Arno's Blog

Quadrichrome: a New Blog Layout

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:46:00 +0000

I've created a new blog template for my other blog. I'm calling it quadrichrome as it's based on four primary colors. It's a very pared down design, but hopefully easy to navigate and pleasant to look at.

I'm using the colors as a subtle color coding of sort:

red is for primary content. Since red is such a loud color, I use it for the most important thing on the page
blue is for navigation links, the default color for links since the very first web browser
green is for administration and navigation
yellow is for secondary and quoted content.

I'm thinking of using it on this blog as well. Thoughts?

How to optimize a web page for the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:52:00 +0000

There are a few simple changes you can make to a web page to get it to display better on an iPhone (or iPod Touch). I've talked about this elsewhere but I've applied it to the layout of this blog as well. Try it out (or look at the screenshots below)!

What are those changes, you ask?

First, in the <head> section, add:

<meta name="viewport" content="width = device-width" />

The viewport tag will ensure that the page is taking the full width of the iPhone, without any horizontal scrolling.

Next, add this to the <body> tag:

<body onload="setTimeout(function() { window.scrollTo(0, 1); }, 100);">

This will make sure that once the page is loaded the Safari toolbar at the top will get scrolled out of view so that as much as your web page as possible is displayed on the screen.

Finally, you'll want a custom stylesheet for the iPhone. My stylesheet is built-in into my blogging template (i.e. not an external file), so I added another <style> tag that overrides and modify the style defined in my "default" stylesheet:

<style media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" type="text/css">


/* Override style definitions as appropriate */
body {
  width:480px;
  background:#f00
  margin:0;
  padding:0;
  font: large "Trebuchet MS",Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;;
  color:#333;
 }

/* etc... */

.not-iPhone {display:none;}

</style>

There are other ways to accomplish the same thing that are described in Apple's documentation

Note that I define a #not-iPhone class so that I can hide any content that I don't want to display on the iPhone, such as large images or content type not supported on the iPhone.

In the iPhone stylesheet, I've changed the layout so that it fits the smaller screen of the iPhone (480 px). For example, I moved the sidebar at the bottom of the page, instead of on the right. To take advantage of the limited real estate, I've removed some margins. I have also simplified the layout and removed some of the background textures I used on when not on the iPhone. Finally, I used a resized version of the header image (resized to 480 px wide), so that it loads a bit faster.

Declarative programming in Flex

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:40:00 +0000

When building applications using Flex (for AIR or Flash Player), you can use declarative programming to specify part of your user interface. The declarative language of Flex is XML-based and called MXML.

Here's a simple app in Flex/MXML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" 
  layout="absolute" 
  title="Hello Rich Internet Application"
  backgroundColor="#FFFFFF"
  >
 <mx:VBox horizontalAlign="center" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
  <mx:Button 
   label="Click Me" 
   click="mx.controls.Alert.show(
    'ActionScript and Flex are a match made in heaven!', 
    'Flex Rocks!');"/>
  <mx:Label 
   fontSize="24" 
   fontWeight="bold"
   color="#1A49DF" 
   text="Flex Makes RIA Development Easy" 
   />
 </mx:VBox>
 
</mx:WindowedApplication>

Here's the equivalent app in JavaFX:


/*
 *  HelloCompiledJavaFX.fx - A "Hello World" style, but slightly more 
 *                           sophisticated, compiled JavaFX Script example
 *
 *  Developed 2008 by James L. Weaver (jim.weaver at lat-inc.com)
 *  to serve as a compiled JavaFX Script example.
 */
package mypackage;

import javafx.ui.*;
import javafx.ui.canvas.*;

Frame {
  title: "Hello Rich Internet Applications!"
  width: 550
  height: 200
  background: Color.WHITE
  visible: true
  content:
    BorderPanel {
      top:
        FlowPanel {
          content:
            Button {
              text: "Click Me"
              action:
                function():Void {
                  MessageDialog {
                    title: "JavaFX Script Rocks!"
                    // This string has a newline in the source code
                    message: "JavaFX Script is Simple, Elegant, 
and Leverages the Power of Java" 
                    visible: true
                  }
                }
            }
        }
      center:
        Canvas {
          content:
            Text {
              font: 
                Font {
                  faceName: "Sans Serif"
                  style: FontStyle.BOLD
                  size: 24
                }
              x: 20
              y: 40
              stroke: Color.BLUE
              fill: Color.BLUE
              content: "JavaFX Script Makes RIA Development Easy"
            }
        }
    }
}

(from http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/javafx/ria_1/)

The Mechanics Monument—labor omnia vincit

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:47:00 +0000

The Mechanics Monument.

Bronze sculpture by Douglas Tilden in San Francisco at Market, Bush and Battery.

Dedicated in 1901, this sculpture also known as the Donahue Memorial Fountain, celebrates Peter Donahue, a successful San Francisco industrialist.

Peter Donahue arrived in the Gold Rush era San Francisco in 1849 and soon opened a small blacksmith shop at the corner of 1st and Mission under a tent. Over the years, Donahue's business grew into the first foundry on the West Coast, Union Iron Works, which would manufacture the first printing press in the West. Donahue also founded the first streetcar of San Francisco, Omnibus Street Railway, and the San Francisco/San Jose railroad line, still in use to this day by thousands of commuters every day. Donahue also founded the San Francisco Gas Company, which would become the Pacific Gas and Electric company after merging with Edison Electric, still in business today as PG&E.

The monument was a source of inspiration in the rebuilding of San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake and fires. Still close to its original location, the modern tower behind attest to the success of the rebuilding efforts.

The San Francisco of today owes much to the vision and energy of its early pioneers. It is quite remarkable how a single person had such an impact.

The fountain is inscribed with the motto labor omnia vincit. "Work conquers all", indeed.

Temple of Forgiveness

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:24:00 +0000

Temple of Forgiveness.

This shot of the Temple of Forgiveness that I took at Burning Man 2007 is now my most interesting picture on Flickr, beating the picture of the Starry Bamboo Mandala I took last year and "Naked Lady" from the Kona Classic.

Methodist Church in Bodie

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:53:00 +0000

Church in Bodie

Bodie is a once prosperous mining town in the Eastern California Sierra Nevada, 30 mi north of Mono Lake. It became a boom town in 1877, and by 1879 it was the second largest city in California, behind only San Francisco, with over 10,000 residents. It was the first city in the US with a long distance transmission of electricity. Now it remains in a state of arrested decay.

There's no word...

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:44:00 +0000

There's no word in French for:

tumbleweed

frown

shallow

serendipity

vicarious

bully

The Design of the Mac OS X Shutdown Feature

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:43:00 +0000

Joel Spolsky posted a blog entry about how offering choices to end users is not always a good thing and illustrate his point with the redesigned Start menu in Vista. Moishe Lettvin, who worked on that feature while at Microsoft (he now works at Google) gives some insights into the process that led to this result.

