This page is mostly a collection of random links for myself. You may or may not find them interesting. For more information, you can always mail me: Cameron Etezadi
I scuba dive with rebreathers. Blowing bubbles scares off the fish, and it’s a really inefficient use of the gas that you’re carrying on your back, especially if you use really expensive stuff (helium, pure oxygen, etc.) I’ve got ten times the number of rebreather dives as I have open circuit bubble-blowing dives, and I never, ever want to go back. It’s loud, the inhaled gas is cold, and it’s just not fun. Plus, my back hates the weight of double tanks.
I dive both an Evolution fully closed circuit rebreather and a Drager Dolphin semi-closed circuit rebreather. This Excel spreadsheet will help other Dolphin users calculate their fiO2, MOD, and EAD when working with this system. I also have one for mixed gas diving on the Drager Dolphin, if you want to run helium through the system. While it’s not officially supported, it does work. As with everything else in life, do so at your own risk. I do my dive shopping at Silent World in Bellevue, WA, near where I used to work. Now I work here.
I skydive a lot, or at least I used to. I'm a happy member of the USPA and have a D level skydiving license. Now I just jump occasionally. A couple of summers ago, I was out at the drop zone three or four days a week, and managed to get a hundred and fifty or so jumps in between May and October. Here are some skydiving videos with me in them, from that summer:
The footage was shot by either Tim Gramley or Kelly Craig. All jumps were done at Skydive Snohomish just north of Seattle, Washington. The footage was extracted directly from the digital video into a Windows XP Tablet PC, edited in Windows Movie Maker, and condensed into the small streams present here.
If you're looking for me in the videos, I am wearing a blue jumpsuit with yellow sleeves, and my rig/backpack is a black and purple Mirage G4. There is one video where I am in khacki shorts and a t-shirt. In all cases, I wear a dark blue full-face helmet in these shots.
I fly quite a bit these days. I’ve got a commercial single-engine land pilot’s license, a commercial single-engine sea plane license, a commercial multi-engine land pilot's license, and have private pilot privileges in rotorcraft (helicopters). Lately, I've been flying the Robinson R-22 helicopter exclusively, and have been polishing off the commercial helicopter license, mostly just because it annoys me to have the line on my pilot's certificate saying "private pilot privileges only" for the helicopter. I fly from here. I learned to fly years ago when I was in college. The commercial rating was earned through Wings Aloft, and the helicopter rating was earned just across the parking lot at Helicopters Northwest, when it was still called “Cowboy Copters.”
Last autumn, when I did my seaplane rating, I took my skydiving camera with me in the Super Cub. After I cleared the checkride in the Super Cub, I burned another ten hours off, bush flying in the Cascade mountains. The videos are up on YouTube, if you want to watch.
Even though I’m a development manager and write software for a living, I prefer to work with hardware. During my undergraduate years, despite being a Chemical Engineer and a Biochemist, I worked as the chief engineer for a 50 kW FM radio station. Electricity and I have gotten along since I was a little kid. These days, I focus on mobile and embedded devices at work, and I play with all kinds of projects at home. I usually build either RF projects for amateur radio, a hobby I got into as a teenager, or audio projects, mostly based around vacuum tubes.
I’m a believer in science, though. As much as I love tinkering with audio, most of the high end stuff is snake oil. I prefer to do things in an orderly, scientific manner, and focus on the facts. I also like to keep it cheap. Here’s a link to photos of my latest amplifier, based around the 6GW8 tube, a couple of transformers that I salvaged from old school phonographs, and less than $60 out of pocket. $35 of that was for a Hammond power transformer, because I was lacking the correct one in my junk box. I photoetched the PCB using a grow-light bulb and socket borrowed from the work light in the garage. The top and bottom plate are plexiglass , cut out on a 50W carbon dioxide laser I have access to at work. The wooden frame is red oak, with mahogany splines , and finished in a few coats of marine spar varnish. As you might be able to tell, I don’t have the patience for woodworking, although I think the amp looks just fine. It sounds pretty good, too.
I use it at work to drive a pair of Marantz SE-1 electrostatic headphones that I picked up a couple of years ago.
The other recent tube project I built a year or two ago was a Nixie clock. Again, I cut the case out on a laser, etched PCBs, etc. It runs off of a PIC microcontroller, multiplexes the display (3x2 at 600 Hz, used for PWM fades of one digit into the next), and uses the 60 Hz power line frequency as its reference count, from a 1V tap on the power transformer. It looks pretty cool next to my old Allied 285 tuner and new 6GW8 amp.
I’ve been known to do a little mountain climbing, as well as some kayaking (ok, that photo is actually from when I lived in Stockholm, Sweden, for three years, but I kayak here, too), snowshoeing, skiing, backpacking, rock climbing, and more. It’s hard to live in the Pacific Northwest and not go outside for fun stuff. In fact, I think it should be made a crime to live up here and not be involved in outdoor activities.
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