Marc's Public Blog

This is what it looks like:

I analysed how the DS10A worked, and due to sheer luck in its design, the wires going to the magnetic sensor turn out to be ground and signal, and the water sensor conducted enough current between them to allow triggering of the DS10A:

Wiring is totally trivial, you only need to use a 3rd wire connected to the plus from the 2 batteries, and it "just works". For extra credit, I wired a buzzer between signal and ground, and my water sensor passed enough current to allow the buzzer to run.

I used the Phantom YoYo High Sensitivity Water Sensor which was $10, but apparently you can get one that should work too from seedstudio for $3

The DS10A, I have a stack of, which you can sometimes find on ebay for cheap in bundles, and my house is already wired to receive those signals, so it was trivial to generate an Email and page from misterhouse when this sensor got triggered.

Here are some of notes of what I learned those 2 days:

And notes relative to actual turns:

The 2nd day in the morning, I got a flat on one of my tires without knowing, which made the car very oversteery and before I knew it, I spun in the chicane and got to see why:

This time we were running the full course and had slicks on the cars, so it was a good difference from level 1.
We only had 4 people in our group, and one was close to a professional racer, so I didn't get too close to him. As a result our end times on the 2nd day were the following: our teacher Nico had a benchmark time of 1:38, our next best driver was at 1:41, I got down to 1:43, and the 2 other students with less experience were around 1:48.

After driving, we compared our data acquisition to see what we were doing wrong or could improve:

My last 2 sessions the 2nd day in the afternoon, my times were reasonably stable and in the down direction :)

One before last session: 1:48, 1:48, 1:47, 1:48, 1:45, 1:48, 1:46, 1:46, 1:46, 1:46, 1:47, 1:46, 1:48

Last session (with video offset): 1:45 ( 0:37), 1:45 ( 2:22), 1:46 ( 4:08), 1:45 ( 5:53), 1:45 ( 7:38), 1:44 ( 9:22), 1:48 (11:06), 1:44 (12:50), 1:44 (14:34), 1:44 (16:18), 1:44 (18:01), 1:43 (19:44), 1:44 (21:28), 1:44 (23:12),

Here is a vid of my last session

And for novelty purposes, a shaky video from google glass of an ealier session:

On the way out, I got to watch Dorifto wednesday. That was quite fun to witness ;)

As a result, I ended up renting a track prepared lotus from them (lightened, a few extra HPs over stock, and upgraded brakes). I did however select street tires over slicks since I figured I didn't need to learn slicks when I was already learning a new car and a new track.

I ended up flying early that morning just around IFR weather and got to Willows airport where Rob picked me up.

By 09:00, we started our first session, one of 7 30mn sessions :)

there were other bug cars :)

It took me a little bit to get used to the lotus and learn that it was tail happy under braking. As a result, I had to brake and be back on gas before turning for stability in some places.
Learning thunderhill west also took a bit of time, but I worked my way down from 4:10 to 3:44 by the end of the day, so I'm happy enough with that :)

Here is my last session of the day (just to 20:22):

Thanks to GGLC for setting up the event and Rob and Jenni for getting me the car all prepped.

This time though we started with the top deck which usually is a 1H line and we saw right away, and then we worked through the flight deck:

Captain's view

From there we saw the captain's quarters and surroundings, ops and comm rooms:

From there, we went to the flight deck and dispatch rooms:

landing signals

There was a lot more to see in the aircraft carrier, but we had done a good amount for the day (and this mostly completed my prior visit where I had seen all the bottom floors in details).

I brought a semi dry 7mm wetsuit, a full hood, and as a backup a 2nd shortie with hood that was 5.5mm (or a total of 12.5mm of neoprene). That was a wise decision, the semi-dry 7mm wasn't much warmer than a 7mm, and after my first dive, I was very cold, so I put the 2nd wetsuit on top.
This turned out to be barely enough, and I was still cold on most of the dives, but it turns out the temperature got as low as 13C (55F). It was sad when I saw my computer say 16C (60F) and that felt warm, but the 2 wet suits, tight hood, and 28lbs of lead just weren't comfortable or fun.

All that said, we had above average vis (which means somewhat poor instead of very poor ;) ), and no current, so we got lucky with the conditions actually being as good as they could have been for there (except the temps).

On the first day, we did a couple of kelp dives first, and the Yukon and Ruby in the afternoon. On the second morning, double dive of the Yukon on nitrox, and finished up with the Ruby again, where I took a crap on the toilet :)

Unfortunately most of my pictures are crap because my real camera lens kept fogging up. I used my gopro as a backup, and the nicer pictures are from Arturo.

there we so many lobsters, it wasn't even funny:

Some pictures from the wrecks:

Arturo and I took an early flight on friday morning to enjoy most of the day in San Diego:

this is where we did our our diving trips from

downtown

Balboa Park where Artruo and I spent quite a bit of time when we weren't diiving

After landing we went to pick up Arturo's compact car :)

From the airport, we went directly to Cabrillo national monument to see the beach/tide pools before the tide rose too much. It was a nice hike by the coast:

Arturo was not much of a photo model, so I had to find other people :)

After the coast, we went to see the Cabrillo monument and went to get some picturs from San Diego and the military base:

how about that, it was a perfect fit :)

On the way back down, we went to check out the cemetary on the side of road back down:

From there, we went to the science museum in Balboa Park and went to see a couple of Imax movies:

Next, we went to the museum of man, which closed later and wasn't bad:

The next day, we met with Bill, Regis and Kyoko for diving, which is on its own page.

After diving on our second day, we had a bit of extra time in the afternoon, so we went back to Balboa Park to see the botanical and Japanese gardens:

Next, we went to San Diego Old Town, starting with Whaley House and then shops in old town:

The next day, Arturo and I started the day by going to the Midway Aircraft Carrier, which allowed me to see more of the top of the carrier and the command center which I hadn't been able to see last time when I concentrated on the bottom decks.

After that, we went back to Balboa Park and went to the natural history museum:

After it closed at 17:00, we had enough time to enjoy some yummy deserts before heading for the airport to fly home:

And finally we got to our last day in Japan. Jennifer thought she would enjoy the amenities of our hotel :)

I chose to go back to Tokyo Tower since I had gone in 1997, and figured I would see Zojo-ji, a big quiet temple just next to it, wihch happened to also be featured in X-Men's The Wolverine, much of which happens in Japan. It's a great temple, both in size and appearance:

Next, I went to Tokyo tower, just because. It's not a first attraction (obviously, the Tokyo Skytree has stole the thunder), but if you're by Zojo-ji, why not? :)

Odaiba

At the base of Tokyo Tower, there is a small aquarium. It's nothing to write home about, but I figured I'd check it out anyway. It actually had some interesting fish I hadn't seen before, as well as weird nosed turtles :)

nice snapping turtle

After this, I went back to our room and we walked to the Google Office for lunch with friends and a quick tour.

And after that it was time for a bus back to Narita to fly home. A few shots from that bus: