Lunch Break Surf Report

The weather and water have been beautiful the last two days, with sunshine and great visibility. Unfortunately, the waves have been mostly waist high with little form to them. Keep your fingers crossed for a SW swell this weekend!

Lunch Break Surf Report

After beating myself up on Tamarack's rocky shore break last Friday, I was ready to head back into the water today. Unfortunately, the SW swell had backed down to almost nothing (again), with set waves in the waist-high range. Things were quite crossed up and inconsistent, although I did get a few decent rights.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I finished reading this tome over the weekend, and thought that I would post my impressions on the latest installment detailing Mr. Potter's adventures. At around 850 pages, the length of each installment seems to be getting longer and longer. On the other hand, the book is a very quick read. I believe it took me approximately one week to devour it's contents, and left me with a nice aftertaste.

While I enjoyed the book, I was a bit disappointed with the plot. Let me say right off the bat that I think JKR can develop character with the best of them. By now, I feel as if I know Harry, Ron and Hermione, and I'm particularly fond of Neville as well. This book furthers our understanding of these characters, and does a tremendous job.

However, the whole plot sort of stank, IMHO. Spolers below, etc. You have been warned.

The whole plot, in synopsis, is: Voldermort plants a dream in Harry's head to try and make him steal a prophesy dealing with Harry and Voldermort. No one BUT Harry or Voldermort can remove/steal the prophesy because only people involved in the prophesy may touch it.

Why trick Harry instead of having this most powerful wizard steal it himself? The reason we are given is that he does not yet wish to reveal himself. Thus, the wierd dreams for poor old Harry.

So Voldermort is fairly successful at his newest plot, and manages to get Harry there, to remove it, etc. Only the prophecy vial is shattered, and so it is all for naught. Then Voldermort shows up and tries to lay the smack down on the good guys, and is subsequently sent packing with his tail between his legs.

Question: if he didn't want to reveal himself yet, why did he show up at the end when he knew the his mission target was gone? And if he was willing to show up then, why the hell didn't he steal the damn prophesy himself in the first place?

Finally, he knew part of the prohpecy, and was unconcerned with it for the longest time. Why risk the knowledge of his return and his crack squad (the Death Eater crew) for the prophesy?

Please don't think I am slamming the book, for I did indeed enjoy it. I just think that the overall plot was a bit week. I think that books 3 and 4 have set a fairly tough act to follow. Let's cross our fingers for books 6 and 7! Please feel free to comment on the book...

Lunch Break Surf Report

Today saw the return of some decent waves to the North county, and there was much rejoicing. The set waves had decent size and volume behind them, although most of the larger sets were close-outs at our usual beach break. However, I still managed to catch a few nice lefts, matched with a few fun rights. Best surf of the week!

Lunch Break Surf Report

Today, the surf was small and the beach was crowded - never a good combination. I managed to catch a couple small waves, and then paddled back in a bit early. The last few weeks have seen a distinct lack of swell, apart from last Saturday. Hopefully things will pick up soon!

San Diego Comic-Con 2003

It only took till the age of 33, but I finally went to the San Diego Comic-Con (with my son) on Sunday. The San Diego convention center was completely taken over by the con, and it was quite a site to see. A very kind gentleman gave me a free pass as we were waiting to purchase tickets, so the day started off with a nice surprise.

My son and I first went to sit in on a discussion about the new Lego Bionicle movie, which will be released direct to video on Sept. 16. The panel featured the story writer, animator, as well as reps from Lego and Miramax. A few trailers were shown, and it looks like it will be a decent movie.

After the panel, we walked around the convention center floor, picking up free comics, posters, cards, and whatever other swag interested us. After two and a half hours of walking about, we were ready to head back home. My overall impression of the Comic-Con was: "Glad I didn't pay for it." I'm not a died in the wool comic book guy, although I still have my X-Men comics from when I was in middle school...

Saturday AM Surf Report

I've been a bit of a flake this past week, and haven't updated the blog with the latest surf reports as often as I usually do. This is in part to being busy at work, and in part due to the waves pretty much sucking.

There was a SW ground swell due in today from storms in the southern hemi, so I decided to make an early AM trip to Oceanside. When I stepped out of my truck, I noticed a familiar vehicle pull up next to me, and lo and behold it was OTIS from the surfermag BB. He was looking for some solitude, and so after saying "Hi!", he went looking for a break with fewer people.

As I was walking out, one guy was walking back in to his car, carrying one half of his long board under each arm. le' ouch! I paddled out at the South jetty, caught a few waves and did a lot of paddling against the current, through some pretty scary looking foam. I guess one of the lagoons to the South was opened to the ocean, so all the crap trapped in the lagoon is now heading out to sea. Just wonderfule

I took one wave in, then made my way South, about half way between the pier and the jetty. I caught several fun lefts, and pretty much had the place to my self. It looked as if the North pier was firing, but there were already lots of folks there. Even though the waves weren't huge, they were well formed and bigger than they have been all week. Perhaps the swell will fill in during the day and at a higher tide.

