curtisleo

Dear All, I have a family trip next week to Athens and Santorini. I have permission to dive! This is a last minute dive so I won't have enough time to prep my dive gear. I need some recommendations for a dive company, most likely in Santorini. Thanks, Curtis

Aquatica A300 Housing with dual bulkheads, also another spare set of bulkheads 8" Dome port Macro port two sets of handles. 3 sets of o-rings for the ports and housing. Make an offer. Curtis

World's First All-glass Undersea Restaurant The Maldives | 15 April marks the day that the first ever all-glass undersea restaurant in the world opens its doors for business at the Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. Ithaa* will sit five meters below the waves of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and encased in clear acrylic offering diners 270-degrees of panoramic underwater views. “We have used aquarium technology to put diners face-to-face with the stunning underwater environment of the Maldivesâ€, says Carsten Schieck, General Manager of Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. “Our guests always comment on being blown away by the colour, clarity, and beauty of the underwater world in the Maldives, so it seemed the perfect idea to build a restaurant where diners can experience fine cuisine and take time to enjoy the views – without ever getting their feet wet.†Created by MJ Murphy Ltd, a design consultancy based in New Zealand, Ithaa’s distinctive feature is the use of curved transparent acrylic walls and roof, similar to those used in aquarium attractions. “The fact that the entire restaurant except for the floor is made of clear acrylic makes this unique in the world,†continues Schieck, “We are currently planting a coral garden on the reef to add to the spectacular views of the rays, sharks and many colourful fish that live around the reef near the restaurant.†The five-metre by nine-metre transparent arch, which spans the entire room, seats 14 people and provides a feeling of being completely at one with the underwater world while submerged beneath the surface of the ocean. Set with the resort’s renowned house reef one side, and a clear lagoon on the other, diners enjoy their meal within Ithaa’s translucent shell as the underwater drama unfolds on all sides. Naturally the food will be as spectacular as the underwater setting, explains Schieck, “In such a unique restaurant we wanted to create a distinctive cuisine, which is why we’ve decided to offer ‘contemporary Maldivian cuisine’ as a theme. We take local spices and traditional flavours and give them a western twist to create a fusion cuisine that you could find in the best restaurants in London or New York. Nobody else has done this before and we’re very excited about it.†While the cuisine is dedicated to the fine balance of western food items with a Maldivian flavour, the wine concept is equally exciting; offering diners the perfect opportunity to discover the wines of the prestigious Champagne house Louis Roederer. Ithaa is reached by a wooden walkway from the nearby over-water Sunset Grill Restaurant. Diners begin their meal with drinks on a specially constructed deck over the ocean and then descend to the restaurant via a spiral staircase where the à la carte menu is served. Seating only 14 people, Ithaa offers one of the most intimate and exclusive dining experiences in the world. This innovative restaurant is the first of its kind in the world, and is part of a US $25 million re-build of Rangalifinolhu Island, one of the twin islands that make up Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. This re-build includes the construction of 79 of the most luxurious Beach Villas in the country as well as the Spa Village, a self-contained, over-water ‘resort-within-a-resort’ consisting of a spa, restaurant and 21 villas.

http://www.eye.fi/ $99.00USD Automatically upload photos to most major photo sites, with-in range of a access point. I was thinking if you had a WI-FI access point on the boat, laptop, shared directory, you can upload pics to the laptop. Unless you need to open it up to change batteries, there will almost no need to open up an housing. It's only able to move jpeg files only. Too bad it can't move RAW files.... Curtis

On a few of my dive trips and non-diving, my lowelpro backpack, fully loaded with 1DM2 + 17-40,fisheye, 100macro, 70-200 2.8 IS, 100-400L, IBM laptop, backup eSata drive, assorted goodies, all came out to around 25kg! This is on my back. So far, I've gone through every major airport without a glitch, except LHR. Because of some extra waist strap, they would not let me take it through security. All I did was strap the camera to my neck, lens went into each of my pocket(s) and jacket. Then I checked in the empty bag. This was back in July of 2006. So if you ever run into a situation like this. just wear everything. Since I pack all the dive gear for my wife and I, we sometimes exceed the weight limit. I guess it pays off being a United 1K member. Curtis

I'll test the rendering speeds later this week. I'm still tweaking all the usual parameters. Since i had a bunch of data on the arrays, I need to move it off somewhere else, reformat and rebuild the arrays, then copy back the data over. I usually reformat the entire render array on the start of a new project. Need to finish editing my wedding video. We tested a few Hitachi 1TB SATA-2 3GB/S drives. So far so good. They do get quite warm/hot if you don't have enough cooling. More fans = more noise. Just need to wait until the prices drop a bit. Curtis

