Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Misc category. Noteworthy entries are filed topmost.
100 Best Dives in Cornwall - Charles Hood
I have had this book for quite some time now. It was one of the first books I bought on diving, I don’t buy many. I do like the layout, information and pictures. Some of the co-ordinates are a bit out though, if you read this Charles check the Kantoeng co-ordinates. Anyway, a while ago I thought it would be a good idea to do all the dives in between other dives of course. Most of the dives listed are within the capabilities of either BSAC Sport Diver or PADI Advanced Open Water. Continue reading this entry »
Buying Property in Bulgaria
Back in September 2004 a friend of mine mentioned that Bulgaria was going to be the next place to buy, after Croatia’s house prices started to rocket. I started looking around, tapped Bulgaria into eBay and found some cheap looking places. I carried on searching the net on and off. Eventually I found a site called ……….. Continue reading this entry »
41 Dives So Far……..
This year, and all in Salt Water. Not a bad start to the year for a non-professional.
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!
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 
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.
A Personal Rant About My Badminton Club
It’s not like me to rant, but some things can just get on your nerves. Last year I was 1st reserve for the 1st team, this year we have a second team, the club secretary told me that as I would be playing in the team, I need to join up straight away. They selected a captain, didn’t offer it to me, although I have been playing in the same club 12 years longer than she has. She then selects the team, I was the only one who had joined at the time, I’ve played once since when someone else didn’t turn up. They still haven’t all joined, they need to, to get affiliated with the Badminton Association, insurance etc. Tonight they played a match, at home, using 2 courts up, 30 people turned up to play on the other 2 courts, which meant games were sparse. They lost their game quite convincingly, then proceeded to join the rest of us to play more, they had already played all night, and now we are still sitting out because they want to continue. I have already mentioned to other club members that I am not happy, next season I will join another club and play against them. I won’t change now as I have paid my membership, and I don’t pay anything till the season end.