Backblog - Diving, days 4-5
Due to adverse weather conditions, one of the dives from the last day was shifted to the second-last, producing a rather hectic schedule with six dives being offered. We ended up skipping the second last one: exhaustion, short service intervals, and a reptetive dive profile made us feel this was a prudent choice. We did get the opportunity to dive the site at night, and wow, what a dive!

We saw two spanish dancers, one as large as a loaf of bread, and one smaller than my finger. We saw turtles everywhere, a moray eel, a wobbegong, a lion-fish, and a big phallic purple spawning... thing. I really have no idea what it was, and unfortunately we don't have a photo.

Today (Sunday) was our last day on the first leg of our journey, with two dives in the morning. Unfortunately our nitrogen loading has finally caught up with us (21 dives in five days), and our depth and bottom time were constrained because of this.

I'm now sitting at the marina while the crew debriefs and cleans the boat. I've confirmed that there's no big emergencies at home (our server is still up), and we'll be heading out for a celebratory dinner soon.

As a special, just-arrived news, I'm now an uncle. Jacinta's youngest sister, Zoe, has just has a baby boy named Joshua.

Day 6
Today has been a day of rest as the ship is cleaned in preparation for the next trip. Apparently we're going to have a crew made primarily of TAFE students who'll be running most things. This will certainly make things interesting, but apparently customer satisfaction is a prime factor into their final mark, and the captain's given me permission to be a difficult customer and keep them on their toes.

The day has been spent watching movies, reading books, sleeping in, and me thinking about how much I want to change my talk before linux.conf.au