We have just returned from a 2-week trip to North Carolina. Among other things we explored the outer banks and had a great time diving with Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City. They took us to some pretty interesting wrecks including the Papoose, the Spar and U-352. After all the waters there are called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”. The sharks at the Spar were particularly fun to watch and the German sub is a must-see as well.
Highly recommended!
There are few things that are as rewarding as returning from a vacation and going through the new photos you’ve taken. It means reliving the past few weeks and starting to digest all the new impressions. You also get to see the results of your photographic experiments. Everything from ISO settings to shutter speed comes under the microscope… But what are all the steps you should be taking when you get back to make the most out of your pictures? Here are a few ideas.
That seems to do the trick for me. It’s a lot of work but those digital memories are well worth it, I’d say.
Besides the usual batch of photos I have also put a Flash Gallery online that holds some of the best shots from our recent trip to Thailand. We have done around 20 dives in the Andaman Sea and we enjoyed the fishy things we got to see. It was a little early in the season (1st week in November) therefore we did not get to see any whale sharks or manta rays.
The Mermaid II was our home for the duration of the trip. It is a nice dive boat with an even nicer crew. Both the boat crew and the dive instructors were very helpful and fun. The cabins were fairly hot at night despite an a/c that was running most of the time.
Some other people from our group, J??rg & Silvia, also posted underwater photos they took on the trip. They got a fabulous shot of a Leopard Shark.
On Sunday I ran a Half Marathon with a friend in Berlin. Unfortunately, my better half could not join the race as she had caught a cold. The weather was nice, the people friendly, I was very satisfied with the time in the end. Apparently, I made a glamorous 1035th place. That was a little disenchanting. Anyways, gives me a reason to train some more.
We took the Monday off and enjoyed Berlin. It was amazing how much had changed since we last went. There’s a Dunkin’ Doughnuts at about every street corner now, the Main Station is completed, and the many construction sites around Potsdamer Platz have turned into real buildings… ;-)
We checked out Egypt’s Sunken Treasures at Martin – Gropius – Bau. An exhibit that showcases ancient statues, artefacts and religious symbols from the sunken cities of Alexandria, Herakleion and Kanopus. The guy who discovered it all is Frank Goddio, who’s running a society to promote the preservation and further research of the sites. One of the coolest things their society is planning: an underwater museum at the former site of the harbor of Alexandria! The exhibit was well worth it. And, for divers like us it was a real tease…
I don’t get to write much these days, I guess. Anyways, here’s what happened with the streaming business: Finally I gave in and dropped my scepticism about Apple products and purchased the Airport Express. I liked it ok at first: installation was a breeze but I couldn’t get the remote speakers and the computer to produce sound at the same time – bummer! I thought maybe it is only a feature on a Mac and with a PC I would be out of luck.
Then, I found a firmware update for the airport hidden on the Apple website. Once I upgraded the little toy everything worked as expected: both sets of speakers playing music simultaneously – and I mean simultaneously. When you are in between rooms you can simply hear no delay on either end. So, that was a good experience in the end.
During the hot days here in Cologne my Claxan multi-purpose server appliance started acting weird on me. It didn’t hold a connection with the internet for more than 5 minutes. That was enough of a reason to downgrade. I retired the CL-SA113 and went for a plain vanilla setup with the Airport Express. Consequently, my 300GB web space / NAS is sitting on the shelf and I need to look for new solutions…