I happen to strongly stand in Joel's corner on the issue of options. Some will argue in fact that I sometimes go too far in my quest to simplify. I frequently argue that it is the job of the software designer to make choices on behalf of the user. That's what designing is all about. I'll also note that there's no one in the opposing corner arguing that all those options (or even more of them!) would make for a better product: Moishe essentially elucidates the process that led to this result, without arguing that the result is good :-)

Interestingly, the process to design this same feature in Mac OS X was very different, which probably accounts for the different result as well.

First, I sympathize with the release engineering issues for a system as complex as an operating system. A lot of the difficulties that Apple ran into with Copland were due to an inability to manage this complexity. The scope of the project was just more than the organization and processes we had could deal with. The success of Mac OS X has been due in part to an ability for Apple to succesfuly manage a project this complex to the point where full builds of the OS could be done reliably every week. To that extent, considering the issues described by Moishe, shipping Vista at all is quite a feat, indeed.

But the biggest difference probably was that only a few people were involved in the whole decision making process: a UI designer, a kernel engineer, a UI engineer, a Senior VP with very strong views about this feature (no, not Steve, but the "strong views" trait tends to be acquired by osmosis amongst by the senior management at Apple) and maybe a couple other people. There were no lengthy weekly meetings about this. The whole thing got designed and implemented over the course of a few months (not full time by any of the people involved). There were a few spirited discussions and email threads about what the "right thing" was. The Senior VP had the final call on it (and everyone involved was clear on who the decision maker was on this).

I actually think that the result could have been even better than what we ended up with. I argued against including Restart, Shut Down and Sleep in the Apple menu. How often do you restart your computer, really, especially as a regular end user? On the very rare time when you need to do so, why not just Shut Down, then power up again? And how about Shut Down? Shouldn't the power button that you used to turn the computer on be the same key you press to turn it off? Also, since pressing the power button brings up a confirmation dialog, providing the options to restart or shutdown there should be sufficient. We even had "one key" keyboard shortcuts, so that to restart the computer all you had to do was press the power key, then R when the dialog was displayed and the Restart option was selected. And finally, how often do you need to manually set your computer to Sleep? I just close the lid of my MacBook and it goes to sleep: a simple mechanical, physical interaction: no need for a software command. On desktop systems, Sleep can be triggered automatically after enough idle time has elapsed.

I still regret I was not able to prevail in those arguments.

One of the most endearing features of the iPod for me is that it has no on/off switch. I suspect the result would have been different if this Sr. VP was in charge: there probably would be Shutdown, Restart and Sleep available in a menu somewhere :-)

Then there's the case of the Log Out command. A useful, if rarely used command. I did not argue that this one should be done with, however our dear Senior VP insisted that it should have a keyboard shortcut, and that shortcut should be Command + Q, the same keyboard shortcut you use to quit applications. I mean, how often do you logout that you need a keyboard shorctut for it? But if you're going to pick a shortcut, Command + Q is a terrible shortcut, because it's way too easy to get the context wrong, not realize that the Finder is the frontmost app, instead of, say, Safari and logout when you meant to Quit. For a while, we had some internal builds implemented that way. I tried to argue we should not have a keyboard shortcut for Logout, but since NextStep had one, it was a very difficult argument to win. So instead, I convinced our dear Sr VP that it would be even better if we picked a keyboard shortcut so that from any app, without having to switch to the Finder first, you could log out (since that was such a frequent operation in his mind). That's why we ended up with Command + Shift + Q to Log Out. Not that this command deserved a keyboard shorctut in the first place, but since not having one was not an option, this was the best outcome I could think of to avoid having it be triggered by accident.

This also goes to show that the design process at Apple is not exactly perfect either :-)

Are Software Patents Detrimental to Innovation?

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:47:00 +0000

As the holder of sevent patents to date, and notably of the infamous "theme engine" patent, I was interviewed by Chase from osdev.org on the topic. Here's a reproduction of the interview. The original can be found here.

Chase: Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions.

Arno: You're welcome.

Would you care to give any background information on yourself or patent 6,188,399? What exactly was your role in U.S. Patent 6,188,399, "Multiple theme engine graphical user interface architecture"?

At the time this patent was filed I was the lead engineer for the Mac OS User Interface. My responsibilities included the Finder and the Toolbox, a part of which was the Appearance manager, which was built to implement interface skinning in Copland.

I am co-inventor of that patent, meaning I was one of the engineers who came up with the clever idea it describes

Looking at your resume I see that you've worked in the US, first Apple and now Adobe, but before that you were outside of the US. Most people in IT I've talked with outside of the US don't have nice things to say about computer related patents. What's your opinion? Good, bad, necessary evil?

I don't think there is a fundamental problem with the concept of patents. The purpose of patents is to recognize the value of intellectual property. The intent of patents is to encourage inventors to share their discoveries with the world: in exchange for documenting and making available publicly their discoveries, they are granted a protection, limited in time, by the government. It seems like a fair bargain, in principle.

I think there are several points worthy of discussion about software patents, though. First, is the scope of their protection appropriate? While a protection of 20 years may be reasonable for an industrial application, does the same scope make sense in a field that is barely 50 years old and evolving so quickly? One can reasonably argue that a shorter protection period would be more appropriate.

Second, is the patent review process effective? To be valid a patent has to be useful, novel and non-obvious "to someone skilled in the arts". That is, it has to be a genuine invention, something that no one ever thought of doing before, and something that a reasonably skilled engineer would not come up on his own when faced with a similar problem. Unfortunately, due to the volume of patents application being produced nowadays, it has become more and more difficult for patent reviewers to do their job as thoroughly as they would like. I believe that quite a few questionable software patents have been granted (but none of mine, of course ) either because they are in fact obvious or there is prior art available, and therefore they are not novel. Unfortunately, that only gets determined if someone bothers to challenge a patent. On the other hand, if you are confident that a patent is invalid, particularly if you know of prior art, you may consider ignoring the patent and waiting for the patent owner to contact you to present your prior art. A patent can be invalidated after it has been granted. Note that I am not qualified to give legal advice

Do you think other countries will adopt similar laws?

Many countries already have similar laws. The protection of intellectual property is important in many parts of the world and is becoming increasingly important. Without this kind of protection the incentive to invent would be reduced. The small inventor who comes up with a better encryption algorithm and publishes it would see his work ripped off by larger companies without any need for them to compensate him. On the other hand, larger companies would have no incentive to disclose their intellectual property, but instead would keep their inventions as proprietary information they would not share with anyone else, gaining in perpetuity exclusive ownership of some knowledge that could become fundamental to our society. There are some discussions about what can be patented and how to distinguish between inventions and discoveries. For example, mathematical formulas typically cannot be protected by a patent. Software patents sometimes fall in a grey area.

One of the complaints with computer software patents that always gets mentioned is that the "invention" is not a new concept. Not only are there always mentions of prior art but many technically savy people would consider many patents as obvious evolutions. Do you think there is a problem with the review process?

