Author: michaeljcripps

I woke up this morning to a missing Daily Create. Obviously, something went wrong in the DS106DC control room. Illness? Sabotage? Who knows? Someone, I’m sure.

I took a cue from Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax) who noticed the problem and rolled with it and imagined a possible “freebie” Daily or, better yet, a “missing the Daily” theme. Occasionally, I grow nostalgic when I ponder the months when I had the world-famous Surf Sauna in my driveway through an entire winter surf season in Maine. I could drive it to the beach. I could surf and warm up in the driveway afterward. I could hit the sauna in the evening, just because. It was awesome. I miss the Surf Sauna!

This one was easy. I plucked a photo taken at Gooch’s Beach in 2016, added some proof of Daily text to it, and tweeted it out. I love the small swell in the background, complete with surfers in the lineup. I love the fact that my youngest son (now 16) is just hanging out on one of the benches after a session. And I love that my Hanlon Straw’s Noserider is hanging in one of the board racks. Perfect!

A surf edition Daily Create with the prompt How Dark? Hmm. My first thought was big wave surfers’ descriptions of the deep darkness they experience in a wipe out and hold down in 40′ surf. That’s scary dark, and it’s not something I’ve ever experienced. Sure. I’ve been held down until I felt my lungs might burst. I’ve been tossed around under water until I can’t tell up from down. But a big wave hold down?

Then I remembered my 2017 supermoon session at Wells Beach. And I blogged about it, so I was able to revive the memory by revisiting the blog. I even had a photo of the beach. Perfect.

This was a pretty simple Daily Create. Pull the photo off my blog. Write some hopefully engaging content. Tweet at the right handles with the right hashtags. Done.

Today’s Daily Create involved inventing a weird social rule. With my surf edition thematic for the dailies this round, I had to ponder ways to adjust some of the nuances of surf social rules or norms.

Initially, I imagined modifying some of the infographics that describe and illustrate some basic surf etiquette. I imagined changing things like snaking a wave, dropping in, etc. But I didn’t want to get involved in heavy graphics work for a daily create. I settled on an inversion of the surf localism or surf rage phenomenon that is all too common at crowded breaks. If you’ve seen Keanu Reeves in Point Break, you know what localism can look like, and Youtube is full of footage of insanely over the top aggro surf rage.

My inversion started with two guys about to go mano-a-mano in waist deep water, presumably after one of them broke a standard rule. They’re so close together they could almost be involved in a romantic scene, which really pushed it for me.

It’s not a hug. It’s not a kiss. It’s a tummy-to-tummy rub. Editing was absolutely minimal, with a title and some born on dating for the Daily Create. The image itself comes from a really fun article: 7 Reasons Why I Love Localism.

This morning’s Daily Create took a little thought and quite a bit more work than the last couple, which were really just “take a photo and upload” DCs. After mulling over ideas on the drive in to work, I settled on creating an animated GIF from a beautiful noseride.

In this day and age, of course, there’s a lot to choose from. One could go classic and dig out a Youtube video from about 1967, with perhaps David Nuuhiwa or Micky Dora. One could pay homage to Joel Tudor, who is arguably the one most responsible for the reemergence of classic longboard style. I settled on Justin Quintal as a phenonemal example of a surfer who can put the board right where it needs to be to hold 200 lbs out on (and over) the tip.

The GIF itself wasn’t that tough. Starting with Quicktime, I grabbed a clip from Youtube.

After I had the video in Quicktime, I trimmed it down to the 4 seconds I wanted and saved the file. I imported it into Photoshop using the “Import > Video Frames to Layers” option. I cut lots of frames out to reduce file size, adjusted the delay between frames, added in the text, and Exported for Web.

It took about 30 minutes to handle it in Photoshop, as I played around with the delays, file size, etc. I’m also a little rusty on making GIFs. I’m reasonably pleased with the result.

I had initially imagined I’d superimpose my face on each frame to put myself on Quintal’s board, but the video didn’t really call for that, as it’s impossible to really tell who’s riding – unless one knows Quintal’s style really well.

Here goes. May flowers on Mother’s Day, Daily Create surf edition. This one was pretty straightforward. I was a little stumped about the May flowers challenge at first, then I thought about putting a board next to some daffodils in the front yard.

But then I remembered that my daughter’s 8’0″ has a floral inlay on the fin. Bingo!

I pulled the board off the rack, placed it next to the daffodils, and the rest is evident in the tweet.

Stu Sharpe is a well-known shaper who works out of Florida. Town & Country Surfboards is a venerable brand, with shapers working in Hawaii, Florida, Australia, and, I think, California. My daughter’s board was shaped and glassed in Florida. It’s a high-quality, hand-shaped mini-mal or funboard that works as either a single fin or a 2+1.

I’m going to attempt an “all surf” theme for my Daily Creates during the ENG 304 O1 Summer 2019 term. There’s no doubt this will be a challenge, as I don’t control the Daily Creates and need to respond to what gets thrown out there. (Fun Stuff!)

This was about the simplest Daily one could do. Find something tiny, take a picture, and tweet it with some context. As I’m really a longboarder, I didn’t have a lot of options for something tiny in the surf theme.

Curious about my board? It’s a Trimcraft, a label created by Rich Pavel, Jerry (Mr. Pipeline) Lopez, and Ryan Lovelace.

The Haley Pin is based on Lovelace’s Thick Lizzy model, and my board was shaped by John Oppito and glassed by Josh Peterson at The Heavens in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Glide Surf Co posted a nice shot of the deck sometime after it came out of the glass shop.