Tim Harper | Blog
Tim Harper's personal blog, covering kiteboarding, Internet and SEO topics
F-One Bandit 3 – Review
Mar 10th
F-One bandit 3 2010 – Review
I’ve had the bandit 3 for just under two months now, and can say that it really is a superb kite. I used to ride slingshot fuels, so the need for direct input on the bar, and quick turning speed were essential in a new kite for me. A few highlights of the kite’s performance that set it apart from anything else I’ve ever flown:
1. The pull from the bandit 3 remains consistent throughout the entire window, the fuels have a very definite sweet spot below 12o’clock and it will slow down as it gets to the edge of the window. This means that when I jump on the new bandit 3, the upward motion is never a jerk upwards, it’s always a very smooth, floaty lift, and then it’s always a smooth float down too.
2. Turning speed, the bandit 3 that I have is a 7m, so it should be quick anyway, but this thing turns on an absolute dime, beating the 2008 fuels I own hands down.
3. Wind range, I’ve been out in 18knots and been happily riding upwind on the bandit 3, and then I’ve also been out in 35knots and been ok too, (just depower and hold on!!). The low end is seriously impressive and this kite will see me through most of the Cape Town wind that we get.
So to give a balanced review I need to mention the two things that I don’t enjoy about the bandit 3…
1. The lines are cheap and nasty – I’m not sure how long they will last, but they really do feel a lot thinner than any other’s I’ve owned.
2. I need to depower to unhook – riding comfortably when I’m on full power on the depower rope, I’ve found that I need to depower if I want to unhook, I’ve also found that when I do unhook the kite is very responsive still, so any tiny tweak sends the kite off into the water, or back to 12o’clock
Overall a fantastic kite, and it is the 3rd generation so F-One has obviously made some improvements along the way. I’ll have to send it through a wave or two to test the construction, but I’d rather not do that for the purposes of a review…
I’ve had the bandit 3 for just under two months now, and can say that it really is a superb kite. I used to ride slingshot fuels, so the need for direct input on the bar, and quick turning speed were essential in a new kite for me. A few highlights of the kite’s performance that set it apart from anything else I’ve ever flown:
1. The pull from the bandit 3 remains consistent throughout the entire window, the fuels have a very definite sweet spot below 12o’clock and it will slow down as it gets to the edge of the window. This means that when I jump on the new bandit 3, the upward motion is never a jerk upwards, it’s always a very smooth, floaty lift, and then it’s always a smooth float down too.
2. Turning speed, the bandit 3 that I have is a 7m, so it should be quick anyway, but this thing turns on an absolute dime, beating the 2008 fuels I own hands down.
3. Wind range, I’ve been out in 18knots and been happily riding upwind on the bandit 3, and then I’ve also been out in 35knots and been ok too, (just depower and hold on!!). The low end is seriously impressive and this kite will see me through most of the Cape Town wind that we get.
So to give a balanced review I need to mention the two things that I don’t enjoy about the bandit 3…
1. The lines are cheap and nasty – I’m not sure how long they will last, but they really do feel a lot thinner than any other’s I’ve owned.
2. I need to depower to unhook – riding comfortably when I’m on full power on the depower rope, I’ve found that I need to depower if I want to unhook, I’ve also found that when I do unhook the kite is very responsive still, so any tiny tweak sends the kite off into the water, or back to 12o’clock
Overall a fantastic kite, and it is the 3rd generation so F-One has obviously made some improvements along the way. I’ll have to send it through a wave or two to test the construction, but I’d rather not do that for the purposes of a review…
f-one_bandit_3_most_wanted
- f-one bandit 3 Kite
Google’s site performance tool needs some more work.
