Occasional ramblings, covering a whole host of subjects, mainly centered about my life. Dull? maybe. Repetitive? possibly. Real-life? probably. Expect a whole stream of banal ravings with some gems thrown in, as a surprise...
Cast your minds back to 1994 – here’s what I was doing in mid to late August – I was doing a slow and leisurely road trip by KTEL (with JWH) round Crete. It was then that I first heard of the “Gorge of the Dead” above Zakros – 19 years ago, just less than half my life ago. I have been back to Zakros, but with less KTEL timetabling hilarity in 2000, again that “Gorge of the Dead” whispering to me to explore it. Of course in 2000, I also saw the Ha gorge entrance, but this is a whole new chapter, one of the precursor stories to how I ended up becoming a caver.
On the one hand, it’s a pity that it isn't an exact 20 years since I first went to Kato Zakros, on the other, it is a pity that it took me so fucking long to get to the position where I could consider walking the gorge…
Once upon a time, what seems now like a long time ago, but isn't, I read about the Oregon Scientific helmet cam on the NSS caving forum. One of the gear-heads mentioned the ATC1000 which was just out at the time and I bought one and played around with it.
About six months later I bought the upgrade model ATC2K. So, seeing as I had promised this to the guys over at forums.caves.org, time for my side by side comparison, here goes:
ATC1000 on the left, with AAA cell, right the ATC2K with AA cell
The ATC2K improves on many of the ATC1000's "problems" for caving. For me, these are waterproofness of casing / behaviour in low light / battery issues / mount. We'll go over these one by one.
The first is the more rugged and more waterproof casing. A side by side comparison of the two cameras shows that the older model is far longer than the recent one, but thinner and more cylindrical.
The ATC1000 is rated only splashproof (although mine has survived a brief total dunking) whereas the ATC2K is rated as being waterproof to 3m. The ATC2K also has a shadow guard (peaked front) for reducing flare and has a more rubbery feel than the ATC1000s very plastic look. Both have received their fair share of knocks and scrapes while attached to my helmet, without any problems or malfunctioning. After about 8 months of use (and this is connected to the mount also) the front end of my ATC1000 came off, making it no longer splashproof. I have submerged my ATC2K to about 4 or 5m without problems.
Behaviour in low light, next. The ATC2K is very much better at acquiring an image is low light. I don't know whether this is a CMOS issue, or a result of different hardwired software in the camera. The ATC1000 shoots at 15fps and gives a very smooth image with many tonal ranges. The ATC2K shoots at 30fps and gives a more contrasty (sometimes blocky) image. Whether the trick to achieve the increase in fps also necessitates loss of image quality I am not qualified to say. How this links in to the fact that the ATC2K will give a better balanced image in low light I also don't know. For someone who has not seen the image quality of the ATC1000, the quality of the ATC2K is not noticeably bad. The fact that it will capture an image, when the ATC1000 will not is what is important to me.
Comparison in low light and external conditions
Comparison in street conditions
Comparison in cave conditions
Battery issues: size and lifetime! The ATC1000 takes four AAA cells. The amount of recording I could get out of new alkalines varied from about 45 minutes to 75 minutes depending on the subject and the amount of time the camera was on standby. The lifetime of some otherwise pretty good Ni-MH batteries was not so good, ranging from 30 minutes to no more than 60 minutes. The cost of new batteries per hour recording or the inconvenience of carrying many spares was unsatisfactory. Further, it is almost impossible to change batteries without a pen or a safety pin to release the latch, especially when wearing gloves. The ATC2K takes two AA cells, much cheaper and much easier to find. The battery life was close to two hours for alkalines or well over one hour for Ni-MH rechargeables, meaning that you have to open the back more frequently to change memory card than to change batteries. So with the ATC2K you get many more hours recording for the buck. Another thing is that the battery indicator comes on when you have about 10 or 15 minutes of recording time left, giving plenty of warning. On the ATC1000, it would often come on immediately before the camera died. I am curious what the TFT screen on the back of the ATC5K is going to do to battery life.
Mount issues: The ATC1000 did not have a satisfactory system for mounting the camera on a helmet - the system required leaving the clasp in place on the helmet and sliding the camera in and out, something which may have sped up the detachment of the front cover of the camera. After a few uses like this, I decided on using inner tube rings to keep the camera attached to the helmet, something which worked well enough as long as I jammed a toothpick in there as well to keep the axis parallel to my line of sight. The mount for the ATC2K is much more handy, having a clippy system allowing you to detach the whole camera from the female mount with ease. I have the female part permanently fixed to my helmet and clip the camera into it whenever I want to. It sticks out from the helmet quite a distance but this is easy to get used to. As I wanted to be able to alternate place of mounting between helmet and elsewhere, without having to take off the helmet so as to undo the strap, I wrote to Oregon's customer support about getting more female clippy parts, but I received no response.
