Diving the GB Church and Arbutus Island

In September during the club days at UVic i joined the SCUBA and the Starcraft club.  While I have done precisely fuck all about playing Starcraft the over the last month I have been rather active with the SCUBA club.  As a dive master and having recently acquired a truck I am now doing a lot of the driving gear about for the club.  I have also been helping with the classes (Open Water etc taught by the SCUBA instructors there) and teaching some drysuit orientations.  It's been great fun and I have met many great folks out there.

Last week I was rewarded for my efforts in shuffling about gear with a charter out of Sidney.  First off let me thank the great folks from the Ogden Point dive centre for taking us out.  I went for two dives with my friend Alisa (who taught me almost all I know about diving!).  We explore the wreck of the GB Church, doing a little swim through of the bridge and finding the Octo hanging out under the bow.  After that we headed to Arbutus island where we proceeded to find ten (yes TEN!) Octos.  What an awesome day of diving.  And to proove that I am not just making all of this up, Alisa took some video while we were down there, check it out:



GB Church Artifical Reef and Arbutus Island from Alisa Preston on Vimeo.

As you may have guessed, we do like Octopus.

Holy Shatner

I fondly remember being introduced to Has Been that rather popular album made by William Shatner Scott my supervisor at UBC back in 2004.  We had a few discussions about music before (he is quite the completionist when it comes to Blue Oyster Cult) and was quite intrigued to learn that Metallica had covered them on Garage Inc.  Anyway, I am reminded of this because I just saw some new Shatner music, and it delivers in the most excellent way:

The end of the song video made me want to play rockband.  After that I had to finish off in proper Star Treck fashion by watching music video involving Leonard Nimoy, that excellent excellent man.

I just wish there was a Jeff Bridges cameo in that music video.

Awesome Linux Screensaver

I found a really cool screensaver for those of us cruising in linux. I first found it after my first dabbeling in kernel hacking ... but didn't think of posting about it till now. Makes me feel leet for having some swanky code scroll past my screen, especially if i recognize a passage.

The practical upshot of all this is that when I am nodding off at work and the screensaver kicks in it looks like I am coding. Upon further inspection the more astute observer my note, of course, that I am not actually typing :)

Gabe's watching you too

It's addictive, also let it be noted that steam is great.

Lemmings

I have some fond memories of wasting oodles of time finding new and exciting ways of making small green haired doodles die in the various incarnations of the lemmings series. Why would I mention it today? Because today lemmings is 20 years old. There is even a free version of the game to play. If you haven't played it before, do so now. If you have enjoy a bit of nostalgia :)

Gource just made me feel productive

So, I have been at a bit of a standstill with my analysis of late, not for lack of trying, but mostly due to some the evolution of the atlas code base. In an effort to get my PhD done however I have been coding like a maniac over the last month. Since I have been tracking my development via git I decided to make a little video of what I have been up to (code-wise) and it made me feel good about myself.

See I wasn't completely useless over the last month!

Airports Are Fine, Waiting There Isn't

More airports should have free wireless that works as well as the on in the Vancouver airport. Both Halifax and Tronoto were disappointing. On other news I wish I didn't have to sit around the airport waiting for my flight but could rather be on my way home.