Yes, I think the patent review process could be improved. I think that the inventors and the public would benefit from a better review process. In my experience, when submitting a patent one of the difficult part of the application process is researching prior art. You want to avoid the expense of submitting a patent application that is going to be rejected or to rely on a patent that could be declared invalid after being granted because there is some prior art that was not discovered at the time of the submission or the grant.

Similarly, during the review process, the reviewer wants to do the best job they can to ensure the idea is original and non-obvious. Unfortunately, there is no convenient process to research prior art today.

I think an organized community-based process would be welcome and helpful. Imagine that you are a reviewer about to review a patent application. What if you could post a query to a site asking for prior art on an invention to which anyone could respond to with citation or evidence of prior art? Sometimes the IT community does band together when aggressive companies start to issue threats to enforce crucial patents such when Forgent asserted claims that impacted JPEG. Maybe we could generalize this?

As an engineering manager, I'm often responsible for reviewing our work and selecting what could be patentable. I have to consider both the "obviousness" of the invention, as well as any prior art I know of. Only if I find something that passes both criteria do I involve our patent group. If they agree with me, with then proceed with an internal review. If the internal consensus from other engineers in the company is that the idea is non-obvious and original, then we involve our patent lawyers at which point we submit an application to the patent office. So, we try to do what we can to limit and eliminate frivolous patents, but we may not always be successful.

When this patent was being mentioned on IT news sites there were a few responses that went something like "What?!?! They patented THEMES???" Even more now when almost all computer software can be themed the idea that theming is patentable seems bizarre. Of course everything seems obvious when looking back in time. During your time at Apple was patent 6,188,399 seen more as a significant enhancement to an existing invention or something new?

LOL Yes, I remember reading some of the reaction when this patent was discussed. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask me about it. Apparently, the answer is 5 years!

Patents are legal documents. As a result, they are very precise but they are also somewhat difficult to read. Not too many people actually took the time to read this patent and understand what it applied to.

This patent doesn't cover the concept of themes or skinning. First, that would hardly be original and second that would actually not be something that can be protected by a patent. A patent cannot be used to protect an idea or concept. It has to protect a specific manner to accomplish something. In this case, this patent is fairly narrow and applies to procedural skinning, if you will. That is, the ability skin or theme software using not just images assembled together (I'm not aware of any patents on that and I think one could argue easily (a) there is a lot of prior art on that and (b) it is obvious to a skilled engineer) but using procedural code to specify a skin or theme.

When we came up with this idea back in 1997, first we had a "hey, that's a cool idea" moment, which is the first sign that something might be patentable then a "hey, I've never heard of anyone doing anything like this before", this being the second sign that something might be patentable. We then put in motion the process to apply for a patent, which included doing research on prior art, describing it, etc...

So, the concept of skinning wasn't new (although it certainly wasn't as widespread as it is today), but how we wanted to do skinning was.

In terms of IT patent news this patent is rather old, most mentions were back in 2001 with articles such as http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/09/apple_patents_desktop_themes however there have still been mentions of this patent over the years (mostly on KDE or Gnome mailing lists). The majority of articles back in 2001 all seem to suggest there is prior art. To your knowledge have there been any legal challenges to the patent?

I'm not aware of any legal challenge to this patent. However, like I said this patent is frequently assumed to being much broader than its actual scope. I don't believe there is any prior art that I know of, but I'm open to being proven wrong. Also, contrary to what the Register states, Themes.org does not constitute prior art, since again the patent doesn't cover the concept of skinning *and* the patent pre-dates Themes.org (I think in fact we inspired Themes.org).

After browsing through the U.S. Patent office website and even the patents related to patent 6,188,399 I can see why some people say that almost everything you can do with a computer has been patented. For those of us in the U.S. interested in creating operating systems it seems the entire process is basically illegal or at the very least could get us sued back to the stone age.

I'm not sure what you mean by illegal. By definition itself, patent protection is a legal process. You might think it is unfair, or non productive and that the law should be changed, but I don't think you can call it illegal. I also think that there are still many new inventions to be made, otherwise I don't think I would still be working in this industry.

Do you think amateur operating system developers really have anything to worry about? No, I don't think so. If you don't intentionally violate a patent, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Patents are designed to protect the public interest. They are not granted for the protection of big companies, in fact just the opposite.

Patent infringement cases typically involve willful infringement, that is someone who knew what they were doing when they decided to use the intellectual property described in a patent. Typically, if you are unknowingly infringing a patent you are given the chance to rectify by using some other mean to achieve the desired effect. So, you would not be prevented from skinning your app or your OS, as long as you did it some other way than the method described in the infamous patent above.

Again, it's not the idea that's protected, it's the specific method to implement the idea. So, you could either choose to do it using one of the "obvious" methods for which there is ample prior art, and which are therefore not protected by patents *or* if you find there is so much value in the particular method that you absolutely want to use it, but yet cannot find prior art about it, you must recognize that the idea is original and valuable and you should give a tip of the hat to the inventors, maybe by offering them to license their patent.

Have you heard of the SCO vs IBM patent case involving Linux? Do you have an opinion?

Actually, the SCO vs. IBM case is not a patent case. SCO had various claims against IBM, but none involved violating a patent. On the other hand, IBM counter-sued SCO claiming infringement by SCO of some IBM patents. So one could argue in this case that the patent system works since IBM is using it to defend itself against a predatory company

I was willing to give SCO the benefit of the doubt regarding the merit of their claims and assume that their actions were really just a sincere mean to defend their intellectual property. However, their behavior leads me to think that SCO is behaving as a predatory company or at least as a desperate company trying to sue themselves out of bankruptcy. Personally, I'm rooting for IBM on this one

Do you think that companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Apple apply for so many patents just to acquire an arsenal of patents? To some degree it seems that once a company acquires enough patents it becomes safe to function. A game of thermonuclear war if you will.

Large software companies file patents to protect themselves from being sued by a smaller predatory companies (such as SCO). I am not aware of any instance where Microsoft, IBM or Apple have gone after a small (or large) inventor and sued them for patent infringement. The business models of these companies is to innovate and sell (and protect) their innovations, not to write patents and license them.

Very often large companies negotiate with each other cross-licensing agreements, meaning that they pool their patents together. Companies therefore have an incentive to accumulate patents, as the set of patents they have is considered a valuable commodity in those cross-licensing deals. And the reason they are interested in those cross-licensing deals is to cover themselves, not to go after others.

A few firms have a business model based solely around the acquisition and aggressive enforcement of patents (Forgent comes to mind). I personally don't find those companies to be providing a very valuable service to society. I see them as an unavoidable consequence of our system but find what they're doing to be morally objectionable, although legal. I don't think they contribute to making the world a better place.

Without worrying about your current employment contract, if you had an original idea involving computer software would you personally patent it? Why?

I would consider it, certainly. However, patenting an original idea is not always the best course of action. I've also worked in academia where you publish and share your results for fame and no profit. It's a different kind of reward I've also been involved with some startups that did have valuable intellectual property but decided it was in their best interest to keep it as proprietary information. They basically did not want their (potential) competitors to know what they were up to. unfortunately, some of them folded and as a results their ideas went with them and were never shared with the world. They were good ideas too. Maybe someone will rediscover them someday.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions and for not assuming I was evil for having my name on a patent!

