talk Dirty to

Me". The newly formed band played its first live show on October 15, 1994 at the Loretto High

School Fair in El Paso, Texas] Not long after, At the Drive-In released its first studio recording entitled

Hell Paso, a 7-inch EP issued in November 1994. Following Hell Paso’s release, the band members embarked on their first tour – a 2,000-mile trek

across the state of Texas. After a drummer change, At the Drive-In released its second EP ¡Alfaro

Vive, Carajo! in June 1995. The band then set out on another tour, this one in a newly purchased

1981 Ford Econoline and spanning 42 days and 10,000 miles across the United States. During

these tours, At the Drive-In began developing a large underground following by mostly playing in basements and small venues across the western

United States, with their popularity spread by word of mouth among fans. One such show that

changed the course of history for the band was in a now defunct bar in Los Angeles, where the band

put on an explosive performance for just nine people – some of them employees of the Flipside

record label. The staffers were so enthralled by the show that they offered to put out At the Drive-

In’s record then and there. Accepting the offer, the band first headed out on another 21-day tour of

the Southwest before ending in Los Angeles again where they recorded their debut full-length album

titled Acrobatic Tenement for $600.

Following the recording of Acrobatic Tenement in July 1996, the final line-up of At the Drive-In fell into place with the addition of Tony Hajjar and Paul Hinojos and with Omar Rodríguez-López transitioning from bass to guitar. The album hit stores August 18, 1996, and with its release the band commenced another U.S. tour the following year spanning 100 days (February to June 1997) and 24,000 miles. This tour included shows with hundreds of other bands such as Screw 32, J Church, AFI, Still Life, Mustard Plug, Face to Face, and Cosmic Psychos. At the Drive-In’s fan base began to swell with every show it performed.[citation needed] Following this tour, the band members took a month vacation (Jim Ward remained on vacation until the recording of In/Casino/Out) before rehearsing for their next record and subsequent tour. At the Drive-In’s third EP titled El Gran Orgo was released on September 18, 1997, and “showed a more melodic side of the band, but the musical depth and heartfelt emotion was never more apparent.” Two days after its release, the band was in Boulder, Colorado playing a show with Welt to kick off its next 35-day, 11,000-mile tour that also included six dates with Karp and the Young Pioneers, and one-offs with Guttermouth, The Criminals, Piss Drunks, and the Humpers. At the Drive-In’s popularity at this point was undeniable, with headlining shows in the Midwest drawing between 100 and 350 fans

At The

Drive In

In“Casino“Out and Vaya 1998 : 2000

When the time came for At the Drive-In’s next recording, Flipside quit producing records

and Offtime was financially unable to, "so the band literally approached almost every indie label they could think of." When hope

was almost lost and the possibility of another record seemed dim, Bob and Michelle Becker

of Fearless Records saw At the Drive-In open for Supernova at a bar named Club

Mesa. Despite Fearless’s history of producing mainly pop punk bands, the band members

"felt very comfortable with Bob and Michelle on a personal level" and a deal was signed.

Consequently, At the Drive-In began recording its second full-length album titled In/Casino/

Out on June 3, 1998. With producer and mixer Alex Newport, the band spent four

days recording at Doug Messenger's, in North Hollywood, and an

additional two days mixing the album at Paramount, in Hollywood. This

album marked a notable maturation in At the Drive-In’s sound and is

special in that it was recorded live with just a small amount of overdubs.

In/Casino/Out was chosen to be recorded live because, according to some sources, At the Drive-In struggled to capture the intensity

and emotion of its live shows in the recording studio.

In/Casino/Out was released on August 18, 1998, although the band

toured almost non-stop from July until December, playing shows with

bands like Knapsack and The Murder City Devils. At the Drive-In took a

couple month break until March, 1999, at which point they kicked off another tour with a two week stint

with Jimmy Eat World in the U.S. until they headed to Europe for a six week European tour spanning eleven countries. Upon returning

to the U.S., At the Drive-In played a handful of shows before returning to the studio to record their fourth EP entitled Vaya, which was released on July 13, 1999. Without missing a beat, the band kicked off another tour on July 28 in Austin, TX with Universal

Recovered, another band from El Paso. This tour included shows with

bands like The Get Up Kids and Rage Against the Machine. Later, in April

2000, At the Drive-In released a split EP with Sunshine. The five song EP

only contained two tracks by At the Drive-In.

