An article I wrote (with fellow GUE diver Nathalie Udo) about our experience with TSRCP in the Philippines has finally been published in the latest issue (12.3) of GUE’s Quest Magazine (available with GUE membership).
Points of Interest added to crashcard
Crashcard’s map view now features “Points of Interest” showing where nearby towing services, public transport, taxis, repairers, hospitals etc are. Tapping on a POI shows you the address and allows you place a call where available.
To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.
“Democracy without transparency is just an empty word”
It is of grave concern that in recent years, we have seen countries, including our allies, invoking extra-judicial measures in the name of democracy. We must resist this trend. Extra-judicial measures do not protect democracy, they undermine it.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.
No sooner had I flicked the switch moving the site than there was a 36 hour outage. The experiment persists for now, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on things.
Yesterday afternoon, during planned maintenance that was not intended to interrupt service, an issue arose that took down a critical database cluster. This brought down our entire network while our engineers worked feverishly to restore these databases and bring your blogs back online.
Unfortunately, car accidents do happen. CRASHCARD guides you through the collection
of important information during these stressful times, granting peace of mind and
simplifying insurance claims.
The Thresher Shark Research & Conservation Project
In 2011 I’ll be returning to The Thresher Shark Research & Conservation Project for a six month stint as Science Officer. Helping out on an important scientific and community project with some of the greatest people I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with.
I spent the best three months of my life there in 2009. Diving every day, researching sharks and mantas, and helping a small island community—through the research and its application to conservation and within the local dive tourism industry, but also directly within the community, where the project provides jobs, helped construct housing and where TSRCP volunteers teach marine biology and conservation at the local school.
Life on the island was confronting at first. About 2 km square consisting of a couple of small villages and a few dive resorts (largely foreign owned, but where the island community gets 80% of its income), there is no permanent electricity and no fresh water. The island is powered by petrol generators prone to breakdown and drinking water is imported daily. A simple, largely subsistence lifestyle. I grew to love the island and its people.
History
TSRCP was started in 2005 by research scientists Simon P. Oliver and Alison J. Beckett to create a baseline of Monad Shoal in the Philippines—primarily concerned with Pelagic Thresher Shark (Alopias pelagicus) cleaning activity as well as the shoal’s coral coverage and general health.
Monad Shoal is about 8 km east of the southern beach of Malapascua Island in the Visayan Sea—an open water seamount with a relatively square dive profile around 21–24m that plunges to 250m, presenting a unique opportunity to observe and record these rarely studied oceanic sharks.
Both threshers and Manta Rays (Manta birostris) frequent the site, as well as a myriad of other pelagic and reef fish. Particularly the various species of cleaner fish that draw the oceanic wildlife to the shoal.
TSRCP is a significant source of environmental, ecological and behavioural research for Pelagic Thresher Sharks, providing research, education and conservation locally, regionally and internationally.
GUE Relationship
Through volunteer divers (including myself) TSRCP became aware of Global Underwater Explorers, a non-profit diver training agency focussed on research, conservation and exploration, whose training methods and techniques are uniquely suited to scientific research diving. In 2009 TSRCP became a GUE affiliated project and now provides all volunteer divers with basic training aimed at perfecting the buoyancy, trim and propulsion techniques necessary for a successful research diver.
UPDATE 2010-06-25: Air Depth 1.3.1 is available. No more crashing on iOS3.x. Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE 2010-06-24: Air Depth is currently in Review. Hopefully that means it will be available within the next day.
Version 1.3 of Air Depth contained a crash bug related to an iOS4 framework. I’ve already submitted 1.3.1 to fix the issue. 1.3 was approved in 12 hours, so I hope 1.3.1 is approved within a similar time frame.
The issue manifests on iOS versions less than 4. iOS 4 is released on 21 July. However, 1.3.1 will fix the issue for all prior iOS versions if you don’t intend upgrading to iOS 4.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Followup on App Store Pricing and Developer Payments
I received a message from Apple today, in response to an earlier post of mine. I’ve reproduced it bellow:
Hello
Your assumptions on UK VAT are correct; the iTunes Store sales prices in the United Kingdom are VAT (Value Added Tax) inclusive, as are any other goods sold in the UK. This is required by law, not by Apple policy. You can refer to the government tax website www.hmrc.gov.uk for an understanding of VAT laws. Every customer in the UK expects that VAT is included in their price, so this is not unusual for them.
To the contrary, USA customers are used to seeing sales taxes added at the time of checkout, and not included in the sales price of an item. This is how the iTunes Store reflects taxes—the same way customers are accustomed to seeing it as they would in any other store in the USA.
This is address in the FAQs on iTunes Connect, as well as explained in detail to anyone who emails iTStax@apple.com.
