Taken with photosynth and edited by using camera plus on the iPhone 4S

Dive logging software has moved on a lot from the original paper based log books and  Suunto style desktop applications.  One thing divers like to do is to talk and relive their dives with friends over a beer.  With the advent of the iOS based dive loggin apps,  you can synchronise logs between your dive computers (I sync my Suunto and VR3), manual dives performed without a dive computer, pictures, ratings and equipment used easily out in the field.  My preferred dive logging app is Dive Log Manager for the iPhone.  It’s made up of the iPhone app and free desktop companion to synchronise with either your desktop software and/or dive computer.

The third category is dive planning – which can be split between recreational and technical planning. With Padi’s move away from teaching the basics of using the RDP process to using software and more people wanting to dive on Nitrox, it is certainly useful to have a dive planning tools for recreational dive purposes at hand.  I’ve seen far too many people dive “blind” by following a guide not knowing the implications of their choice of gas.  There are a number of free apps that allow you to plan repetitive dives with limits on the Air/Nitrox mix and several Pro apps which remove the restrictions.  They also have hand calculation tools all divers to work out the best mix for depth, equivalent air depths and max bottom times.  Apps such as iDiving, iDive and iDive Nitrox have similar functionality and costs.

Technical diving introduces a few more issues – multiple gasses including trimix, multi-level, gas bailouts, VPM models, conservatism and the list goes on.  Most technical divers would travel with a laptop installed with either V-Planner  or some derivative so that they can iterate through numerous scenarios to optimise depth, time, gas and risk.  A new alternative is to carry your planning software (and diving history) on your iPhone or iPad.  V-Planner was migrated over to the iOS platform early on and provides an excellent planning tool (Warning : Always double check you plan with an alterative source where possible to reduce the risk of error!). V-Planner presents the VPM decompression model and includes both VPM-B and VPM-B/E model versions. The diver can specify any combination of nitrox or trimix, and as many deco gases as required. Planning methods include both OC and Closed Circuit Rebreather. It includes planning for bailouts with SCR and OC legs in a CCR plan. Includes details of ppO2, END, and gas consumptions. It includes many of the features from the desktop version such as conservatism adjustments, extended stops, adjustable last stops, the planning monitor system and extensive control over many other planning features. Also included is a set of dive planning tools for calculating best mix, maximum operating depth (MOD), END, EAD and other planning considerations. The Mixer utility for blending nitrox and trimix, is included too.

A new app on the block is the Baltic Deco Planner, an app that is similar in functionality to V-Planner but a little more polished with respect to the user interface.  The best addition is the graphing capabilities – very useful for looking for your off-gassing points and on deeper dive profiles looking for potential isobaric counter diffusion events.

Finally, there’s the social apps and or travel tools.  There are a couple of niche players out there who think that the diving community need their own collaboration platform such as Diving Dude, DiveTime and the aptly named “The best scuba diving and snorkelling locations”.  Unfortunately, I find that little applications such as Facebook, Google and TripAdvisor cover those bases quite comprehensively already!

1. Fill lower bowl with pre-heated water
2. Insert upper vessel containing measured amount of coffee
3. Apply heat source to lower vessel – the water will rise and mix with the coffee in the upper vessel.
4. Once all the water has migrated to the upper vessel (there will be a little residual water) leave heat on for approximately 1 minute
5. Remove heat and watch the wonder of gravity and pressure differentials (the vacuum) draw the coffee back down
6. Remove upper vessel and enjoy your coffee

http://vimeo.com/34564139

I’ve built a custom slider using the same components from Igus for my Canon 7D but the mobislyder looks a little more portable (given it’s only 35cm long).  Stylish and compact, mobislyder adds controlled flowing movements to your production, letting you create a variety of shots in an effortless and elegantly simple way. mobislyder comes with 5 different mounts so there are numerous ways to attach it to your device.

Specifications of the Lomokino

• Film type : 35mm
• Exposure area : 24mm x 8.5mm
• Frames per. roll (36 exp.) : 144 frames
• Frame rate : Approximately 3-5 frames per second
• Taking Lens : 25mm
• Angle of view : 54 degrees
• Aperture : f/5.6, f/8, f/11 (Continuous aperture)
• Shutter speed : 1/100
• Film Advancing : Manual
• Film Counting : Volume display
• Focusing : (Normal) 1m~infinity, (Press button for) 0.6m close-up
• View finding : Inverse-Galileo foldable viewfinder
• Flash sync : x-sync (hot-shoe)
• Tripod mount : Standard 1/4″ tripod screw

Having a look around on the market highlights some of the more popular but expensive video monitors – aka the Marshall line which start around £700. Not wanting to spend that much, a number of blogs point towards Lilliput. Lilliput are a manufacturer more commonly associated with the automotive industry – in providing headrest mounted monitors for people who want to add a little bling to their “ride”.

