Hilma Hooker

The Salt Pier And Vista Blue Dive Sites

This is a combo video of the Salt Pier which is a working salt production facility. The pier is a series of conveyor belts that move the salt to ships awaiting pickup. This structure makes for some nice habitat for Tarpon, Spotted Eagle Rays as well as all the other usual suspects.

Vista Blue dive sight is the second part where we run into the coolest little sea turtle. Great reef here as well.

Bonaire Quick Tips

Bonaire Quick Facts -

Local Currency - US Dollar
Local Beer - Polar
Local Industry - Salt and Tourism
Local Cheese - Gouda

If you want freedom in your schedule and want to do some great dives, Bonaire is for you. Also, you have the freedom there to modify your spending to fit your budget.

In our experience, we paid the same amount for one dinner out as we did for a full week of air ($160 after a coupon we got and with free nitrox upgrade if you go with Dive Friends Bonaire). For this reason, we ended up doing a couple BBQ's at our rental villa (that we found on vrbo.com) and those meals turned out to be two of our favorite meals.

As for the diving, it was great! Really, the whole island is a dive site. The fish seemed to me to be more friendly than most in other countries, and they were plentiful. We saw tons of parrotfish, tangs, grouper, eels, gobies, and on and on. We also ran into a feeding Spotted Eagle Ray and a very friendly little sea turtle. Some of my favorite spots include, the Hilma Hooker, the Salt Pier, Vista Blue, 1,000 Steps, and the reef right out in front of our villa, Yellow Submarine.

Other highlights include the local Flamingos hanging out in Lac Bay and the donkeys and goats roaming freely around the island and, phew, talk about your big lizards!

Overall, I'd recommend Bonaire for a dive trip where you can set the pace yourself, but if you are on any kind of budget, plan to visit a grocery store when you get there because food can get pricey quickly.

Check out my YouTube channel to see my videos of Bonaire

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GoPro HD Hero 2 and the new iPad make for a traveler's editing powerhouse

Edit full 1080p at 30 frames per second from the GoPro HD Hero 2 on the new iPad using iMovie. You won't believe how slick and easy this is. I'm really looking forward to going on a dive and being able to post an edited 1080p video of the dive within a couple hours. Check out this YouTube tutorial I put together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWPtfRB9efA

New Toy - GoPro Hero 2 Camera

Jenny just picked this up for me from Werner at Ocean Enterprises! GoPro HD Hero2 Can't wait to try this puppy out underwater in 10 days! I got a flat lens housing from eyeofmine.com to adjust for focusing under water as well. So far the picture quality looks awesome and this thing is tiny for what it does! Still need to work out the editing of the videos but I think I have a plan for making soundtracks for the videos. I'll post updates as I generate some content.

Spring Cleaning Time means Money - Gazelle.com and eBay Instant Sale

Happy spring everyone!

Time for spring cleaning. This is kind of an update on our Gazelle.com and ebay instant sale experience. Today we got the last of our Gazelle.com checks for our old idevices we recycled for cashola. Still waiting for anything from eBay, hmmm. But now eBay instant takes a lot more stuff than gazelle.com (they only take a very limited selection including only Apple stuff and some other cel phones).

But we have a bunch of our own eBay auctions going now and really that's the best way to maximize spring cleaning profits, it's a bit more work, but whatcha gonna do...

-update- my lovely wife has just read about another site, glyde.com, that might be worth a look as well

new iPad initial observations

I've now had a day to use this new gizmo and, wow, it looks and feels great. In my opinion, it's all about the combination of the amazing new display and the unrivaled touch accuracy on that screen.

If you are into taking pictures, making videos, or playing games, you will definitely see and feel the difference. Going back to another device will be difficult because all you'll see are those little jaggies you never noticed before. In fact, I'm noticing a lot of iPad apps have jaggies in them because they haven't updated yet. It's a little odd when they mix text with graphical text objects (like a button in an app). Time for the app developers to do some updating.

It is fast. I haven't noticed a lag yet.

The battery life seems great. I've played a lot of 3d action games today and as of right now I'm at 76% on the iPad as I write this post. Very impressed here.

The only drawback I've noticed is some fatigue in my fingers. I went from the original iPad to the new one. This may sound odd but I think this one might be a little thin for my hands. I might go out and buy one of those big grippy cases like OtterBox Defender Series for The New iPad 3 3rd Generation & iPad 2 - Black
And as an added bonus, with this case I can drop it too :)

--UPDATE-- just wanted to mention that full Siri was not included on the new iPad. I think this might just be because the Apple servers can't handle the increased data traffic load yet and I expect to see it soon, but I am missing Siri on this iPad. The voice dictation is very cool though.

smart phone security check

It occurred to me today that I see a lot of phones that make me feel uneasy because of potential security problems.

The first thing I do with a new phone is assume I will lose it. I have a lot of sensitive data on there like contacts, emails, passwords and other data. It would be frustrating to lose the phone, but potentially devastating to lose that data.

So here's what I do to my iPhone -

- set the screen lock password. Yes, it's a little annoying, but you can set the lock time to be higher if locking after a minute bugs you too much.

