The PADI Enriched Air Nitrox course improves your diving in one enormous way! It allows you to spend longer under the water.

This course is conducted entirely in the classroom and doesn’t require any diving. The course covers the equipment aspect of diving with nitrox as well as dive tables and computers. You’ll also analyse cylinders of nitrox and go through the procedures to obtain nitrox fills.

This would be ideal for those going to Sharm in November, as you can then dive on Nitrox all week. I believe Red Sea diving college offer free nitrox to those who are qualified. Also would be useful to those who are or have recently become AOW divers!

If you are interested, please get in touch ASAP as I need to make sure you have study materials well beforehand.

Nitrox (EANx) Diver (1 Afternoon £99 includes manual, tables, and certifcation)

Thank you so much.

Ian
GLUG Training Coordinator
www.pathfinderdiving.co.uk

Ocean Optics Photography Set

Ocean Optics are opening what is believed to be the World’s first set designed purely for teaching and practising Underwater Photography this weekend.

Their photography stage is based around workstations to improve specific skills, with the centrepiece being an artificial reef with table, staghorn, turbinaria, fan corals, tube sponges, and tropical fish and crustaceans.  There’s even a small wreck for practising wide-angle shots! Best of all, the water temperature is a balmy 30 degrees!

Ocean Optics will be running courses for novice Compact camera users, and I wondered whether there’s enough interest in the club for them to run a course specifically for GLUG?

You don’t even need your own Camera – Ocean optics will supply you with a Fuji compact and housing, along with three underwater lenses and a strobe!   If you’re thinking about starting UW Photography, or if you’ve already got an UW Camera but aren’t getting the shots you want, then this is the course for you!

If any club members are interested, please leave a comment below, or email me using the envelope that appears next to my name at the top of the post when you’re logged in.

Neil.

27/Dec/09  to 02/Jan/2010

2 places remaining on this trip organised by Rainbow-Scuba & Tours in Thailand. Previous itinerary was to dive a sunken squadron off the coast of Phuket. Apparently this is no more! Sunk even further under the ground or was washed away. So we head up from the Similans to the Surin islands: some of the top dive destinations in Asia. Our vessel will be the comfortable MV Nautica which we have used for many previous tours.

 The ultimate escape from Christmas and Winter blues.  Take advantage of cheaper Xmas day flights and enjoy 6 days and nights in good company, good food and excellent diving.   Price per person sharing Standard Cabin (convertible twin or double bed) now 840 GBP with 20% discount. More details from

Thank You
Adam Preston

Palau pioneers ‘shark sanctuary’

This is only a start but great news none the less! Well done the people and president of Johnson Toribiong in Palau.

All the GLUGies, who are  just back from an amazing Red Sea trip, had the pleasure and privilege of diving with these incredible creatures. Pictures and trip report to follow shortly!

Charlie

Hello,

It was nice meeting everyone at the meeting a few weeks ago, and unfortunately i can’t make the next one as I will be in Kota Kinubalu diving for two days which will be great fun. I will post about the experience when i’m back. I wondered if anyone had been diving in Panama and had any recommendations. I’m heading there at the beginning of december and would like to do 1-2 days of diving.

Thanks,
Chris

The next major change on the site is a brand new range of post categories… I know folks, please do try to contain the excitement!

The reason behind this change (again this is in last month’s minutes) is to try and solve three problems;

1 – The old categories were too general and ambiguous which lead to most posts fitting into multiple categories.
2 – The categories didn’t give any indication to members what could/should be posted about.
3 – There was limited ability to control what emails are received from the site.

The new, expanded range of categories should offer the following benefits:

1 – A clear list covering most topics members will wish to post about – we hope that having a category which matches post topics closely will encourage members to feel comfortable about posting.
2 – Greater confidence that when posting you are targeting the correct subset of our membership.
3 - Far greater control over received emails from the system; Members can remain subscribed to specific topics of interest while unsubscribing from others.

It should no longer be necessary for posts to be posted with multiple categories selected. Of course should a post genuinely fit in multiple categories then it’s fine to select more than one.

As before, the Club Announcement category is compulsory for all members, all others are optional. In order to roll out this change I have had to reset everyone’s selection to a default and that default is for everyone to be subscribed to all categories.

Now, before everyone makes for the site in a blind panic to unsubscribe from absolutely everything, could I suggest, request even, that people hold off and only consider unsubscribing if the volume of emails is too high and then only from the categories causing the problem. If everyone just unsubscribe as a knee jerk reaction from everything then there’s very little point having a forum and I can’t believe that the current volumes of posts are anywhere near the levels which warrant people having to use the controls!

Below is a list of the old categories and the new ones with examples of what they are intended for. These descriptions are not exhaustive lists of what can be posted in them, just suggestions.

