Random

For the last few years, I've wanted to get SCUBA certified.  I never had the time to do so, but that didn't stop me from planning for it, and that is why a diver is part of Melev's Reef. Often asked if the diver on my business card is me, I replied that it was my goal, a constant reminder of what I wanted to do some day. For the past 30 days, I've been working hard to get this accomplished, and I'm happy to report that as of yesterday I'm now fully certified for open water.

Fort Worth has been buried under a lovely blanket of snow. Probably about 6 to 8" worth over the past 48 hours, but enough to cause chaos to our city because we are simply not used to getting more than 1" of snow each year. With all the beauty of it around us, power has gone out to 33,000 yesterday and as of today, 206,000! Myself included.

Much to my delight, I'm happy to say that my new website got some serious love. You can read all about it here:

That didn't take long! Welcome to the new site.

The matching podcast went up today, which is available on iTunes.

Shameless plug for my new site Reef Addicts. :)

Reef Addicts has a contest and you can win a Reefkeeper Elite Net controller with all the associated components.

Reef Addicts is a brand new community-based site. For the past eight months, it has been a dream of mine, something I wanted to develop in the proper way to provide good usable content to hobbyists around the world. Different from Melev's Reef, this new site welcomes your interaction and values your input.

It's the first of the month, and what comes with that? A brand new episode of Reefcast! Episode 32 is up on Itunes, ready to download now. Enjoy.

Download page

A year ago (August 11, 2008), I did some math to see how much my tank costs me in electricity. Not the most fun thing to know, but still... here's the updated version, 12 months later. Some equipment has been changed out, and the rate of electricity is 10.3¢ now instead of 12.6¢:
 

I've gotten some emails lately about the LFS (local fish store) page on my site, because people that visit the area like to see what's available to see while they are in town. I made some updates since some stores were gone, others moved location, and a couple of new ones cropped up.

Then a guy on DFWMAS requested that the map be interactive at the top. He wanted to be able to zoom into his area. He even gave me a scrap of code to get me started, and the rest of my afternoon was devoured learning how to make an awesomely colorful map. LOL

To get everyone up to speed, the road trip to Arizona was a lot of fun. I got home Monday morning at 5am. Of course, as soon as I walked through the door, I checked on my reef and did a bunch of minor tweaks to adjust things they way they needed to be. All was well.

This latest episode is Epic, so it was named Epic Episode 30. It is a video episode, and thus a large download. Be sure to save it to your computer rather than trying to stream it. Downloads page

My reef is doing quite well. Here's the latest image.

A few projects recently completed: