Surf Magic at Magic-Seaweed.com

When I was a little blonde surfer boy, we used to tune into the radio at certain times of the day to hear the "Coca-Cola Surf Report". On many occasions it was not at all accurate. When we got older and smarter, we got friendly with a guy at a surf shop down the coast. If we phoned up Dave, and he told us nobody had come into the shop today, then we knew the surf was definitely pumping. Things have really progressed since then, and where surf meets internet, there is no finer website than "Magic Seaweed" at: http://magicseaweed.com

This site through the cooperative efforts of the worldwide surfing community covers the entire Globe. When I was that little blonde grommet, we had to go to the shop and flick through expensive magazines to see surf in Indonesia or Mexico. At "MSW" you can go to anywhere on the globe and see the latest surf reports, photos, videos, reviews, and anything else you could possibly desire.

They have excellent videos, of amazing surf from around the world, like this YouTube video of an insane break called "The Wedge" at Newport Beach in California. A few days ago they had some really big waves coming in along the California coast, just like these gnarly monsters at Newport:




MSW also has detailed surf reports, weather forecasts, tides, and winds, for all of the main surf breaks around the world. Here is part of today's report for "Phillip Island" which is 75 minutes drive from where I live. (There is closer surf only 20 minutes away from home, but it is often not as big or reliable as the Island).

A key item not shown below is the temperature outside, which is a wintertime cold low here in the southern hemisphere. A big thick "seal impersonator" rubber wetsuit from top to toe would be the order of the day for any water workouts today. I think I will be lazy and stay indoors surfing the Internet.



There is even a section of the MSW site called "Surf Science".
On these pages, Dr Tony Butt has posted several detailed items concerning the mathematics and science of coastlines, waves, storms, and swells:



I could easily keep writing for at least the length of this post again about all of the wonderful live webcams, the photogalleries, the videos, the reports, the featured surfers and exotic locations, but really you have to do the virtual e-travel yourself and check out: http://magicseaweed.com

Enjoy,
Big Passy Kahuna Wasabi

Image Source: http://www.arrowriver.ca/images/surf1.gif

Making Web Pages at Google Sites

The screen capture above is actually stored on my brand new Google Site located at: http://sites.google.com/site/passyworldtestone

It does seem a bit slower to load in than pictures I have stored elsewhere for this blog on my "Passy World" privately run website. However the Google Sites storage is free, whereas my private site is not.

But let me just say in passing that the hosting and support for my private site supplied by http://www.namecheap.com has been nothing short of sensational, and certainly worth every US greenback dollar I've paid them!

Here is a good 3 minute video intro to Google Sites from YouTube,
(actually made by a member of the Google Sites team) :



And this is going to be a very video intensive post, because we now have four videos from Radford University in Virginia U.S.A.
(My old home state from a few years back).

Video 1 - Setting up a Free Google Website:



Video 2 - Adding Content to the Site:



Video 3 - Changing the Appearance and Sidebar

Note: The layout for Google Sites has changed slightly since this tutorial was created. In order to edit the site appearance, you must now click on the "more actions" tab on the top right of your homepage and then click on "manage site." Now on the left-hand side you will see the heading "site appearance" with "site layout," "colors and fonts," and "themes," listed under it. "Site layout" in this case is the same as "site elements" in the tutorial. The rest of the process is the same.



Video 4 - Converting to a Wiki-like Collaborative Site:

The layout for Google Sites has changed slightly since this tutorial was created. In order to share your site, you must now click on the "more actions" tab on the top right of your homepage and then click on "share site." The rest of the process is exactly the same as in the video.



These four tutorials will give you a very good grounding in making free web pages using Google Sites.

However, immediately below, there is also a PDF document that gives step by step guidance on exactly how to set up a Google Site for the first time. In this document we also explore using a Google Site as a document storage warehouse that can feed a Blog.

The PDF document used for the viewable iframe is actually stored on our "Passy World" Private site. This is because the same version of the PDF stored at our Google Site refused to work in the iframe, and only seems to be downloadable into Adobe reader on a local PC.

So this is the one part of our plan that has failed in our quest to use the Google site to totally feed this Blog post.

If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.


Alternatively, you can download the full size PDF from our Google Site location by clicking the link below:

Click to Download the “How to Make a Google Site” PDF

Shown below is a typical education use of Google Sites, where a school teacher has setup a site for her students to use:



Open the full size version of the site by clicking this link:
Mrs Richau's Class

The following link is to a PowerPoint Overview of Google Sites that was obtained from Slideshare.net and has been uploaded to our Google Sites page:

Download Google Sites Presentation as MS 2003 PPT

Note that we can only download the file from our Google Site, and that we cannot open it Online. This seems to be a characteristic of all of the files currently stored on our Google site.

Trying to embed an SWF Open Office version of the Google Sites Powerpoint onto this blog also failed.

