Session 5237 (Friday Session)

Today I am going to be a bit technical. You might all wonder why these things are coming out from me, like the WavLOG on the Blogger and the StokeMaster StokePORTAL (http://www.stokemaster.com).

One of the things that you notice when you enter the site is current conditions panel on the site on the left. This is something that I am actually rather proud of. When I started to surf, I used to rely on free web sites like Pacific Waverider and also STORMSURF.

Oh man, when I first found about STORMSURF, I was so intimidated! Listen to the sound of it, STORM and SURF. I thought that real surfers only go out when it is really stormy out to catch huge waves. What am I getting into? In fact, back then every time I went out basically it felt like Storm Surfing, I could not barely paddle out, and that was on luckier days. On some unlucky days, I was taken out by rip current, and now I was ten times more scared about getting back since my arms are already numb from paddling. But turned out this site was the site got me going to understand a whole lot about the ocean and the wave, the tutorial section on this web site is so much detailed and helpful.

Back to web sites, so I found myself going to various web sites to find out the information about today's condition, and also soon learned that I can get more accurate information directly from NOAA web sites than relying on the interpretations of each of the web sites. So that was the start of the Stoke Console product that I created which is basically an engine to pull all of these government web sites into one page, so I don't have to open multiple windows. This worked out good. But I also wanted to get a summary of current condition, that's when I developed the SM2005 product which is the engine behind the current conditions panel you see on the home page. It actually gathers numerical metrological data every hour then performs trending computation for up and down trends. I am hoping to improve this further.

So I decided to do two things, one is to share to others what I know, and instead of just telling what I know, I have decided to structure the information so that people and even I would know the process of how I have acquired the entire "learn to surf" experience. Hence the start of the Blogging.

So that basically sets the tone for this blog and web sites. Part of the purpose of all this is that I am actually trying to expose all of the ignorant things I do, I think, I assume, and my struggles as I try to understand all of this.

What end up happening though is that when you strip away all of the technicalities for the weather and surfing technique, is basically a personal dialog for my quest for life, and I think that you will find that popping up between the paragraphs I write.

I surfed the Jetty on Friday morning on a real full tide and looked like the swell was going but too much water basically killed the waves. I had a few waves. But it was really good to paddle in the morning.