I didn't manage to get in the water this weekend.  I should have been going up to Rosehearty on the Moray Firth on Saturday, but getting up at silly o'clock wasn't appealing after a Friday that started with a 6.30 am meeting and ended with a rehearsal that finished at 9.30 pm.  And on Sunday I had a tree to cut down. 

As I walked along the beach at Carnoustie on Sunday, the water was crystal clear.  You could see every frond of seaweed, every tiny shard of shell in  the coarse sand.  I don't know whether the vis at Catterline would have been as good - it's much more silty, and gets stirred up easily by the resident seals - but I did wish I were underwater.

In the end I nearly was: the dogs swam and then shook themselve all over me so I got nearly as wet as I used to before my drysuit was fixed.  And I had a lovely time beachcombing, which is the next best thing to diving.

It'll be a fortnight before I'm back in the water - I'll be in Gloucestershire next weekend, clearing up my late mother's flat.  I do hope the weather holds.  It's about time we had a decent summer, with good vis, no storms, no days blown out due to easterlies, no constant heavy rain...  If I'd started diving last year I might not have seen it through, conditions were so bad so often; it would be great to show last years' trainees what diving's really all about. 

Now that the clocks have gone forward we should be beginning our Wednesday evening dives soon.  I can't wait to get wet again!

Through a lens, blotchily.

I've been commissioned to write a piece for Scuba Magazine about Montrose SAC's club trip to Northern Ireland later this year.  To get the best quality underwater photos I'll need an wide-angled lens (there's a lot of stuff in the water that causes blotches in the photos, called "back-scatter"; with a wide-angled lens you can get in closer to the subject and therefore reduce the amount of water between you and it, thus reducing back-scatter.)

So I've been trying to locate a wide-angle lens I can use with my Intova underwater camera set-up. (If you're not yet into underwater photography, it's important to know that cameras typically have to go inside a watertight housing, onto which you screw accessories like lenses and lights; the cameras - apart from a few very expensive ones, perhaps - aren't themselves watertight.  Each type of camera has its own housing, so you have to get the right one for your camera.)  

I know Intova make a lens that you can fit and remove during a dive.  I know who imports it into this country - but they don't sell direct to the public, so I've been trawling the internet to find a retailer.

Intova IC12 camera
(photos courtesy of
Intova's website)

The same, in its
underwater housing.

According to the importer's website the nearest agency is Aberdeen Watersports, so I checked their website: no mention of any lenses.  Same for the agencies in Burntisland, Edinburgh and Glasgow - in fact most of them didn't even mention Intova. 

So I searched e-Bay, where I eventually found a lens after trying 2-3 different keyword phrases ("scuba diving cameras", "underwater cameras", that sort of thing).  But all it said by way of identification was "46mm thread".  As I have no idea what size thread my housing has that wasn't very helpful.  Intova make several housings.  Which one does this lens fit?  At around £130 a pop I'm not going to buy one on spec.

Why are retailers so coy about their products?  If you're writing for/to consumers you can't expect them all to be experts on everything they want to buy.  I know I need the lens that fits my specific housing and I know which housing I've got.  I haven't a clue what the thread size is, and I doubt there's any mention of it in the handbook as that only covers the camera iself.  Why can't they say "fits xyz housing(s)" or something really simple like that?

It's all very well saying "come and visit our shop" but their shop's in Liverpool and I'm between Dundee and Aberdeen.  That's not exactly a 10-minute jaunt; the diesel would double the price of the lens.  And while I'm sure it's a lovely shop, full of all sorts of delightful bits and bobs that I never knew I didn't need, I'm not going to waste the better part of two days getting there and back.

Thank heavens for email.  With a bit of luck I'll get replies from 5 separate retailers saying "we've got just the thing for you, and it'll only cost £100 all in".  A girl can dream...

Jargoning on and on

As my regular reader(s) may know, I started learning to scuba dive in November and I'm now trying to get the kit together. I've found a dry suit with all the thermal undies for a very good price on eBay, and I'll be trying it for the first time in the pool on Monday, so fingers crossed that the obviously new zip has been properly fitted. I think I'll leave the undersuit off for the evening, just in case! It might be a tad too hot in the pool, too, as it's slightly warmer than the North Sea.

