The hotel’s in Nabq - away from my normal stay in Naama. Don’t know if it was the time of year, or the location, but we seemed to pick up a load of mosquito bites. After the Eid holiday finished, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
Marina were very helpful, and we had some good diving. Thanks (especially) to Frank and Mido.

I don’t mind getting away on my own, but is was a really nice change to be away with some friends.

This really is a bit step, as I’m actually moving away from JAlbum - the software which has driven this site since … well … forever. I don’t have any problem with JAlbum, and my thanks are due to David and his team, and to Armond (who built the BluPlusPlus skin I used). Most of my page structures are pretty much unchanged from those I evolved from BPP.

Index pages are now generated dynamically from the album structure. I can use this same process to generate other (non-album) indexes. And I can take an image out - or add one in - in minutes, rather than regenerating and uploading.

I wanted to be able to display the photos in different perspectives - rather than just by trip (=album), so I needed to use tools which could be used more interactively. I’ve still got a way to go on all of that, but at least I’m starting to structure things in the right way. So I hope to be able to build “albums” of - for example - all my dives on Jackson Reef based on these new class structures.

It also means I should be able to maintain my Gallery / Portfolio in a bit more timely manner (it’s currently 3 years since I’ve updated it). I shouldn’t have to hold the images more than once, either.

Workflow, Toolkit and Album generation

The last rework shifted from generating HTML to PHP, but was still driven by JAlbum. It also wasn’t really built the way PHP was meant to be used- I had one script for each image. The new release moves to a single set of scripts, with the image data being held in XML files. Another XML file is used to pull all of the images into an album. So I can update an album by changing a couple of text files, rather than having to regenerate the whole file.

The XML, thumbnails, album and images are all now produced from Adobe’s Lightroom, which is now becoming the only post-processing tool I need to use. The data and photos are exported (and the Copyright watermark applied) using Timothy Armes’ LR/Mogrify and LR/Transporter plugins.

Presentation and interaction

I’ve taken the opportunity to make the images larger (broadband - and bigger screens means that this is less of a constraint now). PHP gives me an opportunity to structure things differently for mobile devices as well, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to that.

The slideshow now does away with the rather clunky Javascript implementation. One frustration with this was Microsoft browsers switching scripting off, and telling users it was dangerous. I’m using the HTML META refresh to scroll on every 8 seconds. Much smoother.

This refresh statement is deprecated, because of the potential for abuse. However, the slideshow seems to me to be exactly the sort of application why this was available in the first place ….

The photo and dive metadata displays also now work without Javascript - although they’re nowhere near as pretty, and a bit less responsive.

Dive Logbooks

One key bit of automation is the inclusion of logbook data with the images. With the JAlbum tools, this had to be available when the album was generated, and was pretty much hard-wired.

I’ve now set up the database (which I first wrote about 3 years ago) on the webserver. This is now queried “on demand”, and I’ll be working on it to give those different perspectives I was talking about.

I did try using a JDiveLog XML file. Managed to get it kida working but all of the profile data made it a bit slow, and it generated out-of-memory errors, so I had to rethink. I do still like the JDiveLog data structure, and will probably do something with it in future, but I think mySQL probably offers the most future-proof solution.

I’m sure this won’t be the last rework. But now I need to get the last years’ worth of albums loaded.

Click on the thumbnail for larger images.

.. I really liked these reflections, and the trees through the "window"

And here's Bob ...

This is the second time I’d dived the Moldavia, and both times the viz has been wonderful. Paul - the skipper of Voyager - was spot on the mark, of course.

I was buddied up with John and Guy (with air and a Nitrox deco mix), and we headed towards the bow. The big problem is always going to be the light on a wreck like this, so I ramped up the ISO and opened the aperture. I still ended up with a few shaky shots, so there’s a technique to be worked on.

As we steamed back, the sun burned off the clouds, and - as we were back for midday - there was time for cider, ice cream and a snooze on the beach before I headed back (working the next day). Everyone else got to do it all again the next day …

Anyway, here are the photos (as usual, click on the thumbs for a larger image) …

So the next day I went back with my camera and macro lens. Not much at first, but as soon as the sun came out, so did they.

Here are the ones that worked …

These are the Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria)

. .. and these are the Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus)

Taken with the Zuilo 50mm and 1.4x teleconverter

More “no surpises” in terms of dive centre (Red Sea College) or accommodation (Hilton Fayrouz).

There was a problem with my Viking flight being delayed, which meant I didn’t get to bed until 5:30am. I missed the first day of my Cavern Diver course (the TDI flavour, with Christian at PURE), but managed to catch up.

