Gone

Friends, like most of the iconic structures around the Noosa Shire, this Blog will soon be demolished.

It's replacement is Modyssey (modern + odyssey)

Please follow. Oh and tell your friends the same. Please. Thank you.

INTERMISSION

Friends, lurkers and puzzled aliens, the great god Statisticus has decreed that I have exceeded my storage capacity on this little virtual vehicle of distraction called Brine Time and has barred me from uploading any more imagery of randomness (or even contrivedness).

So let's inhale the joy that is the start of the working week and reflect on some briney stats to date:
37694 visitors
13056 visitors from my island home
850 profile views (OK it was me for maybe 800 of them)
793 posts
578 being the most hits on an individual post - here's the hyperlink
http://brinetimes.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/bing-x-quiver-kaddy.html
49 followers
6 requests to endorse stuff I would never use
1 post without any images - today's
Unable to quantify the number of hours punching the keyboard with my three typing fingers

Despite all this, the demons of creativity command me to continue to explore the mundane in search of aRt and beauty. (The Truth is not "out there".) So I have started another blog called Modyssey - as in modern odyssey. Apparently I can't use Brine Time. So please click on over there to continue our shared love of the brine, aRt, ranting, music, photography, surfing, randomness and beauty. Peace to you and your tribe.

Tuesday Tech

It's only a matter of time until the hordes of iPhones roaming the planet join their evolutionary cousins the GoPro and the Contour re-entering the primordial brine. Aqua Tek are taking up the challenge of developing what we all will later say was "so obvious" a rugged, waterproof iPhone case with solar recharger on the back. Check it out here.
http://www.gizmag.com/aqua-tek-s-iphone-case/21479/pictures

Friday Froth

Wherever you drop anchor 

this weekend. 

I hope you get to 

bury a rail and 

bend a fin.

Empty

Exotica

Yesterday, a mate sent me hyperlink to a surf travel company's web site promoting it's 2012 packaged adventures. The shot accompanying it showed flawless lefts bowling down a point and nobody out. The terms "uncrowded" and "exotic" were not explicitly spelt out - maybe for legal reasons. But they were certainly inferred via the stunning image.
My experience of the same location was more like this shot below - 16 out at dawn and three boats of surfers on the way.
Sometimes the uncrowded wave is in your own backyard (unless that's the Superbank).

Valentines Day

"And think not you can direct the course of love, 

for love, if it finds you worthy, 

directs your course. "

Kahil Gibran

Monochrome Monday (homage)

Q.   Who would have thought that putting bagpipes with electric guitars would result in a rock hit?

A.   Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott (RIP) and his fellow Scottish expats, Angus and Malcolm Young of the Oz band AC/DC, when they recorded "It's a Long Way to Top (If You Want to Rock n Roll)" 36 years ago.

What a crazy journey from Sctotland to Freemantle Prison to international fame and then back to "Freo" cast in bronze. Not many rockers can claim that. That's Bon above, still attracting the birds in Freo, 30 years after his death.

"Ridin' down the highway 

Goin' to a show 

Stop in all the by-ways 

Playin' rock 'n' roll 

Gettin' robbed 

Gettin' stoned 

Gettin' beat up 

Broken boned 

Gettin' had 

Gettin' took 

I tell you folks 

It's harder than it looks"

from AC/DC "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock n Roll)" 1976

The Power of One

I was watching a doco on free-to-air TV about The Power of One author Bryce Courtney and was heartened by the fact that the close up shot showed he was typing even worse then me.

But then the shot pulled back wide and the guy is 78. He says he's had three knee reconstructions, heart surgery, divorce, lost a son, worked in Zambian copper mines and he's probably got arthritis to boot. No wonder he's typing worse then me.

But he's published 20 best sellers in 20 years (No I haven't read any of them). Now that's inspiring.