IT SEEMS THAT SOMETIME AFTER EARLY JUNE 2009, GOOGLE HAVE PLACED THIS NEW "attredirects=0" SUFFIX ONTO THE FILE NAME OF ALL UPLOADED FILES. This new naming convention somehow stops the files from being linked to from any other web pages or Blogs. It makes the files downloadable only, and not at all viewable online. I have raised a Support Request with Google about the problems this change has caused, and I will update this post when I get a reply back from them.

Conclusions

Considering what can be done with Google Blogs, I was expecting a few more options and fancier templates than what is currently available.

The look and feel of a Google Site is more like a Wiki than a website. Perhaps this is the target market for the product, since Universities and other Education content suppliers seem quite eager to use Google Sites. A Google Site would certainly be a very good way to gather together reference materials for a class of students to use. (But not quite as nice looking as a “Wall” made in “Wall Wisher”).

However, if you have Photos in Picasa, and Presentations and so on in Google Docs, then Google Sites serves as a very nice integration tool indeed.

Personally, I would make a Google Site just to have free access to the 100MB online filing cabinet for my most referenced documents.

But what I find most disappointing is that the filing cabinet, with its direct URLs ending in attredirects=0, can no longer be used to service my Google Blog, or any other web pages. This has all come about since Google started recently suffixing all the file names with the new "?attredirects=0" ending.

Google Sites are perhaps not the fanciest looking free web presence in town, but they are certainly very useful just the same. Each site has 100MB of storage, plenty of flexibility, unlimited pages, and it is totally free of any charges.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Web Quest Treasure Hunts

Image Source: http://www.tonyynot.com/yoda_pirate.jpg

My hero Yoda : the greatest teacher of all.
- After all he was the one who trained the Jedi!

Recently I went treasure hunting on the Internet for some Web Quests for my own young Jedi trainees. I was expecting this to be an easy ten minute job, as I thought the web would be well a wash with a pirate's bounty of worthwhile internet search and find tasks.

Alas me hearties, the quest to find such real treasures proved to be just as elusive as pirate's booty. It seems that many web tasks were written three or four years ago, and sadly a lot of their internal links are no longer working.

Once two or more links are broken, it puts a gaping hole into the whole exercise. The treasure hunt takes a big hit, much like a cannon blast through the side of a pirate's ship!

HOWEVER:
Internet web quests still in good working order were uncovered here:
http://www.ecps.k12.nc.us/dfw/ebaker/WebQuestHomepage.htm

At this site there were good quality internet discovery exercises on:

• Chinese New Year
• “Black Beard" the Pirate (that's gotta be a must-do!)
  
• The Bones Inside Us
• Earth Moon and Sun
  

Another site with quests containing interesting items is:
http://www.museummania.com/treasure.htm
(On some items where the links do not work, just skip those questions).

Other than these sites, not many fully working internet tasks were found.


Image Source: http://www.fabricattic.com/Treasure%20Map%20T060860.jpg

Perhaps I had the wrong treasure map, perhaps I should have worn a patch over both eyes, or maybe I was just sailing sideways in the wrong sea, but that's about all I found.

Still, better than running aground in "crocodile country".

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi
(The Raw Fish and Seaweed Sushi Dog)

Actionscript 3.0 Soccer Game

Use the Mouse to move the lad, and make him kick or head-hit the ball.
Kicks deflect to the left, Headers deflect to the right.
If the ball hits the bottom of the screen, a life is lost. There are three lives.
There are 3 levels of soccer goal scoring to get through to win the game and "beat the computer".

There are a few issues with this online version of the Flash game:

1) We need to do refresh or reload inbetween restarts of the game, or the levels stop working.

2) The ball can get stuck going vertically up and down in the left or right boundaries of the screen. The only way to end this is to move the player away, and sacrifice lives until the game ends itself as a loss.

(Although this is not all bad. After all, it does add a suprise element to the game, via the random occurrence of this unlucky event.)

3) If we do not refresh the blog page between new games, all sorts of strange things happen with the levels, and sometimes the ball starts going faster and faster (to disaster !) as the game progresses.

These issues do not seem to occur on the SWF file when it is played locally on the PC here at home. If someone knows how to fix the online issues, I would be delighted to be enlightened.

This game is actually a "Paddle Ball" game, called "Break the Bricks" that I have changed into a soccer game.

The original Paddle Ball game was built by following the excellent multipart AS 3.0 tutorial at the "Mr Sun" Flash website:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/mr-sun-studios

The following PDF document gives a detailed review of the build with quite a few extra hints and ideas. It also explains how Mr Sun's Paddle Ball game was converted into this Soccer Game. Also included is a step by step guide on how to put the finished Flash Game onto a website or Blog.

If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.

Alternatively, you can view or save the full size PDF by clicking the link below:

Click here to open or save the “Build the Soccer Game” PDF


The following additional PDF provides a full listing of all of the Actionscript code that was used to make the Soccer Game:

If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.