Relationship of Command 2000 : 2001Recording for At the Drive-In’s third and final full-length album Relationship of Command began on January 17, 2000. The recording took place at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, California with producer Ross Robinson (and mixer Andy Wallace), who the band had met in an earlier tour and who had "convinced the boys that he was the guy who could get every ounce of them onto tape." Relationship of Command was recorded over a seven week period and featured Iggy Pop with minor parts in a couple of the album’s songs. It was released September 12, 2000 to critical acclaim, and catapulted At the Drive-In into the mainstream musical spotlight. The album is now seen as one of the most influential rock albums of the decade, with it being ranked 47th in the 50 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century in Kerrang!, number 83 on Spin Magazine's 100 Greatest Albums 1985 - 2005, as well as being ranked at number 90 on MTV2's greatest albums ever list.Though In/Casino/Out was recorded live, "Relationship of Command may very well be the first record to harness the chaotic balance of adrenaline and intellect of ATDI's live performance." "Ross was instrumental in bringing out a lot of feeling from us," Bixler recalls. "We channeled a lot of emotion into this record. He pushed us farther than we thought we could go. I learned to cut loose the way we do live and not to be afraid to break something or whatever." While capturing the essence of At the Drive-In's live shows in a way never before seen, Relationship of Command also featured some of the bands most experimental songs, including "Rolodex Propaganda", "Non-Zero Possibility," and "Invalid Litter Dept."In addition to touring worldwide in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. following the release of Relationship of Command, At The Drive-In also performed on several television shows. The band's first nationally televised performance was on Farmclub, a now defunct television show which aired late at night on the USA Network. After that performance, they also appeared on Later with Jools Holland, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman. Additionally, their minor hit radio single "One Armed Scissor" had circulation on MTV and significantly contributed to the band's popularity.

More Ride Than Free: The Alta Rezia All-Mountain Tour Some say that there’s

no such thing in life as a free lunch, while others believe there’s no such thing as a free descent. Even on a Freeride Tour, gravity is not always on your side as Dan Milner finds out on a four-day epic ride of the Alta Rezia region.

I trace the line of our trail with my gaze, as it drops down to the azure blue Lake Giacomo far below. To any casual passerby, the trail we're about to drop into looks far from welcoming; it's a twisting, foot wide swathe of loose gravel and fist sized rocks that cuts back and forth across an exposed mountainside that itself feels a long way from anywhere, but to us it's the deserved fruit of our labour, reached by an hour's climb and a final bike shouldering scramble across some very exposed scree chutes. Right now loose gravel and fist sized rocks have never looked so inviting. I drop my seat and roll into the entrance of the trail sporting a cheek to cheek grin.

Words: Dan Milner

It's the penultimate day of a four day navigation around 270 miles of the Swiss and Italian Alta Rezia region of the Alps. Self sup-ported, we're carrying the basics for overnight'ing in the villages that dot our map while loosely trying to follow the route pioneered by Hans Rey and Thomas Frischnecht back in 2004, labelled the "Alta Rezia Freeride Tour". Using ski lifts, jeep shuttles and moun-tain railways to cover much of the uplift Hans and Frischi were entitled to use the term "freeride", but to us however, the word is a proving a little misleading. Lulled by the downhill image painted by the international duo's pioneering trip, Guillaume, my riding buddy has brought his seven inch travel Specialized SX trail, only to find each of our four days involves more than a thousand metres of climbing, a challenge made a little tougher by the fact that we're carrying 22 Ib backpacks. I feel for him on his heavy, long travel bike as we start every climb but I haven't the nerve to tell him that our version of the Freeride tour has deviated from Hans' official route and thus omitted a couple of chartered uplifts.

Taking the Bernina Express train out of St Moritz delivered us to the Bernina Pass at 2252m (pictured). The line is 100 years old and still runs with Swiss punctuality, unlike ourselves who arrived at our Mon-astery accommodation that night 2 hours late after having taken 2 wrong turns en route.

We start our epic in St Moritz by taking a historic train up to the 7000 ft Bernina Pass. The red Bernina Express sports a dedicated carriage in which to hang our steeds, but we've made the wrong assumption that the "Freeride train" is just that, a train laid on for bikers. It turns out in fact that only alternate trains are bike friendly and having just missed the 9.10, we have a two hour wait until the next energy saving departure for the spectacular Bernina Pass, a location that has done so well in preserving 1960's chintz I half expected a Sean Connery-esque Bond to step from behind one of the station buildings.

Fast undulating forest singletrack polished off day one with a well earned shot of adrenaline. Half an hour later we'd be enjoying the hospitality of Italian nuns.

Uphill? 'We should be on a

descent, shouldn't we?

