Check out this photo, taken at Mt. Bachelor yesterday after a freezing rain storm hammered the northwest side of the mountain. This is the lift house at the top of Northwest Express lift! It’s not uncommon to see ice-covered chairs over there but this is ridiculous. It kind of reminds me of Superman’s fortress of solitude. Sounds like it will be a few days before they can crack the ice off the house and the towers to get this thing moving again (apparently Outback is the same story). Between the economy and the wacky weather, the ski resorts (at least here in the NW) must be having a tough season.

For the past couple months, I’ve been working on a web site for my cousin, basketball coach and author Brian McCormick. The site centers around his latest book, 180 Shooter: 5 Steps to Shooting 90% from the Free Throw Line, 50% from the Floor and 40% from the 3-Point Line.

My favorite part of the job was creating the shot tracker program, which is an interactive shot chart, similar to the one shown at left. Coaches can input their players’ makes and misses with a rich user interface, tracking a wide variety of criteria such as opponent, quarter, shot type, etc. The coach can then report on the players’ shooting statistics, broken down by these criteria, and visualize that data in a heat map overlay. The result is knowing exactly where and under what conditions their players should take their shots.

There’s also a great individual practice program, which helps players follow along with the drills outlined in the 180 Shooter book. The program guides players towards practice in the necessary areas to improve their shooting. I would recommend for anyone wanting to become a better basketball shooter, you should check out this web site.

a while back, i linked a video that combined beer pong and skateboarding for some amazing antics. next in this series, which i’ve entitled ‘youtube pastime mash-ups,’ is this impressive domino routine involving four pool tables, six cues, damn near 50 billiard balls, and more bones than an archaeological dig site. i’d like to see mike massey pull this one off.

proof positive that your favorite things are even better when you put them together.

dedicated readers will know that my brother andrew, over at crossing out of the blue, is an avid bike racer. this week he’s down in virginia for the tour of virginia, a 7 stage race of almost 500 miles. there are about 175 professional and elite amateurs participating in the tour. andrew finished 9th in this morning’s time trial and didn’t drop any time off the leader in the afternoon’s criterion in lynchburg, va. here’s to a successful rest of the race for andrew, and a great season. you can follow up on andrew in this race and throughout the season on his team web site, Kenda/Raleigh Cycling Team.

i hate to copy a post straight off of deadspin, but for those readers out there (see: google and comment spam bots) who don’t keep up with deadspin, or those who just enjoy beer, ping pong, or any combination thereof… check this out. this has to be the greatest single collection of amazing beer pong related feats ever assembled. kudos to the inventiveness, god-given talent, practice, and, let’s face it, incredible perseverance, that went into this video. ’cause there’s no way some of these shots were hit within the first 50 times. enjoy…

hello all from salt lake city, utah. i’m here with my brother enjoying some of the best powder they (and/or we) have had all season. and to top that off we’ve also had some amazing bluebird days. yesterday we went to alta, which means i had to ski for the first time in 5 years, since they don’t allow snowboarders (weak). anyway, here are some videos of us enjoying the snow.

there’s more where that came from after the break…

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so i was just reading about this new search engine called ChaCha, where you can search with a “guide,” that apparently hand-selects search results for you. while it’s an interesting concept, i can’t imagine it will be too commercially viable. just to test it out, i did a search for carolina tar heels and here’s the chat that ensued.

JoeS: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: so what are some good tar heels sites
JoeS: let me look. hang on a minute!

blank screen …

You: for example how come i am not seeing anything
JoeS: i haven’t given you any results yet.
You: oh

(more…)

the tar heels took the top ranking today in the hoops polls, after a convincing win in their first acc contest, versus florida state at the dean smith center.  not to mention a 38-point zwieback-producing victory earlier in the week versus penn.  this is going to be a great season for roy’s boys.  i’ve got my carolina pictures online in the photo section, shots of the penn game, chapel hill, and our place in boone, nc.  check it out.  how bout them gators???

the morning started off with virginia tech avenging their ridiculous last-second loss last year with an overtime win over duke at cameron.  then, the ducks took out top-ranked ucla at macarthur court, opening the way for the tar heels to take over the nation’s #1 hoops ranking.  as far as my teams go, this was about as good as it gets without the heels even stepping onto the court.  best sports day ever?  not likely, but it was pretty fun to watch.

on tuesday night i launched a new web site for a us ski team member, and a friend of mine, kevin francis. now you can keep up with kevin as he travels around the world for nor-am’s, europa cup, and world cup ski races on www.kevinfrancisracing.com. this is one of the first sites that i have used pure css for the layout, and i have to say that it makes things a whole lot simpler. it is also the first site i have made using some transparent styles, so i’m interested to see what browsers support it.