On the origins of .DS_Store

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:56:00 +0000

If you are a Mac user, or if you have transfered files from Mac to Windows, you're probably familiar with .DS_Store files. But where does this name come from?

Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple. At that time the Finder code base was some 8 years old and had reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it require huge engineering effort, and any changes usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. For Mac OS X we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch.

Part of the work involved separating its user interface and its core functionality, the back-end. The back-end of the Finder enumerates files, watch for changes in the file system, deals with metadata, including icon locations and folder settings. Internally, those two components were known as Finder_FE and Finder_BE (Frontend and Backend).

However, we soon started realizing that the Finder backend would be useful outside of the Finder. Therefore, a plan was hatched to someday make it available as a public API. Since I had previously been responsible for naming Icon Services and Navigation Services, we decided to go with Desktop Services (at the time, we were also considering renaming the Finder to "Desktop"). Hence the name of the .DS_Store, for "Desktop Services Store". We added a "." in front of it so that it would be considered as an invisible file by Unix OS, including Mac OS.

Personally, I don't think it's a great name and I wish we had gone with something a bit more descriptive, but it's too late for that :-)

There is also an unfortunate bug that is not fixed to this day that result in an excessive creation of .DS_Store file. Those files should only be created if the user actually makes adjustments to the view settings or set a manual location for icons in a folder. That's unfortunately not what happens and visiting a folder pretty much guarantees that a .DS_Store file will get created

Incidentally, Finder_BE aka Desktop Services did end up being used by more than just the Finder: Navigation Services (the Open/Save dialog) now also make use of it, although it didn't in the initial release of Mac OS. However, the Desktop Services API has still not been fully released.

They stole my bike!

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:32:00 +0000

Well, this week-end was eventful.

First I finally got an iPod connection kit installed in my 350Z. I went with the Neo iOn because it works with the factory Bose audio system and allows the iPod to be controlled from the driving wheel. I bought it online and went to the local Best Buy to get it installed. I dropped the car off in the morning, walked back home and took my bike for a little riding around (for what would turn out to be our last ride together. Sniffle, sniffle.)

The weather was gorgeous, so I went to Golden Gate Park to try out my new macro lens. They had a butterfly exhibit at the Conservatory of Flowers which turned out to be perfect subjects for my experimentation.
My back has been sore on and off since my trip to Egypt in December. It had been flaring up again, so later in the afternoon I went to get a massage, which did help for a while. I finally got a call that my car was read and biked back to pick it up.

I unclipped my computer and light from the bike, and carefully secured it to the metal post of an 8-foot chain-link fence, in a well lighted, public area of the Best Buy parking lot. I then drove the car back.

A few hours later, I walked back to the Best Buy to get my bike back. At this point, you probably see where this is going. My bike was gone. Now, mind you, they did not break the Kryptonite U-lock I had, which a good news, since the last time I had my bike stolen, almost two years ago to the day, they did cut through my security cable. However, they tore down the fence completely so they could slide my bike from the pole and get away with it. Now, that seems to me to be a bit of a disproportionate effort, particularly since this was a low-end bike. Nice and comfortable for sure, but I can't imagine it has that big of a resale value. Maybe it just goes to show I don't have a criminal mind or that I'm too lazy. I'm not sure.

So, at this point. I'm not in a very good mood. But what are you going to. Apparently, there's 12 to 14 bikes stolen in SF every day. SF is th US city with the highest per-capita incidence of bike theft, with only New-York ahead. Apparently, there's a big underground economy in bike theft, where bikes gets stolen in San Francisco and sold in Oakland, while bikes stolen in the East Bay end up in San Francisco.

More for the experience than in the hope to actually ever see my bike again, I went to the police department and filed a report. I very much doubt it will serve much purpose. The police officers I gave my declaration to seemed to be very midly interested. I can understand this would not be at the top of the list of criminal activities to pursue, but still...

Anyway, since I really have to come to depend on my bike to commute to work, I went to REI and bought a replacement. Because I'm trying so hard to figure out a positive spin to this sad story, I've actually calculated that the money I'm saving by not driving to San Jose every day more than offsets the cost of a new bike every couple of years. Sigh...

Since I needed to cheer myself up, I went to take a few pictures of the Golden Gate. Looking at the majestic cityscape at night always warm my heart, even when I think of the misguided souls stealing bike at this very moment...

Typeface dream

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Fri, 26 May 2006 04:05:00 +0000

Last night I had a funny dream. I dreamt of a typeface.

You would think a typeface would not make a very interesting topic for a dream, but there it was. I could visualize the fluid shapes of its glyphs, its upper and lower case letterforms, its elegant punctuation marks, its friendly strokes, its underlying rational geometric construction, its various sizes and weights.

It was not a typeface I knew. It was a new typeface. It was simple, legible, elegant, friendly, balanced, interesting.

Before my eyes, the glyphs appeared, then faded leaving room for new ones to appear. Sometimes group of letters would appear together ("AVION", "ffl", "ae"), but no recognizable word.

Of course, as soon as I woke up the memory of this wonderful typeface started fading. Maybe I'll get to meet it in my dreams again, but this time I'll have a notebook at the ready by my bedside...

On a somewhat related note, the default font in Microsoft Office 2007 is no longer the venerable Times New Roman, but a new versatile font created by Lucas de Groot, Calibri.

Kona Classic 2006

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Wed, 24 May 2006 05:40:00 +0000

View from the Naked Lady

This year I participated to the Kona Classic, a yearly underwater photography contest and art festival in Kona, Hawaii.

Scheduling this trip proved to be a bit of a challenge as I was on a business trip in Hamburg the week before the event took place. I traveled from San Francisco to London, spent the week-end there, then onward to Hamburg for the rest of the week before flying all the way back to Hawaii, with a stop-over in Franrkfurt and San Francisco. What a trip. Curiously, I was not jet lagged when I arrived in Hawaii. I did manage to get my time zone calculations wrong though and to book my San Francisco-Kona flight for 24 hours later than I intended. However, I was able to correct my itinerary once arrived in San Francisco.

I also took the gamble of traveling all the way from SFO to London, Hamburg and back with my big diving equipment case, but it turned out pretty well (thank you Debrilla Ratchford, inventor of the rolling suitcase).

Everyday of the week looked something like this:

7am: wake up
8 am pick up at hotel by dive operator
9:30 am: first dive, then lunch
noon: second dive
3pm: return to the hotel
3:30pm: seminar on various topics: composition, lighting, shooting macro, shooting wide-angle, digital workflows, etc... by one of the "pros" on hand
Spend the rest of the day reviewing images, and select one or two to try to make them better with Photosohp :-)

Punctuating the week were various dinners, sunset cruises, etc... I even got to see my first green flash, a rare meteorological phenomenon popularized by Jules Verne where a brillant flash of green light appears for a brief instant as the sun is setting. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough to capture it with my camera.