Next on the list is a boyancy compensator (BC, BCD or stab jacket), gas cylinder (or bottle), 1st stage, 2nd stage (regulator), BC air hose etc. As you may have noticed, there's a lot of jargon involved here - I had to look it all up on the internet because our training doesn't cover the intricacies of 1st stage, 2nd stage and so on - we're just told "This is your reg, this is the octopus (or AS), this puts air in your BC, this one's your gauge - oh and you'll need another air hose for your dry suit, of course".

That's all very well, but when you start looking for the gear on the 'net everyone suddenly gets very technical. They don't talk about regs and octopusses... not even for second-hand sales on eBay. I know there's an argument to be made for correct description, but not to the point of excluding people who need the right gear to stay alive 20 metres under the sea. Well, other people have obviously had this problem before, so when I Googled "scuba dive jargon" I found several lists explaining everything I need to know and then some. Thank heavens - and whoever wrote them! Like Scots, I can't speak the language very well yet, but at least I'm beginning to understand it.

Again, the other day I was talking to someone about wine-speak. I spent 15 years in the wine trade, latterly teaching evening classes to consumers, so I know quite a lot about wine-speak. It used to make my sister roar with laughter when I talked about a wine having "biscuits on the nose". Made sense to me, but she had a wee mental picture of a small dog sitting up and balancing a biscuit on his muzzle. When you're trying to describe the often quite small differences between one Champagne and another, you need a good list of flavour-associations; people in the trade know what you're talking about, everyone else just gapes.

One way and another, it all got me thinking about jargon and how so many people think it's OK to plaster it all over their web pages. It will be, if the only people who ever read the pages are in the know (e.g. a site written by an engineering company to be read by other engineers). But what if, like me with the scuba kit, readers know they need the stuff but haven't a clue what you're talking about? This is where a good copywriter can really help, by keeping it simple and using layman's terms if at all possible; if not, by creating a glossary that can either go on a separate page or in a box at the side of the page where the jargon's being used.

I also think some people use jargon to try and confuse you into buying stuff you don't need - I definitely got that impression when I tried to buy a new domain name at GoDaddy a few weeks ago (see "Website Drama in NE Scotland", below). I got so muddled and befuddled I just left the site and registered the name elsewhere, and I think a lot of people do the same.

So if you're writing a site for something that tends to use jargon, my advice would be to follow Henry Ford's dictum: KISS (Keep It Simple and Straightforward - that's the polite version anyway!). Avoid jargon like the plague. Cliches, on the other hand.... but that's a different story.

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Swimming with the fishes

I'm going swimming this afternoon for the first time since I can't remember when (apart from the dip I took after a sauna in Finland in June, in a decidedly chilly lake). It's not because I like swimming pools - I loathe them and the chlorine that infests them, the damp march back and forth to the changing rooms, the verrucas, the sheer indignity of the whole proceeding - but I've finally made the decision to learn scuba diving.

I've wanted to dive for ever. I tried a "taster" class a few years back and had a panic attack because I was trying to breathe through my nose and all the air available was what was in my mask. It's very counter-intuitive, for me at least, to breathe in the water: I spent a lot of my childhood seeing how far I could swim underwater without having to come up for air (my record was 2 lengths of the pool). But I'm determned to crack that. I want to swim with the fishes! I went on one of those boats with underwater windows last summer and the views of fish, sponges, underwater rock formations and the rest rekindled my longing, and now I'm going to stop dreaming and start training.

In order to train with my local club you have to be able to swim 8 lengths. Doesn't sound like much, but I have no idea whether I can do it or not. Training starts in October, so I've time to get fit, but best find out in good time, I thought, so I'm off now to find out...

2 hours later: it wasn't very much - I did 12 lengths, no trouble. That's a relief! The only bit that aches is the outside of my hands, from 12 lengths of breast-stroke. Oh, and I need to get some goggles so I don't have to keep my eyes out of the chlorine and give myself neck-ache. It was warmer and much cleaner than my memories of swimming pools past, and the showers really worked, too. Altogether not the chore I was expecting ;-)

Moral: face your fears and do it anyway - and start early enough that you can do something to solve any problem that crops up. Or something like that! Same with deadlines, I guess...