RealSurf Surfers' Forum

Haven't surfed in hail - yet - but I've been out in California on days when the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 10 metres. Got very interesting when it was head high and I was at a secluded reef break called Deadmans one morning...

You were peering into the murk when all of a sudden there'd be a wall and you'd spin and go, taking off into a pit and grey oblivion. Talk about intense. Was particularly fun when a set would break outside. You'd hear it go over and a moment later the whitewater is thundering out of the mist, giving you a second or so to duck dive into the black depths.

To see some pics on a clear day with yours truly in the spot...

http://www.realsurf.com/Deadmans.htm

I remember surfing at Middleton years ago and it started to rain pretty heavily. I was chatting to my mate about it maybe being time to go in when I noticed there were all these little red dots on his face. Sure enough they were little dots of blood from the hail and almost everyone out there had them (including myself), especially after catching a wave and copping the tiny little bits of ice in the face at twice the speed... the surf was pretty average so I don't think we stayed out much longer, but I've never seen that happen since!

Uther, see you're getting some support for being a moderator. I'll keep a closer eye on your posts and will let you know. One thing though, my bandwidth isn't free, so please stop posting that wonderful but bandwidth-gobbling pic with all your posts.

Checked Mav surfer boards and couldn't find ref to deadmans, but was amused to see that they don't have anything remotely like our traffic on their forums... and ours haven't even been going for two months! Boastful grin!

admin wrote:please stop posting that wonderful but bandwidth-gobbling pic with all your posts

I would have thought that it wouldn't use any of your server at all as it's on Surfing Life's website? (ie they get the traffic/bandwidth on their server everytime it's downloaded on this forum, but without getting the actual visitors to their website).

However, I agree that it's a little annoying - it makes each page quite long - Uther can only post a one liner, but it'll always add the equivalent of another 10 lines to each post..

just my 2c

The problem is that I pay for inbound bandwidth only. So everytime that pic gets requested up goes the old bandwidth bill!
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hold on though, its the user viewing the image who is requesting it from the asl site, so RS has no part in that request. Definitely should not be using any of RS's bandwidth...

yeah, that's what I thought was the case streetdaddy - RS servers are completely bypassed for the image. This is normally a problem for the other site (ie ASL).. they get the bandwidth bill but not the pageviews. This is why some websites make their images available only via their website.. to stop 'poaching', so to speak.

Anyway, surfed the peak at newport once when a southerly buster came through, the weather was so foul, we couldn't see which way to the beach, when it started hailing golf balls, we seriously had to dive down and follow he contours of the ocean bottom and follow up towards the shallows. We got hammered, then just as quickly it went away, perfect clear skys and picked up to 4 foot perfect.

uther wrote:thermalben, out of interest, do you work for asl? How do you know about the hits they get.

No, I don't - rightclick and select 'properties', and this will show the URL of the picture. As the pic was located on ASL's site, this means that every time this page loads (ie everytime someone "requests" it from the Realsurf forum), the picture is loaded from the ASL server to complete the page.

Same too if you were to post something from the BOM or a swell chart or the latest Paris Hilton video.. if they're located on someone else's server, then they're paying for the bandwidth cost... but without the benefits of the "traffic" seeing what they've got to offer (ie banner ads.. product placement.. etc)

I have no idea how many hits they get though.. that's a different story.

maroubra