We all have some great yarns to tell and the telling gets longer and more interesting as the years swing past. Watching that old author pounding away reminded me that you can't leave this creativity gig too late in life to start. I'm going to assemble all those chanced overhearings, family myths and my own badly remembered misadventures and mangle them into my own fictional bio called "Caffein, Cameras and Commuting". There will be special mention of nefarious hijinks. . .not sure if people will still be reading books by the time I get to 78 though.
Have an inspiring weekend.

Souled x sold

While the  Big Names Of Thrusterville suit up with the surfing suits for the Kelly Show Ch13 the surfing fringe will be assembling for The Alley Fish Fry. Get souled, not sold.

Wednesday Wordage (pumpin)

"Something will pan out. It's a magic economy. Yes ! All up and down the coast from Los Angeles to Baja California kids can go to one of these towns and live the complete surfing life"

"They take off from home and get to the beach and if they need palace to stay, well somebody rents garage for twenty bucks a month and everybody moves in - girls and boys."

"Cash - it's practically in the air"

Today's wordage excerpted from the Tom Wolfe book The Pump House Gang 1968.

Inside the Square

Those with access to ancient metal beasts like Rollei and Hassleblad (or even the plastic wonder Holga) will know the joy of the square format. Be warned the next few days are going to be creating within the square.

Monochrome Monday (Mourning)

Today's post dedicated to the family and friends of the surfer who drowned at Moffs on the weekend.

"Eh"

Can't imagine the earth without art or a surfing life without Albe Falzon's iconic surf movie Morning of the Earth. Is the movie aRt? Here's proof that it is? Taken with my phone and shaky hands at the live MOTE performance last weekend. (Then "processed" in iPhoto, T

Instagram and Photoshop i.e. this is not Polaroid people)

Hope your weekend is inspiring.

Happy?

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again 

and expecting different results."

Albert Einstein

Jack (Evans) Lives Here

The Beeverman

Today's post is dedicated to my friend The Beeverman, who is recovering from heart surgery. We have differing tastes in politics and religion. He doesn't surf. I don't understand why a $20K hi-fi would sound that much better than a $3K lo-fi, (especially given the abuse our ear drums have suffered at the hands of live music over the years). Yet, we get along just fine. Get well soon, mate.

Monochrome Monday (wet darkroom)

Strange Days

It's the middle of the day in the middle of summer and it's so dark I have all the lights on so I can see the keyboard. The rain has been non-stop for ever. It seems. A part of my old tin roof is leaking. Intermittently. But I am dry. This is Australia. Bushfires and floods in the same week are standard.

The poor weather has motivated me to once again arm wrestle the digital demons that rule my little laptop. Most of the time I don't understand the digital realm. It has its own logic and pecking order. A truce has been settled and the 11001101 army allow me to log into my own blog. Well I didn't buy my blog but I have visited it for awhile and I do feed it type and pixels. So it's mine. Like Granite Bay is mine because I have visited it for 40+ years.

Ownership is an odd concept around here - especially on Australia Day, which we just had. One of my friends once said "we don't own the land, the land owns us". Her family has been here for thousands of years. The rest of us came here on boats some time in the last 200 years or maybe even last week.

When I whinge about crowds on all manner of crafts, my friend will gently remind me that Australia ain't the same as it was 250 years ago and the crowded surf point is a metaphor for the country. We all arrived here on all manner of crafts. Hoping for a better life. There's ample opportunity for aggro selfishness or for sharing, for being well mannered or being rude. 

Happy belated birthday to Australia. Here's to a better life for all of us - traditional owners, long term locals, fly-in-fly-out miners, wage slaves in the city, battlers in the bush, aliens in UFO's, nature spirits, new migrants and refugees on leaky boats.

(materials used in today's blog were sourced from Germany (cameras), Japan (cameras, film, scanner), USA (film), Great Britain (film), Australia (images, food, electricity, water), China (clothing, analogue camera), Brazil (thongs), Switzerland (watch), New Guinea (coffee) and the whole earth (air))