History Of Skateboarding.

Skateboarding is believed to have been created by surfers during the 50's who had the idea of surfing the streets. The first boards that were made were home made but skateboards out of pieces of wood carved into a square, however skateboards soon were made in large quantity using thin layers of ply glued together for greater durability. Skatboarding was still a hobby of surfers rather than a full fledged sport.














Skateboarding began to expand and by the mid 60's local competions were emerging for downhill slalom skateboarder, however within a few years skateboarding was almost extinct as skateboard companies ceased to produce boards, and the small number of skateboarders was once again forced to produce their own boards with clay wheels and square pieces of wood.




In the spring of 1975, skateboarding took an evolutionary boost toward the sport that we see today. In Del Mar, California a slalom and freestyle contest was held at the Ocean Festival. That day, the Zephyr team showed the world what skateboarding could be. They rode their boards like no one had in the public eye, low and smooth, and skateboarding was taken from being a hobby to something serious and exciting
Similar to the boards in this video.






In 1978 the most influencial thing in skateboarding history would occur, Alan Gelfand would do the first "ollie". The importance of this is because almost every single trick in skateboarding today has the "ollie" as the foundation.



Skateboarding continued to progress and so came the evolution of vert skateboarding, which is probobly most popularised by modern skateboarders such as Tony Hawk and Bob Burnquist who both feature on the THPS series.



Vert skateboarding took a dive in fame in the early 90s, but skateboarding still remained, though it became primarily street. It was then that Mike Vallely and Natas Kaupas came on the scene and pushed street skateboarding even further. Natas pictured above.

In 1995 ESPN held the first X games which put skateboarding into the mainstream. The other most influencial factor in the mainstream success of skateboaring was the first THPS game which was released in 1999.

Mike Vallely

Seeings the title of my blog is "Skateboard memories" I suppose its only fair I write more than one blog post on the subject, so ive decided that I will write a blog post on Mike Vallely.




Mike Vallely was born in Edison, New Jersey and resides in Long Beach, California. He is the singer in the hardcore band Revolution Mother and in the punk rock band Mike V & the Rats. He also sang for Black Flag on their 2003 reunion shows in Los Angeles. He was the singer for the part of the show where the band played the entire My War album. He is on the Element Skateboards team as a pro skater. Vallely was featured in the popular Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game series.














This is the Album for "The Days"
by Mike V and the rats.
Heres the the album title song.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYmsJRjq0A

Mike V is such a popular skateboarder because he has such a distinctive skateboarding style and has such a genuine character. Mike V's skateboarding style blends old flatground tricks from the 80's with new age flip tricks as well as grabs and grinds. I think this shows innovation in skateboarding but true loyalty to the past.

Here is a perfect example.



with the perfect contrast of the status quo of modern skateboarding.
This is a video of Mike Mo Capaldi.



Mike V's longevity is not solely due to his skateboarding
skills, because he really is no where near one of the best
skateboarders that there are, he is a character and he is
very genorous with his time and is very down to earth.

For more information on Mike V.
www.elementskateboards.com/team/mike-vallely/

Axiom 49-Key Semi-Weighted USB MIDI Controller

The axiom 49

"So, I just bought an axiom 49 2 months ago on ebay. I purchased it on the 5th of January, and it arrived around a month later. It's a very nice keyboard, and it works very well! I have been playing my keyboard alot. I would like to learn more about the keyboard and have read a little bit about it on the internet, I plan to read more!"

I wrote that as my first blog post and since then ive found and learnt a great deal about the axiom 49.





I really like this video because it shows the ease in recording keyboard directly to your computer.

This is a picture of the keyboard I purchased.

Since then a newer keyboard has

been released which is very similar,

Its called the axiom 49 Pro.

The differences in the Axiom and the Pro are subtle but important.

1. The trigger pads are more sensitive.

2. It has an LCD screen.

3. More pre settings.

More information on the Axiom 49 can be found at

www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Axiom49.html

Assignment 2

I have to decide to do my second assignment using a data visulisation of the past 10 years of state of origin. So basically what ive done is use google sites to create the the assignment. Initially I wasnt exactly sure what I was going to do for my assignment and actually gained inspiration from the olympic medal tally display that was shown in class. I have used a similar sort of idea and rather than using different sizes to represent the number of victories in a timeline ive primarily used color.

The first page of the assignment is a timeline from 1999-2008, the color of each year signifies a victory to NSW, a victory to QLD or a draw. Once you click onto which year you want to look at the three games played from that year are displayed as colored numbers from 1-3, each color also representing a win, lose or draw. Once you click into a particular game there is a Rugby league birds eye scrum formation setup for each team. Each player has their number and their name above their postion on the feild aswell as their club colors aswell as other notable information such as captaincy or man of the match. Each game also displays the coach of each team and the refree of each game at the bottom of the page.

I began to also link the players to certain lists which had all the players from there clubs who had played origin but stopped because it took way too long.