Green waves

So another weekend spent in the sun and surf, and i reckon it's all starting to fall into place now.  I managed to catch a few of the 'green waves'  and ride them wave all the way to the beach.  I found by shuffling towards the front of the board you can keep going for longer on a wave, i guess if the board is losing momentum, tilting the nose abit forces it down the wave more.  Next thing is learning how to turn properly.  Ache all over today though, i nose dived a couple of times and had some big waves crasg on top of me.

Finally feels like summer is just around the corner now, it is the best time of year in Sydney. 

This made me laugh

New Gadget

My Garmin Forerunner 305 finally arrived today, all the way over from the USA.  It's basically a high sensitivity GPS receiver & virtual trainer on the watch and wireless heart rate monitor all in one.

I've just given it a test run around centenial park tonight, and have been able to upload all the GPS tracking info, pace, altitude, heart beat  and awhole ton of other  metrics to my laptop.  Using the proprietary Garmin software, i can then sift through all these measurements in relation to a map.. pretty amazing really.  In this case, i ran 11.30km at an average pace of 13km/hr with a average heart beat of 165bpm.  I can see exactly at what points around the park i ran the fastest/slowest, and when i was about to have a heart attack etc.  The cool thing is that next time i run that route, i can run against the virtual me; the watch will tell me how far infront/behind iam of myself in realtime.  

 

The best part of it all though, aside the Garmin software, is that you can import this all this GPS data directly into Google Earth (see below).  Your route is plotted to pinpoint accuracy,  every little triangle represents when the device recorded a  GPS signal. If you click on one of those triangles, you get presented with the longitude, latitude, altitude, heart rate, speed and direction you were heading.  So, even if you aren't runng/cycling, you could forexample take this out on a walk/car journey then upload the data into google earth to check out your route.

 

This is a very smart gadget, you barely notice it when running and i just love having a GPS device/map on my wrist that is synched with a heart monitor.  The only gripe i have is that it takes ~30 seconds to lock onto satellites. 

Then again, perhaps this is too much technology; perhaps i should just keep it real and run up snow covered mountains in Russia with bricks in my backpack like Rockie Balboa did? ..

Easy

To get something clean, one has to get something dirty. To get something dirty, one does not have to get anything clean.

Last weekend

So I went surfing at Bondi Beach on Saturday and Sunday again.  Both days the conditions were ideal for learning..  fairly calm with 3-4ft waves rolling in, along with blues skies . 

Some of the other more experienced surfers were out too, amazing to watch and you learn so much from just talking to and observing others.  Physically though I think you need powerful shoulders to be able to get the initial speed on your board, strong arms/abdominal muscles to be able to quickly get up on the board, and ofcourse balance/finesse to be able to avoid falling off straight away.  I fail on all 3 counts, but am thinking of doing some swimming to build up the arms/shoulders.  Not so much a problem this weekend, but one of the hardest aspects i'm finding is actually swimming out through the breakzone;   anything bigger than 4 ft and i'm knocked off my board and washed up on the shore.  I end up using about half of my energy just getting out to the waves.  

This article offers 3 techniques for paddling through waves: Pushing Up. Busting Through, and the Eskimo Roll.  I've tried all three and usually just try busting through, but i don't think i'm able to get the board fast enough and so end up gettting carries backwards eachtime, particularly when doing the eskimo roll.  I think i need to get a smaller, lighter board so that duck-diving is an option. Here's a good thread on duck-diving for anyone interested

 

Iam still blown away by how good Google reader is.  it is simply the most efficent way to trawl through unread news items. As you read items it scrolls them down one at a time and marks them unread (all using the space bar). And, it is all very well done with AJAX.  As I continue using Google Reader I've been looking through my reading behaviors and stats and have learnt alot about my reading habits.  If anyone hasn't tried this yet, i highly recommend it.

Currently reading Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, listening to Hed Kandi BeachHouse 2007, and watching Mantracker on Nat Geo Adventure channel.  

Is it just me

.. or is it getting warmer these days?  I wish there were more in the press to highlight the fact. 

