Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
home for the holidays
Happy Holidays all -- I'm home in Oregon until the 30th. Rainy up here!
I brought my laptop but I unfortunately forgot my power cord...not good. I'm gonna have to scramble to find one as I actually need to do a little work on this work computer during my time up here, which stinks but it is what it is. I knew I was forgetting something when I packed in 1.5 minutes total.
I brought my laptop but I unfortunately forgot my power cord...not good. I'm gonna have to scramble to find one as I actually need to do a little work on this work computer during my time up here, which stinks but it is what it is. I knew I was forgetting something when I packed in 1.5 minutes total.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
morning drive
Surf no good this morning. Very no good...not even worth getting in the water no good. And I usually get in the water when I've woken up at 6 am and driven 50 minutes for it. Anyways wind was blowing pretty hard on shore, and was a jumbly mess. I wasn't expecting it to be good at all but needed to do a little first-hand research into it, marking this down for future reference...I've learned a lot about what buoys and period and readings mean, but until you see what those readings translate into in terms of actual surf at the actual spot, they don't mean a whole lot. I'm gaining that second part of the equation now.
-spot: Linda Mar and all HMB/San Mateo breaks
-swell 6 ft holding
-period 13 sec increasing
-wind 14 Kt from S(180) Gust: 16 Kt
-plus probably most notable for this morning's suckage: high tide 6:24 AM 6.30 ft (that is a pretty high high, right around when I wanted to go out. It might actually be surfable now on the lower tide, but probably not.)
Thanks to Stokemaster for the readings. This morning Santa Cruz woulda been the right direction, shoulda gone that way instead of north. SC is a great place.
On that note, had a good morning session at the Hook yesterday. How's this for lazy (or is it efficient?)...instead of walking the maybe half mile to the Hook from home, I packed up my car with two boards and drove to the parking lot. I suited up in the lot, surfed, showered in the public shower, loaded the car and came straight to work. While this may strike you as very lazy, it was actually much more efficient...plus it allowed me to take 2 boards and pick the one I wanted once I saw the conditions and how many people were out. And it saves me the (slightly less than) 7 minute or so walk back and forth, plus the additional delay time swinging by home inevitably adds on. What I really need though is a bike w/ a rack, that'd definitely be ideal, high on the list. Internet would be good to have over there too -- could go online to just check in and make sure I wasn't missing any work stuff before making the drive. Will get to that in '08.
-spot: Linda Mar and all HMB/San Mateo breaks
-swell 6 ft holding
-period 13 sec increasing
-wind 14 Kt from S(180) Gust: 16 Kt
-plus probably most notable for this morning's suckage: high tide 6:24 AM 6.30 ft (that is a pretty high high, right around when I wanted to go out. It might actually be surfable now on the lower tide, but probably not.)
Thanks to Stokemaster for the readings. This morning Santa Cruz woulda been the right direction, shoulda gone that way instead of north. SC is a great place.
On that note, had a good morning session at the Hook yesterday. How's this for lazy (or is it efficient?)...instead of walking the maybe half mile to the Hook from home, I packed up my car with two boards and drove to the parking lot. I suited up in the lot, surfed, showered in the public shower, loaded the car and came straight to work. While this may strike you as very lazy, it was actually much more efficient...plus it allowed me to take 2 boards and pick the one I wanted once I saw the conditions and how many people were out. And it saves me the (slightly less than) 7 minute or so walk back and forth, plus the additional delay time swinging by home inevitably adds on. What I really need though is a bike w/ a rack, that'd definitely be ideal, high on the list. Internet would be good to have over there too -- could go online to just check in and make sure I wasn't missing any work stuff before making the drive. Will get to that in '08.
Rip City
For those who aren't enlightened, the Blazers have won 9 straight. Yes, those Blazers, the Portland Trailblazers...NBA...red and black...far too many people still associate today's revamped Blazers with the Jail Blazers or old...this is a completely different team. The youngest in the NBA in fact I think, and seems like they've got some quality character guys who can actually play a bit too. If they keep this up, and with Oden next year, it's becoming real fun being a Blazers fan again.
I thought this little clip from last night's win against the Raptors was worthy of a Horace post. Kind of reminds me of myself. :) Enjoy.