The descent I have decided on is one that follows an ancient mule track historically used by smugglers and we set off from the Bernina Pass in high spirits, weaving our way down a stunning mountainside, before turning uphill again. Uphill? 'We should be on a descent, shouldn't we?' I ask rhetorically of Guillaume. We've gone wrong already, having missed one vital paint flecked rock that marks the trail. Fifteen minutes of backtracking puts us back en route and we ride a rollercoaster trail, in places paved with ancient slabs, into the Poschiavo valley. To make our tour more manageable I've downloaded our day's routes from a mountain-bike tour website (www.bike-gps.com), and have come armed with profiles, distances and "roadbooks" (directions to take at each junction) all printed out and filed in a waterproof map case. I feel snug at my level of organisation, but soon realise that omitting a GPS is an oversight that costs us in time and energy on several occasions.

Reaching the hamlet of Lungacqua at 6200 ft is one such error having climbed six hundred feet too much. 'Extra up means extra down though' I repeat mantra-style, as we drop onto a techie trail strewn with canon ball sized rocks before, heading along what is perhaps the best trail we encounter of the trip: a four kilometre stretch of undulating mossy singletrack, that clings to the side of the mountain like it's the material incarnation of the contour line itself. A few spots of rain entice us to quicken the pace, and I dig deep within my energy to stay focused on the half meter wide snaking trail, determined not to pitch myself off the edge. Fifteen minutes of rhythmically swooping trail bliss restores our faith in the bike as a ticket to adventure and it's with tired legs but a sense of accomplishment that we spin up to the door of the convent in Poschiavo for a meal of nuns' home cooking followed by deep, deep sleep.

Another col, another descent. And so the pattern for each day is set. The AR is all about earning your rewards it seems. Despite the abundant lifts en route, t's no free ride.

The Bernina Pass often acts as a barrier to storms, but the rain that we wake to in Poschiavo is still with us as we jump from the train back at the pass, clad head to foot in wet weather gear, to set off along a rumble-strip of slippery rocks that tests our techni-cal prowess. Thankfully the rain eases off as we start a 1200 ft climb up the Val de Fain valley toward the La Stretta pass from where we will ride down into Italy. 'So where is the trail?' Guil-laume asks when we reach the lofty pass. We're shrouded in mist but through the murkiness I can make out the edge of an abyss: the trail appears to literally drop off the edge of the world. The ex-posure renders the initial descent a hike-a-bike and in places we have to hang onto chains anchored into the rock. I start to get the feeling that the Alta Rezia is not only about the bike parks of Livi-gno, but about adventure biking in the purest sense of the term. It's a buzz though, and despite the weather the adventure factor kicks in to make it one of the most memorable days of a summer of riding. The rain returns as we ride a dozen tight switchbacks before spinning the final fast kilometres of open trail to the warm and comfy Baita Montana Hotel in Livigno.

We wake to sunshine and I instantly regret not planning in a back-pack-less day of blasting Livigno's bike park trails. Instead we don our packs and take the Mottolino lift up to 9500 ft to start another day of epic backcountry riding to Santa Catalina. Following the rain, the August sun returns with a vengeance and we sweat our way up climbs to earn several fast, pedal-free descents before arriving at the Bormio gondola, only to find that the top section is closed for the day. The closure leaves us a thousand metres short of the 9000 ft summit from where it would have been a long descent to Santa Catarina. 'It's OK' says the friendly liftie, recognis-ing angst on our weathered faces 'you can just follow the jeep track; it makes a traverse to Santa Catarina'. "Traverse" in Italian obviously translates as "climbs", and an hour and a half later than scheduled, and after some severe sense of humour failures en route, we arrive at our meeting point to take a Landrover shuttle up to the Forni refuge. Nothing seems a problem for Italians though, not late arrivals nor the fact that our bolt through forks won't fit Maurizio's bike trailer. His initial concern soon becomes joy as we flip the bikes upside down and lash them with rope for the 1500 ft climb up to the refuge.

"Traverse" in Italian obviously translates as "climbs"

A tour is only a tour of course if you return to your start point, meaning we need to reach Tirano to take the Freeride Express back to St Moritz. Marcizo, our enthusiastic host at the refuge points out a great singletrack descent back to Santa Catarina where we can take a cable car to 8000 ft before descending to Tirano. Well rested and over-fed, we pedal out of the refuge in the shadow of an almighty glacier, its ice glowing blue in the early morning light. Perfect high mountain singletrack and a cablecar uplift put us in good spirits as we trace our route to the Paseo dell'Alpe pass, but when the trail eventually leads out onto 4x4 track we become lured away from the easy descent to Tirano by a small trail heading off over a makeshift bridge and into the forest. 'Okay, if it turns downhill in the forest we'll follow it' we agree, before finding ourselves lunging down the trail as it swoops through mossy old growth forest.

