Back in training.
Now I have returned from my holiday, physically I feel great, warm climates stop the aches and creaks that old age brings 
I probably have gained a few pounds, including a lot of fluid that is removing itself at regular intervals. Its now time to get back into training for London.
Sunday April 23, London Marathon, it will be my third year in a row. While my general fitness is far better than last year, I am not as light, if I cannot lose at least a stone before the Marathon it will be a bigger test than ever before.
Some boring maths………..
Every step I will have to move 6kg (rounded) more than before, I take 150 steps a minute, a marathon takes me 4.5 hours (270 minutes). 150 steps x 270 minutes x weights = how much weight I would have to move over 1 step (roughly 1 metre) instead of carrying it over every step = 243,000 kgs = 243 tonnes. If someone 6kg lighter than me had to move 243 tonnes 1 metre before starting the race, they would know how I felt.
Of course in real life its not that bad, my muscles tone would have changed to carry the extra weight, and would even be part of the weight, but muscle is metabolic and uses more energy and oxygen. Its far easier to carry 6kg over 26.2 miles than move 243 tonnes by 1 metre, but at least I have an excuse for a bad finishing time……………………….
So back to the gym tonight, 1 hour of CV work then a 1 hour swim.
I made it back!
After 20 days in Thailand I have had to come back.
The trip is always a bit of a drag, it goes like :-
- 07:30 - get up
- 08:00 - catch taxi to airport
- 09:00 - arrive airport
- 09:55 - fly from Phuket to Bangkok
- 11:20 - arrive Bangkok
- 13:30 - depart Bangkok
- 19:35 - arrive London (Thai time 02:35)
- 21:00 - depart carpark (Thai time 04:00)
- 01:30 - arrive home (Thai time 08:30)
Thats a complete travelling time of 25 hours!
The trip out was just as long, so thats 2 days of the holiday missing. I did my first dive the day after I arrived, Tuesday 7th, and my last diving was on Tuesday 21st, I managed a total of 31 dives in the 2 weeks. I took over 2 gb of photos and 1.5 hours of video. As with all underwater photography, there are a few exceptional photos, a large number of good photos and a lot of ok ones. I had already binned the out of focus & full of backscatter photos.
The video is another story, there was so much ambient light that the lights I have make little impact, which meant that the picture was totally blue. The camera does not help this either, I bought the cheapest Sony camera I could find, its great above water, but underwater it seems to overexpose most of the video. I have copied it all to my PC and started editing it, I have used the PC’s colour correction and also turned down the brightness. This has greatly improved the video, the only problem is when the colours change quickly, it gives some interesting colour changes.
I did enjoy the videoing a lot, the setup I have was cheap, I will have to look at a more professional rig, HID lights and either a 3 CCD camera or a HDV camera. This is going to be expensive!
One more week, then the water temperature will drop 20 degrees!
One more week, then the water temperature will drop 20 degrees. I’ll be back from Thailand and diving in the UK.
I returned from the Similan Islands trip 2 days ago, I think I have now stopped swaying, 6 nights on a boat does have its toll. Once again I used the Jonathan Cruiser as my choice of boat to dive from, the Thai divemaster “Yay’, almost pronounced “Jay”, loves to dive and loves the coral reefs and its life. He knows where to find everything, that doesn’t move to far, and is good on air. The food on the Jonathan cruiser is always very good, varied, and plenty of it. My last 2 trips was with a dive guide called Patrik, but he has moved on. The new dive guide had an ear infection and couldn’t dive, luckily, Patrik predecessor was on holiday and booked in to do the same trip, so they collared him into leading the trip.
The diving was very similar to before, with a couple of different sites, including Beacon Reef and the remains of a dive boat that didn’t return a few years ago. Not so many large things this time, and also not so many nudibranchs, but dive sites change all the time.
4 dives a day for 4 days and 3 dives on the last day is intense and tiring, combine that with plenty of food and no exercise, this is not a good recipe for healthy living, I will have to make up for it when I return to the UK.
Before the Similan trip I did 3 local dives, and I have another 9 dives planned, including 2 tomorrow to Shark Point and Anemone Reef. Mondays diving should be interesting, they call it saturation Monday, 4 dives in 8 hours, taking every dive to the edge of no-deco limits. I going to cheat and blag some Nitrox to wind everyone else up.
I’ve not looked at doing any ‘tech’ diving this trip, but there are more tech diving establishments opening up. I’ve had a chat with a couple of the new tech shops, and they seem quite knowledgeable.
I will write-up full reports on my diving activities for http://www.travel-dive.com when I return.
One more week, then the water temperature will drop 20 degrees.
Thai Holiday, the first few days.
I have now been in Phuket for three days. I have been here many times before, but every year it changes, here are my impression of the changes since my last visit.
Firstly, everything has become more expensive. On my last visit, I rented accomodation for 600 baht a night, the same accomodation this time is 1100 baht, and that was after negotiating heavily. Most restaurants have new menus, which means they have gone up. Phuket is currently very busy, people are paying the prices asked, so the prices go up.
Secondly, a Tsunami warning system seems to be in place, we don’t know if it works or not, there are also signs warning you that you are entering a Tsunami Danger Zone, there are also towers with sirens and a Tannoy system to warn people. But, this is Thailand and whether it is actually connected to anything, your guess is a good as mine.