I thought this little clip from last night's win against the Raptors was worthy of a Horace post. Kind of reminds me of myself. :) Enjoy.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Free Rice
Going back to prior word-of-the-day posts -- this is definitely worth a look. FreeRice.com -- online site where you do multiple choice meaning of words, for each one you get correct they'll donate 20 grains of rice through the UN towards world hunger. It's fast, easy, and fun, and there are a lot of good words there. Multiple choice is kind of entertaining, good for the brain. Plus it's doing something good for the world! What's not to like.
I donated 1,000 grains of rice (with vocab level of 32, best level 36) before losing interest, deciding to post it here, and doing a little more actual work.
I donated 1,000 grains of rice (with vocab level of 32, best level 36) before losing interest, deciding to post it here, and doing a little more actual work.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Wave Machine
Last night after a quick visit downtown, we drove by West Cliff to see what was happening over there. Steamer Lane was going off, wave factory. Pretty awesome sight, fun to stand and watch. Tourist style, took a few pictures and had a guy take one of Selin and me also:
Update: As is always the case, if you ever want to see (lots) more of my photos than the select few I usually post here, I put them all up online on my Picasa web album (here or check the linky linky list on the right margin). Now ya know...but don't say you weren't warned...I take a LOT of photos!
Update: As is always the case, if you ever want to see (lots) more of my photos than the select few I usually post here, I put them all up online on my Picasa web album (here or check the linky linky list on the right margin). Now ya know...but don't say you weren't warned...I take a LOT of photos!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
water photog
Took the new digicam out in the water today, it worked great! Waterproof little 7.1 megapixel camera, fun stuff. Tried to get some action shots of my coworker Eddy the Dubliner but the dang bloke didn't catch any waves...camera shy I guess. Haha -- but got a lot of shots of him paddling. Here's a couple:
Definitely got to give Eddy credit for having a good spirit about things. Nice guy, super stoked on the morning dawn patrol prework surf sessions. For him in Ireland, it's a several hour weekend trip to the coast where they catch some even colder Irish waves...washed down w/ a nice Guinness after though...not too bad. (although it would help if I actually liked Guinness).
Monday, December 10, 2007
surfboard shuffle
Should've brought a board or 2 with me back from Santa Cruz this weekend. But I didn't. Now I have no board here in Mt View and would probably go to Linda Mar tomorrow. Gotta get this board situation straightened out here, I've been in a bit of a quandary since hawaii when I brought a bunch over to Mt View and then took them all back to SC.
weekend surf recap 5
While fresh in my mind and before I get back to my work to-do list, here's the weekend write-up.
Saturday Dec 8: We had our company holiday party on Friday night, so we stayed in Mt View Friday. Holiday party was fun, great company. On Saturday we woke up and drove to SF and did a little shopping. Went to this one store Selin likes called Jeremy's and then to H&M and used a 25% off coupon Selin had gotten her hands on. I got a new shirt and a new polo shirt. Then we cruised on down 280 to 17 to Santa Cruz for the afternoon. I really like the bay area, it is such an amazing, sunny place, with so much to do. Surf is pretty small this weekend, so I used the 6'2 fish out at the Hook from about 3:30 til past dark. It gets dark early now! Surf was pretty fun out there though I must say. A bit crowded especially at the start, but I was able to hold my own and catch my fair share of waves. The real good surfers weren't out, more a mix of middle-range guys like me and one or two good guys, and then beginners. Hook is really a fun wave, it's fast enough to give you some punch but if you catch a good one it holds its shape really well and gives you a nice little wall to try and work with...I'm working on doing something w/ that wall instead of just cruising along it. Got a few quick turns and one nice off the lip that I remember. So I stayed out until the sun was completely down and it was just me and one other guy. The surf really started coming in then too...in the last 15 minutes I must've caught 8 waves or so, good ones too as the last remnants of sunshine were going away over the horizon. It was a COLD walk back home though -- sure seemed a lot longer on the way back, dripping, wet, shivering in my wetsuit then it did on the way there. Got in the shower and my hands and feet were bright red and numb, and really hurt a lot in the contrasting hot shower water. 15 minutes later they had recovered, no frostbite, no amputated appendages.
