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SurfSens Brings Surfing Into the Computer Age
cylonlover writes "In an activity that for many of its participants is akin to a religion, the merging of surfing and technology might seem a bit like blasphemy. But while surfing is still about lifestyle for many of us, these days it's also a competitive sport offering huge amounts of prize money, so it's no surprise to see the emergence of boards packing more than just polyurethane within their fiberglass shells. With the aim of 'turning feelings into facts and figures,' research company Tecnalia and Spanish surfboard manufacturer Pukas have teamed up to create a surfboard that packs a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS compass, pressure sensors and strain gauges to measure the flex of the board."
No need for skill anymore. Slap some speakers on it and call it Surf Hero.
I'm quite genuinely surprised that this has not been done sooner.
In hindsight, it seems quite an obvious thing to do.
As an Amish gentleman, I find this product quite wicked, and I shall not purchase one.
Yeah, right. Take one of these foo-foo boards out and get the **** beaten out of you by "locals only" townies. These rednecks then take your board, break it in half, and sell the parts to a chop shop. (Do they even have chop shops for surfboards? Well they'll have to start now!)
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yo dawg, we heard you like surfing so we put a computer in yo' surfboard so you can surf while you surf.
It wasn't until the end of the summary I realized it was referring to something else than web-surfing. Duh.
Tag this as tubular, dude!
A pity they left out the most useful feature.
Recently surfboard flex and return speed have bean at the forefront of board design. Unfortunately there are two very big problems with trying to design a board that has perfect flex. One is that surfers descriptions are flawed. A surfer might say a board feels stiff when the board is actually very flexible. The stiff feeling comes from the board having a fast return speed from flex. The second problem is that a board that has the best new flex design could get bad reviews because it is not what people are used to. With the computerized surfboard it will be possible to get to the bottom of these kinds of subtleties. This really could revolutionize surf board design.
I would love to hear what any of the Computational Fluid Dynamics folks might have to say about all of this.
Huh. :P
It took me till about half-way through the above before I realized they were talking about the water + wave kind of surfing, little directly to do with the internet. Obviously, I was quite confused.
My keyboard IS my surfboard brah!
Yo dawg, we heard you like surfing
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that's what we're seeing. down under, everywhere, but here. no surprise? our intentions are growing stronger. can you feel it? see you there?
some/same intentions; our will be done?
1. DEWEAPONIZATION (not a real word, but they like it) almost nothing else good happens until some progress here.
2. ALL BABYS CREATED/TO BE TREATED, EQUALLY. (a rough interpretation (probably cost us. seems like a no-brainer but they expressed that we fail on that one too(:)->) 'we do not need any 300$ 'strollers', or even to ride in your smelly cars/planes etc..., until such time as ALL of the creators' innocents have at least food, shelter, & some loving folks nearby.' again, this is a deal breaker, so pay attention, that's cheap enough, & could lead to our survival?
3. THOU SHALT NOT VACCINATE IRRESPONSIBLY. this appears to be a stop-gap intention.
the genuine feelings expressed included; in addition to the lack of acknowledgment of the advances/evolution of our tiny bodies/dna (including consciousness & intellect), almost nobody knows anymore what's in those things (vaccines) (or they'd tell us), & there's rumor much of it is less than good (possibly fatal) for ANY of us. if it were good for us we'd be gravitating towards it, instead of it being shoved in our little veins, wrecking them, & adversely affecting our improving immune systems/dna/development? at rite-aid, they give the mommies 100$ if they let them stick their babys with whoknowswhat? i can see why they're (the little ones) extremely suspicious? they're also asking that absolutely nobody be allowed to insert those corepirate nazi 'identity' 'chips' in their tiny frames. they know who they, and we, are, much better than we ever will? many, oddly? have fading inclinations to want to be reporters of nefarious life threatening processes, ie. 'conspiracies', as they sincerely believe that's 'stuff that REALLY matters', but they KNOW that things are going to be out in the open soon, so they intend to put their ever increasing consciousness, intellect, acute/astute senses & information gathering abilities, to the care & feeding of their fellow humans. no secrets to cover up with that goal.
4. AN END TO MANUFACTURED 'WEATHER'.
sortie like a no-(aerosol tankers)-fly zone being imposed over the whole planet. the thinking is, the planet will continue to repair itself, even if we stop pretending that it's ok/nothing's happening. after the weather manipulation is stopped (& it will be) it could get extremely warm/cold/blustery some days. many of us will be moving inland..., but we'll (most of us anyway) be ok, so long as we keep our heads up. conversely, the manufactured 'weather' puts us in a state of 'theater' that allows US to think that we needn't modify our megaslothian heritage of excessiveness/disregard for ourselves, others, what's left of our environment etc...? all research indicates that spraying chemicals in the sky is 100% detrimental to our/planet's well being (or they'd talk to US about it?). as for weather 'extremes', we certainly appear to be in a bleeding rash of same, as well as all that bogus seismic activity, which throws our advanced tiny baby magnets & chromosomes into crisis/escape mode, so that's working? we're a group whose senses are more available to us (like monkeys?) partly because we're not yet totally distracted by the foibles of man'kind'. the other 'part' is truly amazing. we saw nuclear war being touted on PBS as an environmental repair tool (?depopulation? (makes the babys' 'accountants' see dark red:-(-? yikes. so what gives? thanks for your patience & understanding while we learn to express our intentions. everybody has some. let us know. come to some of our million baby play-dates. no big hurry? catch your breath. we'll wait a bit more. thanks.
do the math. check out YOUR dna/intentional healing potential. thanks again.
Android Standard Hardware has all of that except for the strain gauges.
Install strain gauges/bluetooth module in to the board & carve space for a waterproof android dock out of the foam.
It would be cool to see a shark chomping through the board and spitting out the indigestible bits
.
Talking of high tech, whatever happened to the thing I saw about 5-6 years ago where someone had fitted a small hydrofoil blade beneath the rear of the board, which lifted the whole thing out of the water at speed and made it ultra-fast and ultra-manouverable. I know little about surfing, so maybe that wasn't playing fair, and it got seen off by the surfing equivalent of the "get off my lawn"brigade, but it seemed a great idea and once seen, sort of obvious. Not even expensive to make.
than what Intel cooked up back in the mid-2K's. A board with a PC and wireless connectivity. Almost as bad as branding with Disney.
What, no media player? No digital camera? No Shark Shield?
With all of the possibilities, they seem to have chosen the lamest ones.
A GPS? Seriously? "Dude, this surf is awesome....where the hell am I?" I still remember where I was the last time I surfed - 14th Street, Del Mar - a short climb down the cliff to the isolated beach.
"Lame" - Galaxar