« Avez-vous quelquefois observé le soleil qui se couche sur un horizon de mer ? Oui ! sans doute. L'avez-vous suivi jusqu'au moment où, la partie supérieure de son disque effleurant la ligne d'eau, il va disparaître ? C'est très probable. Mais avez-vous remarqué le phénomène qui se produit à l'instant précis où l'astre radieux lance son dernier rayon, si le ciel, dégagé de brumes, est alors d'une pureté parfaite ? Non ! peut-être. Eh bien, la première fois que vous trouverez l'occasion, — elle se présente très rarement, — de faire cette observation, ce ne sera pas comme on pourrait le croire, un rayon rouge qui viendra frapper la rétine de votre œil, ce sera un rayon « vert », mais d'un vert merveilleux, d'un vert qu'aucun peintre ne peut obtenir sur sa palette, d'un vert dont la nature, ni dans la teinte si variée des végétaux, ni dans la couleur des mers les plus limpides, n'a jamais reproduit la nuance ! S'il y a du vert dans le Paradis, ce ne peut être que ce vert-là, qui est, sans doute, le vrai vert de l'Espérance ! »

Having just picked up underwater photography being able to learn from people who regularly produce "wow" pictures such as Marty Snyderman, David Fleetham, Ty Sawyer and Eric Cheng was a fantastic opportunity. And it didn't hurt that they were all incredibly nice and passionate guys. Most of the participants I got the chance to dive with were also really nice and laid back, with the exception of a couple of Hollywood celebrities, who were clearly coming from a different planet.

To my surprise, one of my pictures ended up placing 3rd place in the "Diver" category. Yeah!

I'm looking forward to next year, but I think I'm going to have to think about upgrading my hardware, because my little Olympus 7070 with no external strobe is starting to get in my way. And I thought that scuba was equipment-intensive. Pfft. It's nothing compared to underwater photography :-)

100

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 02:33:00 +0000

Rob, a friend from work, had been recommending me to dive in the Yucatan area for a while, and in particular to dive a cenote. I finally got to follow his advice and dive my first cenote today, and what an experience it was.

A cenote, or d'zenot (sacred well) in Maya, is a collapsed cavern part of an underground system of caves, caverns and rivers flowing to the sea, carved over centuries by the rainwater penetrating the limestone. At the surface they appear as large sink-holes in the middle of the jungle but they are doorways to a fantastic underwater world.

I dived the cenote Chac Mool (the claw of the Jaguar), located south of Playa del Carmen.

The water in the cenotes is clear as air, offering visibility of over 70m. The Chac Mool cavern featured stalagtite and stalagmite, proof that it was dry at some point. Indeed, during the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago, the water level of the world's ocean was some 100m lower.

Some of the stalagtites and stalagmites are slanted at steep angles which is another sign of the violent geologic event that shaped the region. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid 10 to 20 km wide collided nearby at the present day location of the Chicxulub village, pushing 70% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs, into extinction. Some fossils were also visible, embedded in the limestone.

In contrast to the signs of these dramatic events, the shafts of light peering from the surface evoked the peacefulness of a cathedral. When crossing the halocline, the boundary between fresh and salt water, at about 10m of depth, the light is distorted at it passes through the water, enshrounding you in a dream-like haze.

It was a fantastic experience and incidentally my 100th logged dive. What a way to celebrate. Thanks Rob.

Underwater Photography

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:21:00 +0000

Today I rented a digital underwater camera, an Olympus Camedia 3000 with an external strobe.

I had used disposable underwater cameras before but this was my first try with a "real" camera. The big difference is the strobe. Because sea water filters out reds, pictures taken without flash come out with a bluish tint. This time, though, with the help of the strobe, I got some interesting pictures.

Taking pictures underwater is more difficult than it sounds. For one thing my air consumption was worse than usual, because you tend to get all excited when you see a potential subject, and you swim around more, trying to stay still in a current while you frame your picture. More energy spent means more air consumed. Also, it's really hard to take pictures of fish. Most of them are moving real fast and not staying still for the picture. So I took a lot of pictures of sponges and corals instead. I did manage to get a moray eel, a crab, some shrimp, an angelfish, some blue chromis, a squirelfish, a school of yellowtail snapper, some sergeant majors, and my prize: a splendid toadfish, a rare species that is only found in Cozumel and that spends most of its time hidden in small caves where it croaks loudly (hence its name).

I got all the pictures on CD and I´ll upload them when I get back.

Gabriel recommends the Olympus 5050 as an digital underwater camera. I'm now tempted to get more toys and spend some time getting better at underwater photography...

Some People Should Not Dive

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:57:00 +0000

Some people really should not dive.

After your initial dive training, you get a certification card, or C-card. Mind you, unlike a driver license, once you have a C-card it never expires and cannot be revoked. Unfortunately, maybe.
This makes some sense, though: at the wheel of a car you could hurt many more people than yourself. With diving, if you do something stupid, you´re the one most likely to suffer the consequences.

This afternoon's dive offered several examples of what not to do as a diver, from the minor to the frightful.

During the dive briefing, the divemaster is always very clear about what you´re supposed to do and not to do. This time, as always, Miguel reminded everyone to follow him and stay behind him.

All the dive sites over the Cozumel reef are drift dives. That's the easiest and most relaxing way to dive: you just let the current carry you along. You don´t even have to kick your fins. You can just sit back and enjoy the ride, literally.

Now, if you start kicking, you´re going to go fast. You´re going to go much faster than everybody else and you will end up separated from your group. That´s what happened to four of the divers. They went way past the lead divemaster into the blue yonder. Miguel, our divemaster, started banging his tank to get their attention and gestured for them to come back and rejoin the group. Did they? No, of course not. One of them, once they were back on the boat, even complained that the divemaster was banging on his tank. Well, duh.

That was funfest number one. Now, Cozumel is a national marine park. To preserve the fragile reef ecosystem, you should not touch any sponge or coral. You could accidentally break it. But the natural oil on your skin also degrades the protective coating that protects those fragile organisms from bacteria. The divemaster also reminds you of this during the dive briefing.

But one of the divers in our group was a grabber. Accidents happen and sometimes you brush against a sponge. But this guy was just grabbing and holding on to sponges. Repeatedly. He also grabbed some of shrimp and started playing with it. Argg... Why on earth would you do that?

I must say in general that divers are quite well behaved. After all, if they want to keep enjoying diving, it is in their interest to preserve the reefs. But there always has to be an exception.

And now for another behavior that could land someone a Darwin award. It was actually a combined effort. One of them was a diver with our group (one of those that kept getting separated) and the other was a young snorkeler, a friend of the diver.

The snorkeler was tagging along with us and from time to time would freedive. At one point, as the snorkeler was freediving, the diver gave him his spare second stage and the snorkeler took a breath.

