Sunday, June 01, 2008

a 22 people SUP downwinder

What to do on a sunny, windy and flat Sunday on Maui's north shore?

Easy... a downwind on a standup board!
Looks like this group is making almost a fixed appointment of it every Sunday. The start is at 1pm at Tavares bay. Last Sunday we were 22!


Here's the start.


Michelle's favorite yoga position: the downwind facing dog.


It was blowing up to 30 and it was gorgeous out there.


Kaleo.


CLEARLY, I was chasing all the girls to take photos of their bums. This came up the perkiest.


At the end, even a Coors light tastes great!


Well, for a change I took mostly photos (I had the camera on the wrist band), but I did shoot a few clips too. Here's the (weak) short video.



PS. Kelly Slater just won the surf contest in Fiji and he's flying towards his possible ninth world title (not too bad considering he started the season going to events only if the forecast was good...). At 35 he's still the undisputed best surfer in the world.
Here's a well done wrap-up of the last day of the contest. Stay tuned for J-bay!

Talking about surfing, very slow and small start of the forecasted south swell here in Maui. There should be reinforcement towards the weekend.
Yesterday I went for the sunset session only to get skunked and stuck in Lahaina because a motorcycle accident forced the closure of the highway till 9.30.

My take in these cases is: "hey, better stuck that involved in that accident!".
It can always be worse... or (same thing) the glass can always be seen half full...
Plus, I got to enjoy the sunset at Launiupoko completely alone and in total silence with no cars passing by (the police were blocking them in Lahaina). I had a feel of how the islands must have sounded a few centuries ago, before we humans arrived and brought our artificial noises and pollutions with us.
Only the waves and the grasshoppers... how peaceful!

PPS. Any internet gurus that can help with this?

11 comments:

RAS said...

Cammar;

Upload the new version of the software here ...

http://www.axis.com/techsup/cam_servers/dev/activex.htm

That should work,

RAS

Sharon said...

Yup – can always be worse. My beautiful co-worker Corina just got the call that the guy who died (William) was a good friend of hers. There’s so many ways to die it’s amazing any of us are still here...

cammar said...

Ras,

there two sw on that page:
1) AXIS Media Control SDK
2) AXIS Camera Control SDK.

I tried both. The first one's installation fails (i can send you the file with details if you tell me where), the second succeedes. But the problem is not fixed.

Btw, why would I need a Software Development Kit if I just want to visualize a webcam on my pc???

Sharon,
between the many ways to die, a car accident is quite a possible one: 1.3 million deaths every year worldwide. Sharks kill 5 people a year in average...
Mmm... what should I be more scared of: cars or sharks?

Oh, btw... no worries. We will be wiped out (unfortunately together with most other species) by our own irresponsible acts pretty soon.
And then Launiupoko will be peaceful again...

I'm at the point in which I almost hope that we will not survive our own pollution, so that the planet will eventually be given a chance to cure itself and give birth to more different living species... hopefully better than us.

Anonymous said...

I just tried the webcam page in IE, Firefox and Safari and no luck. Also tried the AXIS Media Control SDK (5.25) that RAS suggested. I got prompted to install the ActiveX control, which I installed and got another error: "The stream is unavailable. This might be due to the AXIS device initializing."

Could it maybe be a problem on the website at the server end? Maybe the webcams have not been setup correctly.

Nice pics of the SUP down winder by the way. Looks like fun. I just got a SUP/windsurf longboard and paddle. Looking forward to taking it out this weekend for the first time.

Cheers,
Andrew

cammar said...

Andrew thanks for your comment. Is there anyone that can actually see those webcams? I remember seeing them once... I think it was one of the computer at Kanaha Kai... I should stop by and check it again and take note of all the settings.

Yes, the downwinders can be fun. The windier, the better, because you catch more glides... nothing compared to a surf session though.

Nice article you link on your website. I like this other one
even better.

It reminds me of four years ago when I decided to order my custom 12.6 Timpone.
It was because I interviewed Jeff Henderson and one of the topics were the huge longboard I saw in his shop. He told me pretty much the same things. But what really convinced me was what he told me when we went for a coffee after the interview:
"As you can imagine, I own a few windsurf boards. If for some reasons, I had to get rid of all of them but one, I'd keep the longboard..."
I was so impressed by that statement that I went to Timpone the same day...
Since then, I had hundreds of memorable and lonely light wind wave sailing sessions.
Thanks Jeff!
Just in case somebody new didn't see it yet, here's a nice video of him.

Oh, this hysterical other video of Sharon came up on the same page... check it out.

Mega said...

Who's the guy with the Ottawa Senators (hockey team)t-shirt?


Alexi Yashin?

Anonymous said...

Flat and windy up to 30 knots? Why weren't you guys windsurfing instead?

:)

cammar said...

Mega,
yes, but he doesn't want anybody to know, so he speaks with perfect america accent.
Crazy stuff on your websites, btw...

Guy,
you have to understand that when you live in Maui you get so spoiled that flat and 30 knots becomes an extremely boring kind of windsurfing.
I don't like strong wind not even when there's waves, imagine if I would go sailing when it's that windy and flat!
As you can see, there's at least 21 more people that thinks like me...

PS. Can anyone tell me if you can see those webcams I link the forum thread linked at the end of this post? Thanks!

Anonymous said...

GP,

I can see them fine with FF and IE.

I didn't do anything special or have to install/configure anything with Firefox 2.0.0.14. I must have installed the plug-in before. When I used IE7, I got prompted to install the control and as soon as it was done, the video started streaming to my browser w/o having to restart.

However, there is a note on the second link that it is "currently out of order" on the left in orange, it doesn't jump out at you because of the colour on the page.

With FF, it just shows up as a broken link. With IE 7 it reports the message about not being able to register the Active X control.

Maybe when you tried, they were both down, and when you saw the message, you thought there was an installation problem.

I think it's a slightly misleading message from the plugin that it couldn't obtain the video feed and start streaming it to the browser.

I'd try to understand it better but it's a warm (33C) and windy Sunday morning (WSW 28 G 34) in Southern Ontario and my board is calling!

Ciao

cammar said...

Magically this morning the first one works on both FF and IE. You're right, the second one says out of order. Maybe they were both out of order till a few days ago.

Anonymous said...

Andrew, About your AXIS camm problem, you have to switch on
RTSP
Enable RTSP server*
*MPEG-4 video streams will be unavailable if this is disabled.
In System Options | Network | TCP/IP | Advanced. That fix my problem (same error message).
Cheers,
espin