A half hour later we are raising looks of concern from occasional mushroom gatherers that we pass as we push our bikes up an impossibly steep climb that will, we insist pop out somewhere. We emerge at a deserted hamlet far above the valley floor along which we should by now be pedaling to our train. We're miles from where we should be at this stage in the game, but the expe-rience seems highlight the inadequacies of the term "freeride". As we roll into yet another technical descent, I realise there's a pat-tern emerging with our own version of the Alta Rezia Freeride tour, one in which includes a lot more uphill. Of course this means more descent and a lot more adventure to boot: worthy rewards indeed for a little extra effort. You've just got to have the right approach. And the right bike doesn't hurt either.

Our return to the Bernina pass was greeted with rain. A long slow steady climb up to the La Stretta pass border with Italy once more, ended in a swirl of cloud, obscur-ing our descent to Livigno. Just as well, it was steep and scary as hell, but rideable, spitting us out with the kind of massive grins and over-dose of endorphins to freewheel into town.

Name: Brandon Hoerres

Age: 23

How are things going with Mutiny these days? What does Gaz and Joe have in the works with you these days? Any talk about another video at all or anything? Things at Mutiny are great. Joe and Gaz are two of the best dudes I know and to have them as “bosses” is a sweet deal. I’ve heard some talk about doing another Mutiny DVD but I have no idea if things are being put into motion yet. I know we are still going to focus on web content and try to put out some quality web edits this year. So there should be traveling and filming for web edits in my future. I don’t mind that at all.

How are you? Meh, I’m 23 and I just had kidney stone. I guess things could be worse. Apparently as part of the operation to remove the kidney stone they stuck a lazer in my penis. I mean how many people can say they have had a lazer in there genitals.

What’s new in your life? I graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a BA in Philosophy and I hope the never have to write another paper debating some meaningless nonsense again. However, I do plan to go back to school to get a computer science degree and maybe one day join the world.

How has the Wisconsin winter been treating you? Where have you been getting your riding time in at? Any plans of heading south at all? It’s a love/hate situation with the winter in Wisconsin. Some days I just wanted to sit inside and do a whole lot of nothing. Other days I need to be outside but the amount of snow on the ground is depressing. When the snow isn’t too debilitating I try to go to the park every now and then, but riding the same park for about 7 years now wears on you. I normally head to Texas every winter for a nice break. This year I will be heading to dallas for a Mutiny trip in February. A much needed break.

This past year you had the chance to travel quite a bit more since you finished up college. How has not having school hovering over you been? What’s next for you? Finishing school has been nice, however I plan to go back. I’m not a a sadist or anything I just want to make sure I have a secure future once riding takes away most of my mobility. I will try to ride and travel as much as possible in the coming years while maintaing a college life. It worked so far I will keep at it for a little bit longer.

Where are you right now? Right now I am sitting in my apartment in Milwaukee wrapped in a blanket because it is SO cold here.

Where are you off to next? Texas, where I hopefully will not have to wear several layers of clothes at all times of the day.

What does your average daily routine consist of these days? Recently I have been waking up at about 7 a.m. This is very odd for me. Its about 7 hours earlier than I normally wake up….Then I sit around on the internet reading random stuff or watching documenta-ries. Netflix is probably the best thing ever for that. Ummmm, these things normally happen during the day in no particular order, make curry, ride, watch a bunny chase a cat, take a trip to Whole Foods, nap, nerd rage, hang with Biggie…exciting days.

Tell us something people might not know about you. The reason I don’t answer my cell phone is because of a girl. If you have ever received 50 phone calls from the same person within a few hours you know what I’m talking about. If you want to get a hold of me you are way WAY better off emailing me.

What does 2011 have in store for you? Anything in particular you are really looking forward to? To be honest I’m not exactly sure what 2011 holds for me yet. I know I’m going back to school for computer science. I will probably be traveling here and there but I have no idea where I’m going. If I’m looking forward to anything right now it would be the 2011 New Years because of all the 2012 b.s. Ha. It should be an interesting year.

What’s the last song you heard, movie you watched and website you visited? Song- RJD2; Smoke and Mirrors, Movie- Black Swan, Website - I was just on Hulu.com watching The Simpsons, but if your ever really bored you can check out loljesus.com. You might love it or you might hate it.

Any plans for tonight? If by plans you mean fall a sleep on my couch watching episodes of 30D Rock, then yea I absolutely have plans for tonight.

She's more than just a miniature version of her sister, the Diana F-. Rather, she's everybody's darling and a true keeper. Read on after the jump to learn what's so special about this little camera.

I was lucky enough to get my Diana Mini for free at Photokina 2010. I remember looking at her through the plastic wrap of her packaging, not sure what to think of her. Sure, she looked cute – but I wondered how much I would actually use her.