Fig Tree

I love this grand old Fig tree in the Botanical Gardens down here in Sydney,  often come down in my lunch break and have a snooze under it.  I wonder how old it is?  Judging by the width i'd say several hundred years.  According to this page it is a Moreton Bay fig tree (Ficus MacroPhylla ofcourse), and here is some more information from the fountain of knowledge. 

 

 

More surfing planned at Bondi this weekend. I've found this great surfcam overlooking Bondi beach, and find myself staring at it allday long wishing i was there.

Lets go surfing now

 Been out surfing twice this weekend in Bondi and i'm in agony.  There was a 3 meter swell today and it was like being in a washing machine at times.  I've bought my first board, a second hand 7ft 6 inch SunRide epoxy, and 3.2mm Billabong wetsuit.

"Looks like we may have overdone it with the sherry there mate"

The first time i saw this advert i was in hysterics, and still am everytime i watch it, especially now having spent 5 years in Australia. 

Auusies wouldn't give a Castlemaine XXXX for anything else!

Wipedout

Dude, i like went over the falls and totally pearled today.

After 2 1/2 hours of fighting a massive Bondi surf, being thrashed by rhino waves, and inhaling half of the sea I managed to ride about 7-8 of the big ones and loved every second of it.  By the end of it i was suffering from Peralitis* though.

It's a great sensation just gliding down a wave.  I know I'm going to ache so much tomorrow, but am definitely looking forward to next Saturday's session.

Currently reading  Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, a bizarre postcyberpunk novel; watching "The Great Global Warming Swindle", a group of very prominent scientists explain if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it - very compelling; watching National Geographic Adventure Channel, and eating at the rather excellent "Eat Thai the republic" restaurant down Darlinghurst rd (this is a a big call, but I think it as good as if not better than the legendary Thai Thai Poh).

Anyway, I'm kished, goodnight. 

 

* Pearlitis :

The propensity to drop into a wave and have the nose of the surfboard bury under water thus causing the rider to be pitched out from the face of the breaking wave. Generally resulting in the surfer being worked or rag dolled.

Technorati Tags: surfing

Australian Citizenship

After nearly 5 short years I'm a few weeks away from finally being able to apply for this. On the way back from London a few weeks ago I was looking at my passport, and it had something like 9 different Australian visas plastered inside it; 417, 457's and permanent residencies. I'd forgotten about half of them.

It's the same ordeal for every ex-pat living down here, never ending hassles with the Immigration department. On television, the Australian Government advertise how easy it is to become one of them now, but in reality you need atleast 4 years of living in the country and setting yourself up is far from easy. Still, it has definitely been worth it, and I reckon the passport will be quite a milestone for me.

Over the jet lag now, and back into the swing of things now. It hasn't stopped pissing down with rain for the last week, so Sydney makes even London look like a bright cheerful city at the moment. On Friday I just signed up for the marathon again this year. It's in mid-September again and I'm already beginning to have doubts.  Doing the marathon itself is great, you get a huge buzz from everone cheering you on and ultimately crossing the finishing line, it's just the 2 months training leading up to it that gets abit tiresome.. running 4 times a week.

Survival theme this week; i've been watching the 2nd series of Man vs Wild, Bear Grylls has been in the Everglades, Iceland and Mountains of Mexico�and Outback in Australia so far.  I'd recommend this tv programme to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. I've also been reading Miracle in the Andes- 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, the story of a plane crash involving a Uraguyan rugby team, cannibalism and a amazing story of survival an endurance.  I think the movie Alive was based off this.

Going surfing this weekend.

Murrays Law

Any country with "democratic" in the title, isn't.

Jet Lag

 

I think travelling West to East seems to intensify your jet lag for some reason, perhaps because is more disruptive, or runs counter to the body's circadian rhythm.  Either way having just travelled for 36 hours non-stop from Norway to Sydney on Friday I'm just completely exhausted mentally and physically.  Was great fun, and we really didn't want to come back this time. You really get the feeling that London in the summer is really one of the worlds best cities, so much going on, and I loved seeing new spins on old haunts.  Oslo/Drammen in Norway has so much natural beauty and a really good vibe to the place.

I've uploaded my photos from the 3 week trip here, and when I'm in a bit better shape write some comments on each one.

Cheers! 

Facebook

Why is it so popular? 

