Author Archives: bbeoj

Survey of Surfing Demographics – Protect Your Break

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I read about this on Surfline – now I’m spreading the word and urge you to share this with your community of surfers.

With lessons learned from the recent fight to save Trestles, the folks at Surf-First.org have put together a survey designed to gather demographics on surfers in the US. Because they say it better than I can, here’s copy from the survey landing page:

All across the country, surfers are facing access and environmental fights that fail to consider their needs and enormous impact. While fishermen and other recreational ocean users flex big muscle in courthouses and town halls, surfers get pushed aside a ‘segment group.’ A minor hobby for punk kids – instead of healthy lifestyle for whole families. That’s because we let them.

Despite being a 1000-year-old sport with a $7 billion industry, surfing has failed to produce the demographic and economic studies to show who we are, where we live, and what we spend. So while other interest groups bolster their arguments with impressive numbers to prove their positions, all-too often, surfers get blindsided and bowled over, unable to offer a single hard number to support their cases or save their breaks.

Not anymore. With your help, we can start to paint a true picture of who surfers are and how we behave. And every surfer who answers provides another stroke of necessary detail. All you need to do is take 15 minutes to fill out the survey.

Bagging a President

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Betsy & Hope are off to “bag a president” (i.e. climb a mountain in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire). And true to form,their motto for the trip is: Go Big or Go Home

Ten Highest Peaks of the Presidential Range

Ten Highest Peaks
Rank Peak Name ft m Area
1. Mount Washington 6288 1917 Mount Washington Massif
2. Mount Adams 5774 1760 Northern Peaks
3. Mount Jefferson 5712 1741 Northern Peaks
4. Mount Clay 5533 1686 Northern Peaks
5. Mount Monroe 5372 1637 Southern Peaks
6. Mount Madison 5366 1636 Northern Peaks
7. Mount Franklin 5000+ 1524+ Southern Peaks
8. Slide Peak 4806 1465 Mount Washington Massif
9. Mount Eisenhower 4760+ 1451+ Southern Peaks
10. Mount Clinton 4310 1314 Southern Peaks
Yep, they’re going for Mt Washington. One of the most valuable tools for this trip has been the subscription to the White Mountain Guide Online. White Mountain Guide Online
They already knew they were going to be hiking from Pinkham Notch to the summit of Mt. Washington, so I searched for a route among the “suggested Hikes”. Going to the summit appears to be strenuous. White Mountain Guide - Suggested Hikes
It’s pretty cool to see the whole of the Boott Spur Loop laid out on a map: White Mountain Guide - Boott Spur Loop
But you don’t feel that in your gut like this: Google Earth - Boott Spur Loop

Hope, I’ve added waypoints and much trail description in this Google Earth file.

TrackMania

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I’m posting this here so I have a place to point my cousin Jake Hodges. He gets the same kick out of driving racetracks as I do, but he does it in a real car. And I know he enjoys a good video game.

Jake, I love to race realistic sims as much as the next guy, but sometimes you want to stomp the pedal and hit 650km/h on the straightaway (that’s 403.9 mph for those playing along at home). I’ve been playing this game for a couple of years and they just came out with a new version. Trackmania has always put sim graphics on an arcade racer and given it to you full on. Dude, you can brake while you’re in the air!

Official Game Site of Trackmania Nations Forever

In case you’re still not convinced to give it a try – it’s FREE – here’s a trailer:

Need to convert UTM to Lat / Long?

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My wife hikes the Palmetto Trail with her childhood friend. They call me “Compass” because I get on Google Earth and map out their route then download it into the GPS. The maps provided by the Palmetto Conservation Foundation have UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates, which are a whole other ballgame from Lat/Long.

After 10 long minutes of scouring the web, I found one site that converted the UTM coordinates to latitude / longitude: The Canadian Spatial Reference System’s GSRUG at http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/gsrug/utm_e.php

The link I found was broken (from a 2005 keyhole bbs post) – so here’s the product description from the CSRS website:

Geodetic Survey Routine, UTM/TM to/from Geographic coordinate conversion. Compute either Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates from the geographic latitude and longitude of a point or the reverse conversion.

News 2.0

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or “Geeks are hard wired to one-up other geeks”

I suppose it would just illustrate my kinship with these souls to publish a formula from my hypothesis that “15 minutes of fame” is an outdated concept. Given that News 2.0 is presented on nearly ubiquitous media and is available on demand, the baseline fame “hang time” will vary as a function of the true mass appeal of the story. No longer will “15 minutes of fame” be awarded solely by media outlets – now spotlight seekers have the power to grab the attention of the media on the internet, who can pick up the story and award t minutes of fame. The formula is

t = (e^(1/x) + ln(x))
x = number of internet webpage views
f(10) = 3
f(100) = 6
f(1,000) = 8
f(10,000) = 10
f(100,000) = 13
f(1,000,000) = 15

Case in point, this story on WIRED caught my eye:

Star Wars-Obsessed Rocket Geeks Build and Launch an X-Wing Fighter

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/15-12/st_xwing

But it’s only worth sharing because of this response:

What Really Happened to the Life Size X-Wing