I have been without internets (except for while at work, and whatever Gs and Bs I could work from my phone) so I have not been posting on here. Two weeks ago, COMCAST finally got me connected (after 5 tries), so I have high speed internets, cable and the all-important HD channels that I was missing. For the life of me, I have no idea how anyone can watch TV without HD.
What has been going on? Well . . .
My father, two brothers in law and I completed our annual Roatan Reef Survey. Pop, Mark, Wade and I spent a week diving and relaxing at the cabin in Roatan. We dove about 20 times give or take, and painted both cabins while we were down there. The reefs were their normal spectacular selves, the diving was very good for that time of year. On our first day of diving we had incredible visibility, best I recall, and I got some pretty good pictures. I will post them to Picasso a little later on. The visibility on the Prince Albert (the wreck in the CocoView channel) was great on the first day, I and got some very good ambient light shots of a trumpet fish (the best is below here) and some good shots of the coral growing on the wreck.
The trumpet fish provided some very good poses, this was probably the best one, but I saw him on several dives. If you have the time, scroll through the Picasso page (link in the normal position, the top link in the list of links on the right hand side of the blog). For you underwater photography folks, you will notice the INCREDIBLE white balance on these shots, I got lucky on the first day, and made a discovery on the next to last day of diving that has allowed the Olympus camera to redeem itself. Basically, there are some underwater settings in the digital camera scenes mode, two of the settings allow for automatic white balance setting, I figured that out about thursday, on saturday, I figured out that you could do the same thing with the video camera mode. Unfortunately for the video setting, I didn't figure it out until the very last dive, and there was nothing to really video with it, but I will post a bit of the video to show how good it can be if I can find something to video.
Coral on the Prince Albert
Garden eels near the Prince Albert. The area around the Prince Albert (PA for short) is a wide sandy bank that leads up to the shallow area in front of the resort. Normally you can see a few interesting things there, but this was the first year (out of 10 or so) that I saw the garden eels. I spent about 10 minutes taking pictures of them, using ambient light, as you will notice, the sand is white (the color it is supposed to be). The eels were cool because I had never seen them before, not very dynamic, but interesting to take pictures of. Ambient light is good for this sort of stuff because a flash would have bounced off of the sand and the shot would have had a bluish tinge to it.
A National Geographic Moment
For those of you that dive in the Caribbean, you have probably noticed the invasion of the lionfish. They are all over the place in Roatan, and have the potential to do some serious environmental damage to the reef life. Roatan and the reefs around it are famous for the smaller fish, which the lionfish (not a native species, so there are no natural predators) love to eat. That said, they do provide some very dramatic photos. This shot (ambient light, with the new, magic white balance setting) is of a competition between a scorpionfish and a pair of lionfish for a prime hunting grounds. You have to look carefully to see the scorpionfish, they camouflage themselves to look like the reef they are sitting on, waiting for a fish to swim close, then they eat it. For this shot, I was originally taking pictures of some Peterson cleaning shrimp on Newman's Wall (leading to the PA), I got a couple of good shots, then looked down and saw the scorpionfish. I started snapping away at the scorpionfish, when I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye, it was two lionfish trying to intimidate the scorpionfish and move it away from the coral ledge he was sitting on. This went on for about 10 minutes, the scorpionfish eventually moved down a ledge or two, but it was pretty cool to watch.
Warning, non-whitebalanced video, but a pretty cool sequence.
Some white balanced video for comparison:
The week of diving was pretty darned good all around. Family diving note: For some reason, dad is very good at spotting little things while diving. He always manages to find something cool to see despite being very near sighted. Normally, I hang back from the group a little bit, take pictures, then catch up, by the time I am done with the shots I am on, he has found something else to take a picture of.
Other news:
I have begun running again, I am cautiously optimistic about it, and am keeping the mileage low to avoid my most common recurring injury: plantar fasciitis. Most of my runs have been shorter, I have been hitting the mall in the morning, running past the Lincoln Memorial (what would Abe Think?) and visiting my Korean War Memorial buddies. If you visit the mall, the Korean War Memorial is probably them most vivid memorial in my opinion, the patrol of stainless steel soldiers is pretty cool in the morning, and there are no crowds so you can run through there. Once my feet get used to running again, I will start to creep up in the miles and visit some of the other good running routes.
I have also began riding to and from work from the new house. It is always difficult to start that off (what's the new route? what if I get lost? what if I take a wrong turn? what if I forget my badge?) but once I do start off, I always think back about my trepidations and wonder what was I worried about? My new route is mostly flat, downhill on the aggregate on the way to work, which means uphill on the way back from work. The route goes through Rock Creek Park and takes advantage of the bike/running trails that wind through the park. The only time I am on a street is about the first 1.5 miles to and from the house to the park, and most of that is residential.
Winter riding has it's challenges, I had my first, pretty spectacular bike accident this past week. There are a few patches of ice along the route, I managed to hit one on Thursday morning, luckily, my body protected my bike from serious damage. I was coming off a bridge, and accelerating along a fun part of the trail, I hit the ice and the next thing I knew, I was laid out on the ground. Outside of my damaged pride, I have a pretty spectacular bruise on my left hip. There was no damage to the bike, so I just dusted myself off and rode on into work.
I suspect that once things start warming up more, I will have a few more riders in the morning for company.
Fantasy Football News
I did not finish in last place this year, which was good for my ego. I was able to pass my brother in law Mark during the last week of the season and finished in second place in the family contest. My niece Sydney "won" the family trophy, her all names strategy did not work out and she can read through the fantasy football advice book for a year. Wade, my other brother in law won the family competition and finished in the money, so I will have to listen to him for the rest of the year. My strategy for next year: No Diva wide receivers, thank you for fading into oblivion Randy Moss. Joe Flacco will be on my team, as will Aaron Rogers. The rest of the team will be up for re-assessment.
Future updates: Sam and Cheney, neighborhood description, movie reviews
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