Little did I know that I would fall head over heels for her. This cam-era has changed my vision and it is now my favorite camera.

Why? Well, just looking at pic-tures taken with a Diana Mini, you’ll notice this lovely vintage charm that we all love. It’s differ-ent from her big sister, the Diana F, but special in its own way. The images her little plastic lens produces are dreamy and soft, the vignette is noticable, but not too strong.

The Diana Mini is a camera that is incredibly

easy to use. It takes regular 35mm film,

which is really convenient. There are two apertures available, F8 for cloudy

days and F11 for sunny days. The shutter is fixed at 1/60, but there

is a ‘B’ bulb setting. Shutter cocking and film advance are not coupled,

allowing for multiple exposure madness. Or you can make endless

panoramas, or anything in between.

I find that the Diana Mini works very well with redscale film. It emphasizes the vintage

effect and goes well with the square format.

There’s just one

more thing

that needs to be

said: The Diana Mini is small!

Her tiny size and low weight allow

you to just throw her in that bag or in your jacket

pocket and to carry her around all day.

Occasionally I use the half frame format too. Half frames are awesome, too. I love the way you can com-municate a story using them.

I should use it more often, but I just love my squares that’s why I don’t shoot in half frame mode as much.

I find that the Diana Mini works very well with redscale film. It emphasizes the vintage

effect and goes well with the square format.

Monster Energy is sending their MTB army to this weekend's Vienna Air King for the kick off to the FMB World Tour!

Monster Energy athletes to compete in this

weekends Vienna Air King held in Vienna, Austria

which officially kicks off the Freeride Moun-

tain Bike World Tour.

The Vienna Air King is an international dirt

jump competition, which is held every April and

functions as the annual bike season kick off

event in Europe in conjunction with the ARGUS

Bike Festival ; Austria-s biggest bike event that

attracts 100.000 visitors each year and will

now broadcast live on the net!

It was recently signed Monster Energy Athlete

Sam Pilgrim -GBR- who took the win in 2010,

and with his recent win at White Style, Sam

will be looking to carry that momentum back

to the top of the box!

Also attending the event this year are Monster

Athletes and 2010 FMB World Champion Cam Zink

-USA-, Lance McDermott -GBR- and Monster

Army rider Sam Reynolds -GBR-.

Reynolds is coming off of a second place at

White Style, and is looking to push his riding

to a new level this season.

Riding in his first comp since signing with

Monster Energy, FMB Champ Zink will be look-

ing forward to defending his FMB title. Cam

says, -Being supported by Monster is pretty bad

ass! Their list of unreal talent goes on and on

in every direction of sports and lifestyle and

I am pumped to be a new addition. This year I

will be splitting time between filming for some

pretty big projects and most importantly try-

ing to keep my FMB World Title by winning as

many major contests as possible.-

Also looking to go big in 2011 is veteran Mon-

ster Energy rider Lance McDermott. Though

it-s been over a year since Lance has been able

to compete, he-s now fully recovered from a

horrific broken tib-fib at the end of 2009 and

ready to kick things up another level in 2011!

Coming off his recent fifth place finish at

-White Style-, Jamie Goldman also returns to

Monster Energy athletes to compete in this

weekends Vienna Air King held in Vienna, Austria

which officially kicks off the Freeride Moun-

tain Bike World Tour.

The Vienna Air King is an international dirt

jump competition, which is held every April and

functions as the annual bike season kick off

event in Europe in conjunction with the ARGUS

Bike Festival ; Austria-s biggest bike event that

attracts 100.000 visitors each year and will

now broadcast live on the net!

It was recently signed Monster Energy Athlete

Sam Pilgrim -GBR- who took the win in 2010,

and with his recent win at White Style, Sam

will be looking to carry that momentum back

to the top of the box!

Also attending the event this year are Monster

Athletes and 2010 FMB World Champion Cam Zink

-USA-, Lance McDermott -GBR- and Monster

Army rider Sam Reynolds -GBR-.

Reynolds is coming off of a second place at

White Style, and is looking to push his riding

to a new level this season.

Riding in his first comp since signing with

Monster Energy, FMB Champ Zink will be look-

ing forward to defending his FMB title. Cam

says, -Being supported by Monster is pretty bad

ass! Their list of unreal talent goes on and on

in every direction of sports and lifestyle and

I am pumped to be a new addition. This year I

will be splitting time between filming for some

pretty big projects and most importantly try-

ing to keep my FMB World Title by winning as

many major contests as possible.-

Also looking to go big in 2011 is veteran Mon-

ster Energy rider Lance McDermott. Though

it-s been over a year since Lance has been able

to compete, he-s now fully recovered from a

horrific broken tib-fib at the end of 2009 and

ready to kick things up another level in 2011!