Some words about Oregon's customer service: there ain't none. You buy the camera, and that's it. If you want to contact them by e-mail, they'll never answer you. I have sent repeated mails to Oregon about various questions and none have been answered. I once sat in an automated telephone queue for 40 minutes never getting through to the support staff. Oregon are crap - if you buy something, from that moment on you have to come to terms with the fact that you are on your own. This is not the sort of customer services I have come to expect from across the lake. People interested in the ATC3K and ATC5K coming soon, should keep this in mind.
One more thing - after about 11 months of use, my ATC2K developed a patch of dead pixels or something, which was not on the exterior of the camera but which created a dead spot a few pixels in diameter. I have tried to reach Oregon about this as well, but with no joy.
So the rain rained and the thunder thundered, but everything still went according to plan. Almost. The one day of good weather meant that we did not do Polydrosso on the Sunday, but did exams instead.
The 9th annual Panhellenic Speleological Convention is being held starting this afternoon down in Monemvasia. My car is buggered. It keeps going crazy and overheating for no perceivable reason. The drive down will be interesting to say the least...
So, here I am with streppy-throat and lemsips all a steaming, and feel like shit and worried for my liver. How the hell come is it that everything that has some sort of action beneficial to you in an analgesic or anti-inflammatory way shafts the liver well and proper?
I have become a little more aware of my liver in recent months, ever since the SGPT and SGOT and the gamma GT jumped and caused me a little concern. I mean what the fuck are all these numbers and letters all about anyway? I’ve done my reading, oh yes, and now I know what the numbers measure. I also know I can live with much higher numbers than those I am currently scoring on my "to what extent have the interferons fucked your liver" scale.
So I am all throated out and fluey at the moment.
Nevertheless, I am still going to lead a rag-tag fugitive fleet to Pal - no wait, that’s something else, I’m in charge of a group of cavers, not a Starfleet. So we going to Pal tomorrow morning. Oh yes.
Between Vityna and Marko's junction there is settled snow on the road. Marko's junction is where the hairpin bend is after Zatouna. Mother had trouble getting as far as Zatouna yesterday, although the sunny weather should have made things better for today.
The plan is to set off at 06:30 hours tomorrow morning from the club and meet at the kiosk at 07:00 hours. From there we scoot to Pal as fast as we can, to meet the mayor who will give us the 4x4 and someone to take us to the holes. Temperatures in Paloumba are currently at about 7 degrees.
We have about 110m of rope - three twenties and a fifty. We have about five little ropey things and six belts plus some wire rope, got about twenty anchors and plates for rigging, but hope to do most of it without having to hammer the rock anywhere.
No idea what we’ll find - so quite excited. Worried about how all the team will sleep and how they’ll be accepted by the villagers, etc.
Generally got a whole bunch of worries on my mind.
And now a quote from his Bobness:
For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despise their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something They invest in.
So there we were, about half way up the mountain and approaching the entrance to the cave, and suddenly the car is engulfed in a cloud of white smoke blinding me momentarily and scaring the shit out of Nontas in the passenger seat.
Hm - I think to myself, billowing white smoke, best stop, even though it is most likely to be just water and steam that's come out of somewhere under pressure. But where? Well, the pic above shows where it came from. A burst pipe, the one which takes the hot cooling water from the engine back to the radiator. can't really move the car without it. So we get into this whole idscussion about what should we do and how to deal with this. Fortunately both Nontas and Mike are technically more advanced than I am with this sort of thing and took it on themselves to fix the problem, but not until after we had finished the work we had come for.
So off we went up the mountain, all of us in the one car now, and me rather a little annoyed with Mr. George the service guy. I'd done the service at 151,500 and dammit he should have seen that the rubber pipe was worse for wear to the extent that it was likely to burst and spray hot and dirty cooling fluid alll over the place.
At the stopping place, we got all the gear out of the car and Eri and I got ready to go on in, while the boys went back down the mountain to look for a replacement piece of tubing. It was not going to be an easy task.
Of course, they could not find a Fiat piece of tubing, and brought up a piece of seat tubing, with the same diameter (roughly) as our broken piece. After exiting the cave at about quarter to midnight, the time came to turn our hand to McGiverisms and improvised solutions. First we saw that the new tube was too narrow to go into where it should be, and had to grease up the tube and the entrances. Next it was too long and would kink in the wrong places, in the end we made a frankenstein’s monster of a solution, using part of the old damaged Fiat tube and some of the new tube and made it all the way home…
