Are you a San Diego surfer, kitesailor or paddleboarder who likes to be on camera? A new travel web series centered on adventure and water sports will be filming in San Diego soon, and you could be featured.

CLEAN BREAK, a web series sponsored by Schick Hydro razors and shave gels, will be filming in San Diego June 2-4, with the use of the best servers from sites as https://www.servermania.com/solutions/ddos-protected-servers.htm online. The production company is seeking locals who can serve as location experts to be featured on the show. According to CLEAN BREAK’s Meg Roberts, “The perfect local guide is someone who is charismatic, fun-loving, and who can show people what makes their hometown incredible. Guides should be fun, informed, and ready to share knowledge about San Diego with the crew.”

CLEAN BREAK is looking for the kind of in-the-know info only a San Diego local would have, so only individuals who reside within the San Diego area will be eligible to be selected as a guide.

New episodes of CLEAN BREAK will first be shown on Crackle.com (which had 2.1 million unique visitors in March 2010), and will then be uploaded to the official Hydro Experience YouTube and Facebook channels.

Think you have what it takes? Make a video and upload it to CLEAN BREAK’s YouTube channel by Monday, May 10. The CLEAN BREAK community will vote on all submissions from May 11-18. Candidates are encouraged to round up their friends and get them to vote for their videos on YouTube.

Here’s some of your competition:

• Ric
• Jeff

Links:

• Legal and rules
• Official Facebook community
• Official YouTube channel, where submissions and voting takes place
• Crackle, where episodes will be shown
• Schick Hydro (sponsor) website

The world’s first social media holiday is being celebrated today. Foursquare Day, which is 4/16 (get it? Four, squared?), is the brainchild of a Tampa optometrist who loves the social location-based check-in game Foursquare and thought it should have its own day. Though initiated less than a month ago, the idea spread worldwide and is being celebrated with check-in specials at various businesses and even a unique #4sqDay 2010 badge (pictured at right).

Several restaurants, bars and other businesses in San Diego offer discounts and deals for those who check in to Foursquare on their premises, and some have added special deals just for Foursquare Day.

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Saw a sad thing as I was rolling down Kettner Boulevard this morning – they’re taking the San Diego National Bank sign off its headquarters building.

San Diego National Bank was known for the Wyland mural of whales on the side of its main building and its “whale” logo. Its parent company, FBOP Inc., failed in October, making SDNB the largest local bank to fail during the recent financial crisis.

Let’s hope whoever occupies the building next will be a marine-mammal-loving organization inclined to keep and maintain this landmark mural.

For me, it started with a blaring car horn.

Hearing this sound at 8:00 in the morning is not unusual in our neighborhood. Many tend to hit their horn instead of a doorbell when picking up a friend. We’re resigned to it, though it sometimes inspires my husband to sing “In the ghetto…”

This was different, though. This person was leaning on their horn. Like it was malfunctioning. Or something was wrong.

I went to our second-floor bedroom window that looks out on 22nd Street and glared with my best how-dare-you-some-folks-are-sleeping look. I saw a white minivan parked in front of my house and a Mexican woman standing outside it who seemed agitated. She was arguing with the driver and pointing at the house next door. The horn continued to blare. I wondered if it was stuck and she was trying to tell the driver how to fix it.

Her eyes met mine and she seemed embarrassed, though I think by now I looked more curious than angry. She hurried across the street and the van started driving off in another direction, horn still blaring. What the heck was going on?

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People who enjoy beer and happen to live in San Diego have been getting a treat this week. It’s been “Storm Week” here – meaning the influence of Stone Brewing Co can be felt far and wide.

Churchills, an english pub in San Marcos recently opened up their new renovated bar area – which has 50 tap handles. FIFTY! They have a LOT of really good beer on tap. I’d been threatening Ivan, the owner, that I would be coming in with my camera to take a bunch of beer-porn shots of his new setup – and I finally delivered.

Follow @churchills on twitter for awesome updates, and if you’re bored – check out the rest of my pictures from churchills!

What dangles when you angle? What slides when you dive? How many ladders can they fit in one sub, and must I climb all of them? This and many other questions were answered Friday when a group of 8 bloggers were invited aboard the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine U.S.S. Hampton for an all-day distinguished visitor cruise.

The bloggers included Smarterware’s Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani), NBC San Diego tech correspondent and Mashable associate editor Jenn Van Grove (@jbruin), Mitch Wagner (@mitchwagner), Angie Swartz (@aaswartz), Chris Cantore (@chriscantore), Scott Kingery (@techlifeweb), Rob Marlbrough (@DowntownRob), and me, Peggy Gartin (@thepegisin). The visit was arranged by Submarine Squadron 11’s public affairs officer Lt. Denise Garcia and led by the squadron’s commander, Commodore Brett Genoble. Waiting to greet us were the boat’s commanding officer Commander Bill Houston and his crew of 134.

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• January 16th and 17th
• Intuit, Santa Fe Campus in Carmel Valley
• our wiki

If you’d like to help out – show up around 8:30 am to help the planners unload and setup.

Some tips for those of you for whom this is not news:

• If you’re speaking rehearse your talk. It helps!
• If you’re not done with your talk, don’t wait until the last minute!
• Bring cameras, video recorders, audio recorders, etc. – people love having their talks recorded.
• New to barcamp? Search Flickr, Yahoo or Google for “barcampsd”!
• Not sure what to talk about? Have a peek at this.

Thats it!

See you all Saturday!

I recently got a most startling email: the U.S. Navy would like me to come aboard one of their submarines and blog about the experience.

Lt. Denise Garcia, public affairs officer for Submarine Squadron 11 based at Naval Base Point Loma, invited me and 7 other bloggers to an all-day embark aboard one of their Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines on January 15.

“You’ll be one of the first bloggers the San Diego-based sub community has hosted (I think you may be one of the first for the entire submarine community as well). The sub community prides itself on its silent service, but there’s much to talk about too. I think you’ll find the day aboard fascinating.”

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Everyone and their mother is getting on Twitter. In droves. People are writing code which creates thousands of fake users which follow them, and serve only to artificially inflate their follower count. In this gigantic, ever-growing ocean of Twitter who are examples of folks who are NOT DOING IT WRONG? I have a couple shoutouts to give – because these organizations are doing GOOD and not just sponging up popularity. These are places to do business with – because they behave honorably.

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See more earthquake details at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

I’m usually not awake at 7:35 AM on a Saturday, but today was an exception. While propped up reading a collection of humorous horror stories (“Blood Lite”) with Husband 1.0 snoozing beside me, I suddenly felt like our house had been lightly tapped by a semi. It lasted no more than two seconds.

“Did you feel that?” I said.

“Was that an earthquake?” my now-awake husband said.

My iPhone was in hand in a flash, I pulled up Tweetie, and there was the crowdsourced evidence: tweet after tweet that said “earthquake.”

Turns out our tiny temblor was a 4.0 centered out in the ocean just off the Channel Islands, about 23 miles west of San Diego, and 19 miles west-southwest of La Jolla. Details from the USGS are here.

From my informal Twitter survey, it was felt in downtown, Golden Hill, La Jolla, El Cajon and parts of Carmel Valley. Folks who reported they didn’t feel it were in Cardiff, Carlsbad and easterly parts of Del Mar.

I’m off to get some breakfast now, but here’s a topic for discussion: how come the news events we rely on Twitter to verify are always big, bad and widely felt?