New Board! 6' 5" CI MSF Bonzer

It has been a while since my last surfboard purchase, and for good reason - I've been very happy with all of my boards. However, while checking out craigslist.org one day, I came across what sounded like a very good deal.

I called the person offering the board for sale, and after talking with him a bit, it sounded like just what I was looking for: a Channel Islands Merrick Singe Fin (MSF) which had been retrofitted with Bonzer side bites. It was in almost new shape, and was the same dimensions as my MSF.

So, I decided to sell my MSF first, chip in a little bit of extra cash, and then pick this one up. Here she is, in all her beauty:

Top side with nice slob job resin tint

Dimensions

Bottom

Close up of fin cluster

Bottom view from the nose

Translucent fins from Rainbow Fin Co.

Near the end of my photo shoot with the new board, Ace came on out and decided to get in on some of the modeling action. What a ham...

Ace seems to like it as well

I got her all waxed up this morning and just need a bit of juice to try her out on some "waves of consequence".

Baseball Season - Tournament Wrap-up

Turn out the lights, the party's over...

The AA tournament is done, and the Raptors finished in 4th place. We had a tough seeding draw (4th) which saw us face the Iron Birds for our first game. The teams were randomly seeded, and the two teams (out of six) which are seeded first and second have a tremendous advantage, as they get a by in the first round of the double-elimination schedule.

We lost our first game against the Iron Birds, and headed down to the loser's bracket. There, we faced the Storm and won a tight game with a 5-4 score. All 5 of our runs were scored in a single inning, and our pitching proved fairly solid throughout the game.

Our third and final game found us facing the Iron Birds again. Their star pitcher was untouchable, and the Raptors struggled at the plate. We scored a single run off of a single hit, and that was all she wrote.

So, the season is no over and we get to relax a bit until soccer season starts sometime near the end of summer. I was very pleased with the improvements my son made over the course of the season, and he really enjoys just playing ball with me outside. We've scheduled a few Padres games this summer, and both of us are looking forward to them!

Thursday Afternoon Surf Report

Swamis - March 10, 2005

I've been able to get out in the water these last three days, and the conditions have been pretty decent compared to the lull we've experienced the previous week. On Tuesday , the sky was overcast and the wind was almost nonexistent, dishing out waves that were glassy, peaky and extremely fun. Wednesday and Thursday saw the sun make an appearance - unfortunately the wind also showed up and the waves were not nearly as nice as on Tuesday.

I've been surfing my GH canard quad fish and loving it. We'll see if we get some of an expected southern-hemisphere South swell early next week. If we do, it might be an opportune time to try out my new board (pictures and more information coming soon)!

Baseball Season - Regular Season Wrap-up

The Raptors finished up three games over five days, with one win, one loss, and one tie. Our overall season record ended up being 13 wins, 3 losses, and 1 tied - not too shabby!

The Thursday night game was against the Storm, and our offense struggled early. However, we scored a few key runs late in the game, and after 4 & 1/3 innings of play, took the lead 4-3. Time was called due to the 2 hour limit during the regular season, and the team left happy.

Saturday's game against the Bulls was problematic. Alan had a very tough time getting pitches over the plate, and our offense was quite lackluster. We ended up losing 9-4, and hoping for a better performance during our last regular season game and tournament.

Monday night's game found us facing the Iron Birds again - the same team which has beaten us twice the last two games we have been matched up. The Iron Birds have one very good pitcher, whom they pitched for a single 1-2-3 inning. However, their other pitchers are nowhere near as good as the #1. So, after he left the game, the Raptors jumped all over the Iron Birds and put together a nice eight run second inning. The game was called at the two hour time limit with a 10-10 tied score.

The Raptors looked a bit rough defensively during our final game, which worries me. We will face the Iron Birds (again) for our first tournament game, and I am sure that their #1 pitcher will be out in force. I can only hope that the Raptors put the bat on the ball and do their best. Due to pitch counts, I don't think the #1 pitcher will be able to stay out the entire four innings needed for a regulation tournament game, so if we can keep the Iron Birds in check until that time, we may have a chance. It's all about the pitching...

So, wish the Raptors luck tonight as we begin our post-season journey - we could use it!

Score cards for the final three regular season games are found below.

Baseball Season - Week 8 Wrap-up

Week 8 found the Raptors facing first the River Cats on Thursday, and then the River Dogs on Saturday. Did the Raptors continue their torrid winning streak, or would they fall down as the regular season nears its closing? Read on for details...