Now, and it apparently wasn´t obvious to either one of them, but this is a really bad idea. He took a breath of compressed air, then zoomed back to the surface. When you do that, the air in your lungs expand because of the difference in pressure between the depth and the surface (Boyle´s law). As a result you can end up with more air than your lungs have the capacity to hold. This can create all sort of interesting things, including arterial gas embolism (the lung´s alevoli are distended, then rupture, then gas leaks into the arterial), mediastinal/subcutaneous emphysema (the lung tears and air leaks into the cavity between the two lungs) or pneumothorax (collapsed lung).

When he saw this Miguel started gesturing big no-no signs. Once we were back on the surface he told the diver not to repeat that performance, and she was acting somewhat bothered, wondering what she had done wrong. Now, when you don't really know what you're doing and someone tells you "what you just did was very dangerous", please, believe them. Don´t just argue with them and say "well, nothing happened". The point is that something could have happened.

Each diver is responsible for their own actions. A divemaster is only there as a guide and advisor. Whether you decide to follow their recommendation or not is your call. After all, it´s your life.

Divemaster Arno

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 05:27:00 +0000

I have completed my training as a Divemaster. I have passed all the theory exams, the swim tests and the practical application part of the training. I'll need to mail in some paperwork, pay my annual dues and liability insurance and I'll receive my authentic Divemaster card!

This was different than the Rescue Diver training I took a couple of years ago. Rescue Diver is very physical. You have many rescue exercises to do, some of which are quite demanding. For Divemaster, you have to learn a lot of theory (physics, physiology, decompression theory) as well as how to interact with student divers and instructors. However, it´s not physically quite as demanding. I´m glad to have completed both training now. Next step would be the Dive Instructor certification, but I think I´ll wait to get a bit more experience to go for it, although Gabriel tells me it´s essentially focused on marketing.

Three more dives yesterday, and another three today, including a night dive. Nigth diving is really a special experience.

There are at least four different things interesting about diving: the equipment, the fauna, the landscape, the physical experience.

For some people, diving is a great excuse to buy piles of gadget and expensive and complex equipment: compressed air cylinders, exotic gases (argon, helium, nitrox), underwater lights and cameras, etc... You dive because you have to test the equipment. Others couldn´t care less about the equipment: if they could swallow a pill and breathe underwater without equipment, they would.

For some people it´s all about the fauna and flora. They know all about the mating habits of the mantis shrimp and can distinguish between the juvenile, male and female parrot fish. When they're in the water, they look in crevices and under overhangs for the rarest species. They often have cameras, but not for the equipment, but as a way to record their finds.

Some dive sites, especially deep ones, don't have much animal life. Instead, there's the beauty of the reef to enjoy, the towering coral heads, the butresses, the swim throughs, the huge barrel sponges, the fantastic underwater landscapes that feel as if they were from another planet.

And then, there´s the experience of being free from gravity. You don´t weigh anything anymore. You can move left, right, forward, back or up and down. You can move just as easily upright, horizontal, on your side or upside down for that matter. Moving is effortless. You barely have to think "up" and your breathing pattern changes, affecting your buyoancy and causing you to rise. Or a quick flick of your fins and you are propulsed forward.

I´m not much into the equipment, and although the landscapes and the animals are fascinating, I like the physical experience the best. At night, this experience is intensified. You can turn off your light, look away from the other divers and you find yourself floating in space, with nothing around you but the sparkle of the photoluminescent plankton as you wave your hand in front of you and the sound of the bubbles as you exhale. For a moment you feel like Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Actually, I think I´m getting a sense for what astronauts feel like when they travel back to earth. Yesterday I was lying in bed reading, and I wanted to roll. I pushed against the headstand, and I was surprised and disapointed to realize that my body would not just float away as I had been expecting, and as it would have underwater. Instead I had to prop myself up, then clumsily move around. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to get out of the water, just like sometimes you have to get back to earth.

Fast Boat

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:21:00 +0000

Today I went on the so-called "fast-boat". It's not really that much faster as we leave at 8am, half-an-hour before the regular boat, and return only an hour earlier. It is however taking a maximum of eight divers and a single divemaster, and therefore less crowded.

We went to Santa Rosa Wall, then Tormentos Reef. Both dives were great, with less eratic currents than yesterday. Our Divemaster was an expert naturalist, particularly good at picking out the small things in the sand: a couple of Jackknife fish (black and white stripes and a long dorsal fin) hiding in the coral reef, crab, spider shrimp, tiny flounders and larger ones. We also saw the usual baracudas and giant groupers and a very friendly large angelfish who was probably expecting some food from us. I also heard the dolphins again, but didn't see them this time.

It was the first day of diving in a year for one of the divers on the boat, John. As he was setting up his equipment, his regulator started freeflowing (that is, it started delivering air continuously and forcefully making quite a loud noise). It happens sometimes when the diaphragm of the regulator gets stuck. John started fumbling with it, hitting it and shaking it violently with no effect. I grabbed it from him and put two fingers in front of the air out-take, unsticking the diaphragm and stopping the freeflow. John thanked me and added "I was just checking if it was still working. Haven´t used it in a year". OK. Well, scuba diving equipment is life support equipment. Specifically, your life. It needs an annual maintenance check, because when you´re about to go on a dive is not the time to find that you should have maintained it. I could tell already that this guy was going to be fun, so I signed up to be his buddy (I need the practice to handle emergencies). Indeed, once we were in the water John had various problems. He wasn´t weighted properly and didn´t have good buoyancy control, so he kept floating up. At one point he started floating toward the surface out of control, which can be dangerous as this can cause decompression sickness or lung overexpansion injury, so I went after him, took control of his BCD and emptied all his air so he could go back down. It´s at this point I found out that his dive computer´s battery had run out, so he had no depth gauge nor a check on his dive profile (another no-no, and another reason why you´re supposed to have yearly maintenance on your equipment). Not long after he ran out of air and I had to escort him to the surface. He started ascending way too fast, and I motionned him to slow down but let him go as my computer was beeping requesting me to slow my ascent. First rule of the Divemaster: don´t put yourself in jeopardy because someone else is doing something stupid. I eventually caught up with him, stabilized him and did our safety stop together. My respect for Divemasters increase everyday now that I start seeing through their eyes.

I went to visit San Gervasio, a site of mayan ruins in the center of the island. Since around 100BC and as late as the 16th century, women from the Yucatan were expected to make a pilgrimage to the temple of Ixchel in San Gervasio at least once in their lifetime. Ixchel in the mayan pantheon was the goddess of midwifery, fertility, medicine and weaving. Iguanas now meander amongst several buildings, temples and roads that remain in the middle of the thick jungle. I spent most of my time running from mosquitoes, but several of them managed to bite me on my feet. As it turns out, malaria is endemic in Cozumel... Oh well.

Tonight a US Navy ship has moored in Cozumel, and it´s shore leave for the marines, along with the usual batallion of tourists from the cruise ships (five cruise ships stationned today). Although the marines are dressed in civilian clothes, they stick out. For one thing, there are very few drunk divers in Cozumel -- alcohool and diving don´t mix, "Dont´t drink and dive" as the saying goes. For another, tourists are rarely travelling in band of four or five cropped hair young guys. A pack of them got a room next to mine. I hope they´ll be reasonably quiet and I´ll be able to sleep tonight. I have some diving to do tomorrow...

