Marcus D. Hanwell's Blog

Been playing with the Linux beta of the Google Earth for the last few days. I had played with the Windows version once or twice and was impressed but as I do not run Windows full time anywhere (just very occasionally in VMWare) I hadn't played with it much. The Linux beta seems to be really good, it has crashed twice on me so far, but for a beta it has taken a lot of hammer and remained stable and it looks very slick.

I am really pleased to see Google developing for Linux too, and I think this is a very positive move on their part. They have been doing so much for the open source world it was starting to worry me that they like many large companies were neglecting Linux with their software offerings. I still haven't had chance to try Picasa which is a more disappointing port in my eyes, although a definite beginning. It didn't work on my amd64 system last time I tried it though...

In other news I seem to be so busy right now! I can't make it to the Gentoo UK 2006 Conference down in London this year. I hope you guys have a great time, wish I could have made it myself. I would have even rustled up a talk for you guys

I went diving yesterday at the famed UK dive site - Stoney Cove, with an old school friend Matt for the day. He also works at the local dive shop, SDS and sold me half of my new kit. So if it wasn't all top notch I had the guy to complain to out there with me We got there at about 10:30 and were allowed into the bottom car park - now I know why everyone obsesses over this as I saw how far we could have been walking in full kit. It cost £15 each which I thought was pretty steep to just let us dive in their old quarry but I am new to all this.

I just know everyone wants to see me covered head to toe in neoprene so you are in for a treat - Matt took a photo of me just before I jumped into the water but didn't quite manage to get my head in the shot. As Matt hadn't been diving this year he wanted to take it easy so we avoided the deep bit in the middle and stuck to a floor of about 22 m maximum depth.

We took in a few of the sites on our two dives including a big boat (must check its name), a transit van, a Wessex helicopter and a submarine with one of those geocache signs on it. We even saw some fish here including a couple of monster pike! You can see all my other pictures here - I got quite a few. All my new equipment worked really well and there were no leaks in my camera stuff. I did a test deployment of my DSMB and we did our safety stop off it on our second dive.

I was quite amused though as I had told Matt about the diving I had done out in Malta and how they had asked me if I breathed (I do by the way). They wouldn't let me have a 15 L cylinder, even on our 35 m dives as they said I would never need it. In their defence they were right and I usually came up with 60-120 bar I think at the end of every dive. Matt got me a 15 L and a 12 L, and himself a 12 L and 10 L. Needless to say we were coming up for him on the first dive and I finished with 110 bar, and the second I think he had 30 bar and I came up with 100 bar... I think he believes me now. It is all these 10 km runs I think

We had a really good day, finished it off with a beer in the resident pub. I now have Stoney Cove in my log book too, although I did scratch the face of my dive watch a little on the second dive These were my coldest dives to date at 11 C, but my Oceanic semi-dry suit kept me nice and toasty warm. Matt did fine in his drysuit too. I still haven't spotted the appeal of dry suits, but it may become apparent up in the Farne Islands next week!