- set the phone to delete all data after a specified amount of attempts. If someone has enough attempts, they will guess your password.

- set up a remote management app like find my iPhone. You might get your phone back but if you don't find it you can delete everything off of it.

and really, that's about it. pretty simple, but trust me on this, if you ever lose your phone, you'll feel better knowing someone doesn't have your data.

So Apple server outtages are ok now?

Just making an observation here but I think the newest thing about the new iPad is that apparently we all are now used to the Apple store servers going down at a product announcement. Previously, it seems like we'd read at least an article or two about how the servers couldn't handle it, but to my knowledge I'm the first one mentioning it this time.

That's ok though, I think it's clear that this is a case a massive product interest instead of a weak server farm like it may be interpreted with a lesser known company.

My intent on recognizing this is to hypothesize what this phenomena means in regards to investing in the company. I think this shows how much trust consumers have in the pattern of successful products Apple has. Even detractors don't bother to point out the Apple Store going up and down on product launch.

So considering Apple seems to know what they're doing financially (they're in the elite $500 billion club) and they still put out products people snap up almost by reflex, I'd say Apple is still a good investment at this point in time.

Happy Friday!

Friday finally! That is all...

Last Chance to sell your old iPad!

The big day is tomorrow - iPad HD (or 3 or whatever) will be announced!

Jenny and I are planning on upgrading but it seems like a waste to have our old ones sitting around neglected. I highly recommend selling yours as well very soon because once they announce the new one, resale supply for the older models will drive down prices.

I think the best way to go is to sell it to a friend or co-worker who has a cute child in need, but if that situation doesn't apply to you check out gazelle.com and instantsale.ebay.com. These services will lock in a price at which they will buy your old electronics. They pay shipping.

Compare prices and sell them now. It makes it much easier to justify buying the new model :)

My take on the Amazon Kindle Fire.

-- Kindle Fire key points--

PROS
- it's $199
- nice size and a surprisingly good display
- it's tough
- it comes with a month of Amazon Prime
- web browsing is pretty good
- would make a great kid's tablet

- it's $199

CONS
- it's not an iPad
- feels a bit laggy if you forget it only cost you $199
- limited app store

The first thing I have to say on this subject is that you shouldn't compare this to an iPad directly. They are vastly different products and should be thought of as such.

The Kindle Fire costs $199. This is a huge point. That's a fraction of the cost of an iPad and that needs to be considered when looking at what it can and can't do.

It comes with a free month of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime lets you stream movies and TV shows on the Kindle Fire and gives you free two day shipping on Amazon.com. It also lets you check out one book at a time from some selections from the Kindle library. Prime is actually a pretty neat service and I'm considering continuing to maintain the service at its annual price of $79. I watch a lot of TV and it seems like Amazon prime has some pretty good exclusive content. Plus if you're in the market to make some big purchases (physically big) this might be a good reason to pick up the Kindle Fire because it could potentially save you quite a lot in shipping costs.

As for the device itself I think my favorite part is the size. It is large enough to comfortably read and watch movies or TV shows but it is small enough to fit in my back pocket. Plus this thing seems pretty rugged. It has Gorilla Glass and I haven't found a need for a screen protector yet and I must say I haven't treated it delicately. I must also say that the display is pretty darn impressive for a $199 tablet. I think a lot of parents will be or have already gotten one of these for their kids. There was an issue in the beginning with kids auto-purchasing content and racking up credit card bills but that has been resolved now that you can require a password for purchasing things.

Really, the intent of the Kindle Fire is to be a storefront to the world of Amazon. I can't really comment on e-books since I'm not an avid reader. But I must say it streams the heck out of Netflix.

You can get a lot of apps that are commonly found on the Android AppStore but I must say I am a little disappointed that the selection isn't as complete as I would like. It seems pretty clear that they want to keep you locked into Amazon products so they limit the selection. You won't find your Google apps here without finding a way to side load them onto it.

Web browsing is pretty good. Not great, but good. It's clunky at times but really that's all about whatever website you get to. It will do Flash content, but it tends to feel strained. Again it's $199.

Also if you're a geek, you can root this thing and put android on it which is pretty. eat, but wai until your Prime trial ends because that will break.

All in all, for $199 it's pretty neat-o!

how to auto data mine yourself

There's been a lot of talk lately about Google's new unified privacy policy. How much of an issue is it for you?

It's time to Google yourself. I find that using my name comes back with WAY too many results that don't apply to me. But here's a short list that brings back useful info

- your email addresses

- the username/usernames you register as on websites

A LOT of websites you register with have social functions that you won't even use, but they will still show up on Google.

So now that you've seen your tracks on the web, it's time to automate your web privacy. It's simpler than you might think. Go here:

http://www.google.com/alerts

Set up alerts to include your usernames and email addresses and you'll see what new information Google learns about you on a daily/weekly basis.

Ahhh, peace of mind. Now Google can sell you all kinds of stuff that pertains to your life and you don't have to worry about being big brothered in a bad way.