Dangers of diving

Here's a link to an article by CDNN regarding the death of a BSAC instructor and hospitalization of three students.

Diving is very dangerous if you're ignoring your training and taking short cuts. Panic is the number one killer but the main cause of panic is a (perceived) continuous mentally strenuous activity during a period of time. A common "stressor" for new divers is the water covering the nose in the mask. It can be hard to clear the mask of this water and you'll get used to it eventually, but this is apparently a (contributing) cause of panic for many. Practising to take the mask off completely, putting it back on and clearing it of water is a good way to get used to the feeling and to accept the fact that as long as you have air there's no need to panic. Panic is the number one killer and don't you forget it - also don't worry too much or you're more likely to panic (I'm starting to see a pattern here and it is in the form of a circle). The main reason divers perish is complications due to a minor mistake (but a mistake none the less) which cause an escalation of a initially trivial problem, and being a mainly underwater activity a mistake will be far more serious then on dry land.

Here's is yet another tragical outcome which is all to common. If you don't have a line into a wreck (b-dive) you're not likely to find your way out. Silt will turn day into a night which will last much longer then the air you're breathing.

We are the angry and the desperate, the hungry and the cold

Here's the music video of "Prayer of the refugee" from the album The sufferer and the witness by Rise Against (couldn't find one with better sound quality, sorry). Together with "Behind closed doors", "Injection" and the ballade-like "Roadside", "Prayer of the refugee" is one of the top four songs of the album. The Sufferer and the witness is a great album, but it can't really compete with Siren Song Of The Counter Culture which is by far their greatest album in my opinion. Here's a "behind the scenes" documentary of the music video.

Interesting side note; most people should NOT be allowed to upload videos to YouTube.com! No one wants to see the middle 40 seconds of a song you "recorded" at a live concert with your cell phone. Either get a proper recording, or for the love of god - at least acceptable sound, or do not upload at all. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to find a proper live recording of "Prayer of the refugee" to no avail.

Teaser Trailer

Here's the teaser trailer for "Kampsportsgalan i Skellefteå" 2007; Quicktime or Windows Media Video.

Very impressive concept

This is a wristwatch made from actual steel of the Titanic, produced by Romain Jerome under the name "Titanic DNA". It is going to cost a ridiculous amount of money and probably become a real collector's item. The concept reminds me of the Grand Bark whisky, which is based on and flavoured with whisky salvaged from the SS Wallachia.

The only thing I've salvaged so far is a stainless steel thermos lid from the waters of Norway, I'm still a few parts (and the better part of a thermos) shy of building anything of value.

So... It's a joke or what?

Today I found this note on my windshield. Note the handwriting equivalent of "all caps" on all but "plats" (spot) and "Flytta" (Move).


The reason it looks all beaten up is because I was going to throw it away. Allow me to translate; "NB YOU ARE PARKED ON MY PARKING-spot! Move". That's funny, I've been using the number XXX parking spot for 3 years now, and that's were I found my car this morning. When the parking lot is emptier then usual I sometimes notice that a car with a spot below mine somehow traded with a car above, apparently someone isn't paying attention. Anyways, it's probably either a bad joke or someone didn't bother to throw away the accusing note they found on their car. At the off chance that it wasn't a joke, I printed out a short re-taunt; "Denna p-plats, XXX, är MIN sedan 3 år. Parkera här och bli BOGSERAD" , in English; "This parking spot, XXX, had been MINE for three years. Park here and get TOWED!".

Also note the original note to the right, both taped to my rear window.



Hopefully my message gets across. Either that note was not meant for me, or I'm dealing with a very confused individual. Or both, if you write a note you must include some identification of the parking spot in question (the number for instance) otherwise some fuck-tard could just put the note on another car.
Either way it's kind of funny...

Thank you and good night

So it's finally over. No, not the blog you deficient, the time thief known as "Kampsportgalan i Skellefteå" (something like "[the] martial arts gala in Skellefteå). Four of us from Kali Sikaran
(Eric, Lars, Mattias and me - in alphabetic order) put on a show with various weapons (and a lawn chair). I did a double stick routine, stick and knife vs. Lars who had stick and knife, defence/offence with/without knife against Lars, knife against Eric, unarmed against Eric who had a cell phone and at the end we all did a little dance number just for fun and chock value. It turned out really well, although I had my doubts when we were all standing on center stage. There were a fair number of people watching which definitely sent my pulse up a notch or two. Someone told me there were roughly 400 spectators watching (not counting staff/officials) . The whole spectacle was also captured on film and soon to be printed on DVD:s. I think we had a great mix of martial arts and downright silliness, we gave the audience a show not just a demonstration of our art. There's a lot more that can be said about our show, but I don't want to give away the ending. Wait for the DVD, it will be worth if. I will be posting some pictures of the show in the near future, right now I'm just glad it's over.