Coming off his recent fifth place finish at

-White Style-, Jamie Goldman also returns to

the Monster program, but Jamie has decided to

sit out Vienna Air King choosing to polish

up his home jumps in preparation for his own

comp -UDUG 2- being held later this month.

Jamie will be competing in select events this

season as well as coming up with ideas for a

few events to put on after the success of last

year-s Upside Down and Underground.

Jamie says, -Monster means America. Anytime I

have an idea, Monster is all for it! And they

always end up helping to figure out a way for

me to be able to do it bigger and better. And

that-s the American way. -

Monster is also pleased to announce the re-

cent signing of Mike Montgomery -USA- to the

team. Montgomery will not be attending the

Air King event, but will be rocking Monster En-

ergy at various other events on the FMB calen-

dar in 2011. Mike says, -I wanted to partner with

a brand that will help me raise the bar, take

chances, and elevate the sport…Monster Energy

is that brand and I-m the athlete!-

Fresh off his fourth place finish at White Style,

but healing up from some wounds, be on the

lookout for Canadian Monster Energy athlete

Graham Agassiz to be sending it bigger than

ever in 2011

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Where’s home? Nelson BC

Favorite riding location? Kamloops. The riding there is just so much fun. The trails are fast and flowy, there’s lots of big jumps and a good crew of people to ride with. It’s basically desert terrain so you’ve got these wide-open, fully-pinned trails. Also it’s really easy to build jumps there. You try to build a big jump anywhere else and it takes forever – digging through roots and rocks, building with wood – in Kamloops it’s like building snowboard booters. Everything just goes up so fast.

Describe the mountain bike world that you’re a part of. It’s just a tight crew of really good friends that are also pro riders. We all ride and train together. Go to the same contests. We want to try to keep the “mountain” in mountain biking. I like doing tricks, but want to make sure I keep true to what mountain biking is. You might as well ride a BMX if you’re just doing tricks on a small mountain bike that is basically a BMX. A real mountain bike is supposed to be ridden in the mountains.

Favorite trick? My favorite trick to do is probably a super-seater. And I really like to watch super-flips.

Favorite Contest? Chatel Mountain Style. The organizers over there are super rad – they take really good care of you. The course is awesome – it’s a mix be-tween slopestyle and big mountain. And the whole atmosphere there is really cool because it’s in a small European town up in the mountains.

How many days on the bike this year? Ummm 5 days a week for most of the year. I’d say about 200.

What keeps you motivated? Watching everyone’s’ movie segments gets me motivated. Action moti-vates me a lot to get out there, ride fast and learn new tricks.

What do you do when you are not riding? I just relax and hang out with friends and do the stuff I used to do be-fore I became a professional mountain biker – snowboarding, sledding, dirt biking, boating, going to the beach… you know normal stuff.

What did you think when you saw Follow Me the first time? Watching it in Monterey for the first time was awesome. It got me stoked to go ride. The first time you see a film that you’ve put so much work into is a pretty crazy feeling. Seeing it all come to life and sharing it with a ton of people is really cool.

What’s been the reaction to your segment? It’s been really good. Lots of people are stoked on it and I’m just glad they enjoy it. It’s pretty crazy how stoked the kids are on it. I guess that’s what it’s all about… getting everyone stoked to ride their bikes.

One thing people should know about making Follow Me that they don’t know already? It was a lot different than what we do with other films. Normally when you build something for a movie it’s just for you – but in Follow Me we all shared what we built, which made it kind of challenging. But in the end it was all just about having fun. It sucks riding alone on big stuff so it was nice to have someone to ride and work together with.

Shout outs? The Anthill boys, for killing it. Now that we’re friends… I think? Hopefully. I don’t know… what’s a good shout out? Family, friends and sponsors. Thanks!

A journey towards the hottest climes of the cosmos must start by passing the sun, the fiery centre of our solar system. With a surface temperature of 5800 kelvin, our star is far from chilly, but it is no cosmic record breaker either. Blue supergiants, whose greater mass compresses their cores and stokes the nuclear fires within, run at more than 50,000 K.

Even that is surpassed by some white dwarfs, compact spheres of heat left behind when a smallish star burns out. One such stellar cinder, called HD62166, measures a scorching 200,000 K and lights up a vast nebula with its painfully bright atmosphere.