Zero Gravity

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 03:22:00 +0000

Yesterday I completed all my written exams: Physics, Physiology and First Aid, Equipment, Decompression Theory and the RDP, Dive Skills and the Environment, Supervising Activities for Certified Divers, Supervising Student Divers in Training and PADI Divemaster Conducted Programs. I passed on all of them with 80% or more. One of my answer on navigation was embarrasingly wrong, where I affirmed that three angles of 60° were all you needed to navigate in a triangle pattern... On the other hand I was also able to calculate the amount of air to put in a lift bag to get a 200Kg motor out of the sea floor, or the depth you have to dive at to breath compressed air equivalent to 100% oxygen. All useful skills that will come in handy sometimes.

I also finished the last two water exercises: timed tired diver tow and underwater equipment exchange. For this one, you and your partner go underwater, then strip out of your equipment and exchange it with each other, then put it back again. No practical application whatsoever, but it´s an interesting problem solving exercise. It´s harder than it seems.

I´ve also completed the last bit of the training, which was the drawing of a dive site map, including emergency procedures appropriate to the local site. I´ll show it to Gabriel tomorrow and we´ll see if he approves. I also still need to hear from him how I did on the rest of the practical training.

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit Chankanaab park, which means "small ocean" in yucatec maya . The name comes from a cenote (fresh water pool communicating with the ocean through underground tunnels) which is just next to the ocean. It´s a nice place to visit and take some sun in and snorkel. It also has a nice archaelogocial section describing the various pre-colombian meso-american cultures and a reconstituted typical mayan habitation. I was able to follow along with the guide´s explanation: my spanish comprehension is getting better.

Today, I spent the day diving for fun: El Paseo del Cedral, Tormentos and Paraiso Norte. The first two had some really interesting current. And by interesting I mean that it felt like you were flying at supersonic speed about the coral reef. Lots of interesting animals too: lobsters, giant crabs, angelfish, some baracudas, a nurse shark, giant groupers, a pod of four dolphins, a pipefish.

Also, a familly of four new divers who just got certified. As it turned out, the little girl ran out of air early and started panicking when she hit her reserve. I was able to put my training to good use, reassure her, reach our guide and let him know she needed to go up. Once we were back at the surface, the mother thanked me and asked me if I was a Divemaster. Well... wouldn´t you know it... I hope I made Gabriel proud...

Felipe Xicotencatl

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 02:40:00 +0000

My Divemaster training is progressing. I took some of the theory exams (physiology, conducting Divemaster programs, handling students) and I think I did OK on them. I'll take the remaining ones tomorrow. I'm also beeing graded by Gabriel on the practical portion of the course. I don't know the results yet, but Gabriel seems happy with me. I also took most of my watermanship exams, including the 400 yard freestyle swim (10min), the 800 yard fin/snorkel swim (14min) and the 15 minute water treading. I still have to do the tired diver tow, an underwater map of a dive site and do an underwater equipment exchange.

We took on a new student. She wanted to become NAUI Advanced Open Water certified (NAUI is a dive certification agency, like PADI). I again served as model for the skills she had to perform underwater, gradually improving my skills to "demonstration quality" level. The funny thing is that she doesn't seem to be very motivated. She complains about not looking forward to doing some of the requirements, saying that she'll do them "if she has to". Well, nobody is forcing her. She doesn't have to take her advanced certification. She has 40 logged dives, so she's already a fairly experienced diver. She doesn't seem to have major difficulty underwater, so I'm not sure what's motivating her behavior. Her husband is not diving, so she's probably not being pressured by him to do it. Some of the mysteries that Instructors and Divemasters have to deal with.

I did my first wreck dive today. For some reason, the opportunity to do one before had always escaped me. I almost dived the Rainbow Warrior in New-Zealand in 2000, but at the last minute the weather got too rough. Very good conditions today, though, and we went diving the C-53, also known as the Felipe Xicotencatl (I'm also getting better at my Mayan pronunciation). The C-53 was built in 1944 for the US Navy, then sold in 1962 to the Mexican Navy. It patrolled the area until 1999 when it was decommissioned, donated to the Cozumel underwater park and sunk in 82 feet of water off shore from Chankanaab Park. She's kept upright by eight anchors and she's starting to get overtaken by coral and algae. Unfortunately, a first layer of coral attached to the paint of the boat, which is now coming off. The underlying metal will be a better substrate and it should be a nice artificial reef a few years from now.

This dive ended up as a deco dive (that is, Gabriel and I exceeded the recommended recreational dive tables) and we had to do a decompression stop on our way back up. That happened because of our repeated diving, the residual nitrogen in our issues and the fact that our earlier dive in the morning was a deep dive at 111 feet. No more diving the rest of the day to give a chance to the accumulated nitrogen to leave our bodies.

Excellent dinner at La Choza, the best Mexican/Carribean restaurant on the island according to Gabriel. The guacamole and salsa de verdeo were unctuous, the sopa de pescado spicy, but just right and the filete de pescado a la Veracruz, a fish cooked with tomatoes, onions and peppers, delicious. For desert, I had an avocado pie, which was definitely an unexpected flavor for desert, but something one could get used to. Maybe mexican cuisine will grow on me after all...

Mr. Gadget

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 04:08:00 +0000

I'm getting used to the climate. In fact, it doesn't bother me at all anymore. I've decided that air conditionners are works of the Devil. In a hot weather like in Cozumel, using air conditionners is asking for a cold, with the large temperature gradient between air conditionned rooms and the outside. I've unplugged the one in my room, just relying on the cool breeze of the evening and I feel great.

Today we did a two-tank boat dive with Greg, Brett and Bryan. The first one was a deep dive, at Palancar Gardens, the second one was a drift dive at Las Palmas. On the second dive, I gave the dive briefing. I had anxiously prepared my notes on a slate and I tried to remember everything I had to say while using the communication techniques Gabriel had taught me: look each diver in the eyes, don't give interdictions, repeat every important information at least twice.

Later on, we did the Navigation specialty course from shore: using a compass underwater, natural and landmark navigation, tracing a square using only a compass. As I was helping one of the students by measuring the distances on the sea floor, I put my fingers straigth on top of a well camouflaged ray. Thankfully, it did not sting me, but just scurried away. Another close encounter...

