Reflections on Teaching

There are many ways to teach people. I take the approach of; show you, show me, do one, teach one, teach me, and again, and again....now theoreticals. I like to have people think, this is when the learning imprinting takes place in my experience. You've got a foundation, now you've got a structure, a context to apply it to if you will, as you work within these confines, you see who looks outside the box, and who just accepts it.

An out of the box thinker is what I have been labeled. I enjoy the label as it gives me liberty to say things out of the ordinary, or that others are not willing to say. It also lets me present some of the more outlandish ideas, expecting to be able to settle on a middle ground, or be pleased and get the idea to go forward.

The type of training I went through for the last few weeks was as usual, but so laissez-faire as to be....weird. Structure is what I'm accustomed to, however I function very well without it. There was structure, but it was at the whims of the weather and fatigue of the participants.

I got to see how my way of doing things is better and worse than others. Positive and negative feedback was given in proper proportions, and real learning occurred.

Scuba Instructor training is not like any other type of training. There is a specific formula to teaching people to scuba dive...but you can move various parts of the formula around to suit the student, the instructor, or the circumstances, but you still must maintain a particular order, and building process. There must be the foundation before the other components, otherwise you're set for failure.

It takes special people to do this, and while it might seem like the dream job, it's still a job; I's have to be dotted, and T's crossed; missing any could lead to the end of a beautiful career, being too cavalier and overly-confident can be your demise.

I was going through the Instructor Development Instructor Trainer portion of the courses. The step you take before Master Instructor, and then Course Director. Our joke in my house was that we had no idea what I would do with 'my second life' when we moved. Looks like it found me instead!!

No matter how hard I try to go back to what I did before here, it doesn't work out for me. Resume after resume, application after application - nothing. Yet scuba keeps coming and coming, dragging me along to sights unseen and depths other never consider. Without realizing it I've dove 10 or 12 times in a week and not all of them are teaching, there's fun in there too.

I do truly love watching when people 'get it'. The satisfaction of seeing someone's world change for the better is worth the tired days, sunburns and little food when you forget to pack a lunch.

Well, it looks like more diving in my future, and if things keep going well, more research too. There's a beautiful world out there that most people only capture as a background for their beach photos, or the baseline for a sunset. I intend to bring as much of that world to view as possible. Let's see what we can see.

This way, please, Sir.

Leave only bubbles!!

Back-up: The Great Photo Loss of 2013

If you're reading this, all I can say is BACK-UP your stuff.

There's a sinking feeling you get when you realize a mistake has been made, but it goes deeper when you realize there's nothing you can do.

Except with MORE technology. I was in the process of transferring 'older' photos from one drive to another. No big deal, been done hundreds of times. Formatted the new drive, set it up and everything was ready to go.

I select the stuff to send over so I can back it up.
I send it.

disk drive: Wow, that's alot of stuff.
Estimated time: 1 hour 45 minutes
disk drive: To much....can't....stuff...it.....take...
Writing

Cool, I'll make some coffee and head to work, leaving the computer to 'do it's thing'.

computer: Take it! It's data, you're ready for this!!
disk drive: No...to much...so fast...trying...

Go about my day, come back, no errors or anything on the computer. GREAT!! now I have more space on the first drive to work with and won't lose everything, and I just happen to have a couple hundred MORE photos...soooo.....

1st disk drive: heh, heh

Take more photos, load more photos, go about my business for a few days, staying busy with projects. Finally get some time and want to show my wife some of the old photos so we can reminisce...wait, I thought I put it here...

disk drive: Files? Hmmm...no...I don't remember any of those....
computer: Yes you do, the shortcut says it's right here. Look, there's even a few bytes left, you can't say it's not here.
1st disk drive: Whistling looking away.
disk drive: No, I distinctly recall not having them here.

Now, I thought I put them here. Let me check the other hard drive...not there...(sinking)...hmmm

1st disk drive: Huh? Wha? No buddy, nothing here to see, move along.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Ok. Remain calm. Data in - data out. If I haven't done to much work since the initial transfer...well, it has been a week, and I have been working on timelapse projects...That's only 2000+ more photos...and there was that night shoot...

Gone. Nothing there to find.

So, expert time!! Wait, that was supposed to be me. Wife's solution, buy a computer and drive just for photography. Awesome idea, except I barely make enough to contribute to the house account, and I'm not making any money on the photography yet. Oh, and the material I was using for the book, that's gone now.

See, this is when ADHD is a curse. Projects were in various stages of creation, even now I just realized that some of my video projects were in the transfer... (further sinking).

Ok, enough, back to expert time. Hello internet!!

Found a couple of programs:
First: Undelete Plus - all it did was give me a report of what is recoverable. For $40 it can recover it, maybe.
Second: PC Inspector File Recovery - wouldn't work. Period. Would scan, then close. Scan, then close. Scan...
Third: Restoration - This file appears malicious... I've already got enough problems, sorry....
Fourth: Piriform Recuva - Scan and...wait....hey look, some of my files!!
Finally: Mini-tool was the best recover program I found, even though the primary scan took....TWO DAYS!!

1st disk drive: Hey, that tickles.
disk drive: whoa, what's that noise?
computer: Told you guys, he built it, he fixes it.
1st disk drive: giggle...make it stop...giggle

First scan was mostly successful, unfortunately many of them had already been overwritten. So, gone, forever.

But wait, there's a 'deep scan' option. This brings images of comatose people and zombie-like stares to mind. What the hell, let's give it a try, I've already recovered 3000+ photos...

09Mar2013: I held off on publishing this as I kept running scans and did an audit on how it all went down. Long story short, back your stuff up. I ended up with 30,000+ photos recovered; estimated loss of 100,000+ and videos. By the time I got to the two day scan, I had some recovered, but the last scan, taking two days, was the most fruitful.

Make sure you back up, and if you are going to backup a drive to do a hardware refresh...back up in parts and pieces, don't try to be overly efficient like I did.