Monday, March 31, 2008

Manabu surf superstar?

Local videos! My nightly surf web browsing stumbled across this website just now: www.surfvid.com, which appears to feature home-style video shot around the Bay Area: from SF to SC. Video of SC is nothing new, but the video cameras don't break out that often around San Mateo, so, fun to see that.

BUT most notably of all, and I'll have to ask for confirmation on this one, but I think it's my man Manabu of Stokemaster.com fame featured pretty heavily in the video! He used to wear a white helmet when surfing, not wearing it any more, but it was nice because it made him pretty distinctive and easy to find. Anyways there's a dude in the video wearing a white helmet, getting some waves, and if I had to guess I'd say it's definitely Manabu ripping it up. I'll find out and update accordingly. Pretty awesome find if it is, Manabu you're famous!

Update: Apparently the video just starts playing automatically on it's own every time you load the page, which is a little annoying, and for that I apologize my loyal Horace reader. So you can either just let it load (and enjoy the hawaiian music over...and over...and over), or pause it. It'll move off the main landing page and into obscurity soon enough anyways. Because if it truly is Manabu, which with another watch I'm even more certain it is, pretty distinctive style he's got, it's just too good to take down. Oh yeah the video also pauses itself whenever you click anywhere on it. Also annoying.

Update II: I haven't had a whole lot of luck actually viewing any of the videos on the site itself...I think I'll figure it out soon? Maybe? Regardless still a good find.

Update III: Actually I don't think it is Manabu. I need to get more sleep. Further research indicates Manabu surfs regular foot, and this dude is goofy. Plus his helmet was blue, not white. I think I do know who white helmet dude is, I've seen him out there. Surf looks fun in the video I wish I could go get on some of that right about now!!! (But it's flat)

Update IV: This video has been nothing but problems. It seems that it's failing to ever go past about the 30 second mark, just hits there and loops back to the beginning every time...and it's NOT Manabu...and so I'm TAKING IT DOWN. Better luck next time SurfVid.com -- I'd link to the link of the video but I can't even find that now, silly site! (Still a fan of the effort though, but UI & infrastructure could stand some improvements -- what do I know?)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I read your comments about the site and had a few comments of your observation.

you sure have said alot about the site but i couldn't tell which video you were watching/talking about (there are something like 50+ videos there dating between the early 80s and 2008). it seems from your comments that you haven't had a lot of experience with web-based videos. clicking on any web video stops it. it's the nature of the beast and not something that has anything to do with the web site. check youtube. repeating videos is a feature since sometimes video are choppy when they first load because of bandwidth. sorry you find it annoying, but others appreciate it (can't please everyone).

anyhow, your site looks good. keep it up and enjoy the surf!

Nic said...

Just going through comments now and saw this, thank you for the comment and insight!

By all means, don't take anything I wrote personally, not my intent at all. I actually really enjoy the website and love to see the local footage, nice work on all of that!

My experience with the one video was that when I embedded it on my blog, even though it was several minutes long, it would always get stuck at about the 30 second mark and loop back to the beginning. Not sure why that was, but combined with the fact that the person I thought was my friend actually wasn't, I decided to take it down. No worries at all -- I'll be posting videos again most likely as I continue to watch them on your site.

I enjoyed your site and have been back numerous times since! Keep up the good work.

And thanks again for the comment. Take care,

-Nic