Greg, Brett and Bryan are equipped with all the latest scuba diving gadgets. They have dive computers with a wireless connection to their air tank to measure the amount of air remaining. They have integrated inflators/alternate air supply. They have foldable snorkels. They have nice log books, tons of dry bags and wet bags, and mask defogger (most divers just spit in their mask to prevent fog from forming underwater, you can tell the real gadget freak by the fact that he uses instead mask defogger, aka spit-in-a-bottle). On the other hand, their fins and masks don't quite fit, they always have some problems getting their wireless connections to work, and it takes them longer than average to unpack, prepare and put their gears away. I think it's mostly Greg who wants "the best" as he puts it (he keeps asking us for "the best" dive site, "the best" restaurant, etc...). It's just that he confuses "the best" with "the most expensive" or "the most exotic". On the other hand, Brian, one of his sons, mumbles about wanting "the less gear possible". There is yet hope for future generations... ;-)

The Zen of the Divemaster

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 03:44:00 +0000

Today, I assisted on the Open Water dives 3 and 4 for Larry and Brian. While supervising them on the ocean's bottom I must have kneeled on a hydroid. At first, I though I had cut my knee on a sharp piece of dead coral and I even let out a cry under water. When I came out of the waterI could see there was no cut, but the very painful sensation continued. I put some Calamine lotion on, but it didn't make a difference. I continued to suffer for the rest of the day.

After this unfortunate encounter, Gabriel showed me how to use The Wheel (tm), this weird contraption from PADI that allows you to calculate your safe bottom times. Everybody uses tables or computers, but knowing how to use The Wheel (tm) is a requirement for the Divemaster certification. Go figure.

We then waited for the arrival of a very enthusiastic trio of divers. Greg and his two sons, Brian and Brent, just flew in from New Mexico, where, as Greg points out, they don't have much water. They're just here for four days and determined to do the most of their time here. They've signed up for the Advanced Open Water training. We took them on a first dive to check their diving abilities and work on their buyoancy control.

While I was watching them get setup and then underwater, it reminded me of an observation I made before: Divemasters are living embodiments of calmness.
A Divemaster never rushes. A Divemaster does things slowly and methodically. A Divemaster doesn't do brusque movements. A Divemaster's life is outwardly unharried. Underwater, a Divemaster is graceful and fluid. A Divemaster doesn't flinch when a fireworks explodes under his feet. OK, maybe not the last one. But in general, it's true that every Divemaster I've known have shared this characteristic.
On the other hand, new divers are often seen running, rushing to put their equipment on, then putting it off because they forgot something, then putting it back on. Underwater, they have jerky movements, turn their heads left and right quickly, flail their arms around, point at thing excitedly. Basically, they behave as if they were on land.
Water is much denser than air, and therefore our movements and our demeanor need to adapt to the aquatic world. Conversely, Divemaster seems to have on land the same cool demeanor they have underwater. I wonder if my own demeanor is going to start changing, even when I get stung by a hydroid :-)

Fete Nationale

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 02:29:00 +0000

Today´s Bastille Day, the French national holiday. Well, let me tell you: it´s not really big in Mexico. Might have something to do with the fact that Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican national holiday celebrating the victory of Mexico over the French :-)

Anyway, to celebrate I went to the closest thing I could find to a French restaurant, an Italian one, Ambar. It turned out to be fantastic. I got a table in the back garden, lighted with kerozene lamps and candles, with soft Italian electronica playing in the background. The lobster lasagna and the tiramisu were both great. I´m glad I´ve discovered this restaurant, because I can´t say I´m developing a fondness for Mexican cuisine.

I got the first stage of my regulator fixed. Thankfully, dive repair shops are not what´s missing on the island. I went back in the water today as an assistant in training with two students doing their final dives for certifications. It´s a father and son team, Larry and Brian, from the Bay Area. A small world. I was able to get them some help and did some nice, demonstration quality, skills: mask clearing and second stage retrieval, serving as the example to emulate. We´ll dive again tomorrow to complete their training.

I got a sense of the Divemaster Mystique today. There´s this aura of omniscience that surrounds the Divemaster, conferred solely by the title. Divers instinctively rever "their" Divemaster (even when he´s in training). The training material explains that this will happen and suggegsts this is an opportunity for the Divemaster to be an intermediary with the instructor, who supposedly can be felt as more distant by the students. There could be some of that, but I think there´s more going on: when given the opportunity to ask advice to the instructor or the Divemaster, the students turned to the Divemaster. As Gabriel told me jokingly later, we should introduce ourselves as the Instructor and the Assistant, to avoid confusion :-) That makes it even more important for the Divemaster to be a good role model, since divers will instinctively copy the good or bad habits of "their" Divemaster. The pressure is on :-)

Dive theory and practice

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 04:56:00 +0000

A lot of dive theory today: physiology, physics (PV = n R T, Gay-Lussac, Boyle, Dalton, Henry), equipment.

Speaking of equipment, my brand new regulator got busted. The seat in the first stage is blown and no spare part in the dive shop. So, we had to rig together a new regulator. Good practice on equipment maintenance, though :-)

Gabriel played the dive student today, and I gave him an underwater tour of his own backyard, starting with the predive briefing and leading and navigating underwater. Of course, he wouldn´t make things easy for me, so he had on purpose a series of non-life threatening incidents: he "forgot" to put his second stage in his mouth when doing his entry, I had to go and rescue him, using my panic diver training. Then he managed to loose his weight belt, loosen his tank, go off course, and bit his second stage. Each time, I had to keep an eye on him to catch him as soon as the problem occured, then assist him in fixing it. I only missed one of the simulated difficulties, which was his fin kicking style.

There´s quite a bit of pressure when you have to keep your eyes on a student as clumsy as Gabriel was today, but thankfully today´s was the worst it gets in a given dive, although all of these problems happen regularly in everyday dives. Yesterday, for example, a diver in another group lost their weight belt just as we were beginning the dive. Most incidents happens in the 10 minutes at the beginning of the dive, so I´ll have to keep my eyes peeled.

Got some nice churros at Plaza del Sol. California law prevents churros stand in California from making them fresh, so they´re always pre-made and stale. This one was the real thing.

My first rescue!

noreply@blogger.com (arno) — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 03:20:00 +0000

Today, review of dive physiology, meteorology, oceanology and biology. A lot to cover, but Gabriel keeps it light and interesting, generously sharing his experience that goes beyond what´s covered in the manuals.

Equipment failure: my first stage delivers too much pressure to my second stage, making it leak. The technician was out today, so we switched to a spare first stage and will have to get it fixed tomorrow.

We went in the water to do some additional work on my basic skills. My hovering (stay immobile in the water without moving hands or legs) and mask clearing (full removal of mask, then putting it back on) was better this time around, but I fumbled my underwater equipment removal (removal and replacement of scuba unit). I have to be able to do all these to "demonstration quality", that is with sufficiently exagerated and clear movements that a student watching me could learn how to do it. I still have to work on that.

Later, I accompanied Gabriel and two students on an underwater trip as divemaster in training. It was the students' second dive. Although you could see they were excited about exploring the environment and the experience of being underwater, they were also swimming all over the place. As a divemaster who is worried about their safety, this makes your job more interesting...

As it turns out, one of them had a problem with his BC that he had filled with too much air and he started ascending out of control. I went after him, grabbed him, purged my BC and tried to empty his. With the underwater adrenaline rush, I didn´t manage to quite empty it and Gabriel had to come over to give a hand.

This real life experience helping out some students was both humbling and exciting. I'm looking forward to more.