Here are some (staggering) facts :

• Facebook has 24 million active users (who have used the site in the last 30 days) and of them, 50% of them login each day. Apparently the next most active social network, MySpace.com is not more than 15%.
• A recent survey has found that 50% of college age females said Facebook was their #1 most important web site (even more than Google, Wikipedia, or anything else) and that 1/3 of college age males said it was their #1.
• Look how many “addicts” Facebook has, according to Quantcast. 63% of visits are from addicts. eBay is only 56%.
• Facebook is adding 100,000 new users per day; that’s ~3% growth per month. And the fastest growing segment is over age 25, so at this rate, they’ll have 50 million users by the end of this year, and 75% of them will be out of college. I read just on paidcontent.org that Facebook is the fastest growing social network in the UK, and already 10% of Canada’s population is using it.

With 40 billion pages view per month, Facebook has passed eBay in page views, and is now in 6th place, just behind Google. 

Personally, i'm not a fan of social networking sites, but Facebook has been designed and implemented well, and their recent decision to allow application developers access to core Facebook features, such as user profiles and user connections, and even publishing to the News Feed, all with the control and permission of Facebook users is excellent. So if you build an app and a Facebook user chooses it, it will show up on their profile for all their friends to see, and they can enable that app with a single click, and so your application can spread virally to the 24 million other users.   Food for thought.

Consuming RSS feeds

I use Google Reader eachday to trawl through all the RSS feeds i subscribe to, this is mainly because of the interface and  keyboard shortcuts make it very easy to quickly scan items and filter out those of interest.  Previously I've been using the sage plugin for firefox, which has worked well, and more recently the feeds bar for IE7-- again the keyboard short cuts on that are great.. for example if you are using IE7 :

Open Feeds CTRL+J
Open Feeds in pinned mode CTRL+SHIFT+J

However, i find Google Reader works best for me, especially the new shared items feature.   You can view my shared articles here

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/01316159295444228531

See how Robert Scoble reads 600+ feeds a day

 

Shark fishing in Sydney harbour

Nearly broke my rod reeling it in!

 

Ingunn

hit 30 this week.  To celebrate we met up with a few friends on Friday night at Bar Comida down Stanley St and did the harbour Bridge climb yesterday which was a great experience. 

Not sure what this is

Wating to catch a fish. I've actually got some smaller fish hooks now which i reckon will solve all problems.

  

 

"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."  (L. Ron Hubbard, founder of scientology)

ha ha ha.

Bike maintainence

Web site WikiHow has a detailed guide for bicycle maintenance to help keep your bike in tip-top shape.

 

Top of my wishlist

The  iMate Momento 100 Picture Frame, which has a 10 inch 800 x 480 picture frame that has built in WiFi. You can plugin a memory card or USB drive with photos on them, or better still connect to the Momento Live Service and stream photos that to it.   You can also get photos to it by using Windows Media Connect from your Vista or XP Computer.

But the best part is, Momento supports Vista SideShow Gadgets (not SideBar). This means that you can download and use a bunch of gadgets on the Windows Live Gallery and enable them for use on the picture frame. The data then renders very nicely over the photos as the slide show goes.

At the moment it looks like the device only supports WEP and WPA for Wireless Encryption, but a firmware upgrade will support WPA2.

I've tried to order it on Amazon, but annoyingly they won't ship it down here.

Wouldn't it be great if you could stream some sort of image rss feed to it, from flickr perhaps? 

Top of my wishlist

The  iMate Momento 100 Picture Frame, which has a 10 inch 800 x 480 picture frame that has built in WiFi. You can plugin a memory card or USB drive with photos on them, or better still connect to the Momento Live Service and stream photos that to it.   You can also get photos to it by using Windows Media Connect from your Vista or XP Computer.

But the best part is, Momento supports Vista SideShow Gadgets (not SideBar). This means that you can download and use a bunch of gadgets on the Windows Live Gallery and enable them for use on the picture frame. The data then renders very nicely over the photos as the slide show goes.

At the moment it looks like the device only supports WEP and WPA for Wireless Encryption, but a firmware upgrade will support WPA2.

I've tried to order it on Amazon, but annoyingly they won't ship it down here.

Wouldn't it be great if you could stream some sort of image rss feed to it, from flickr perhaps?