Alternatively, you can view or save the full size PDF by clicking the link below:

Click here to open or save “Soccer Game AS 3.0 Code” PDF

CREDITS:

Nearly all of the AS 3.0 code contained in this game came from Mr Sun’s excellent tutorial on making the “Brick Breaker” game, which can be found at this website:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/mr-sun-studios

I have merely put his code together and added a few changes and extra comments and explanations along the way.

Kenny Sun is the one who deserves the credit for the overall game structure and coding. His Blog is great for learning how to make Actionscript Games.
Do yourself a favor and check it out sometime soon !

Hopefully one day, if we keep doing enough tutorials, we will be able to design games, and write the complete Actionscript code ourselves :)

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

"Robo Chess" Online Chess Game

Play more free flash games at Multigames.com

This is a fun little free Flash game of Chess made by Start Games.

Click the "Play" button to start the game. (Takes a while to load in).

Make sure your speakers are switched on to hear the very informative comments from the Robot.

Note : To "castle": Click the king once first and then click on the rook !

What I like best about the game animation is moving the mouse around the Robot's head, and seeing his eyes follow it in a very human-like manner.

What I like second best is how the Robot just says a simple "Oh No !", when you get him into check mate.

Drawbacks to the game are that the Robot makes his moves very fast, and we cannot see all of our lost pieces stacked up at the side of the board as we play.

There are several other embeddable chess games at: http://www.multigames.com .

But you do not need to CHECK out these MATE, because currently Robo Chess is the highest ranked favorite. :)

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Note: "Robo Chess" is fairly easy to win against, and does not have favorable reviews everywhere on the web. If you are after a more serious challenge then you should probably check out this site:
http://www.expert-chess-strategies.com/
and play some of the Java Chess games there.

Another site with a very good multi-level Chess game that I recommend for players of all abilities is at: http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/chess.html.

AMD Phenomenal Processors

I just can't hold back any longer.
I have to do this shameless AMD "Fan Boy" Post !

The reason being that I am currently putting together a new PC that will be solely used for Gaming. This PC is built around the sensational new "value for money" Phenom X2 550 3.1 GHz Black Edition processor from AMD.

Here is a basic review of the Phenom X2 550 BE:
http://itreviewed.net/index.php/amd-phenom-ii-x2-550-black-edition/

An here is a more detailed review:
http://www.techspot.com/review/171-amd-phenomx2-athlonx2/

Initially the graphics card will be an old cheapy 1GB Nvidia 9600GT, but the plan is to upgrade later to a Radeon 4890 (when funds become available).

The rest of the rig consists of the following:

800 watt Power Supply
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P Motherboard (ATI DDR3)
4GB of Kingston 1333 DDR3 RAM
2 x 750 GB Western Digital HDD Black Performance Series
Gigabyte Poseiden Case
Winfast DTV2000H Digital TV / FM Radio Card
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gaming Sound Card
2 x LiteON DVD-RW
ASUS 24" LCD Monitor

My current rig, that I will be keeping and using for "real" work, is a phenomenal AMD Phenom X4 940 3.0GHz quad core PC. This machine has been brilliant and there seems to be no limit to the number of applications that it can run at the same time. It is also magically fast on all Adobe CS3 Products.

The specifications for this machine are:

AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz processor

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 Motherboard

Nvidia 512MB 9800GT Graphics Card

Winfast DTV2000H PVR2 Digital TV / FM radio card
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music Sound Card

2 x 640GB WD HDD Caviar Black 32mb cache
4GB Kingston DDR2 1066MHz Memory
Antec Earth Watts 750W Power Supply
ASUS DVD-RW

Lite-On DVD-RW
Samsung 24" LCD Monitor

Basic Black case with some colored neons inside it.

Naturally there is no argument that the Intel Core i7 processors are the best, but here in Australia we have to pay too much for them. I have found that I can build AMD computers much cheaper, that consistently do everything that is asked of them.

So if you want good old fashioned "Bang for Buck",
then Get into AMD Phenom !

You will be phenomenally glad that you did.

Enjoy,

Big Passy Wasabi

World Wide Cooking Class

If you like Prawns, then you will love this:


This is "Fettuccine with Roasted Red Pepper Cream Sauce and Grilled Shrimp" from the Blog by Kim at: http://kims-concoctions.blogspot.com

I cooked up this very dish tonight for dinner, and it was a refreshingly enjoyable taste sensation. Being an Aussie, I always enjoy eating prawns. But it was something special to have the lemon bite of the creamy sauce compliment the grilled prawns so perfectly.

Kim's blog is brilliantly written with detailed step by step instructions for each of her recipes. There are also plenty of photos that show exactly what to do at each step along the way.

By following these simple and perfectly illustrated step by step instructions, even complete beginner-boy cooks like me can get through to the end product a-ok.

This is the world wide web of sharing at its best, and it has certainly left a very nice taste in my mouth.

Why not give one of Kim's delicious recipes a go sometime.

Bon Apetit and enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

P.S. A week later I made Kim's "Asian Beef Stir Fry" which was also a truly tantalising taste sensation ! Go to this page for the recipe:
Kim's Asian Beef Stir Fry