Venice Beach Shark Tooth Dive

Pico and I went to Venice beach on a trip with Diver’s Supply yesterday. Even though the water was a chilly 65 degrees, it was a fun dive. It was way more relaxed than the ones from the boat and I didn’t really have a buddy to keep up with per se. Pico couldn’t sink the first time out so I just dug around for a while by myself. The second time I lost him within a couple minutes of diving.

Though we were there for shark teeth, I apparently don’t have the eye for it. I wish I had taken my camera with me because I saw some neat wildlife. I saw a really crazy white blob thing straight away the first dive. It was spherical but with split ridges that ran around it with what looked like some tentacles in the middle. That was my favorite. My second favorite thing was a translucent anemone with light purple spots on the tentacles and little white tentacles with red tips in the very center.  The others found an artificial reef where they had some luck. When we went out the second time Pico had some more weight on him but I still lost him within the first couple minutes. Visibility was about four feet. I just popped up occasionally and swam over towards the dive flag. I spent a lot of time looking at interesting sea life. I saw a couple of sea urchins, lots of hermit crabs, a few fishes, tons of mollusks, corals, and some kind of tube worm with tentacles that look like stringy snot. They withdrew the tentacles when disturbed. I am really glad stuff like that doesn't get as big as we do.

New Phone – the Palm Pre

Well this is a nifty little device. I like it overall. I used to use a Palm Treo 700p but when Verizon started giving away the Pre and the wireless hotspot plan that goes with it, I just couldn’t resist.
The Good:

• Lots of neat gadgets. It has GPS and will geotag photos itself.
• It will allow you to find geocaches on the spur of the moment instead of downloading the geocaches for the entire state at home or trying to predict where you’re going to be when you get a chance to geocache.
• The WiFi hotspot feature is awesome. It couldn’t be any more simple to use.
• The phone will also use other WiFi networks that are around when you want to browse the web or check email. It’s better than using the cell network and it doesn’t count against the 5GB data cap.
• It runs lots of apps at the same time and it’s easy to switch between them while one is thinking or downloading.

The Bad:

• You can’t search calendar appointments! You can pretty much just start typing anywhere – tasks, contacts, memos, app launcher, google maps, pictures - and it will automatically start searching, but not in the calendar.
• All these gadgets suck battery power. The Pre has almost 2/3 of the battery capacity of the Treo 700p. I drained the Pre in about 3 hours 30 minutes of continuous use talking, texting, emailing, mapping, and app downloading.
• The antenna is weak – my 700p got much better signal than the Pre does. The signal is pretty lousy where I work. The Treo 700p could deal with it but the Pre runs down flopping between networks. 
• The GPS took forever too get its first fix. More than 15 minutes. It finally locked in after I clicked on VZNavigator but that might be a coincidence.
• While the Pre will geotag photos, it does not record the time and date the photo was taken in the EXIF information. It only records “date modified” on the file. If it doesn’t have a good GPS fix it will use Google location services to get a fix which is likely to be half a mile or more off.
• The camera on the phone takes pictures that are too big to send via MMS.
• The video editor makes malformed mp4 files. They don’t report the correct video size and have white space in them. They also won’t upload to youtube.

Keys Trip in review

I went down to Key Largo this weekend and my friends were gracious enough to let me stay with them. Friday I went scuba diving at Molasses Reef. Some people are better off not scuba diving in the morning and I’m one of them. Still I got to see a lot of wildlife – eels, sea turtles, fishes galore, Portuguese  Man-o-war, and a big stingray.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday we went to Key West Naval Air Station and watched the Blue Angels perform. We had a bit of an issue at breakfast because all the air ran out of one of the Jeep’s tires. Joel changed the tire with the skill of someone who’d had to do that before. When we got to the base we walked around all the static displays, watched some performers, and Kim recruited medical people for camp. The UV index was 11 which evidently is high enough to fry sunscreen right off you. I wish I’d remembered my hat!

Sunday we had a potluck at the church and went sailing before evening services. After services Chris arrived and we played Super Smash Bros. Brawl until we couldn’t see straight. Another victory for Das Ubermousen! It was great.

 

 

Monday I heard a strange noise like someone building a bridge outside. When I got up and looked out the window I saw I was wrong – they weren’t building a bridge, they were building the river. I figured that was as good a reason as I needed to play some more smash bros. They had a nice steel plate they laid over it so cars could get by.

 

Pew of Pain

I went with my friends to the local church for worship Sunday. They’re nice people there, all ten of them. We had a potluck after morning services that was very good. They had some amazing marinated pork dish that was very tasty. The one thing I don’t like about going there is the medieval torture pews. There is a line of wood that goes across the pew and is very uncomfortable when you lean back on it. The pews must have belonged to a Catholic church in the past or something. Our Lady of Perpetual Discomfort would be my guess. I suppose it does cut down on snoozing during the sermons though. :P

Scuba diving in Key Largo

One of the sea turtles I saw on my dive at Molasses Reef in Key Largo. The new underwater camera, an Intova IC-10, really seems to do video better than it does still pictures but I haven't yet tried using manual white balance so there is a faint glimmer of hope. It wouldn't make the cut as an above-water camera. On this dive we saw rays, man-o-war, turtles, eels, and numerous fishes. Our first dive was at the wench on Molasses Reef, the second was near Fire Coral Cave. We didn’t go in the cave, but I did get to swim under a rock with very low clearance. They were both very good dives.