Author: 6000

Not a great start

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It’s not been a great start to the day.

My phone’s software updated yesterday and reset the volume setting on the alarm clock. This was never going to be a good thing. Either it was going to be very, very quiet or IT WAS GOING TO WAKE UP EVERYONE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD!

I almost soiled myself when it turned out to be the latter, but that blast of volume was actually the better option as I had had a particularly restless night. My uneasy slumbers had been punctuated by dreams of Godzilla hurling flaming cars from the M3 onto nearby sports fields. And that wasn’t even the worst bit: some of the drivers of those cars had agrostophobia, and those that survived the impact and the resulting blaze found themselves wholly triggered. It was awful.

You can see why I feel somewhat unrested.

And then, with assessments for both kids beginning today, the careful balancing act on the drive to school between recognising the importance of the tests and not scaring our little cherubs half to death. And it really doesn’t help when one is so laid back he’s practically horizontal and the other is concerned that she might get a sum wrong.
At some point.
During the rest of her life.

With them suitably advised (one newly terrified, one newly blasé) (well, done, Dad), I headed off to work. I could have taken the M3, and indeed it was probably the route of choice, but the chances of being attacked by a mutated dinosaur seemed so much higher along that route, so I took the low road instead.

Along with everyone else who was avoiding death by traumatic exposure to grass.

Desperate times called for entirely sensible measures, and thus I employed a mixture of soothing Ludovico Einaudi and Susanne Sundfør to calm me down as those around me (many of them in these categories) gave their best efforts at sabotaging any attempts at me getting to the lab in time to complete yesterday’s experiments.

Suffice to say, thanks to Ludo’s Petricor [sic] and Susanne’s The Golden Age, I remained calm, focussed and got to work in time to add the appropriate reagents at an appropriate time.

It’ll take more than dinosaurs, dodgy alarm clocks, the spectre of school examinations and all of the traffic in Cape Town to beat me.

Although I could do with a nap right now.

Down one

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Latest news from the City of Cape Town water dashboard:

Here are a few takeaways from  this week’s numbers and the information provided therein.

We are still using too much water. And by “we”, I mean people who aren’t me or my family. But even so, even with those people who aren’t me and my family, Cape Town has cut its water use by almost 50% when compared with similar periods a few years back.
Can “we” do better? Well, “we” should be able to, but interestingly, “we” have been stuck at this sort of level for a while now. Could this be some sort of impasse, and if so, why is it happening and what can the City do to get past it? There are already plenty of measures in place, but are they actually having enough effect?

582 million litres x 7 days = 4,060 million litres, but actual volume stored in the dams dropped by 8,739 million litres. That discrepancy is mainly due to evaporation because of the hot weather and strong winds we’ve seen this week over the Winelands area. So, in the last 7 days, we’ve lost an additional 8 days at 582 million litres back up to the sky. And let’s face it – it’s going to be hot and windy a lot more over the summer.

The good news is that even with this continuing overuse and huge evaporation, the dam levels “only” dropped by 1%. Simple maths suggests that with 26% of usable water still available, and using/losing 1% a week, we can last another 26 weeks. I’ve been doing some (more) rudimentary calculations and I reckon that takes us to the middle of May. We might just make it. Or not. I actually have no idea.

Because historically, water usage goes up at this time of year into summer.
However, there is some good evidence that water restrictions will curb this increase:

Taking 2014/15 as an example of unrestricted use, and comparing it with last summer (when restrictions were in force), we can see that there has been a reduction of maybe 400 million litres a day. And yes, production (blue line) is still above where we need it to be (pink line), but that graph tells a good story, and with more draconian measures in place this year, will hopefully continue to do so. Addition of temporary small scale desalination plants and tapping into local aquifers will mitigate supply issues a little too.

It rained this morning, which ruined the kids’ sports day, but at least I got another 100 litres or so from my sausages. And I’m only concentrating on that latter fact, because we’re really not in any position to complain about any negative effects of precipitation in Cape Town right now.

