Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

I have no idea what they are singing about but watch this drummer. He’s awesome.

Retired construction worker Wally Wallington of Flint, Michigan is moving one-ton concrete blocks by himself using only primitive methods. He’s reconstructing Stonehenge all by himself.

So Adobe released an online version of an image editor that that are calling, Adobe Photoshop Express. It’s targeted at people who need to do casual and basic image edits.

It’s not going to replace the full blown Adobe Photoshop but it will solve for most people’s needs. Plus, it comes with 2 gigs of storage and allows you to connect with some popular social media sites but not Flickr as of yet.
Give it a shot, it’s worth the price and does a pretty good job.

http://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html 

A photographer explains the great lengths he goes to get the shot.

Story is here

This guy is dead on

1. You can translate most of the English words ending in “-ic” into Spanish by: substituting the ending with “-ico”. These words always have a written accent.
Examples: academic→ académico, fantastic→ fantástico, magic→ mágico, organic → orgánico.
Exception: mastic→ mastíque

2. You can translate most of the English words, with two or more syllables, that end in “-al” into Spanish by keeping the same ending “-al”.

Examples: cultural→ cultural, capital→ capital, cereal→ cereal, dental→ dental
Some Exceptions: continual→ contínuo, magical→ mágico, terrestial→ terrestre.

Wow. This is some ninja eagle ray.

From the AP Story

MIAMI (Reuters) - An eagle ray leaped onto a boat off the Florida Keys on Thursday and stabbed a woman with its barb, knocking her to the deck and killing her, a Florida wildlife investigator said.

“It’s a bizarre accident,” said Jorge Pino, an agent with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The woman and her family were aboard a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, off the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, he said.

“A large ray jumped out of the water and collided with the victim and somehow the barb penetrated some part of her body, which caused her to fall back and hit her head on some portion of the vessel,” Pino said. “We don’t know exactly which one of those things caused her death.”

Local media said the animal’s barb had impaled the woman through the neck.

Eagle rays are common in warm or tropical waters and are often seen near coral reefs. The spotted creatures can grow to more than 8 feet across and have two to six short, venomous barbs near the base of their whip-like tails, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Web site.

The rays often swim near the water’s surface and can leap out, especially when pursued, but are generally shy of humans.

“All rays leap out of the water from time to time but certainly to see one collide with a vessel is extremely unusual,” Pino said.

….

Let’s hope people don’t start killing rays because of this.

Ok, I like the show Lost. And I understand that we are dealing with a show where I should suspend my disbelief about a lot of things. But the thing that is really bothering me is:  Jin speaking close to perfect English.

As a non-native speaker of bad Spanish, I know how difficult it can be to speak a foreign language late in life and how hard it is for a non-native English speaker to follow a conversation. I lived in an immersion program in Mexico for a summer and was reminded of this everyday just trying to get by.
Which brings me to Jin. They are on a island for maybe 3 months and he’s understanding and speaking English. Not just yes/no or getting the drift of of what’s going on but full blow conversations about karma and how difficult it is being married. WTF!

A new rebreather is now on the market, the Poseidon Discovery which is also called the Cis-Lunar Mk VII. This new automatic rebreather was designed by Bill Stone with Swedish-based Poseidon Diving Systems.
From the product decription:

The diving is simple. Open the tank valves, wet the switch on the back of the display, wait for the systems check and off you go. Forget about everything you ever heard about PO2, scrubber life and oxygen cells. Our system will handle all that. Just remember to breathe.

You don’t adjust anything, and the mouthpiece vibrates and blinks to alert you of a malfunction. There is an integrated bailout valve in mouth piece that allows you to breath open circuit and return to the surface. There is also an integrated gauge/computer to track your decompression obligation and how much time you have left. You can read the manual here.

I’ve just got a beta invite to test the new HULU online video service.

Hulu was put together by some of the major networks (NBC, FOX, Universal, and more). The idea it to offer a YouTube like experience that is legal and allows the networks to offer another ad-supported network outlet for their content.

This isn’t just old catalog stuff but with originally aired network content & movies, such as Heroes, 30 Rock, Chuck, Family Guy, The Simpsons, etc.

I just started playing with it but I have 10 invites, anyone want one?