Our Thursday game against the River Cats saw an explosion of offense, as the Raptors scored 12 runs in 3+ innings. The game was called in the top of the 4th due to the 2 hour time limit on AA games. Our two pitchers did fairly well, and the Raptors ended up only allowing 2 runs to score.

On Saturday, we faced the River Dogs. The River Dogs won the end of year tournament last year, and have some experienced pitchers on their team. I had a feeling that the game would be a closely contested match, and was right. The Raptors scored 7 runs off the River Dogs first pitcher in the first two innings. Our first pitcher allowed 3 runs over the same span of time. The River Dogs' second pitcher only gave up one run over the final 2 innings, with a total of 8 runs for the Raptors.

Alan pitched the final two innings for the Raptors, and pitched extremely well, allowing only two runs. We've been practicing a bit, and it is showing. He is now throwing much more accurately, and there is some definite "pop" to his velocity.

Thus, the Raptors go 2W and 0L for the week, and 12W and 2L for the season so far. Score cards are below for those interested:

Surf Report - "You got NOTHING!"

That's your surf report, folks - "You got NOTHING!".

We had some nice waves last week, but this week has seen the Pacific Ocean transform into Lake Pacific, with waves no more than knee high in most locations. The weather has been beautiful, with clear skies and high temperatures, but the swell is just not cooperating.

Furthermore, it doesn't look like things will not improve in the next week or so! Gah.

Porting a Win32 Delphi Library to Linux

As I have mentioned in different posts, the primary product at my place of employment is developed for the Windows 32 bit platform, using Delphi. In the two previous posts, I looked into moving this code over to the .net platform, and came away fairly successful in the endeavor.

One of our existing partners asked us about providing our library on platforms other than Windows. This partner wanted the library to exist natively on many different Unix / Linux variants, and wanted to know would this be possible, etc.

A while ago, Borland offered Kylix, a product for both Windows and Linux. Unfortunately, that product is no longer offered, and I can only assume that the product was not as successful as Borland would have liked, given that it is no longer available. Furthermore, it was only functional for a given subset of the Linux platform, so I went looking for other ideas.

Next stop - Free Pascal. After looking over the site, I noticed that it seemed to offer quite a few platforms - 32 and 64 bit Intel processors, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX, etc. However, how compatible is it with Delphi code?

There was only one way to find out, so I downloaded the .deb files (usable with my Ubuntu Linux box) and got hacking. After roughly one week of looking over the tools and available documentation, I have successfully compiled a shared library which contains a subset of the functionality provided in our native Windows product. I have compiled a C application which successfully links to this new shared library, which means that just about any language our there should be able to talk to it. Not too shabby!

Next, I need to port over the XML processing code to use the components provided in the Free Pascal component library, which may take a bit more time. However, I am very happy with the productivity and compatibility so far, and our partner was enthusiastic as well!

Baseball Season - Week 7 Wrap-up

Week 7 has come and gone, and the end of the season looms ever-closer. Will the Raptors develop any solid pitching before season's end? Will our batters get comfortable hitting off of kids instead of the pitching machine? Time will tell...

Our Thursday game found us facing the Bulls again, and also saw the performance of our last potential pitcher. He pitched the first inning, delivering 2 strikes out of 30 pitches - not exactly the balls-to-strikes ratio a manager dreams about. However, some timely defense and a runner thrown out by the catcher while trying to steal second salvaged that first inning, after giving up 3 runs. Alan came in to pitch the 2nd and 3rd innings, throwing 12 strikes in 46 pitches, and giving up three more runs. Obviously, I am hoping that our pitching improves over the next few games we have left! While the pitching struggled, the defense looked better, with another base runner caught stealing at third in the second inning. Furthermore, our offense really cranked it up, scoring 16 runs as we cruised to victory.

Saturday saw our fortunes turn South as we played the Iron Birds. Our pitchers actually did much better, both pitching two innings and throwing 16 strikes out of 40 pitches and 17 strikes out of 56 pitches respectively. However, the defense was very flat, giving up all of our seven runs due to throwing and fielding errors. Our offense was no better, as 11 out of our 12 outs over the four innings of play were due to strike outs. We lost 2-7, and our record now stands at 10 wins and two losses. We'll be focusing on throwing and fielding during our two remaining practices.

Score sheets for both games are found below.