Skellefteå Ju-Jutsu club did a really good show which I unfortunately only got the chance to see on the dress rehearsal. Sure, I may be partisan - being a member myself - but it definitely stood out. Muay Thai (thai boxing) had a really nice show with pizzas, dancing (with pizzas) and fat suits. The DVD sound pretty fancy now, doesn't it? I'm waiting for the DVD my self, it is going to be interesting to see what the audience saw. Well, almost what they saw. The video crew set up just outside the mats (Yes, "Mats" is a name in Sweden, but one "mat" two "mats" so there), the audience was sitting in rows on either side of the "center stage". There will probably be a short story in the local newspaper, I'll update this post then. Right now I'm going to sleep. Meanwhile, here's the trailer from last year's show at the same arena.

Marinated diver with a dash of zombie

"Well, there's your problem" to quote Adam Savage. What you are looking at is the zipper of my dry shell suit; plugged, pressurized and sprayed with soft soap on the floor of my tiny bathroom (for more information see this earlier post).



The bubbles indicate air escaping from the suit's zipper which means that I need a new one. As far as bad leaks goes, this is the best. It requires professional service and a new zipper, all in all a pretty costly affair.

Saturdays dive (on the 10:th) had to be cut short as my first stage wasn't freeze-proof (which led to some minor complications), unfortunately the dive on the 11:th had to be a short one as well.

My dry suit was taking in a little too much water, which kind of becomes a concern while diving in cold, streaming water (the outside temperature was 0 degree C, 32 Fahrenheit). As the water pooled against my chest the risk of hypothermia and other complications became all to obvious, nothing to do but abort. My dive buddy, a highly experienced diver and instructor, continued to dive on his own as I made my way back onto dry land. Well, the land was probably more "snowy" then "dry", and my dry suit was more of a water container then anything else. I had to walk a fairly long distance to make it back to the car where I had dry clothes and a towel. As I got to the car I dumped the weights and the vest. Now for the hard part, getting out of the dry suit. The zipper is in a very hard place to reach (on the back, basically between the shoulder blades of the wearer) and requires a certain amount of force to open, which due to it's location and my frozen fingers presented somewhat of a problem. Before I left my car I filled my "three finger" wet gloves with hot water for added protection against the cold water. Unfortunately, when I got out of the water all that warmth was long gone. And the keys to the car is in the pocket of my overall, which is under the dry suit, shielded by a zipper. If I wasn't encased in a suit partially filled with cold water I might just have laughed at the whole scenario. It probably looked quite funny to any potential onlookers, me flailing my arms against my back, trying to get a grip on the illusive zipper tag. After about 5 minutes of struggling I finally got out of the suit and into some dry clothes. The overall had soaked up a lot of water and was dripping as I hung it over the trunk. But I regret nothing, I enjoyed the dive while it lasted and thanks to the two extra weights I added in the back pockets of the BCD I had a more balanced buoyancy compaired to the day before. Now I just need to shop around for a good price on a new zipper...

Also I saw one of the trailers for 300 and I've got to say, I'm impressed. Great soundtrack, nice visuals and an epic story. It just might turn out to be a great movie, well worth a look. Release Date: 16 March 2007 (Sweden). There are no zombies in the movie 300. Speaking of zombies, check out the latest SB-Email.

Tango Uniform - updated

I've got a dive the 10th (tomorrow) and wouldn't you know it, my dive watch goes tits up on the 9th. The battery got changed and the watch was pressure tested in late April of 2006.


Since this was fairly recent, the battery should not be flat and even so the watch's second hand would take two steps at the time to indicate "low battery" before it stopped, for me it just fell over dead. Incidentally, this watch now displays the correct time only 12 times a year, once each month (date, time and 24h indicator). I always screw in the crown tight before each dive so if there is water in there it is not my fault. Neither has the watch been subjected to showers, baths, or saunas. Citizen are renowned for their dive watches, it isn't like them to sell inferior watches.
I suspect either a malfunctioning battery or improper service/testing, it is yet to early to say. Then again, I've been using it quite often - diving with the depth meter and using the chronograph on land but still... So now I'm without a wrist watch, I feel...Naked.

I'm back from the dive, which unfortunately became a short one. The weather was alright, light snow and with temperature around 1 degree C (33,8 Fahrenheit).

