See you in the lineup – Greg Kroleski signing out

Hey surfers & fans of SurfScience.com – I have some news that is both exciting & a little sad. After three wonderful years I’m hanging up my SurfScience hat and heading on to new projects.

I have LOVED being a part of this community growing into what it is today and am so appreciative for all of the awesome people that have helped along the way. I’ve gotten a chance to sit down and talk with tons of great folks who’s brains are libraries of surfing know-how. It has been my pleasure to help gather that information and try to present it to all of our online readers.

While at SurfScience I was able to help out in many aspects – from marketing to product design and algorithm planning, but one of my favorite parts was writing articles for all of you. A  few of my favorites include:

Indo Board Workouts for Surfers

April Fools 2010 – California Surfbaord Permits

How to Choose the Best Surfboard for Your Waves

I’m excited to see how SurfScience continues to grow and what new projects the rest of the team puts into action. There are a lot of cool ideas in the works!

So, farewell from the digital world, next time I see you will be out in the lineup – catching waves and yew-ing all the way to the shore!

Surf Scientist for Life,

Greg Kroleski

Happy 2nd Birthday Guys!

Yum! Thats the taste of a job well done.

This month marks the 2nd birthday of SurfScience.com. Its hard to believe that just two years ago, our little corner of the surfing-internet didn’t exist.

Where did people go to learn about surfboards?

Who interviewed shapers?

How did people find rating on the boards they wanted to buy?

I’m not sure… but then a few surfers from Orange County had an idea. We would learn everything we could about surfboards and share it with everyone who wanted to listen.

SurfScience.com was born and has been growing like a bean sprout ever since. We’ve had the pleasure of working with some awesome folks from the surfing community throughout the year and have gotten tons of fan mail from our grateful readers.

WE ARE STOKED THAT YOU DIG SURFSCIENCE.COM!!!

So happy birthday to everyone that’s been a part of this ride. I can’t wait to see what our terrible two’s hold in store.

Apple, I Think You Owe Surfing Some $$$ (Also Thanks for Making iOS5)

Most of the time my blog posts are about exciting things in the world of surfing, but today I have a bone to pick. That bone is with Apple Computers, who I feel is a bit out of line.

Let me start by saying, I like Apple. I think they are a great company doing great things and making very cool computers. This post is mostly in jest, but… seriously, there are a TON of surfing pictures on Apple’s website and someone needs to call them out for not having any relation to the sport or culture of surfing.

Background Info: Yesterday Steve Jobs announced a bunch of cool stuff that Apple will be releasing soon including, iCloud, OSX Lion and iOS5. Very exciting things for lots of fan boys everywhere.

While I was checking out their site I noticed a picture of a surfer. Sweet I thought, a surfer.

"Oh sweet, a surfer"

What is SurfScience.com All About?

It has been over two years since SurfScience.com started.  Every so often we like to take a look at where things are and where they should be headed.  Today I’d like to share some of this process with you.

One of the big questions we ask ourselves is what areas of surfing we should focus our efforts on.  Should it be surfboard design?  Surfing tips?  Interviews? Product reviews?

We try to focus on things that are useful to the average surfer instead of talking about what the pro surfers are up to.  While that sort of celebrity stuff is great fun, we believe that you care more about things that will actually impact your surfing.  Things you can apply in the water tomorrow to surf better and have more fun.

I recently took a look at the words that appeared most recently on our site.  I ran a big crawl of our entire site and came up with the most used terms.  (Other than plain English terms)  Here is a nice keyword cloud to show what our focus has been so far.

What SurfScience.com Has Been About So Far

Getting A Custom Painted Surfboard

A surfboard will perform the same regardless of its paint job.  But when your board looks sweet, you probably ride a bit better just because of the confidence boost.

There is no doubt about it, surfers love how their boards look.  Many surfboards sell because of sweet artwork.  Look at …Lost Surfboards.  Sure the boards are great, but would they be nearly as popular if it weren’t for the cool art on every board?

Even pop-out manufacturers are putting cool designs on their boards.

I took a look at the surfboards that are most viewed in the SurfScience.com Board Rack and just like you might have guessed, the boards that look the coolest get the most clicks.  No one wants a plain white board.

Shape Your Own Surfboard

Have you ever wanted to shape your own surfboard?  I did, but thought it was going to cost a ton of money.  In fact, I didn’t even know where to get the tools and materials.  That problem has been solved.  Thanks to Foam E-Z, if you have a few hundred bucks and a free Saturday, you can make your own surfboard.

SurfScience Custom Search by Google

We just got done installing a new search function on our site. The custom search engine by Google will make it easy to find what you’re looking for on SurfScience.  Located at the top right of every page, the search bar is the best way to find what you want faster than a speeding Mick Fanning.

Sacred Craft Spring 2011

Sacred Craft is happening this weekend in Santa Cruz, CA.  If you haven’t heard of the expo yet, what are you doing?  Its basically the premium place to geek out on surfboards.  There is one more day left, Sunday the 20th, so if you’re anywhere near Nor-Cal, make the journey.  Below are some things I enjoyed seeing today.

More info here – Sacred Craft Expo Website

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Here is the crowd at the show.  A lot of people showed up.  As you can see, the building is 50% surfers and 50% surfboards.

Q&A About “The Best Surfboards of 2011”

SurfScience.com just released our newest feature, “The Best Surfboards of 2011.”  This new section of our site pulls data from every surfboard model’s ratings to rank the top surfboards of each category.

This is the first time anyone has done a feature like this using 100% user ratings, so we’re stoked to be able to release it.  Of course, like everything new, there are a lot of questions from surfboard shapers, surfers and industry folk.

I’m going to take a minute here to answer some questions I’ve been emailed in the past week.

Q: How do you calculate the rankings?

A: In our top secret laboratory we have an army of one thousand monkeys with abacuses running complex calculations.  First they look at the performance rankings of each board, taking into account overall score as well as: paddling, maneuverability, stability and speed.  They then look at things like popularity; how often is the board viewed, ranked and commented on.  Finally, they look for consistency in rankings, if a board has a lot of really high rankings and a lot of low rankings, it shows us that there might be something fishy, where as if a board is consistently ranked a 7 or 8, we know that is accurate.

Its a fairly complex equation that results in a new number we call the “SurfScience Score” or “SS Score”  This new number will be appearing around the site more and will be a new way to compare surfboards.

Surf Forecasting with Solspot

As a surfer, knowing when waves are going to hit is important.  Really important.

I remember when I first started surfing, I would just go to the beach whenever I could get a ride.  Sometimes there would be waves, other times there weren’t.  Eventually I figured out to check the surf forecast first, which greatly reduced the number of days I got skunked.

Now, some 15 years later, I’m much busier and have to make the most of small windows of free time.  I can usually only free an hour or two to surf a day so it better count.  After making sure there are going to be waves, I’ve got to check things like: swell direction to pick a break, tide to pick a time, wind conditions to see if its even going to work.  (Let alone what the sandbars have been doing this season.)  Then there are crowds, traffic, parking and all sorts of other things to take into account.