Chin up. We might just survive this yet. Keep saving. Every little helps.

Never a cross word

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Previously, at least.
I have a friend who – because he requires a “creative outlet” – devises crossword puzzles. You may have seen some of his work on the back of the Funny Money pamphlet you bought at the robots.

Apparently, there is a dearth of cryptic crossword puzzles with a South African slant, and he aims to do something about that, while keeping up with the more regular non-SA themed stuff as well.

My readership is pretty bright.
He wants an outlet for his creative outlet.
Someone out there is desperately searching for SA-flavoured cryptic crosswords.

[light bulb moment] So – why not have a monthly crossword on 6000 miles…?
Spoiler: There’s no reason – so let’s play.
[teething problems: if you can’t see a crossword just below this, please click here and you should see this post with a crossword]

[crossword]

 

Incidentally, I’m no good at crosswords. I mean, the

Frozen water (3 letters)

ones, I’m ok with. But this stuff is a bit beyond me.

Apparently, I just need to get my head around the terminology, so with that in mind, here’s a helpful Summary Guide to Cryptic Crosswords for us all to learn together. For the record, I managed to work out a few of the clues above without looking at this guide, so I think it might be an easy one.

It’s going to be just for fun to begin with: hence the buttons there to help you out if you get stuck. But if I get some positive feedback, maybe we’ll look at other options for the future. Let me know.

Edit

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Issues. I have issues.

No. Not those ones. I’ve long given up trying to sort them out.

These are software issues. Specifically around the price of software.
A short while back, I bought a subscription to Adobe Lightroom to edit my photos. It costs $9.99 per month, which was then about R129.00. Since then, Jacob Zuma has got hold of the economy again and strangled a bit more of the life out of it, so that monthly subscription is now R145.10 (and likely to be higher by the end of this post, let alone the end of this year). Still, it’s great and I like what I’ve been able to do with it.
So, R145.10 per month. And that’s just for photos. If I want Premiere Pro to play with videos as well (and I do), then we’re looking at an additional $19.99 (or R290.20 at the moment) each month.

Eina!

Simply, it’s not an option.

The trouble is that I have tried out Premiere Pro and I really enjoyed using it. The integration with Lightroom was lovely and everything just made sense. Sure, it was only a first step and I still have everything to learn about it, but I really think I could go places. But not at R300 (or however much more) per month.

And so I am resigned to using free software. Which is great, but it’s also more difficult to use software. I gave Da Vinci Resolve a go on the old PC and it broke it, but let’s be fair – that was probably down to the PC rather than the software. Still, I found the UI rather awkward, and there were nowhere near as many online tutorials available. I will need online tutorials.
If someone wants to donate an annual subscription for Premiere Pro to an *cough* young, aspiring filmmaker, then I’m sure that there are many better cases than mine out there, but I still won’t say no.

In the meantime, does anyone have any other suggestions of where to find a decent video editing package (and by “decent”, I mean good at video editing and reasonably priced)?

I’m ready to listen.

Summer Officially Opened

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We love summer here in Cape Town. Perhaps less so this time around because we’re so very dessicated, but there will still be some people who will be over the moon at this news.

Summer is officially opened by insects: the Christmas Beetle (not actually a beetle, but never mind that) and the bastard mosquitoes.

We saw our first Christmas Beetle this weekend, which is always a sign that summer is just around the corner. Clumsy, noisy fliers, they are hated by gardeners and beagles. Apparently, they are related to cockchafers.

And then the dear mozzie, which is definitely one of my favourite things about living in SA. It’s not that we don’t get mosquitoes in the UK, it’s just that we don’t get 117 of them in each room, each night. I got devoured while I was in bed last night (by a mosquito, not a cockchafer) (thank heaven for small mercies).

The way I’m itching today means that summer has very definitely arrived in Cape Town.