Author: 6000

Toying with the audience

Posted on

On the blogroll just on the right there is diamond geezer. He publishes a blog post at 7am each and every morning. Except yesterday, that is.

Because I post so regularly, a change in behaviour is always going to be relatively easy to spot. I only have to have not posted something by 8am and some people get twitchy, and by 9am somebody’s usually posted a comment wondering if I’m OK. Today it took until quarter to twelve, but then there was a steady stream, split between missing out on having something to read and keeping their fingers crossed everything was fine.

But it turns out that this was an entirely planned manoeuvre, as he was merely toying with his audience as some sort of social experiment.
Hmm. Fishing somewhat for endorsement, I feel.

Still, this sentiment resonates:

Life would be easier if I could throw my hands in the air sometimes and say “hell, you know what, not today”, or if I had a stash of articles in reserve to bring out when time is limited or inspiration weak, except I’ve never managed to create a stockpile, and rarely write anything more than a day in advance.

I might not agree with the political views of dg, or think that his posting at 23:59 last night was particularly clever. And while 6000 miles… covers most every subject (albeit in scant detail), his blog is decidedly London-centric. So there are many, many differences between us.

Still, it’s nice to know that a recognised “big” blogger feels exactly the same way about blogging as I do.

On The Road

Posted on

Not me. VW. A couple of families travelling right across South Africa (Johannesbeagle to Buffelsbaai to be exact) in Volkswagen vehicles have a fairly implausible number of coincidental encounters whilst ‘On The Road’ before arriving at their respective holiday destinations, only to discover that they will be spending their respective holidays staying just across the road from one another.
What are the chances, hey?

Here’s all 95 seconds of the commercial in question:

Regular readers already know where this is going, and they’re right, because, while the ad is nice and all that, the music is what won it for me.

Thus, step forward Aisha Badru with Waiting Around:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/171788658″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Limited googlage tells us about this New York singer songwriter with one independently released 4-track EP. Where do Ogilvy SA find these tracks? Amazing.
Apparently, according to her Facebook, she has a new record coming out soon. And, also according to her Facebook, she has a lot of new SA fans.

I’m not surprised.

Smile through the tears

Posted on

Hard(er) times are coming for SA. The effects of high inflation and the weak Rand are beginning to show more and more, with new stories of job losses, struggling families and desperation becoming an almost daily occurrence. It’s heartbreaking and it’s worrying.

Even those of us who are lucky enough not to be directly affected are seeing a difference. The shopping bill is suddenly through the roof, the requests to help support more members of people’s families and friends are up, and the soaring crime rate is back on the agenda at every braai and dinner party (not that it ever really went away). Such is the lack of confidence in our beleaguered police force that petty criminals can act with complete impunity knowing that their victims won’t even bother to register a case, as all parties concerned are well aware that nothing will come of it.

Here’s a good example:

Opportunistic thieves were caught on a dashcam by Cape Town businessman Marc Nussey last Thursday just after 11am, casually opening the canopy of a bakkie that stopped at a traffic light before making off with a box of toothpaste and other goods.

Nussey posted pictures and a video of the incident on Facebook to warn people and identify the culprits.

He said when he caught up with the driver and told him what had happened, the man did not seem interested in laying charges.

And in the same report:

The Facebook post attracted a number of responses, including from one man who said he watched the same men snatching a box of frozen food from a similar bakkie.

“I jumped out and chased them into Lavender Hill, but could not catch them. I then drove directly to Kirstenhof (police station) to report the crime. They practically yawned in my face,” he wrote.

Still, there’s always hope. And the hope comes in the spirit of one of the other comments on the thread:

Last month, a motorist warned people to stay alert when he saw some guys forcing open a delivery vehicle and running away with a large tin of tomatoes “all in view of a metro police vehicle standing two car lengths ahead”.

“The delivery guy gave chase picking up a brick and unleashed from 10m range, hitting the skollie between the (shoulder) blades who returned fire with the tin of tomatoes like a world-class shot putt athlete.”

The problems are real, but I feel that while we’ve still got a sense of proportion (and humour) about them, for the most part, they’re manageable. The situation is bringing out an almost altruistic “Blitz” spirit in people and that’s good to see.

Just how far that can carry us is up for debate though.

Weekend photos (sort of)

Posted on

I found somewhere else with a monitor that actually works, and noted that I need to repair my monitor this evening. Or maybe it’s the video card. I need to repair something, anyway.

The photos are uploaded, but because of the seemingly haphazard and random methods I used to get them onto Flickr, they are in a seemingly haphazard and random order on there. Still, they do represent collections of pixels what I have made, so I guess that they still count.

This one, Saturday’s sunset while we were actually trying to spot the Space Station pass (we did, but it was less impressive than the sunset) is a favourite, but it’s this rather dark one which excites me most.

I wrote here about my desire to improve my photography a bit, and it was through a link to this webpage and a fair bit of tinkering in the icy cold darkness of Suiderstrand over the weekend that I managed to get that shot. It represents a 25 minute exposure, having played around with a million settings to get that far.
Given that it was so very, very cold and I was only bolstered by a sweatshirt and a couple of glasses of brandy, I’d love to have taken things further, but didn’t. With hindsight, I probably should have stuck it out and gone again for something longer. It was an incredibly clear, crisp night, with close of zero light pollution. There will be others though.

But this horribly imperfect image (it’s actually a lot more perfect than the several test shots that went before it) lays down a baseline for future efforts. As that helpful webpage says:

Like anything in photography, but the best way to learn anything is through trial and error and learning through your mistakes… Play around and experiment, it’s the only way to learn, at the end of the day there’s no harm in taking duds, that’s what the delete button is for.

I did this. I followed all the instructions. I tweaked to make the light shots darker, the dark shots lighter, and in the end I got something to build on. Watch this space, but equally, don’t hold your breath.

They’re stars, by the way. Stars.

On strike 

Posted on

The plan was to upload the photos from the weekend and write a blog post about them. One in particular.

But then the SD card reader went AWOL. To be honest, it couldn’t really have gone AWL, because it doesn’t get any leave. It’s an SD card reader. It has no rights.

Perhaps that’s why it disappeared.

Never mind, I thought. I’ve got a wifi SD card in the camera. Bit of a schlep, but still, it’s an viable alternative.

Unless the monitor on your computer has gone on strike after seeing the way you treated the SD card reader, that is.

Yeah. I know. Technology, hey?

So. Some photos tomorrow then.

Possibly.