The model I went for was the Lilliput 669GL-70NP/C – 7″ HDMI monitor (bought of eBay with a spare battery, hot flash adapter and cable). It’s a nice package which can either be attached to the cameras hot shoe or, if space and equipment allow, on another tripod. Small enough to fit in my camera bag and with the extra battery it easily lasts the day.

As you can see from the first image, it’s great for when you’re zooming in on subjects with manual focus. Below is an image where I’m using it for macro. Shooting video using the monitor is a breeze – and if you don’t need to see the shooting info then you can utilise the full 16:9 ratio that the camera pumps out. Oh, it also comes with a hood shade – which projects out an inch.  Not that much use but given that it pops off easily, that’s not too much of a problem.

The only issue you’re likely to encounter with the lilliput monitor is the battery compartment.  To open the compartment you’ll need a philips screw driver to remove the cover.  A bit of a pain but not the end of the world.

As a side note, I’ve also powered the monitor using my Tekkeon MyPower MP3750 Rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery for a long long time.  When plugged into the monitor it also charges the lilliput’s internal battery.

Tekkeon MyPower charging Lilliput Monitor

Canon Battery Pack LP-E6
Hoya 58mm HMC NDX4 Filter
Hoya 58mm Circular PL Filter
Ex-Pro 58mm White Balance Lens Cap.
Canon PowerShot G10
HDMI to Mini HDMI Cable
Air Duster
LCDVF LCD View finder
Giottos MH621 Sliding Quick Release Adapter Plate
Canon TC 80N3 – Camera Remote Control – Cable

And the two things that go over my shoulder are

Giotto – 4 Section Pro Carbon Fibre Tripod With Two-Way Column
Giottos MH5001

The road from Lhasa ascends quickly to the plateau (don’t look out of the side window if you suffer from vertigo) and then follows the newly constructed railway that runs from Lhasa to Beijing.  As my guide points out – “It used to be much beautiful before they built the railway right through here” – an odd comment from a chinese guide….

After many, many, many more checkpoints we arrive at Laken pass at an altitude of 5190m to an impromptu snow storm. Looking around you could think that the snow up here is a one off as I seem to be the only “tour” with a 4*4. The drive down from the pass to the lake is both spectacular and frightening. Snow, ice, slush, lorries and Yaks all seem to be on a suicide mission – or perhaps they’re just late for the next checkpoint.

Permits checked for the last time we drive along the peninsular to the Tashi Dor monastery. Unfortunately, the thing that stands out the most here (and does elsewhere in Tibet) is the number of Chinese tourists. Yaks line the lake ready to have the Chinese hop on it’s back for the obligatory photo shot. A little further down the peninsula, a chinese couple are getting married. A notable omission to the general scenery are the Tibetans – I hope they have found a more peaceful place to enjoy their heritage.

There’s nothing worse than after an awful train ride is to be awoken at 5:30am to only look out of the window to see a sprawling mass of smoke belching factories and what looks like very basic housing. Welcome to Ulaanbaatar!

To say the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar are ugly would be quite right. The influence of Soviet architectural and town planning is evident.It seems that very little thought has been given to people and the environment. Factories, probably unregulated, are only srperated by waste ground and opportunistic housing. Even the Mongolian ger makes a sporadic appearance. Whether or not they were here before the factories is doubtful.

They love the Beatles in Ulaanbaatar

Arriving at yet another station, a quick look at the map in the lonely planet it should only be a short walk to peace avenue. As it’s 6am, why not – doubt anything is open and it’s unlikely that my room will be ready. Joined by Camile, Gregoire and Morgan we set off. A few minutes later and it becomes obviously that the cartographer for the lonely planet has never been to Ulaanbaatar or there’s been significant tectonic activity as things are futher away than they seem!

45 mins later, several offers of rides, hostels and we’re at Sukhbaatar sq. Quite impressive given the mainly russian style buildings along the route. The Swiss trio decide to look for a place to stow gear while I try to find some coffee – but before we can go our seperate ways we’re joined by a karate teaching American expat by the name of Thamous (one day he’ll be famous-his line, not mine) who offers some help and whisks the Swiss off!

Most of the places for eating are close to the Sukhbaatar square. Silk road bar and grill- off the main road down from Sukhbaatar sq, serves a variety of euro style food but also have shish kebabs on the menu. Good, but you could probably find better. The view if the “temple” is of a brick wall. Don’t come for the view.

California- good lunchtime spot given the outside gazeebo – very welcome shade when it’s pushing 34. Extensive western menu but the beef steak salads are best. Good sized lunch for around 15,000 mnt. For a great curry I’d recommend trying the Taj Mahal in the Ulaanbaatar Hotel (The only five star hotel in Mongolia – so they say!)

