Happy birthday... sort of.

I just noticed that my blog turns one year old tomorrow. My goals for the first year were to post a hundred or so times, and be able to click on the site meter and see that I was getting 4-5 direct requests a day. So far I've made it, with 180 some odd posts and at least 4-5 direct requests daily (direct requests indicate someone is acutally keying in or has "favorited" the URL, half were probably my family or myself, but at least some aren't). Now I've got to come up with some new goals, probably not all that different than the original goals in this case, maybe add another 100 posts minimum and gain an extra 4-5 daily direct requests. I started this because of a recommendation to use a blog to help exposure of my dive business (Wanna Dive - link is on the right side of the page), and I can't say for sure if that's working... but I'm having fun with it anyway, so why not continue?

Today I did an intro dive with someone who was staying in my vacation rental. That person had actually been certified back in the days of horse collars, but has only done a few resort dives since. It went well. Water temps were in the 79-81 degree range on my computer, depending on if in the shallows over the reef, or out on the shoulder. Nice relaxing dive.

It's our "slow season", but I'm still working a stretch of 13 out of 14 days. I've managed to find some great fill in help while Bob is off gallivanting in the Galapagos (lucky him - whale sharks, hammerheads, rays, marine iguanas, sea lions, etc - a lot to see in just 10 days or so), but I'll be happy to have him available again.

The underwater photograph above is of a red-spotted nudibranch. I took a bunch of shots and everything turned off slightly off, but this one is close, could have been a hair crisper on the focus. I discovered/remembered a new little thing/quirk with the Olympus sp-350 (actually noticed this first when taking the pic of the harlequin shrimp I posted earlier), if you are taking macro underwater and you want to get closer, try enabling the digital zoom and see if you like the results. In my case, I was able to fill up more of the frame with the actual subject and keep an effective focus than just using macro and not zooming in to the digital zoom range. I'm not sure if results vary camera to camera or not.

Aloha,

Steve