Here's a photo from where we parked our cars. From there we walked about 150 meters until we found a suitable area to enter the water. The water was flowing rather rapidly which added extra strain on the equipment.

We were four divers in total, in teams of two. Me and my dive buddy made our way through the snow, down a steep slope and made entry to the water. So far so good, although I should've brought more lead, my buoyancy was a little to positive. We dove along the bottom for a while, following the current. My dive buddy cleared some fishing lines and lures from the bottom. Somewhere around this time I started noticing that my equipment seemed to make more noise then usual. It sounded like air was leaking from somewhere. I still had a pressure of 150 bar, which is OK but the air consumption seemed a little to high since I started on 200. After a while the sound was getting louder and I noticed that I made a lot more bubbles then I should. I swam up to my dive buddy and signaled that something was wrong, signaling to the cloud of bubbles left in my wake. I noticed that the regulator was feed way more air then I consumed, creating an overpressure which was emptied through the exhale valve. As we broke surface the regulator was flowing constantly, although not as fast as in a free flow. My dive buddy tried to close the valve on the tank but it wouldn't budge, the ice on the first stage was too thick. Nothing left to do but to walk back to the car, my dive buddy dove on for a while with the others. As I looked at the first stage I could see a thick layer of crystal clear ice which had collected on steel.












I got out of my dry suit, which isn't all that easy if you're on your own, and took a few photos. Most dry suits has the zipper on the back, from shoulder to shoulder, which makes it good task for your dive buddy. Anyways, I'm going to borrow a better first stage for tomorrows dive, one that shouldn't freeze.

Compatibility issues

Depending on your browser and its font size (adjust by holding Ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel) the layout of this blog might not be presented correctly. By "correctly" I mean how it looks for me. Unfortunately there isn't really much to to about that, which kind of pisses me off since I always make sure that a sentence never starts along a picture and then continues underneath it. The first image below illustrates my regular font size. In the second image the font size is larger, which offsets the layout. You will get a similar result if you use a very small font size. I suppose it would be too much to ask that the Internet should start using the same font size as me. Please? Or you could just imagine that the text is properly formatted, that would also work. Also, this blog is available (see "not censored") in China. Those poor Chinese people, one can only hope that their government will censor this blog in the near future.

Adorini Deluxe Humidifier

Today I got my Adorini Deluxe Humidifier in the mail. I had to replace the old one which didn't seem to be able to maintain an acceptable relative humidity. The Adorini deluxe humidifier is a acryl-polymer humidifier which is use distilled water instead of propylene glycol. Propylene glycol is used in sponge-type humidifiers and quite overpriced.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the package is the sheer size of the thing! Here's a photo to illustrate, with the humidifier (still in its original box) placed on top of the humidor.

The instructions were obviously translated into English from a very complicated language. The whole thing read like a haiku poem, and a bad one to boot. In fact, I'll post the entire "manual" right here and now so you can see for yourself. I'll even throw in some of my own comments just for the heck of it.

Adorini Deluxe Humidifier (Starts out innocent enough.)

Please note the following preparing steps: (This could get ugly.)

Congratulations for purchasing of your ,,adorini deluxe humdifier”, based on acryl-polymer.
(Not the traditional way of saying ”Thank you for your purchase of” or ”Thank you for purchasing the” but what the heck.
Also an ”i” apparently got lost in the confusion.)

1. Attach the enclosed self-taping plate in the cap of the humidor. (”Lid” might be more useful, but then again so would ”adhesive”.) The place where the humidifier shall be taped has to be cleaned efficiently. (Still sounds like haiku. Would've worked if not for the use of ”place” and "efficently". I like to clean inefficiently.) In order that the weighty humidifier not falls down inside the humidor you should wait 3 hours before attaching it. (Sounds like a rather round-about way of saying it. Also ”weighty” does sound honest, but not all that positive. But trust me, when it’s filled with distilled water it will be weighty indeed)
2. Now the ”adorini deluxe humidifier” has to lie in a flat cup filled with distilled water for 30 minutes. (That would have to be one big flat cup, the only way for the water to enter the humidifier is through the grate. One might just fill the humidifier with distilled water, but maybe that's too easy.)
3. After that take it off the cup and knock it off. Dry the case with a drapery. (Now that is just silly, also I thought the humidifier should be inside the cup.)
4. Now the ”adorini deluxe humidifier” can be placed in the humidor (The one and only reasonable sentence.)
5. You can tweak the humidity inside the humidor by the sliders (Considering the sentences above, this one made the ”B” grade cut but ”tweak” is not traditionally a word used to replace ”adjust”. Also ”inside the humidor” seems a bit redundant.)
6. After about 6 weeks (depending on the bigness and placement in the humidor) the system should be replenished again. (”Again” seems kind of redundant. Also, personally I would not use the word "Bigness".)