Drinking out is a little bit easier unless it’s the first day of the month as no alcohol can be purchased! So, either buy it the day before or raid the mini bar! In summer there’s quite a few marquees up in the town in an around Sukhbaatar sq and along Seoul st. It seems such a waste to venture into an underground bar given the weather so I stayed outside.

A relaxing in Ulaanbaatar for a couple of days, I headed off to Terelj National Park. There are a number of travel agencies around that can organise anything from a simple walk around Ulaanbaatar or for a full on desert expedition across the Gobi. I opted for a more classical trip into the middle of nowhere and a stay in a traditional mongolian ger. One thing travelling by train that is great is the general feeling of safety – one thing you don’t get in a mongolian transfer! Quite simply, they all have a death wish! On arrival I’m greeted with a traditional airag (fermented horse milk) and shown to my Ger.

Thankfully I’d packed sufficient clothes and gadgets to enable my survival of the grid! Especially the Handpresso Wild Expresso Maker and my folding 12w solar charger. An additional benefit to having the handpresso is that it’s a great ice breaker with the locals whilst travelling. All you need is some hot water (in a flask) and handpresso compatible e.s.e pod. Nearly everyone is familiar with cameras, ipods, eReaders but not with the amazing taste of an espresso in the wild!

The surrounding mountains of the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park are stunning – if not a little cold and on occasion very wet. Most of the other guests elected to be driven around the sites but with my trusty Garmin Colorado GPS and tasted for a little peace and quiet, I just wandered up and down the mountains.

Back in Ulaanbaatar for a day before the the train leaves for Beijing and time to check out some more of the historical sites. While I was there the Nairamdal Park was closed for refurbishment but the Gandan Monastery, Winter Palace of Bogd Khan and Museum of National History were all open and well worth a visit.

Irkutsk……nearly three quarters of the way to Beijing and the largest city in Siberia.  Famous for the many Russian exiles who were sent there for their part in the Decembrist revolt and lake Baikal – the worlds oldest and deepest lake. So what does a diver do with such a tempting dive site so close?

A quick phone call to Gennady Misan and all was set for a dive in the worlds largest fresh water lake. Picked up at 9am and off to the dive shop – hidden nicely away in an industrial estate in the south west of Irkutsk (Krasnokazachja 85). Fitted out with full 8mm wetsuit with additional shorty on top.

Simeoni returns from Lake Baikal

Driving in russia is extreemly similar to Bali. The roads switch from a nice dual carridge way to a pot hole ridden nightmare. Travelling in a unmodified suzuki minivan(I.e. Driver on the wrong side) we duck and dive through the traffic in Irkutsk(past a very nasty looking pileup) and on to the long winding road to lake baikal. The view is slightly reminicent of the train journey. Tree, tree,  tree – you get the picture.

After rounding a bend slightly to fast, we’re at the lake – although it looks more like the coast of a sea and looks quietly serene – few ripples but nothing major.

Good news – visibility(normally 40m+) might be as good as 2m today as the water is a bit too warm  and therefore a big algae bloom (- 12′c) yippeee!!!!

Kit up and we’re instruction time. Shore dive with a 50m swim out to the drop off. I’m buddied with Simeoni (a doctor living in Moscow but originally from Irkutsk) Katia, the dive lead, is with some chap whose turned up in a pick up lorry and has a very useful scuba knife. Long story short – no visibilty, lost a diver, saw a sponge and then surfaced 35 mins later. Upon the offer of a second dive, I’ll decide to sit it out as I’m off to the Caribbean in a months time. Take me back to Irkutsk please – never thought I’d say that so soon! If your thinking of diving in lake baikal, do it in the winter and you’ll get a full drysuit and see something.

Back in Irkutsk and it’s time for a wander around town.  Walking around town during the summer is quite a pleasant experience with a number of outdoor bars and streets lined with wooden buildings.  In the more central area you’ll find the usual western brands taking over the place.

Tewodros Shiferaw Asfaw

Approximately 18,000 runners took to the streets between North Greenwich and Woolwich taking in the picturesque parks for the Run to the beat half marathon.  Conditions were quite good for the runners, overcast and a relatively cool, but not great for taking photos.  The mens race was won by Tewodros Shiferaw Asfaw (bib number 2) and Hellen Jemutai (bib number 32) winning the womens.

To illustrate the title of this post, here’s the link to my flickr set showing some people looking good, and others….. well, you decide.

So, with the impending launch of the iPad I was interested in it’s capability to provide a preview and back up capability. Obviously the 64GB of onboard storage would never be enough, so the article by Maxwell C Shay raised more than an eyebrow. However, one key issue with the process to access an external drive is to logically mount the drive so that it can be accessed through iFile. The demonstration shows this being achieved by using SSH from a laptop – which rather defeats the purpose of a reasonably self contained solution.