Feb 3rd
I just read a nice intro to the new site performance tool (that is currently in labs) on seomoz by a guest blogger scotiasystems: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimizing-page-speed-for-ranking-using-google-tools And decided to check it out in webmaster tools:
The site performance tool looks as vague as all the other webmaster tools stats, but it does have some interesting data:
For one of my US hosted sites (Dedicated hosting on 1 server) I get:
Speed rating of between 0-20 On average, pages in your site take 3.5 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 58% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is 25.14 KB)
And for comparison a Kenyan hosted site (2 servers with double the hardware specs each AND a load balancer), I get the following stats: Speed rating of between 0-50 “On average, pages in your site take 9.6 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 92% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is only 6.88 KB – built for mobile)
So the site is really slow to google’s crawlers, but do they take into account that they may be crawling a page from half way around the world? I wouldn’t mind so much if I hosted on a server down the road from Mountain View California, but because this is Africa, I’m a little concerned.
Another issue I picked up is that google’s very own page ads and analytics scripts are picked up as possible solutions to increasing the speed in your page load times, as they suggest:
Minimize DNS lookups The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
So, make your pages faster by writing your own analytics and ad server, and try to be located close to us, thanks google, very helpful.
Ushahidi – Haiti earthquake response
Jan 14th
I’ve been following the progress of ushahidi for a while now, it’s a crowdsourcing platform for crisis information, and was first used in the post election violence in Kenya in 2007. Since then they have taken the platform from strength to strength, and have got some real exposure with the latest deployment covering the Haiti earthquake that happened yesterday. There’s a great blog post explaining what ushahidi has managed to do in an extremely short space of time here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/01/13/haiti-earthquake/
I take my hat off to the Ushahidi team for their efforts over the last 24hours, you have done a superb job at getting the platform up and running, and by the responses coming in to the system, I know that this project will make a real difference in the relief efforts.
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ for more details and up to the minute reports from the island itself.
As a side note, it’s the first time I’ve seen google’s ‘Latest Results’ when doing a search for haiti earthquake in their results page. http://www.google.co.za/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=haiti+earthquake
It scrolls real time search results as they are indexed by google, fairly impressive I must say!!
Nobile NHP 3D 2010 Kiteboard | Review
Dec 31st
So it’s been quite a while since I did a review of any new kit I tried out and liked, and now that I’ve had my brand spanking new Nobile NHP 3D 2010 board out on the water for a number of sessions I figured I should give it a review.
So the first thing I noticed out of the box was was the massively different rocker, it looks a lot more like a wakeboard than a Kiteboard, and it’s obviously being aimed at a more wake focused rider. So this being said I was a little apprehensive about how it would perform in the wind chop that we get in Cape Town. First time on the water it just felt so beautifully smooth, so that worry was totally unwarranted. The next thing I noticed was the almost zero amount of spray that came of the heel edge and up into my face while kiting, I’ve got no idea which part of the board design is responsible for this, but it seriously makes a huge difference.
Next thing I noticed was the Pop, now a lot has been said about it and brands always mention this as a selling point, but i noticed a huge amount more effortless pop than my previous ‘06 555 board. The 3D moulded bottom is another selling point from nobile, it’s basically a wakeboard style channel system that runs the length of the board, and it does make a fairly significant difference to landings, they just feel a lot more stable than my previous board, so yes, not just marketing hype on that one either.
One bit of marketing hype is the human concept (?), what a name! And seriously, a slightly different shaped toe edge to heel edge is not a new concept at all, it’s been around on snowboards for ages. The difference is barely noticeable, the one on the new T5 is very noticeable, so i’m not quite sure on why it’s such a huge part of the board description.
Last but not least that I should mention is the inclusive IFS Pro footpads, which I’m a huge fan of, at least they aren’t an additional cost when buying the board.
That about sums up my experience on the board, I’m really enjoying it and will leave you with the following images:
(Mine’s the black one, oooh she’s a beauty!)
nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard
nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard_specs
More details on the nobile website:
Kiteboarding Tofo | Mozambique
Dec 29th
Tofo Mozambique is an amazingly beautiful place, right near the inhambane peninsula / lagoon but on the indian ocean side, it’s Africa though so be prepared for the heat, the mozzies and the 2M beer!
