Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

This website/blog is written by and for woman scuba divers. It features trip reports, photos, tips and gear reviews that focus on women who scuba dive.

Pretty cool idea as most of the dive industry is male-focused.

http://www.miss-scuba.com/

Red, the HD camera company owned by the founder of Oakley Sunglasses, has announced a new smaller version of there amazing camcorders. The Scarlet, shoots in the REDCODE RAW HD, up to 4096×2304, which is beyond current HD and is more in line with a 35mm film camera.

Translation: Awesome looking HD-video that should look as if it’s shot with a 150K camera.

The target price is rumored to be around $3,000 USD and should be ready sometime next year…or whenever they ship it.

Also, it should be a great little travel camcorder due to it’s size. The only thing missing is an underwater housing for it which I am sure could be built by Gates or Light and Motion.

Here is the page: http://www.red.com/nab/scarlet

The Utah Saints released a remix of there rave-favorite song, Something Good. The video tells the “real story” of the Running Man dance

Wildlifeman on DiscoveryHD! Rescues baby bird and then kills the feral cat that was about to eat it with a bow and arrow.

Watching Battlestar Galactica

This is very cool. A Iraq war veteran loses a leg while sweeping for IEDs but learns to scuba dive in spite of it.

…part of a group of 14 soldiers with war-related injuries participating in Warrior Dive through Tuesday….

Here is the article

Divers have discovered an unusual flat-faced fish with forward-looking eyes that may represent an entirely new piscine family. This fish was first found by scuba divers, off the Indonesian coast, and may represent the first new family of fish discovered in the last 50 years.

Read article here

I wish my dog was this trained.

This is from a couple of years ago and the video quality isn’t great but it gives a quick introduction to the KISS rebreather.

The KISS rebreathers are like the rEvo in many regards some highlights:

• Easier to travel with
• include an integrated bailout value (BOV)
• have 3-independent oxygen displays
• non-integrated harness and wing
• easy to repair as most of the parts are off-the-shelf from places like REI/HomeDepot

It lacks:

• the modular scrubber
• integrated HUD
• tool-less maintenance chassis, the KISS needs tools

These units are about the same in cost but know that both of these units are sold in units other than the USD so the price for these units fluctuates as the United States Peso Dollar moves.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography will be selling the scientific naming rights for newly described marine species to the highest bidder.

Scientific names for species are the generally two-word Greek/Latin names that are used to identify a species more precisely than a common name might. Usually this left up to the first scientist to describe the species; sometimes it’s descriptive while other times it’s named after a colleague, friend, spouse, girlfriend or mentor.

For example, a local nudibranch is named Doriopsilla spaldingi after local diver San Diego scuba diver George Spalding , who helped collect the samples used in describing the species.

This is the permanent name for the species and now Scripps, which is one the premier oceanography institutes in the world, is going to be selling them to the highest bidder. The funds will go towards maintaining their collections department which lost it’s Federal funding a number of years ago.

I think it’s an interesting idea but my main concern is large company’s coming in and naming things like Chromodoris goldenpalace.com or Doriopsilla pepsi.

Here is the article