Sunday Dec 9: Surf had gotten smaller. I went for a long walk in the morning and checked most of the east side spots. Was nice and sunny and cold outside. High tide. Found some nooks and crannies I'll have to add to the spotcheck list. Wound up driving north in the afternoon, in the ongoing quest to surf more spots I decided to hit 3 mile. Parked and did the long walk in. Carried my wetsuit in the wetsuit bin and changed on the rocks, left the bin behind on the rocks in an easily visible place. It was too sunny to change out on the road by the car. Pretty spot there at 3 mile. The surf actually breaks at a point far from the beach, and you access it by walking even further and then scrambling down some rocks. Absolutely beautiful beach and coast area. As for surf was bigger than expected and real bumpy. I took the 6'2 fish again, should've taken something else...as it was just pretty bumpy for me on that little thing. I wasn't really feeling it so only caught 2 waves and came in. Sat in the sun for a bit and then made the hike back out and home.
Weekends are always over way too fast.
Saturday Dec 8: We had our company holiday party on Friday night, so we stayed in Mt View Friday. Holiday party was fun, great company. On Saturday we woke up and drove to SF and did a little shopping. Went to this one store Selin likes called Jeremy's and then to H&M and used a 25% off coupon Selin had gotten her hands on. I got a new shirt and a new polo shirt. Then we cruised on down 280 to 17 to Santa Cruz for the afternoon. I really like the bay area, it is such an amazing, sunny place, with so much to do. Surf is pretty small this weekend, so I used the 6'2 fish out at the Hook from about 3:30 til past dark. It gets dark early now! Surf was pretty fun out there though I must say. A bit crowded especially at the start, but I was able to hold my own and catch my fair share of waves. The real good surfers weren't out, more a mix of middle-range guys like me and one or two good guys, and then beginners. Hook is really a fun wave, it's fast enough to give you some punch but if you catch a good one it holds its shape really well and gives you a nice little wall to try and work with...I'm working on doing something w/ that wall instead of just cruising along it. Got a few quick turns and one nice off the lip that I remember. So I stayed out until the sun was completely down and it was just me and one other guy. The surf really started coming in then too...in the last 15 minutes I must've caught 8 waves or so, good ones too as the last remnants of sunshine were going away over the horizon. It was a COLD walk back home though -- sure seemed a lot longer on the way back, dripping, wet, shivering in my wetsuit then it did on the way there. Got in the shower and my hands and feet were bright red and numb, and really hurt a lot in the contrasting hot shower water. 15 minutes later they had recovered, no frostbite, no amputated appendages.
Sunday Dec 9: Surf had gotten smaller. I went for a long walk in the morning and checked most of the east side spots. Was nice and sunny and cold outside. High tide. Found some nooks and crannies I'll have to add to the spotcheck list. Wound up driving north in the afternoon, in the ongoing quest to surf more spots I decided to hit 3 mile. Parked and did the long walk in. Carried my wetsuit in the wetsuit bin and changed on the rocks, left the bin behind on the rocks in an easily visible place. It was too sunny to change out on the road by the car. Pretty spot there at 3 mile. The surf actually breaks at a point far from the beach, and you access it by walking even further and then scrambling down some rocks. Absolutely beautiful beach and coast area. As for surf was bigger than expected and real bumpy. I took the 6'2 fish again, should've taken something else...as it was just pretty bumpy for me on that little thing. I wasn't really feeling it so only caught 2 waves and came in. Sat in the sun for a bit and then made the hike back out and home.
Weekends are always over way too fast.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Analyzing Horace
So I track this silly blog with Google Analytics, which is free btw and does some pretty amazing stuff. Aside from boredom, Google Analytics is probably one of the main driving forces to keep updating...as I'm able to see what people are looking at, how many visits, how long they stay on pages, where they're coming from, all sorts of stuff that is just sort of interesting. Now keep in mind that Horace is no big deal out there on the internets, we're talking about 10 visits a day, but it's still fun to look at these sort of things.
Late last week Manabu at Stokemaster.com made Horace the featured blog on his site, and I'm up there prominently in the upper right hand corner. Stokemaster is a much bigger deal than Horace so he has way way more visitors, of which 13 have checked out the featured blog and had a quick look at my site. Not too shabby, thanks Stokemaster! (although 72% of them bounce, meaning they don't look at any page other than the landing page. But that's a bit misleading as there's a lot of content on a typical blogs landing page).
Other interesting tidbits:
Late last week Manabu at Stokemaster.com made Horace the featured blog on his site, and I'm up there prominently in the upper right hand corner. Stokemaster is a much bigger deal than Horace so he has way way more visitors, of which 13 have checked out the featured blog and had a quick look at my site. Not too shabby, thanks Stokemaster! (although 72% of them bounce, meaning they don't look at any page other than the landing page. But that's a bit misleading as there's a lot of content on a typical blogs landing page).