I just build a new system this pass weekend. Most was carried over from a existing SD editing system. Using a rackmount case to keep everything tidy. Intel E6600 2.4GHz 4MB Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional Dual-core and Quad core ready, Dual PCI-E, PCI-X, SATA-Raid 8 ports Cosair 2GB kit PC-6200 DDR-2 800MHz 2x1024 NVIDIA 7950GT 512MB Dual DVI Fanless PCI-E 16x ANTEC TP2-550EPS12V 550 Watt EPS Adaptec PERC 320 PCI-X SCSI Raid Controller Adaptec 2140 SATA Raid Controller 1 x Seagate 160GB SATA-2 3GB/S Boot 1 x Seagate 160GB SATA-2 3GB/S Scratch 4 x Seagate 250GB SATA 1.5GB/S in Adaptec RAID enclosure (4 drives fit in 2 5 1/4" bays) Raid storage 12 x Seagate 181gb Ultra320 SCA SCSI Raid 0 set Media Compaq/HP StorageWorks Enclosure (EBAY!) 4 x Seagate 141gb Ultra320 SCA SCSI Raid 0 set Render Compaq/HP StorageWorks Enclosure (EBAY!) WinXP SP2 Avid Liquid Chrome HD 7.1 SP1 - HD-SDI, SDI, Analog, inputs and outputs I threw in a bunch of test clips and everything went smoothly. Overclocking it is the next thing once I get everything setup. Might try to get 2 other StorageWorks Fiber Channel Arrays online but it's only 18gb drives. All my other systems are linked via Gigabit Ethernet so I can pull clips from other servers. Old servers were turned into a MP3 storage. Another box is Photos/Video storage. One other box is e-mail and general web browsing. Since most of the hard drives are older, it's cheaper to go full SATA. If you want to build an external SATA enclosure, look into using a InfiniBand 4x cable/transport link. There are RAID controllers with these connectors or if you have spare internal SATA ports, you can get a SATA to SLOT adapter. Here's an example of how InfiniBand links can be used. http://www.cooldrives.com/eidrrerasaii.html Curtis

Yes upconverting HDV to HDCAM would be ok. I've dubbed a few HDV tapes through a HD Analog to HD-SDI, recorded onto a HDCAM SR deck. Audio was encoded into AC-3. Used the footage in some broadcast demos. Curtis

Another good NLE is Pinnacle Systems Studio 10. Beta has HD-DVD support to a standard or dual layer DVD. Demo Found here http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/P...Trial+Download/ Let me know if anyone wants to buy anything. Employee discounts Avid, Pinnacle Systems, Dazzle, M-Audio, DigiDesign, SoftImage, Curtis

Yes, It converts DV and HDV into a Avid Liquid format. It will take a little while to render, as noticed by the Sigma Icon on the lower task bar. I did notice that not all files can be imported. See if you can do a few sample captures with your HDV deck into the system. See if you can playback it. The shutdown process is a pain as it has to dump everything in memory. Avid Liquid uses the GPU and CPU together for all effects and playback. When working on a large project, ie wedding, it can take 30 secs to shutdown. I use Liquid Chrome HD with HD-SDI in/out, which is the same software but different I/O options. Curtis btw, I work for Avid Broadcast

I just confirmed with support, Avid Liquid needs to import the .m2t file. This will then be converted to .m2v and .wav file. This is only when importing a HDV file from another capture source. If you use the built in capture function, you should not have any problems. Curtis

I just tried it as well and didn't have an issue. Can you send me a sample of your m2t file and I'll try it on my system? Thanks, Curtis

Hi DownUnder, I use Avid Liquid Edition 7 and Liquid Chrome HD. The only difference between them are the I/O options. HD-SDI in and out. I use it for all my editing. HDV and DV. It has tons of cool filters and color correction. You can do spot color correction. Change the color of a fish and as the filters will follow that chroma around. A very neat feature. Tons of other goodies in it. It does require a a good video card. 128mb ram. 256mb ram would be highly recommended. I edit from my laptop, Thinkpad T60 Dual Core 2.2ghz. Avid Liquid also has a cool DVD menu system and good performance in DVD burning. HDV to DVD works great. http://www.avid.com/products/liquidpro/ Click on demo. Curtis

I'm flying this sunday to the US for a week. Since it's a week trip, I usually just hand carry everything. Now I need to add few hours on to both ends of the trip. I wonder how we can all get together and force BAA to lift these silly restrictions. It's not the size that matters, it's whats being carried. I realized that living out here in the UK, everyone wants to make changes but where do we start? Curtis

I fly out of London LHR often and they made the carry on size 45cm, width of 35cm and depth of 16cm (17.7"x13.7"x6.2"), cut from BAA's website. I can no longer carry my photo backpack and camera gear with me. I was stopped and had to check in my gear. Just a few days earlier, I flew to the US with the same bag and I was let through. Well since I did not want to watch my gear go down the blackhole, I strapped almost everything to my body. 1DM2 was strapped around my neck, A1U was in my jacket pocket, Lens were in all my pants pockets. I might get a photovest for travel now. Anyone else traveling out of LHR? Curtis