Just a quick note to say we had a great holiday in Malta in the end. The diving improved greatly in the end and
Aquaventure showed us some great sites. Unfortunately they never managed to get us out to the Camino caves which would have been great to see. I did go on four really nice wreck dives though to the Rozi and the Um El Faroud - doing some penetration into the engine room of the Um El Faroud. Louise and I also went to the much older wreck of the HMS Maori on our last dive of the holiday which was excellent and he even found us a sea horse which I got a few shots of.
I have put up the digital photos
here but have not had chance to improve the colours and stuff yet - some of them look much better with a little tweaking. A lot of the wreck photos also look amazing in black and white. I don't think I have any prize winners yet but they are a great set of pictures for my first diving holiday with the camera (in my opinion at least). I would love to hear what other people think of them. I really have the bug for diving now too so I am hoping to get into the UK diving scene a little over the Summer too. Some of the videos I made are really big, they play fine under Linux for me but Windows seems to have issues on friends systems...
We also went horse riding while we were away, it was Louise's idea and we both really enjoyed it. The weather wasn't great and the food didn't improve at the hotel at all but we had a great time in the end. I also got quite a nice tan. The Internet over there was so amazingly unreliable and slow too with the wireless taking up to 20 attempts just to associate with the router sometimes. Good to be back in the UK where things like this work a lot better
I am packing again this morning though as I am on a residential course out at Lake Windermere for a week with the UK GRAD programme. Cut off from civilisation again... Then I can play with my photos a little and get my SLR photos developed too - I have quite a backlog now. Great holiday though and I am about ready to get back into my work now - get that thesis written up!
We got to Malta safe and sound. It was really hot at the airport but got really cold by the time we got to the hotel. When we got here it was like the hotel time forgot - it seems to be stuck about forty years in the past which is why so many old people are here I guess
It is nice enough but quite basic for a four star hotel - the
Mellieha Bay Hotel.
We went on our first dive today with
Aquaventure who are at the beach in our hotel complex. I have been looking forward to going on another dive for a good few months now but I was disappointed I am afraid... It was the shortest dive I have done so far at only 34 minutes, the shallowest at a max depth of 7.6 m and an average of about 4 m. It was also the coldest (15 C) and the one where I had the most air left at the end. I came up with just under 130 bar... There were very few photo opportunities in Slugs Bay too - I will put a few up with this entry though such as the sea slug I found.
It was nice to finally get to use all this new equipment though. My underwater camera enclosure seemed to work well, although the woman who sold it to me just told me I need the fibre optic kit to get rid of back scatter... If she had told me that when I asked at the dive show I would have bought one there and then. Never mind - I will get the best photos I can with what I have available. Even though the water was cold my wet suit kept me warm. Louise gobbled through her air - she only had 80 bar left but she gets a lot more nervous.
We have arranged a car for the next four days (three full days) and have two dives booked on Friday, one on Saturday and one or two on Monday I think. Hopefully I will get a few wreck dives in next week too as well as some caves. I really hope the diving does get better - I think we were spoilt in the Red Sea!
Lousie managed to beat me this morning too - she pasted me at Scrabble whilst we were sat at the side of the pool. Back to the evenings entertainment anyway...
On my recent trip to Baltimore I read my second Discworld novel -
Going Postal. I have to say that I enjoyed this book much more than Thud! It is a very clever book and it appealed to me on many levels. I especially enjoyed the Clacks and the parallels my mind drew with areas of modern life and some of the practices of the operators of the Clacks. Moist was a fun character if not a little predictable, all in all a great read in my opinion.
However Dan Brown's
Digital Fortress was a big disappointment to me. It was predictable and terminology was used in a clumsy and in some cases incorrect fashion. He made the common mistake of calling crackers hackers and tried to dramatise the breaking down of a firewall in a way that really did not work for me. If he really did consult with ex-NSA agents I fear for the security of the NSA! I thought it might be a fun read but it really wasn't. I may yet read the
Da Vinci Code but after reading this book I am in no rush to get it.
So a bit of a mixed bag. I found Dan Brown's writing pretty simplistic with silly amounts of twists at then end that were almost funny but not really. Whereas Going Postal was a really fun book that had me amused all the way though. I have bought
Night Watch and
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett - both were recommended by friends.
I also bought
The Art of Diving on a friends recommendation as his friend Alex Mustard did all the photography. I have to say the photos are amazing and I can only hope to take pictures approaching that quality whilst I am in Malta. I also bought An Essential Guide to Underwater Photography by Michael Aw and Matthieu Meur when I was at the London Internation Dive Show (Amazon doesn't seem to have this) and got it signed by the author (first book I have ever had signed). Hopefully that will help me to take some nice pictures - I tested out my underwater camera enclosure and strobe yesterday ready for the holiday
Well I thought I would create a new category for scuba diving as I will hopefully get the chance to write about it fairly regularly. Louise and I drove down to London on Friday and stayed at the Novotel just next to the Excel exhibition centre in the docklands. We managed to find it fairly easily in the end although the drivers seem to drive more psychotically the closer we got to London...
We decided to go to the first day on Saturday 1 April and had bought our tickets about a month ago. We got there just before opening on Saturday morning to see Jean-Michel Cousteau opening the show. We also saw him a few times during the weekend at our hotel. Once we got on our mission began... Enter all the competitions going on the off chance of winning something cool and find everything on our list.
The first thing we found were our wet suits. We had done our research and had decided on a wet suit system that would be suitable for UK diving in the summer as well as places like the Red Sea. I got an Oceanic Shadow system which I was very pleased with. Full 5 mm semi dry wet suit, 5 mm shortie to go over it in cold conditions or on its own in warm conditions. It also came with a hood. Louise tried on about five wet suits I think and in the end chose a Body Glove wet suit system - it was a better fit for her but now we don't get to look really sad on holiday with matching wet suits!
After we got those we took them back to our room in the hotel and went back in for more shopping. I got my underwater camera enclosure and strobe for my Fuji F10 and found the Cressi Sub Matrix mask I wanted too. Then we went over to SDS (local dive shop) to look at their dive computers and other bits. They were probably the most helpful and I took quite a while deciding between the bulky Uwatec Aladin Tec and the compact Suunto Mosquito. In the end I decided upon the Suunto after flirting with the idea of getting a Stinger... Also got some split fin Tusa Xpert Zoom fins, some nice boots, an interface for my dive computer and a really nice Tusa snorkel from them.
By this point we were starting to feel tired and took our bags back to the room and broke for lunch. We had got most of the stuff on our list now. I found a nice titanium dive knife, and then we got some bits from a few other shops and a dive bag to take all this stuff on holiday with us as well as a mesh bag for the beach/boat. Quite a bit poorer but happy with our haul we made our way back to the room just before it all finished at 17:30.
After irritating Louise for a while checking out all my new stuff she made me go for some dinner with her. The buffet at the hotel was very nice as was the wine we ordered to go with our meal. I just can't wait to try out all my new stuff now! Two weeks until we leave for Malta, although I have already tested out the free diving features of my dive computer at the gym... And we both tried on all our gear on Sunday night together to make sure it all fitted together OK and seemed complete. I need to test the underwater enclosures for leaks before we leave too.