Other interesting tidbits:
- somehow, I'm the #3 Google result on 'Santa Cruz wave cam.' pretty impressive.
- I've had 17 visits from the keywords "call it friendo" (11), "friendo" (4), and "call it friend-o" (2)...all of which are from my one post about the movie 'No Country for Old Men.' That's more than 50% of my total search engine traffic to date, popular post!
- Sunday Dec 2 was my all time high on daily visitors. Fifteen! (I probably visited my page a lot that day.)
- 70% of my visitors use Firefox, 23% IE, 7% Safari
- I've had visitors from the US, Canada, unknown, Germany, and the UK
- I need to get back to work
Lunchtime
So work has been keeping me extra busy these past few weeks. Holidays -- radio advertising -- crunch time. All that means lots of work for me. And not many Horace posts.
But of course surfing still has to get fit in there...so I've kept time free for that. Yesterday Paul and I (coworker) tackled Santa Cruz on one of the biggest days of the year. Heck of an experience, wow. I'll write more but now is time for lunch. This morning things were back to normal size so Eddy (another coworker, from Dublin) and I went out at Linda Mar. Fun, he's an amiable chap.
Lunch now with Ridhima, our ambassador from India! (just thought I'd throw that in there -- surfing with Ireland lunch with India, so international)
But of course surfing still has to get fit in there...so I've kept time free for that. Yesterday Paul and I (coworker) tackled Santa Cruz on one of the biggest days of the year. Heck of an experience, wow. I'll write more but now is time for lunch. This morning things were back to normal size so Eddy (another coworker, from Dublin) and I went out at Linda Mar. Fun, he's an amiable chap.
Lunch now with Ridhima, our ambassador from India! (just thought I'd throw that in there -- surfing with Ireland lunch with India, so international)
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
sleepytime
On the fly shift in research material this morning, from stormy ocean conditions to comfy pillow softness. 6 am alarm went off, was dark, cold, and raining, so stayed in bed. From what I gather on the internets it was the right call, norcal ocean seems a bit of a mess right now. Tomorrow it is.
Monday, December 3, 2007
weekend surf
weekend surf update time.
Saturday - uninspiring longboard session at 38th. Pretty small and not that consistent. Neither lefts nor rights that great, but I mostly took lefts. Should've gone leashless.
Sunday - wind was a blowin but made the most of it and hit up Rockaway from about 3 to 5. Definitely the best bet around that area. Linda Mar packed like sardines and small, Montara empty and blown out, Rockaway about 10-15 guys on the northern end getting some good ones. Surfed my 8'10 vernor. Contemplated between it and the 6'9 leaf but longboard was the right call. Got some great waves! As said before I can go left about 3x better than right. So I got some good walled up lefts, flyin' on those! Definitely a pleasant surprise out there to get such a good session in, wasn't expecting to get much on the drive over. New wetsuit is a toaster oven, not even the faintest bit of shivering out there and the water is icy cold now, and the wind was blowing frosty too. xcel 5/4/3 w/ built in hood. hot.
tomorrow supposed to be huge victory at sea out there. I'm in Mt View tonight so I'll head to Linda Mar tomorrow morning and see if there's any possibility of any sort of waves in that type of condition -- nothing like a little first hand research.
Saturday - uninspiring longboard session at 38th. Pretty small and not that consistent. Neither lefts nor rights that great, but I mostly took lefts. Should've gone leashless.
Sunday - wind was a blowin but made the most of it and hit up Rockaway from about 3 to 5. Definitely the best bet around that area. Linda Mar packed like sardines and small, Montara empty and blown out, Rockaway about 10-15 guys on the northern end getting some good ones. Surfed my 8'10 vernor. Contemplated between it and the 6'9 leaf but longboard was the right call. Got some great waves! As said before I can go left about 3x better than right. So I got some good walled up lefts, flyin' on those! Definitely a pleasant surprise out there to get such a good session in, wasn't expecting to get much on the drive over. New wetsuit is a toaster oven, not even the faintest bit of shivering out there and the water is icy cold now, and the wind was blowing frosty too. xcel 5/4/3 w/ built in hood. hot.
tomorrow supposed to be huge victory at sea out there. I'm in Mt View tonight so I'll head to Linda Mar tomorrow morning and see if there's any possibility of any sort of waves in that type of condition -- nothing like a little first hand research.
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