I don’t surf. I would like to learn, but I haven’t yet done that. I snowboard. That’s my thing. It’s what I look forward to doing every single winter. 

But even as a non-surfer, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the movie View From A Blue Moon. A friend told me about it last weekend and I immediately rented it on my Apple TV. (That’s the only thing I have to watch things.)

It’s a movie about John Florence, who is arguably the world’s best surfer right now. He’s from Hawaii. But in addition to John’s incredible surfing abilities, it’s the cinematography and soundtrack that make this movie so special. 

As soon as the movie ended, I immediately went on Soundcloud to find all of the songs. Quentin Tarantino once said that when you pick the right song for a particular scene/movie, you can then never listen to that song ever again without thinking of the movie. That’s how I now feel about this song.

Here’s the trailer (apparently it’s the first surf movie filmed entirely in 4K):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqVqk7FSmY?rel=0]

If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend you give it a watch. There are also some great urban shots for all of the city geeks who read this blog. Let me know what you think if you end up watching it or if you’ve already seen it.

Image: View From A Blue Moon

My condo has an east exposure. That means I get direct sun in the morning and no direct sun in the afternoon, once the sun has crossed over onto the other side of my tower.

But a funny thing happens in the late afternoon and early evening. The sun reaches just the right angle and begins to reflect off the apartment across from me. That apartment is about 11m away.

Once this happens, it then feels like I’m getting direct sun again. It floods my apartment. This may seem like a small thing, but I love it when this happens. It’s happening right now as I write this post.

So I can only imagine what it must have felt like for the residents of Rjukan, Norway when they got their first taste of winter sun back in 2013.

Rjukan is a small town of approximately 3,400 residents. It’s located about 2.5 hours west of Oslo and is situated within a deep east-west valley. 

As a result of its geography, the town is cast in shadow for about half of the year, from September to March. The elevation of the sun is simply too low for direct light to reach down and into the valley.

So what the town did was install a set of solar powered mirrors on top of the mountains. The mirrors – also called heliostats – track the sun and reflect it down into the town’s main square. Now the town gets winter sun.

Interestingly enough, many residents opposed the mirrors before they were built. They viewed it as a frivolous expenditure. Petitions and Facebook pages were created. But now that the mirrors have been installed, most of the naysayers seem to have changed their tune.

I think it goes to show just how important light is, but also how difficult change, of many varietals, can be.

Image: Flickr