Mark's Blog

Cozumel at Christmas

admingrot — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:55:15 +0000

Marlies and I decided to get away for the Christmas break and go back to Cozumel to dive. We are staying at the Casa Mexicana and Diving with Aldora Divers. Five days of diving a couple of days break for other things. Hopefully the weather stays calm and we get some good pictures and video.

Australia here we come…

admingrot — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:27:29 +0000

We fly to Sydney, spend a week, then fly to Cairns, jump on a liveaboard for a week of diving, then fly back down to Melbourne for a few days, then off back home again.

Marlies and I at Herst Castle

admingrot — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:46:39 +0000

Pt. Lobos Grand Tour

admingrot — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:32:35 +0000

Harry W, Harry B, Dionna, and Mark met at Lobos today to do the grand tour. The tour consisted of heading out to Granite Pt Pinnacles, winding our way to Mono Lobo Wall then turning to Thumbs Up, back in the direction of Mono Lobo wall then back to Granite Pt Pinnacles again, and back into the cove. I was the only one with an X-scooter, while the rest had long body Gavins. Since we estimated my X would not last the whole journey I towed a Gavin. Once in the water, and never had the experience of towing a scooter, I found that I was going through the water like I was pulling a piano. At Granite Pt Harry W. took the scooter and after a bit of trial an error we finally got things streamlined. Vis was at best about 30 ft so acceptable but not ideal. We had been around the Granite Pt. pinnacle area quite a bit but I don’t think Dionna, Harry B, and I had been as far as Mono Lobo. We crossed over the sand channel and arrived at what I think was Mono Lobo but to be honest didn’t see much there. Once we turned and headed to Thumbs Up the scenery improved quite a lot with the sheer walls, corals, big schools of rockfish and two or three Mola Molas. These Molas were not fish food yet, like many that were fin-less scattered about. Coming back from Thumbs up was a nice straight line back into the sand channel then into the Granite Pt pinnacles. Just before we turned toward Granite Pt wall the kelp monster grabbed Dionna. She put up a heroic battle and I was cheering her on as she defeated the enemy. As we turned neared Granite Pt wall I grabbed the Gavin from Harry W. as my X was getting close to the max time. A few minutes later the X died and I switched to the Mac Truck. We made it back into the cove, switched to O2 and completed a bit of deco. Very cool dive, almost 2 hrs in the water, and luckily for us a nice 57 degrees.

Mouse Pad

admingrot — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:12:01 +0000

The living mouse pad.

Mt Chamberlain Dive

admingrot — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:01:49 +0000

Friday I took off work to dive with Beta, Joakim, and Dionna off of the Escapade. Arrived in Monterey and loaded all the gear onto the boat. Since there were only 4 of us there was lots of room for our scooters and deco bottles. We were planning on diving Mt Chamberlain to a depth of 220′, perfect Tech 2 dive. Joakim had just completed his Tech 2 class so this was his first post class T2 dive. As we left the Bay we could see thousands of Jellyfish everywhere. The wake of the boat was chewing them up by the hundreds. I was glad not to be diving in there. Still, the Bay was very flat but once we rounded the corner the swells picked up a bit. As we continued on the swells did get a bit larger but nothing that would make us call the dive and pick another spot. We arrived at the dive spot about an hour after we left the dock. The water looked blue and clear but that can be deceiving. We geared up with our doubles and clipped on one deco bottle. Once in the water the crew handed us another bottle and our scooters. Beta and Joakim had jumped in first and were waiting at the bouy. We have drifted back a bit so needed to scooter a few minutes to get back to the down line. Pointing our scooter down we took off. The vis was a bit cloudy to start, the reef came into focus at about 150′ or so. Slowing down at 180′ I signaled the other divers as I had just spotted a Ratfish swimming close to us. We continued down to 220′ and the vis opened up to about 50′ which was great. There were thousands of small fish which flashed out of the way when you shone your light towards them. The reef was full of hard and soft coral, purples, reds, oranges, whites. A large school of Rockfish was hiding in a small inlet of the reef. Just about that time we scootered over the reef, turned the corner and were met with a strong current that the scooters had a hard time overcoming. We decided to turn slowly out of the current and back round the corner. Beta led us along a straight canyon turned left and under an arch… fantastic. After about 30 minutes of depth we came up a bit and wandered around some checking out the tops of the reef. At the predetermined time we ascended to 70′ and settled in for 50 minutes of deco. The Jellyfish were not too bad so there was no stings on the way up. Overall a great dive, a dive were you can say, “That’s what my Tech 2 class was for”.

Want to see the Lloyd family tree

admingrot — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:35:43 +0000

Its available now at: http://mlloyd.homedns.org/phpgedview/

Server died

admingrot — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:18:23 +0000

Wow, that was a pain. A suspected power spike when the power came back on fried my server and backup hard drive power supply. Both were connected to an APC backup system but for some reason did not work. The APC has been returned to the company and another replacement has arrived. They are going to see if it is faulty and if so I will get some compensation.
I replaced the old server with a refurbished one from Compaq, pretty cheap and great performance for under $500. I couldn’t build one myself for less money then that.
Upgraded the OS to the latest version of Ubuntu and Gallery but now I have an issue with URL rewrites. Seems g2bridge, the application that links Gallery to Joomla is quite old and for some reason does not work with my URL rewrite configuration when it is turned on. It works fine when accessed directly from Gallery but not through g2bridge and Joomla.

Marlies Graduates

admingrot — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:25:55 +0000

After 2 years of hard work Loek, Mar, and I attended Marlies’ graduation ceremony in Oakland on June 20th. A big congratulations to Marlies in earning her Masters of Career Development. The ceremonies were held at the Paramount Theater in Oakland with Martin Sheen as the guest speaker. We also decided to stay the weekend and check out a few interesting places in San Francisco. Photos are here.

Twin Peaks and Granite Point Wall Dives at Point Lobos

admingrot — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:53:43 +0000

I talked Harry Wong into letting me dive with him, Ian, and Chris at Lobos on Sunday. The plan was to go out to Twin Peaks, spend 15 mins out there poking around and enjoying the area then back in again. We were diving 21/35 and doing our deco on 50%. Harry was on a long body Gavin, Ian was diving a short body, and Chris and I were on X’s. Once we were out of the cove the vis opened up quite nicely and once past Beto’s reef we estimated it to be around 70-80′. Since there was no sun up it was a bit dim but you could still make out structures from quite a distance. The team stayed together very well and once we made it out to TP, Harry requested a few ‘fly bys’ for his video shots. Ian and I spotted a number of big Tritonia festiva nudis and the usual rockfish were in the neighborhood. We scootered around the end and headed back in towards the Sisters then over to Betos till we reached our deco depth. After deco we fought our way back through the kelp and back to the boat ramp. Our surface interval consisted of lunch, of course, and chatting to Chris about diving in the LA area. After lunch we decided to do our next dive out to Granite Point Wall. Chris was diving with his wife so it was just Ian, Harry, and me. After arriving at the wall Harry again wanted to some video so I aimed my scooter right at him through a nice rock crevice and attempted to go over the camera. One small problem, his light got in the way… clunk! “Ahead all stop captain”. No damage and a lot of laughing.. we continued on. After we left the wall and were over the sand patch Ian found what looked like a stingray, except it was rock hard. We guessed it was an old whale bone and after playing with that for a while we headed back around to Middle Reef and finished our deco then scootering back in on the surface. Great day of diving, no sun, but can’t have it all.