Plunging deep inside a star will take you to even more hellish realms. The largest supergiant stars may have core temperatures of more than a billion kelvin. For a stable star, the theoretical upper limit is about 6 billion kelvin. At this temperature, matter within the star starts to emit photons that are so dangerously energetic they can create pairs of electrons and positrons when they collide. The result is a runaway reaction that obliterates the star in a colossal explosion.

The first suspected sighting of such a "pair-instability supernova" came in 2007, when a brilliant and exceptionally long-lasting stellar explosion was observed, suggesting the existence of a star far bigger than had previously been thought possible (Nature, vol 462, p 624).

Closer to home is a place that is even hotter: not a natural inferno, but a detector cavity 100 metres or so beneath the generally temperate outskirts of Geneva in Switzerland. There, between 8 November and 6 December 2010, nuclei of lead atoms were smashed together for the first time at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in an attempt to mimic some of the universe's opening moments. The result was the highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth, a subatomic fireball registering several trillion kelvin.

That experiment gives us a clue to where the universe's extreme of heat lies. Not in the here and now, but the way back when. Looking into the heart of the big bang, the singularity of temperature and density in which our universe began, the maximum temperature is just a matter of how many zeros you can write before our understanding of physics breaks down. That's probably somewhere in the region of 32.

During a supernova, stellar temperatures can briefly rise far above 6 billion kelvin. In 1987, a star was seen exploding in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way some 160,000 light years away from us. Neutrinos from its heart detected on Earth revealed an internal temperature of about 200 billion kelvin.

That's nothing, though, compared with whatever produces a gamma-ray burst. These brief flashes of ultra-high-energy light are spotted once or twice a day by specially tuned telescopes. CRBs are thought to mark the birth of black holes, either when a giant star's core collapses or when two ultra-dense neutron stars collide. Somehow the gravitational energy is turned into a tight beam of gamma rays and other radiation. While the details of this process are currently unknown, it must involve a fireball of relativistic particles heated to something in the region of a trillion kelvin (1012 K).

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Space itself is neither hot nor cold. In the absence of stuff with thermal vibrations, temperature has no meaning. But there are plenty of cold things in space.

In our solar system, the coldest known spot is quite close by. In 2009, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found permanently shadowed craters near the south pole of the moon that were at only 33 kelvin (-240 °C)-colder even than any temperature yet measured on dark and distant Pluto. As exploration continues and measurements im-prove, that record is likely to pass to some moon or dwarf planet much further from the sun, perhaps with its own sheltered and frigid craters.

Beyond our solar system there are certain to be some even chillier rocks, and the coldest of all these lonely wanderers are likely to be found in intergalactic voids. Warmed only by the weak microwave afterglow of the big bang and a glimmer of distant starlight, their temperature would be no more than 3 K.

Since the 2.7 K microwave background bathes the entire universe, you might imagine that nothing could be colder than this. Not so. A gas cloud called the Boomerang nebula, 5000 light years away, has a temperature of only 1 K. The nebula is expanding rapidly, which actively cools its gas in the same way that expansion chills the coolant in a domestic refrigerator or aircon unit.

Whether the Boomerang retains its status as the coldest known natural object remains to be seen, but this is one area in which humans have no trouble outdoing nature. In 2003, a cloud of sodium atoms in a lab at the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology was chilled to 0.45 nanokelvin, less than half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero - far colder than any temperature the wider universe seems to have a use for (Science, vol 301, p 1513).

Speed is relative. There is no absolute standard for "stationary" in the universe. Perhaps the nearest thing is the all-pervasive cosmic microwave background radiation. Its Doppler shift across the sky - blue in one direction, red in the other - reveals that, relative to the CMB, the solar system is rattling along at 600 kilometres per second. Microwaves are rather insubstantial, though, so we don't feel the wind in our hair.

Distant galaxies are also moving at quite a rate. Space is expanding everywhere: the more space you are looking through the faster the galaxies you see are moving away from us. Far enough off, galaxies are effectively retreating faster than light speed, which means we can never see them because their radiation can't reach us.

While such inaccessible extremes may have abstract appeal, speed becomes much more interesting if you are moving fast relative to some large object nearby - something you can see whoosh past your windows, or something you might just crash into.

Within our solar system, Mercury, the messenger of the gods, is the fastest-moving planet, with an orbital speed of about 48 kilometres per second; Earth manages only about 30 km/s. In 1976, Mercury was outpaced for the first time by a human artefact, the Helios 2 solar probe, which reached more than 70 km/s as it whizzed by the sun. Sun-grazing comets that swoop in from the outer solar system trump both, skimming past the solar surface at up to 600 km/s. Speed does not guarantee escape: a few hit the sun and are swallowed.