Old Categories:

General
Club Announcements
Meeting Minutes
Meeting Reminders
GLUG Events
Non-GLUG Events
Weird & Wonderful
Training Events

New Categories:

Planned changes still to come which are related this this change;

1 – Addition of category filters on the forum
2 – Addition of category info to the automatic emails so members know which of their category subscriptions has resulted in a given email being received.

Cheers

Mark
(Webmaster)

As a result of discussions at the recent monthly meeting (please see the minutes) it has been decided to relax the rules on what can be posted to the GLUG website.

This is part of a small packages of changes which are being made to the site. You may have noticed the new disclaimer at the top of the forum pages, indeed there has been a change in name from ‘blog’ to ‘forum’.

The aim is to encourage members to interact with the site again, something which suffered as a result of event many members will be all to familiar with. It is important to stress that there isn’t now a free for all though the committee believe that the new, less overbearing guidelines will allow and encourage more people to post about a wider range of relevant topics. It is hoped that the forum will begin to be used by members more, rather than being almost exclusively reserved for the committee, which it isn’t!

Your personal profile provides a link to the current version of the guidelines and there’s also a link in the members’ profile system page.

For reference though, below are 3 links, one to the old guidelines, one to the new and one to an automatically generated page which shows the additions, subtractions and alterations made between the two versions which should make comparing the old with the new very easy.

Old Guidelines
New Guidelines
Comparison Old v New

Cheers

Mark
(Webmaster)

The minutes for September’s monthly meeting are now available on the site. Just because I’m mean, and I want people to visit the site and see the new welcome page… I’m not including the link in this post!

The link is available on the new front page in the meeting box, top left!

Of course, comments on and suggestions for the new welcome page gratefully received, just remember it’s a work in progress so try to be constructive please! Hopefully it addresses all the whinging about how unfriendly the site is and aims to present all the essential stuff up front. I’m particularly interested in hearing about anything which you feel really should feature on the front page.

Rest assured the remainder of the site is as it use to be but gone from the front page is the image, calendar, side bars, search etc etc!

The yellow highlighting on the posts and comments list (when logged in) indicates the items which have been posted since you last logged in… which for many will be the whole lot!

More changes on the way… you’re not getting off that lightly!

Mark

(Webmaster)

Original Post

Hi Everyone

I have a lady interested in joining this trip and was wondering if any of the females who expressed interest might now want to join us? At present there are 5 of us (guys) going on 1st November, for a week of training and fun in the amazing Red Sea.

I look forward to hearing from you especially if you are female. Thanks.

Charlie

Hi Folks,

A very late reminder that I’m back on at the Cambria tonight for Cormack’s Wicked Wednesday.  Following the success of my last show there, I now have a regular bi-weekly booking! Check out their website at  http://www.thecambrialondon.com I won’t be performing on 16th, as unfortunately I HAVE to dive in the Red Sea (well, times are hard and someone has to!) :-) However, I shall be back with a vengeance for September 30th.

For those who couldn’t make it last time, this is a Gay friendly venue, hosting a gay friendly Cabaret show with free entry! They have an excellent restaurant, a good selection of beer and wines and the best entertainment in South London :-) I will be singing a mixture of standards, original comedy and parody of musical theatre as well as some original ballads. For the purists amongst you, I even have a song about diving the wreck of the Spanish Galleon, Girosa. It’s a fun night out and last time we had at least 15 GLUG members there.

I hope to see you tonight, if not, I’ll be performing every other Wednesday from 30th September onwards.

There are travel details on my previous post, but the nearest station is Loughbrough Junction and the address is 40.Kemerton.Road.Camberwell.SE5 9AR. Tel There are no parking restrictions and there is ample street parking around the pub for those of you who wish to drive.

All the best and hopefully see some of you there tonight.

Martin
P.S. I KNOW it’s confusing for some of you, but my Stage Name with Equity is James Cormack.

Have fun and safe happy diving!

Southern Red Sea; Exciting diving around the amazing reefs of The Brothers, Daedalus and Elphinestone. Beautiful coral walls dropping off into the blue with regular sightings of pelagics and sharks. 6 days liveaboard on board Blue Seas.

Please visit the Events page for booking forms and full details.

DFL (Diving for Life) 2009 will be held in Bonaire, at Captain Don’s Habitat.

I speak from experience when I say that DFL at Captain Don’s is a great event.  As well as two boat dives a day, there is unlimited shore diving, (at any time of day or night!), and great food and company.

Diving in Bonaire is beautiful, and easy.  There are no strong currents, and fantastic reefs, most of which bottom out to white sand at around 30 metres – perfect even for the most novice of divers.

Reservations will open in the first week of January, so keep an eye on the DFL website.