Log book dinosaur?

[mstevens]

I still log on paper since 1991, I know how many dives I have done, those who don't log dives don't know, they can only estimate ….. perhaps!

I'm a fairly obsessive logger of all sorts of things, including dives. I've logged every dive I've made since 1980, including dock-repair dives, unsuccessful anchor-finding dives in 7 feet of murky water... everything.

Nevertheless, I can only estimate how many dives I've made, because my paper logs were destroyed in hurricanes in Galveston. Twice.

Now I only log electronically. Everything is synced between my laptop, my desktop, my smartphone, and the cloud and is redundantly backed up along with everything else I store electronically. And, yes, I can pull out my smartphone in its compact waterproof case on the dive boat in Cozumel if I want to check or record something. Underwater, I let my downloadable dive computer do the logging for me.

Paper is not necessarily better or safer.

 

[cbm32]

It looks like those that log dives have a LOT of different reasons that they do so. The most common one being so that they can feel soooooooooooo much superior to anyone that doesnt log dives.

 

[Nemrod]

Hi all,

When I was first trained I was taught always to use a logbook. But I pulled it out in Cozumel this weekend and this was met with exclamations of surprise and awe. Do people not use logbooks anymore?

Anymore? I never did. I do remember the vast majority of my adventures, sometimes it just takes something to jog the memory. Do I recall the temperature, the visibility or exact bottom time, what weight I had or the color of my fins, no. Do I care, no.

N

 

[high/baric]

I still have a paper log as a backup, but it felt a little rudimentary to me. I don't trust logging programs on a computer, because hard drives can fail, computers can be stolen, developing programs may be discontinued and they may become outdated and unusable. Also, I would have to haul the computer with me to fill in dive details while they are fresh in my memory. I also don't trust commercial online logging sites, because I don't know how they use my information or how they back up their data. They can also go out of business. So I found a solution from making my own online log. Virtually fail-proof cloud storage, accessible anywhere, only I have access to my data and the log "grows with me" as I can add any feature I want when they become useful to me. Since I love tinkering with this sort of stuff and compiling statistics from my dives the log has become a part of my diving hobby that I enjoy almost as much as the diving itself! The only problem is that hosting the site is a little costly in the long run, but so is diving in general.