So, I tried to write a simple app that could be run from SpringBoard which would either mount or unmount a connected drive (as per Maxwell’s instructions). Unfortunately, that was a no go – no matter how I tried to execute the shell commands nothing would mount. Now, given that I would have my iPhone in close proximity the simple answer was to use a SSH client from the iPhone to execute the commands remotely – while on the same wifi network. All you have to do is install something like TouchTerm (MobileTerm is not yet compatible with the iPad) and create a connection for Home (i.e. 127.0.0.1 with the usual root credentials).

As I chose to purchase the MiFi instead of the 3G iPad, I have an extremely compact wifi router (doesn’t need a 3G signal to create the network) So I simply connect the external drive to my iPad, issue the command from my iPad and then browse, move and organise my files without the need of the bulky MacBookPro or under powered netbook.

You’ll have to jailbreak your iPad – I’ve had this working on both 4.2 and 4.3 betas.  iFile now behaves like Finder in OSX and will display the attached drive as a Flash Drive (with eject icon), so you can skip the SSH steps mentioned in the Maxwell C Shay article. This greatly simplifies the copying and moving of files to and from GoodReader.

So far I’ve had this working fine with SDHC cards from my Kodak Zi8, Sony MHS-PM5KV Bloggie 360 and Canon EOS 7D. Even though iPhoto seems to download the files (if there’s a DCIM folder somewhere on the card) it doesn’t play well with the HD video footage so just launch them from iFile into VideoPlayer.

• Paula
• Lumba Lumba
• Richelieu (Thailand)
• Sipadan
• Green Island (Taiwan)

Trying to work out the logistics wrt to travel and timings for the liveaboard departure dates – which isn’t proving to be too easy!  I may even get the train from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur at this rate to minimise the dive/fly safety margin!

If I haven’t already tried out some stupid sports, this ranks high up the list.  An outfit called Bigfoot Hostel’s offer a Volcano boarding package at around $28. This 4.5-hour excursion will have you climbing to the top of Nicaragua’s ominous Cerro Negro volcano, only to mount a sit-down board and travel at speeds of up to 50 mph while sliding down the slope to the bottom. To add to the thrill, Cerra Negro remains an active volcano, and Bigfoot even throws in a post-boarding mojito to help ease any bumps and scrapes you may have earned on your trip down. (from Uncrate)

Landcruiser tackles the track

Just through the village is the local football pitch (as it’s just near the end of summer, there’s no grass to be seen anywhere). In a barn at the end of the pitch is where we find the Amanwana transport – two classic landcruisers.

The track heads up from the village at an aggressive angle – no problem for the landcruiser or driver. As the track winds higher and higher, livestock and crops are separated by makeshift wooden fences. Nothing on the way looks permanent or very fertile in the midday heat. Reaching the end of the track, we dismount and start the short trek under the shade of trees. Ten or so minutes up the track we hit the first of several spring fed pools. Assured that better pools are yet to come, we push on. Arriving at the main set of pools, no one needs any encouragement to discard their heavier clothes and dive (or gently lower themselves) into the refreshing pool. Generally around 2 metres in depth, the water is clear and very refreshing.

Limestone waterfall

Lying face up in the water, you realise that you’re not the only ones enjoying the limestone pools. Several macaque monkey sit comfortably in the trees watching their fellow (if not larger) cousins enjoying the cool water.

The reason for their attention becomes clear once we exit the pool and return to the fruit buffet and coconut set out by our guides. Suitably refreshed we set back of down the track to the village.

It’s nearly a year on since the operation to sort out my back following my less than successful visit to whistler and I stumble upon a very fitting tshirt from zoozoo2.

LIVERPOOL 3 – 6 ARSENAL

sorry but this restaurant has closed -  shown for historical purposes only

Outswinging corner from right by-line taken right-footed by Francesc Fabregas (Arsenal) to near post, clearance by Mario Fillinger (Hamburg).

Air Bali operate a phenomenal private charter service in and around the Island of Bali.

On this occasion, we were picked up from the beach outside KuDeTa and whisked off to Lembongan island. The trip which would normally take 3-4hrs by car and boat took only 20 mins and provides a unique view of the islands.

It was so good we arranged to have them take us back at the end of our stay on Lembongan!

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Something top end financial companies should think about (mentioning no names….)

“googol”

“a unit of quantity equal to 10^100 (1 followed by 100 zeroes). The googol was invented by the American mathematician Edward Kasner (1878-1955) in 1938. According to the story, Kasner asked his nephew Milton Sirotta, who was then 8 years old, what name he would give to a really large number, and “googol” was Milton’s response. Kasner also defined the googolplex, equal to 10^googol, that is, 1 followed by a googol of zeroes. These inventions caught the public’s fancy and are often mentioned in discussions of very large numbers.”