Trial By Fire

Why Do I Use My Dictionary?

I have a large and beautiful Special Fourth Edition copy of the American Heritage Dictionary.  While making a post this morning, I was going to use Bartleby to look something up, but I paused, walked across the room, and lovingly opened the pages of my Dictionary.

I am a blogger, a technologist, and an engineer.  I have two news aggregators, laptops, digital music systems, GPSs, MP3 players, pen-sized digital scanners.  I have hundreds of newsfeeds, use all of Google's features, read dozens of online journals regularly, have virtual mail folders and dozens of email addresses.  I am an early adopter by anyone's definition.

A lot of people and companies are reshaping our world using the Internet and the computer.  A lot of people see that the future is digital and it will replace everything.  If they really want to succeed in transforming our world in a human and practical way, every single one of them to ponder...

Why do I still so enjoy using my Dictionary?

Spider Crab Invasion

About 50,000 Spider Crabs invaded Port Phillip Bay about a week ago, and are still going strong.  Grace and I were lucky enough to capture some amazing photos and some truly creepy video footage of the marching hoardes.  If Paul Verhoven is watching, maybe this can be the inspiration for a new movie.  (Click for a bigger version of the images)

You can read some scientific background on Spider Crabs, but the pictures speak for themselves.  They were everywhere, surrounding us, along with about four large 2-metre rays which were (we assume) reveling in crab carnage.  It was the first dive where I really felt like I was in the middle of one of those "eat or be eaten" BBC special presentations about the ocean.

The Age has a quick article about the event, and it is rare for divers to be able to see it.  We were just lucky enough to end up at Rye Pier with a new camera while it was still happening.

The movie is definitely a sight to behold.  I captured this with my Olympus C-7070 in movie mode, and was surprised at what good footage a still camera would capture.

 

Finally, here is a beautiful hi-res photo of the red sponges on the Rye Pier pylons with our friends the Spider Crabs enjoying themselves.  (Click for a larger view.)

All of these images were taking with a new Olympus 7.1 Megapixel C-7070 camera and an Ikelite housing designed specifically for the camera.  For the video, no flash was used.  Other photos were taken with the internal camera flash and the Ikelite diffuser.

This is my first underwater photography attempt, and I clearly think more underwater photographs will be coming in future posts.

[tags: scuba diving, scuba, crabs]