Once that was sorted, I was able to get on with the photos …

I’d taken my brand new 14-54mm lens, and ended up using that exclusively all week (I’d also taken the 11-22mm, which uses the same port, but never used it). I actually think that a “general purpose” lens like this is ideal for dayboat diving at Sharm. I don’t like opening my housing on the boat, and you never really know what you’re going to get on any given dive. As it turns out, I was very happy with it, and I’ll put together a separate review later.

I like to make a note in these pieces of any unusual stuff going on - this year, there were four things worth mentioning.

Candelamoa parrotfish “swarming”

You quite often see the odd Candelamoa (aka “long-nosed”) parrotfish Hipposcarus harid on the reef, but on 14th July (which was around a neap tide, following full moon) there were hundreds of them shoaling (and heading north) from Ras Mohammed. On the three dives that day, we saw shoals on all of them.

Far Garden cleaner wrasse

One of the third dives was on Far Garden. I’d missed everything big that day - the Whitetip on Gordon Reef, the hammerheads hadn’t turned up (in fact, I didn’t see any on the whole trip. though they were there) and I missed the Manta on this dive. But just as we got round the headland, I felt a tweak on my leg, and remembered the cleaners. They had a go at my fins as well ….

The Dolphins

Once again, we had some company from a pod of Risso’s dolphins. Not as spectacular as last year, but these encounters are always emotional …

My MANTA

I’ve never really seen a Manta. There were a couple off in the distance on my first dive in Bunaken, but they were way off and not hanging about.

The first dive on my last day sorted that, though. Just after we’d jumped in on Ras Ghazlani, we dropped down (to 18m) near a pinnacle. There were a few fish just hanging off the pinnacle. And I realised one of them was an unusual shape …

Yup. A Manta (actually, it may have been a Mobula, but it looked a bit big). So I eased up to 13m and got a few shots off while he swooped around a couple of times, then headed off into the blue.

There’ll be more photos when I finally get my act together with my gallery software …

Crayfish at Stoney Cove

First of all, Nick Mott - my contact at the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust - has put together a booklet, and (flatteringly) asked if he could use my photos. You can find a copy of the booklet on the SBAP website library.

Secondly, there’s been a bit of a change of management at Dosthill Quarry, and the owner - Ian Forster - has started up a new project called Underwater Ecosystems - so we can hopefully more emphasis on conservation education at his sites.

Finally, I dropped into Stoney Cove a couple of weeks ago, and found a few of the little chaps. As strobes upset them, I tried to get some available light shots - this is the best one of the bunch. I’ve seen them there in the past, but always had a wide-angle lens (which isn’t really ideal). This was taken with the Zuiko 14-54 Mk.II.

I’ve also taken the view that “Apple makes me happy”. This started off with the iPod (just after Christmas) and the Mac mini.

It was through an iTunes Podcast that I Â bumped into the “Where the Hell is Matt” website. Again, the videos are wonderfully life-affirming, and I can watch them over and again.

For anyone who’s missed this Queensland Tourism have advertised a job for an Island Caretaker. Even though it’s only for 6 months, I’d love to do this. So I needed to make it happen. But I needed to put together a video. Only problems … 1) I’d not put together a video before and 2) I haven’t got a movie camera.

Now I figured that Andy talking to a webcam would have limited appeal, so I dragged my mate Paul and his camcorder down to Sutton Park to do some location shots. I was going to include photos of me actually diving there, but the January session was cancelled and today’s the next chance - this is the closing date for applications, so it would have been leaving it a bit late!

As luck would have it, we had a cold snap a couple of weeks later, so I took the opportunity for a follow up.

My obvious “selling point” is that I can take pretty reasonable photos underwater. This is something that takes time, practice, being able to work with the software, and some quite expensive toys.

This was where the move to the Apple Mac (at the start of January) came good, because the (installed as standard) iMovie software is really pretty accessible to a complete beginner. It also makes it pretty easy to make (static) images quite dynamic. I did wait until the iLife ‘09 version was delivered, then put together a first cut.

In the meantime, I realised my Gallery album was waaay out-of-date - missing out (for starters) everything I’ve done with a DSLR. So I’ve been getting on with redeveloping that (there’ll be another entry on that before long) … hopefully, there’ll be a new one will be along in the next week or two.

(The only thing that was disappointing was that I had to get a USB microphone - the standard headsets apparently work at the wrong level).

Two more iterations later and I was ready to upload. Apparently, that got knocked about in the ether, so I eventually managed to resend it with just two days to go.

Queensland Tourism have apparently been blown away by the interest they’ve had. I’d actually guessed very early on that there’s be about 20,000 applications, and that’s not far away.

So (phew) it’s there now. You can see it by clicking on this link.