Its a cruel cuil world...

So Cuil came online, going head to head with Google (who doesn't these days?) and they hit the web with a splash, followed by a 'thud'

Learning the hard lessons of high-traffic I guess. On the other hand I suspect they're getting pounded by curiosity seekers like myself. The few times I did get results, I was unimpressed by the results so far. Plus the graphics they choose to put by the entries are sometimes right on, some times very, very wrong.

Still, I see potential, but then again, ask.com has potential too, but people aren't flocking to it.

Time will tell.

I/O and virtual machines...

Robin Harris has an interesting post:

The Virtual Machine I/O Blender

In the post he brings up the topic of what Virtual Machines do to the pieces of the storage puzzle that have have been optimized based upon traditional I/O patterns. Does the Empirical data gained through the years help at all when you pile virtual machines on it? Looks like the answer is: Not so much. Which brings up the argument about 'stupid vs smart' storage. So fast dumb storage would be preferable to fast smart storage it seems when you're in the virtual machine arena. It's an interesting idea. Should we purchase lots of (presumably) cheaper 'dumb' storage or bigger/faster smart storage? Reminds me of the commodity server hardware vs high-end server hardware argument from a few years back. The price point won the day back then, and I suspect if storage goes the same way, it will rule storage too. There's no universal rule on what will be best for all situations, so there will be room in the market for DMX's and Tagmas, but I suspect cheaper/dumb-ish storage with VM's in mind is going to start to creep into the market place. It'll focus on random I/Os rather than trying guess via-caching what the host is going to ask for next.

If you get a chance, check out Robin's article. In particular, read the comments. Even more good thoughts in there.

Diving in Croatia

Some notes and thoughts about diving on Hvar, Croatia in June, 2008.

Went diving out of of the city of Jelsa on the island of Hvar in Croatia.

View Larger Map

I used the Divercenter Jelsa in Jelsa. They took me out in their Bombard Explorer with a pair of Yamaha 100's on it. It got you to the dive site pretty quickly. The visibility was great and the water was very blue. The first dive (6/24) was to an island called "Nudist Island". The name comes from a nudist camp on the main island across the channel.





The dive was to a max depth of 111' and had a bottom time of 0:42. I started out with 225 Bar and ended with ~25 Bar. The visibility was easily 50'. There was several neat things to see. It was only me an Wolf, the dive master. I was a bit too excited and used a lot more air then I expected. The dive went deep early and then gradually up the incline to the shallower water. Spent the last 15 minutes or more at 30' or less.





More photos from the dive are here



The second day (6/25) was 'plan raut' (not sure of the spelling). It was just me and Wolf again. This dive was to 107' and had a bottom time of 48 minutes. Again, the last part of the dive was at 30' or less. My camera locked up on me once on this dive. The auto-shutoff turned the camera off and Wolf found a nudibranch. I pushed the power on, and then pushed the 'close up' setting (probably too quickly) and the screen went 'pink'. I was bummed. I held the power button down for 5 seconds and it came back to life, but we had moved on from there by then.



The 2nd dive of the day was to Steenova.... I might have the name wrong, I'm trying to find a map so i can find the exact spot. At any rate, there were 4 divers on this trip. Not speaking German was a real detriment on this dive. The cove has straight rock walls and the water was as blue as you can imagine. The walls were full of holes and over hangs with lost of things to investigate. The dive had a max depth of 89' and a bottom time of 46 minutes. I had a squeeze in my right ear that made me miss a nice photo of a lobster. Got another shot at a nudibranch though

More photos from the dive are here

The last dive was to Zala Luka. It was another awsome dive. The water was clear and the sun was shining bright, so the vis was incredible. It was to a max of 92' with a bottom time of 54 minutes. A lot of the dive took place at 30' or so. Lots of Anenomes and schools of fish everywhere.





It was a great diving experience and I'm so glad I went. If you're ever in the area, you have to go diving. It's incredible.

Update (12/2/2008): Added gallery links to individual dive photos for dive 1 and 2.

Pictures of Diving in Croatia

I've posted the pictures I took while diving in Croatia. More details to come, this is just a big dump of photos, no narrative or timeline.

More to come...

UPDATE (12/2/2008): I've migrated to a 'gallery2' system to manage my photos. The link to the pictures has been updated accordingly.

New Dive Camera!

Bought a new dive camera for my trip to Croatia. It was touch and go for a bit there. Flight was Friday afternoon and they were supposed to arrive Friday morning. Well, the timing worked out and I'm the proud owner of a DC800 from sealife.

It's an 8Mp camera and housing combination. It has 3 underwater photo modes (I'm still learning how all that works). I have quite a backlog of photos and posts to get through but hopefully once that's all done I'll be able to write a bit more about the camera. So far it's great, but the shutter speed isn't as fast as i'd like some times. And I did manage to crash the camera while on a dive. It does take some great pictures though.

My dive buddy had his xeon flashlight illuminating the fish, so that's why it's eye is an odd color. More on dive lights instead of strobes later too hopefully.

New New Dive Computer

First bit of scuba news in a while! Bought an Aeris Manta dive computer.

It's been pretty easy to use and fits my writs nicely. I don't dive enough to buy air integrated. I really should have boughten the Atmos 2, their big hockey puck style computer, but it only has one button and it's huge. Plus there are a few other features of the manta I like as well. Not sure if I'll ever use the advanced features it has over the atmos 2 (which also seems to be discontinued) but I'd hate to have bought that and then turned around in a year or so and bought the upgrade. Anyway, 4 dives logged on the computer and so far it's great!