AM Surf Report

The sun is rising later now, so I set a time on target of 5:30. Early enough to get some (hopefully) quality time in the water before work, yet not so early as to require headlights on the ole' board. When I arrived at the local spot, I was amazed at how low the tide was. Haven't seen it this low in quite a while.

The waves were a bit inconsistent, so there was a bit of waiting between sets. On the other hand, when they arrived, they pitched up quickly (thanks low tide!) and then peeled nicely to the left.

There's nothing like that early morning stoke to start the week off right. The surfshot guys even got a couple of pics of me NOT falling. Click on the thumbnail images for a larger version. Woo-hoo! ;>

Free Tri-Stat dX System

For those of you familiar with the Tri-Stat system by Guardians of Order, and to those who'd like to know more about it, check out the free download of Tri-Stat dX at RPG Now.

Lunch Break Surf Report

The swell has backed off a little bit, probably getting a bit o' rest before the weekend when it is expected to pick back up. The Del Mar Cam was making the wave situation look quite anemic, but there wasn't much in the way of wind and the sun was shining...

Down at our local beach break, it was better than expected. Most sets were wasit high, with some fun corners to work down the line. The water has warmed up considerably, and was quite comfortable in trunks alone. Get on out there!

Dawn Patrol Surf Report

Today, I was the second person in the water, at around 5:20 AM. The waves weren't as nice as yesterday afternoon, but the glassy ocean surface made it all worthwhile. Most sets were in the wasit high range, and I had a few nice, long lefts that just kept on peeling into the shore. Throw in the occassional hard-bottom turn right, and you have the makings of a very nice way to start out the day.

Lunch Break Surf Report

I almost decided to not go surfing today, and what a tragedy that would have been. Thankfully, I noticed that the winds were fairly calm, and thus we headed out to D Street for what turned out to be one of the funnest days in recent memory.

The sets were around chest high, and lots of peeling lefts and rights were to be had. The sun wasn't out - but that is just fine as it keeps the crowds down, too. I'm shooting for an early AM session tomorrow, and hoping for similar conditions!

Lunch Break Surf Report

Lots of wind and mixed up waves today result in a pretty horrible day for surfing. We surfed for around half an hour and then decided to head back a bit early. The only highlight of the day (if one would call it that) was my spectacular wipeout which Bob got to witness first hand. I caught a decent sized wave fairly late, and made the fairly steep drop, only to purl (purling is when the nose of your surfboard goes under water as opposed to gliding over it). End result - the board stops and I keep going (full sped) into the surf.

Lunch Break Surf Report

When we got down to the beach today, I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the sets which were rolling to the shore - some were easilly shoulder high! I had checked out the Southern California Swell Model page earlier in the day, and it was reading about 1.5 feet. Thus, I paddled out with great expectations, which were soon dashed.

After my first wave, I was caught inside and a few nice size sets pounded me as I struggled to get back out. After drinking my monthly allowance of sea water and coughing up a few hermit crabs, I eventually made it back out in the lineup. I saw Bob grab a wave, and then lost him as I tried to grab a few more waves for myself. I managed to grab one or two more, and went over the falls on a couple as well. Man, I haven't seen D street this unforgiving in quite a while.

Nearing the end of the lunch break, I thought I saw senor Bob on the beach, so I made my way in. It turns out that his board buckled during his second ride. Ack! What started out as a promising day ended up with Neptune humbling us, letting us know who is really in charge out there.

Weekend Surf Report

Oceanside was pretty fun this morning, with some sets in the chest to shoulder high range. It wasn't real consistent with the low tide, and I ended up staying inside for the final hour to get a few more rides in.

And what a weekend - with perfect weather it's hard to imagine living anywhere else. Hope everyone has a good holiday weekend.

Painless Optimization

Today, I was looking over a Delphi project which my company is close to marketing, trying to find a way to make it quicker when initially loading up the various settings (hundreds of them) from the INI files. The product functions as expected, and is fairly complete, so now is a good time to start looking at optimizations which will increase the number of calculations per second (one of Knuth's laws: premature optimization is the root of all evil).

I figured that the TINIFile object implemented by Delphi was merely a thin wrapper around the INI file related Windows API functions. I thought that I could perhaps write my own INI file object which would perhaps cache the file in memory, thus reducing disk I/O and hence, increasing performance. Checking out the source code for the TINIFile object confirmed my guesstimation, and provided a pleasant surprise as well. In the same INIFiles unit which defines the TINIFile object, another object called TMemINIFile is defined. The implementation of this class cached the INI file in memory, just as I had planned on doing.

To make a long story somewhat longer, I merely replaced references of TINIFile to TMemINIFile in all of the units where INI files are used, and the performace of the project increased by more than a factor of 8. Woo-hoo! Now that is the kind of optimization that I like...

Lunch Break Surf Report

In short: today, conditions at D street sucked golf balls through garden hoses. Not much in the way of waves as far as size, consistency, or shape are concerned. I was considering an AM session tomorrow, but I don't think I'll be getting out of bed at 4:30 for these kinds of conditions. Maybe on the 4th, however...