The outer reaches of the Milky Way are also home to some oddly busy bodies: "hypervelocity stars" speeding past the rest of the galaxy at up to 850 km/s. The theory is that they

were flung out in a close encounter with the giant black hole in our galaxy's centre. Black holes make particularly effective cosmic slingshots because of their peerlessly powerful gravity. Some also create magnetic tornadoes that squirt out tenuous jets of matter at more than 99 per cent of the speed of light.

The spinning neutron stars we know as pulsars also perform high-speed magnetic magic. Pulsars can rotate up to 1000 times a second, which means their surfaces move at up to 20 per cent of the speed of light. Far enough away from the surface, the magnetic field projected by the pulsar can even move faster than light. That is not in conflict with the laws of physics as the magnetic field carries no energy or information. These superfast fields are perhaps the source of the powerful, regular pulses of radiation pulsars send our way. Tiny variations in the timing of those pulses could soon be used to detect gravitational waves, travelling space warps predicted by Einstein's relativity (New Scientist, 20 March 2010, p 30).

Even solid objects can approach light speed, with the aid of a black hole's gravity. At a hole's event horizon, a single rock will simply disappear without a splash, but two rocks on different trajectories could collide with one another. According to calculations posted online last year by Tomohiro Harada at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and his colleague Masashi Kimura, the rotation of the black hole whips up a whirlpool in the surrounding space and increases the maximum collision speed. The upshot is that somewhere in the universe, two rocks caught in the grip of a rapidly spinning black hole could be hurtling towards one another at close to the speed of light (arxiv.org/abs/1010.0962).

Everyday units are far too small to cope tidily with the brilliance of the cosmos. Instead, astronomers use the sun, and its dazzling light output of 4 × 1026 watts, as a standard lamp.

The sun is in fact an above-average star in terms of bright-ness, but some stellar show-offs outshine it by far. The most luminous example clearly visible to the naked eye is Epsilon Orionis, the middle star of Orion's Belt. This blue supergiant is 1300 light years away and 400,000 times as bright as the sun. Much further away within our galaxy, or obscured by dust, are yet brighter stars such as the unstable Eta Carinae, which pumps out as much light as 5 million suns.

In July 2010, astronomers found a new record breaker. R136a1 is a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is as bright as almost 9 million suns. With a mass estimated to be 250 times that of the sun, this freakish body is heavier than anyone thought possible, at least for a star made from the kind of chemical mixture available in the gas of the Milky Way and its neighbours. Could it be built from an almost pure source of hydrogen and helium gas that had somehow survived uncontaminated since the early days of the universe, or is there something wrong with our theories of stellar structure?

Some massive stars burn brighter still - but only for a few weeks and at the cost of their lives (see "What's hot"). A supernova called SN 2005ap, in a galaxy 4.7 billion light years away, qualifies as the brightest stellar explosion on record, peaking at about 100 billion suns.

Gamma-ray bursts emit even more energy than a super-nova, and they can pack it into a matter of seconds rather than spreading it over several weeks. A burst can make even our solar unit seem absurdly feeble: its luminosity can equal more than 1018 suns.

If such explosions seem unsatisfyingly transient, then the brightest steady lights in the universe are quasars, in which a massive black hole feeds on a copious supply of stars and gas. As this doomed material spirals inwards it becomes white hot, and it can shine with the light of more than thirty trillion suns.

Galaxies are supposed to be glittering jewels, studded with billions of bright stars and glowing nebulae. Not so Segue 1, the dark horse of the galactic neighbourhood. Segue 1 is only 75,000 light years away, making it a near neighbour of the Milky Way, yet it remained undiscovered until 2006 because its total light emission is only 300 times that of our sun.

That is odd. Segue 1's few stars are moving around quite fast, so its gravity must be reasonably strong, implying that it contains at least a million solar masses of matter. Very little of that can be accounted for by visible stars and gas, suggesting that almost all of it must be exotic dark matter.

Studying dwarf galaxies like Segue 1 could tell us more about dark matter. For example, if the cores of these galax-ies are less dense than predicted by the standard assump-tions of how cold dark matter should behave, it could mean that the stuff is warm, or prone to self-destruct, or made from ultra-light particles that are inherently fuzzy.

Even better would be finding a "dark star" - a cool, fat blob of gas gently warmed from within by decaying dark matter. Such beasts are thought to have existed in the very early universe, and there may still be a few around today, but none has yet been spotted.

Meanwhile CERN's Large Hadron Collider is being used to hunt for possible dark-matter particles, so perhaps the hottest thing on Earth will soon illuminate the dimmest thing in space.

adam downereditorial design

portfolio 2011

website:adamdownerdesign.tumblr.com

contact:aedwin511@hotmail.com