Thirdly, once again, there are less fish in the sea, not a surpise, it gets worse every year.
I have done 3 dives so far, just local ones from a longtail boat, which were as expected. I had done them many times before, but as I said before, less fish again.
Tomorrow, Thursday Feb 09, I am off to dive the Similans on a liveaboard for 6 nights and 19 dives. I will only set foot on land for 2 hours in the next 6 days, so you’ll have to wait for my next installment.
Infra Red Booster for Sony Digicams
I’ve just bought an Infra Red Booster for my Sony Digicam, the camera has got ‘Nightshot’, which works quite well, but it is very limited. I saw the booster on ebay and took a liking to it.
It turned up today and I’ve had a quick play, it states that it works upto 20m, and it certainly does appear to, the difference is brightness is amazing. The increase of brightness through the extra IR LED’s is superb, it will certainly allow some interesting night shooting. I’ll post some results when I’ve done some interesting shooting
Mine Diving
On the subject of diving in fresh water, Cornwall is covered in disused mines, most of which are flooded. Cornwall is famous for Tin mines, but it also has a lot of Asenic, Lead and Silver mines, to name a few. I won’t mention any mine names or locations, as I am trying every means to find the owners and get permission to dive/explore them. The biggest problem with some of the is the depth before you hit the water.
There is an old tin mine near to where I live, that is flooded upto ground level, it was closed in the late 1800’s. When it was closed it was 3000ft deep, obviously I won’t go anywhere near the bottom, but it would be interesting to see some of the old workings.
Another mine, this time a silver & lead mine, which is partially flooded, you can swim thorugh part of the chamber and come up into a dry area, which still has the tools, carts and tracks still in place. I would make a great video sequence.
There are tin mines that have their shafts on the edge of cliffs!! The tunnels shoot off under the sea bed, how exciting would that be! Trouble is the water table is too far down to get my scuba gear safely.
I will continue to try to get permission to dive whatever has water in it.
Quarry to be flooded
Near to where I work, 200 metres, it’s that close, there is a disused quarry. Years ago I tried to find out if it was ever going to be used again, I was told it was unlikely, but they were not interested in selling it. The quarry is nearly 1 mile across and it’s deep, it would make an ideal inland dive site. Its in the middle of Cornwall, easily accessible and could easily be contoured to make it suitable for all types of divers. There have been many occaisons when I wanted to dive and couldn’t as the sea was a mess. I have just been talking to one of the employees of the quarrying company, the quarry is no longer going to be used, and they have plans to flood it. Unfortunately it is not going to be made suitable for divers, although I am currently trying to get permission from the company that owns several flooded quarries, which if I do, I will be able to dive this one. I have no idea how deep it is, or how high they are going to fill it. It looks at least 100m deep, maybe even 150m, could this soon be the deepest flooded quarry in the UK. We’ll have to see how high they fill it.
I have just spoken to someone who works at the quarry company, the quarry is currently 320 ft deep. They have no idea how far they will fill it, but if its close to the top, it could be approaching Dorothea’s title to being the deepest flooded quarry in the U.K.
TPS, MPS, FPS.
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/ TPS, MPS, FPS, they are all linked from this page. Basically, they are designed to cut down or even eliminate all cold selling phone calls, post or faxes. It does work. I have had significantly reduced amount of faxes at work, calls at home and junk post.
Last night I had my first call, from some telephone company trying to sell me cheap calls, this year. I repeatedly said “F**k Off” over and over again until he hung up, it was around 7pm, and I consider it a gross invasion of my privacy and private time, I am normally very polite, really.
Spam emails, why send them?
My original email address was on my website, it has been got hold of by different email rippers and sold to everyone. I now get 100 emails a day. I use Mozilla Thunderbird, its a free email program thats learns what spam looks like and places it into a junk folder. I don’t read any of them, so why send them?
Are there people out there daft (strange) enough, that get an email from the Halifax, when they haven’t got an account with them, open and read it and then buy viagra from someone who called himself the Halifax!!!
I don’t want or need Viagra or Cialis, I don’t need a degree or be able to shoot more.
I’ve just checked my email, the last ones subject is Viagra soft tabs, next is the Halifax - surprise surprise. It actually looks like a real Halifax email, except the hyperlink it points to, is not the Halifax, I’m not even going to look where it points to.
Why do they bother? They must get some customers, someone sitting in the corner with a dirty mac on, fed up with flashing his limp phalus, buys viagra from the Halifax to impress someone wandering in the park.
I wish they would stop it.
Conspiracy Theory No. 36752 - Shortage of individual building plots
Several years ago, if you wanted to build a house of your own, you could go to an estate agent and get a long list of individual building plots. You can’t anymore. All the building sites at the moment are owned by big companies, and are big developments, no small parcels of land for me or you to build our dream house.
The government has got in place, somewhere, a remit to all councils to allow planning on huge green field sites to big companies, and make individuals trying to get planning on anything a huge amount of trouble, I have been through this and I can name at few others who have.
You may ask WHY?
Simple, its about money, not bribes, but TAX. Big companies pay corporation tax on profits. If you or I were to build our own house, we pay no capital gains if we move into it as our main dwelling, for a short period. Thats it.
I will pass my comments about planning rules in another blog.