Here’s a brief run down of the kiting that I managed to get done in Dec 09:
We were there for around 10 Days, and 3 of them were kiteable with a 14m, this is not the windy season so it’s to be understood. There was almost no swell at all either, so some nice flat sections between the waves. The light 10-12knot wind was from the East, so onshore too which made things a bit more difficult to get out for some, but I still managed to get out beyond the breakers. According to Rowan from tofo kite the wind is a lot better from the NE and SW, though to me it looked as though NE would be best suited for cross on conditions. The SW would have to come over a large hilly section of land before it hit the main beach.
There are three main spots:
Tofo main beach, which is right in front of Tofo town with loads of restaurants and a fairly large sand bar creating a super flat spot on the inside, though because it was busy holiday season this was full of swimmers. There is also a few dive charter boats and fishing boats going in and out of the beach but not enough to get in the way.
Tofinho point, this is a fairly famous surfing spot with a sick looking right hander, the beach is mainly rocky reef right on the point and then there’s a flat reef that runs the whole way up the beach towards Tofo. Sketchy launch apparently, so not many guys kite it.
Barra, this is north of Tofo and will have a good cross shore on an Easterly if you are on the northerly part of the peninsula, this runs all the way into the lagoon. Otherwise it’s also good on a NE (apparently).
The water was nice and warm, round 23-25deg celcius, so boardies and a rashy all the time, just watch out for the blue bottles and jellyfish, they give a mean old sting, but taking a piss on it takes out most of the burn.
We stayed at Turtle Cove, a Surf and Yoga Lodge / Camp Site – We were very unimpressed by the accommodation though, I’ll post the open letter of complaint to them here when we have put it together.
Tim
Is all the South African VC only going to go to internet startups with proven revenue models?
Oct 9th
With the recent news of the springleap investment by Lord Duncan Barratt(??) (Original press release) it left me wondering whether initiatives like Siliconcape will ever really help South African internet startups get anywhere.
Most bootstrapping, hardcore internet startups do not have any idea on their revenue model when they get going (dare I mention twitter?). They pretty much have a great idea, work on it until it’s a finished product, launch it, and go broke. Whether you like it or not, startups don’t fund themselves and there is a significant amount of work to be done to get any form of company going, which in turn requires time, and ultimately you need a salary to be able to eat.
I really like the idea of SiliconCape, I think that there is a great tech community in Cape Town, and bringing all the top Internet guys together and branding them correctly will definitely attract more top talent to our Fine City.
BUT
In terms of actual VC investment though, how many other startups have been funded in the last few years in SA? (Ok I actually have no real data to support this)
Mxit was selling themes and wallpapers before it received it’s boost from Naspers, so is this the general trend, start making some money, however small, and then get somebody to take you to the next level??
Carrier Pigeon Faster than ADSL in SA – Winston now an internet celebrity.
Sep 10th
So I first read about this story here:
And then got a few more links sent to me about this story:
Second Story
Which was probably prompted by the huge response to it trending on Twitter:
And many other sites mentioning it:
Mashable
Reuters
Classic.
Follow Winston here:
Winston
Classic SEO quotes
Sep 7th
Avinash Kaushik Quotes that Belong on Hallmark Cards:
(Specifically related to Analytics)
7. Not segmenting data is a crime against humanity.
6. Never let your campaigns write checks that your website can’t cash.
5. I believe God created the internet so we could fail faster.
4. Magazine advertisements are faith based initiatives.
3. All data needs context, even server errors go up and to the right over time.
2. Bounce rate is brilliantly dumb. It shows that your customers came, they puked, they left.
1. Social media is like teen sex, everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.
Kiteboarding Hurghada Egypt – Magawish Hotel
Sep 4th
What a contrast, Beautiful blue water, Rough hard dry desert, and fat russian tourists.
Flying into hurghada the blue coral reefs are simply amazing from the air and coming into land we spotted kites up and polesurfers cruising across the water.
Had an airport holdup – prayer time – so we couldn’t interrupt the customs officer, to be expected really.
Driving through the town of Hurghada it reminded me that we were still on the african continent, unfinished building works and rubbish all over the place, but definite signs that they were trying to spruce the place up, although failing quite miserably.