Needless to say, the instructions could use a make-over. Or at least someone should take another whack at the translation.

As for the humidifier it is still hanging on to the "cap" of the humidor. I put it in the humidor last night at around 23:00 and this morning it's holding a nice relative humidity of 69%. The magnets makes it a lot easier to remove the humidifier from the lid, the old humidifier was attached with Velcro which quite frankly was a pain.

Holster modification

Here’s an interesting project of mine, a Do It Yourself leg holster… Sort of, you actually start off with two holsters and end up with one holster and a holster-holder.


The Sickinger holster is great, but it’s belt clip restricts the placement of the holster to the waist of the bearer which sometimes can be impractical. The holster tends to snag against the armrest of chairs (and is rather unfomfortable to wear while sitting down) and while driving (when the revolver is stored in the Safe Case) the seat belt has to go over the holster, which can alter the shape of the leather. The idea for this project was to buy a cheap leg holster, remove the holster-part and modify the straps to hold the Sickinger holster.

For this project I used a Swiss arms soft air gun leg holster, designed to fit most soft air guns based on automatic pistols. The holster cost me 149 SEK or 20,74 USD.

As you can see in this picture the leg straps are held together with with Velcro which makes the holster easy to remove.

The holster is held up by a strap with a plastic buckle which attaches to the wearer's belt. I would prefer buckles on the leg straps as well but considering the price I guess I shouldn't complain. Although, since the legstraps are adjustable I could just glue the Velcro shut…
Maybe later.

The Python actually did fit in the holster, although it did seat very low and the target style front sight would definitely snag against the holster when drawn – possibly cutting it open if you were unlucky. Also there were a number of metal parts which could scratch the finish and the holster did not have a quick draw function.

The basic idea was to use just the straps and discard the ”holster”-part, but as I open the box and had a look at the way the straps were sewn into the main body of the holster that plan had to change.

I was hoping that the leg straps would be sewn into the strap that is connected to the wearers belt, which was not the case as you can see.

I decided to cut open the holster, since that was the one move at this point that would have to be made no matter how I wanted to proceed from there.

After cutting the stitches and opening the holster I saw that there were a thick cordura strap sewn along the length of the holster. My first thought was to cut away this part entirely, but that would make the holster less rigid and more likely to come apart. I decided to place the cut above this strap and then glue it against the main body of the holster.

After distributing a few strategically placed lines of Plastic Padding, I placed the holster on a bag to ensure that the excess glue wouldn't spill on to the floor and then placed a 200 bar scuba tank on top to force the parts together.

After the glue settled I cut holes for the Sickinger holster's belt clip, which separated the outer cordura from the soft inner padding. I placed pieces of cardboard into these holes to keep them open and then glued the outer shell to the padding.

I also touched up some of the seams with Plastic Padding and placed a yellow plastic clip to hold the lower part together and 500 wad cutter bullets to press together the upper part of the holster, observe.

This is the back of the Swiss arms holster, with the Sickinger holster's belt clip attached. Some extra Plastic Padding was added around the cuts to prevent the fabric from tearing.



Here's is a before and after photo. Compare the position of the grip to the legstraps and you'll notice that the Sickinger holster places the revolver higher up.



The Sickinger holster actually held on better then I would've guessed and didn't move at all as the weapon was drawn.

I used a lot of Plastic Padding in this project. A soft air gun holster (especially a cheap one) isn't really made for use with a real firearm. The seams were generally quite cruddy and not made to carry the weight of a Colt Python. The cordura material didn't seem very resistant to any accidental cuts from a sharp edged target sight. The Velcro patches were crudely sewn to the holster and one of them had obviously missed its mark and got sewn on in an angle.
It does however seem that the most important strap, the one that connects to the belt, is sturdy enough to bear the load of a full sized revolver.

All in all I would have to say that the project is a success. There are still some esthetical changes that could be made, but the holster functions flawlessly.

FLIP - updated

This is a link to a post on Fogonazos blog that describes the FLIP research ship, a rather unique concept. Go on and look for yourself, don't forget to watch the embedded YouTube video.






I'm currently working on a Do It Yourself project (firearms related, no surprise there) but it will take at least 12 hours for the Plastic Padding to set, results will be posted shortly. Incidentally, it takes a very long time to write then you've accidentally joined your hands at the intex fingirs. I've also written a review which will not be published until late March due to reasons beyond most people's control.