Thursday, February 21, 2008

8 things to do when you’re not surfing or blogging

Its been a while between posts due to a variety of factors including laziness, no net access at home, technology influenced ADHD and general life admin. What have I been doing? Well here is a random semi-concise list of diversionary activities that have kept me away from creating content that ranks for obscure terms:

  1. Submitting this blog to RSS directories (don't ask why as I'll bore you with semi geek SEO techno jiggery pokery speak)
  2. Reading: I just devoured "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Moshin Hamid . I really liked it as it painted a salient picture of how a pro western (thinking) Muslim could become disenfranchised with the state of the west and the U.S. after their "war on terror" post 9/11.
  3. Listening to a heap of drum n bass music via myspace and podcasts my favourites are the Hospital records podcast, and the myspace pages for Makoto, The Brookes Brothers, and Logistics
  4. Reading way too many surf mags I think I'm a closet masochist as this is like spiritual salt and lime for the wounds. For what it's worth I rate Stab as it generally makes me piss myself laughing a higher percentage of the time than other mags.
  5. Dreaming of the Mentawais and other spots around the world (France, EnZed, Tamarama,) that all probably have exceptional surf as I type.
  6. Organising broadband for home - as I just think this internet thing might take off and I'm sick of trying to suck ocean sized pieces of data through my straw size unwired connection.
  7. Working heaps and generally enjoying it ;) as it helps pay the mortgage and keeps me off of the streets and is a perfect diversion from self absorbed whinging about the fact that the surf in Australia has been non-stop for the past three months.
  8. Eating well, I went (read got taken to dinner) to Poshbergs with my Beyonce by a very good friend of ours Caria-Canaria and her new man. It was easily the best meal I have had in a long time. If you live in Sydney and feel like throwing a ridiculous large amount of coin down on dinner I recommend it, and the waygu tastes like a steaky choir of angels singing a hym to lazy happy cattle in your mouth. Very good indeed.
Anyway Laters peepz and RSS sniffing botz...

P.S. You like satire and aren't too heavily Christian fundamentalist then check out This (nice retort to the intelligent design quackery being pushed worldwide)

Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Sniffer Dogs

As previously noted in my post about The Sniffer Dogs, they are one of the best dub reggae bands you have (probably) never heard of who create some wicked dub/reggae/ska tunes. Anyway they're playing in Sydney on Saturday night to launch their new CD . If you are an actual human reader (as opposed to a search engine robot sniffing my RSS feed) and you are located anywhere near Sydney and like music and beer I would recommend getting along to check them out. If you want to have a little listen to what they sound like just check the dogs myspace. I particularly dig the tune "Singing on the dance floor" - there is something about a melodica played into a delay that feels like an updated homage to studio one and trojan records. Well its late(ish) and I'm going to chillax with a glass of red whilst grazing the interesting content desert that Australian terrestrial television has become - hello repeats world, thank you writers strike.

Stolen (syndicated) surfing pics

I love the photos in this gallery from Bill Morris of Tama as its virtually my newish local and when its on like that it is so much fun. I also figured it was time to grab some content from Surfing mag as I have used a bit of content from Surfer lately. Fingers crossed it won't be too long until I'm out in the water enjoying similar conditions.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Occy is a legend

Occy is a true icon of surfing and this video provides a little snapshot of what's made him great (I love the jellyfish soundbite). Apologies for the loud surfermag ads but I guess someone has to pay for the content ;)


Sunday, February 3, 2008

Five Inspirational People

Sometimes I meet people or read about people who I either find straight out inspirational or who make me realise that for how ever much I sometimes stick my head up my arse and carp on with self indulgent whining that I generally have it pretty easy. This post is about those people who are out there laughing at and smashing huge challenges and generally not letting any bad vibes bring them down while making egocentric whiny fools like me look pretty average.

So this here is a list of people that I find inspirational (beware a feel good wander away from self centred righteousness follows):

  • Dr Phil Chang: My highly skilled, good natured, generous caring ENT surgeon. This guys a legend; When he's not fixing run of the mill stuff like surfers ear, ruptured ear drums and dodgy schnoz's you'll find him giving kids a life with hearing and generally making peoples lives better. Dr Chang gave my (soon to be niece) a cochlear implant when she was a tiny underweight baby and so now gets to enjoy sound. You can find him here.
  • Ryley Batt: I read about this guy today, Born with no legs and four fingers (thereabouts) he refused to get into a wheel chair (because it was for disabled people) until it came to sport (his preferred mode of transportation before that was a skate board). He now plays wheel chair rugby (aka murder ball) and from what I read coldy destroys what ever challenges he meets at (probably) full pace. Kid should be bringing wake up calls to whiny teenagers across Australia to make the aware of how easy they have it.
  • Mick Fanning: wildly talented surfer, cooly kid, white lightening etc. I rate him because he came back from the heaviest injury and simply, refused, to quit. And so he hit rehab and training like a man possessed and in late 2007 he became the world champ. The other thing I like is he seems like a down to earth guy with a no bullshit attitude which is refreshing in the era of mega hyped , affluent, pampered and pandered to surf stars. I can't wait for him to start slaying in 2008.
  • Jamie Booth: (Disclosure this kid will be my niece when I get married next year - but she is still fricken amazing). Born a massively premature twin, her brother died but she survived, deaf from birth because of the drugs needed to sustain her tiny fragile life and with cerebal palsy the odds were stacked against Jamie. The kids now six and a half, in a wheel chair talking and getting. on. with. it. Yes things are tough for her but she doesn't care, and don't for one minute think she's not smart, oh no the latest 9 bladed gilette razor appears to have an edge like a railway line compared to her brain. She literally radiates good vibes and I know she won't be limited by other peoples expectations of what she can do.
  • Dr Dave Jenkins: Did the opposite of of most peoples mantras in modern life and left. the. money. He abandoned his well paid job in medicine in Singapore to help the people of the Mentawaii's after not being able to process the juxtaposition of wealthy, healthy westerners frolicking in the ocean whilst 200 metres away people were getting felled at disproportionate rates by malaria, dysentery, malnutrition and all manner of things that shouldn't exist in this age of 24/7 internet interconnectivity and washing machines with LCD screens and GPS triangulation to determine where your missing sock is. So a few years later and they have smashed a lot of the malaria in those steamy islands off of north Sumatra and are moving on to other ways to help out. Most people when they were quaffing their nasi goreng and bintangs on the charter boat after getting ridiculously shacked at HT's would have felt bad for a moment for the skinny sick people on land, maybe they would have passed over a grubby fistful of rupiah for a carving or left some board shorts with the locals. Most people certainly wouldn't have left high paying jobs and security to start a grass roots charity for the betterment of people they didn't know.
Well this shapeshifter album has almost finished, I shall retreat to the couch to ponder further people who fire the inspirational synapses in my brain. Remember kids if life is good if you want it to be - not that I always remember that ;)........

Coffee, Toast and Sunday morning page title hacks

So I have just spent a good 25 minutes of searching, reading and code cutting and pasting to change the way page titles are thrown in blogger. For the average person page titles are the words at the top of the browser which they occaisonally glance at, for the vaguely SEO centric geek like moi they are like cat nip to search engine spiders signalling the basic semantic value of my inanities. So I'll be now able to lure search engine spiders with a better whiff of words about sheep , some drum and bass sycophantic fan boy action and my ramblings about my never ending salt water addiction.

Anyway I should probably throw the person who created this piece of XML/ HTML wizardry so if you blog and need to Change the way Blogger presents page titles click the link cut and paste to your hearts content.