Our transfer driver tried to sell us a trip to Luxor, at a ridiculous price, we declined.
The hotel reception reminded me of something out of a russian spy movie, shady characters smoking in the corners trying to look inconspicous, awful interior decor and well, fat russian tourists.
Eventually got to our room after almost murdering a reception monkey, a bellboy and the transfer driver, 22 hours worth of travelling will do that to you. (Did I mention Egypt Air is stuck in the 80’s?)
Headed to the Kite center, boards assembled and all sorted to get on the water, go out on my 11m and end up far downwind. Disaster. First lesson learned, wind is up at 9 / 10am and ends by 3 everyday, like clockwork.
I was on my 9m and 11m for almost every single day, I had to borrow a 14m for one day and had one session on my 7m. So 12 days later I was absolutely poked, body ached, hands were falling apart and I cracked a bone in my foot, but had one of the best kiting experiences ever, super flat water out at the sandbar, with consistent wind and warm warm water.
We didn’t venture out of the resort much, but after having 3-4 hour sessions every day, sometimes with another afternoon session, we didn’t have much energy, so stuck to a few beers at the shisha bar on the premises.
I read a review about the all inclusive restaurant before we went and it said the staff were like bolivian prison gaurds, this is totally not true, they were all fairly attentive (as attentive as an egyptian can be) and some were even friendly. The food was average but not bad by any standards, the variety was fine for a week, but after day 13 I couldn’t wait for something other than cafeteria food.
The Colona Watersports kite center was ok, a little bit pricey (45euro for the week for rescue / beach access and 70euro for 2 weeks), but the staff were easy going and always willing to help. The launch and land area was really tiny, and gusty and if it gets busy it can be a nightmare, but if you aren’t experienced enough, just dump your kite and they’ll come fetch you.
All in all a great holiday, just remember you are still in Africa and watch out for the fat russian tourists. (or Aim for them if they are in the water!!)
Pics on:
Tim Harper Facebook.
Bing and Yahoo sitting in a tree…
Jul 30th
Bing and Yahoo sitting in a tree…
So what does it mean?
There’s a fairly lengthy explanation in terms of SEO here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-10-things-the-microsoftyahoo-deal-change-for-seo
But what it really comes down to is this:
There are now two main Search players, Bing vs Google, all others will probably either fall by the wayside or be eaten up by one or the other.
Google now has one, very specific opposition, and Microsoft are probably out to give google a very good run for their money.
How they stack up:
Google:
Currently have superior presence, both US and internationally, consumers see them as a household name. Their webmaster tools / analytics / adsense management is very well established and easy to integrate with each other.
Bing:
Not a household name yet, webmaster tools etc needs a lot of work, and they do not have even close to the volumes of Google. They do however have one of the worlds largest corporations behind them, with reaches into most major economic centers.
(check out micosoft locations vs google locations to get an idea of local offices)
http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/default.aspx
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations.html
Microsoft has now acquired the search business of yahoo
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2009/tc20090728_826397.htm
So what does it mean?
There’s a fairly lengthy explanation in terms of SEO here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-10-things-the-microsoftyahoo-deal-change-for-seo
But what it really comes down to is this:
There are now two main Search players, Bing vs Google, all others will probably either fall by the wayside or be eaten up by one or the other.
Google now has one, very specific opposition, and Microsoft are probably out to give google a very good run for their money.
How they stack up in my opinion:
Google:
Currently have superior presence, both US and internationally, consumers see them as a household name. Their webmaster tools / analytics / adsense management is very well established and easy to integrate with each other.
Bing:
Not a household name yet, webmaster tools etc needs a lot of work, and they do not have even close to the volumes of Google. They do however have one of the worlds largest corporations behind them, with reaches into most major economic centers.
Check out microsoft locations vs google locations to get an idea of local offices:
http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/default.aspx
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations.html
So it will be interesting to see how things play out, the tried and trusted brand or the oversize bully that is able to place it’s product exactly where it wants it, in your face.
