flickr – Page 50

Cricket pics

Posted on February 20, 2016

Suffice to say, while we watched the Women’s T20 get abadoned, my fears for last night’s cricket being a washout were thankfully unfounded.

Newlands was cool, but picture perfect for the evening.

Although this image was a far cry from scenes just a couple of hours earlier.

It was a good night for the kids’ first cricket match, and it was topped off by a last ball win for SA which has obviously set the expectation bar far too high for any future visits to Newlands or any other sporting venue. (It’s worth noting that Alex’s first ever football match finished 7-0.)

Cricket’s very laid back, even when it’s very exciting.
There was plenty of opportunity to take photos. Go look.

Drive-by Yoghurt Attack

Posted on January 24, 2016

A lazy day today, but I did read about a drive-by yoghurting, which I thought was in central Somerset, but turned out to be in Dorset (thank you to the geographically beagle-eyed Dr F for the correction).

I’m screenshotting that one in case it disappears:

simply because headlines like this are few and far between.

As promised, I also put some pics on Flickr today. Knock yourselves out.

Leftover tea pic

Posted on January 21, 2016

I may be English, but I’m not a huge fan of tea. Sure, I’ll drink it if I’m thirsty and the only other option is battery acid, but it has to be said that thankfully, this is not a situation I’ve ever found myself in. Yet.

Michael Davis, a Canadian resident, had some leftover tea and, rather than pouring it into the sink like any sensible person would have done, he flung it dramatically into the freezing air with this rather spectacular result:

Yes. That’s impressive.

Other images on Michael’s Flickr which didn’t quite manage the same level of sheer wonder (this one and this one) suggest that he had been drinking a lot of tea that morning, which, given that he apparently ended up chucking away the last fifty (or more) percent of each brew, seems both foolish and wasteful. Silly boy.

So why does tea do this? Wired knows.

A pot of boiling water can be thrown into the air on a cold winter day, and it freezes in mid air creating a shower of ice crystals. Whereas a pot of cold water thrown into the air comes down as large blobs of water. This happens because the hot water is so close to being steam, that the act of throwing it into the air causes it to break up into tiny droplets (hot water is less viscous than cold water, listen to the sound it makes when you pour it in the sink). The small water droplets have a large surface area which allows for a great deal of evaporation, this removes heat quickly. And finally, the cooled droplets are so small, that they can be easily frozen by the winter air.

Michael tells us that it was -40 degrees when he took the photo. He doesn’t say if that’s Fahrenheit or Celsius, but THAT DOESN’T MATTER! because -40 is the magic number at which these two temperature scales magically cross, in a magical manner.

40 degrees (Celsius) like it’s likely to be in the Western Cape today is equal to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I wouldn’t advise throwing boiling water into the air above your head (or to be honest, throwing boiling water anywhere) in those sort of temperatures (or to be honest, in any sort of temperatures).

The results are unlikely to be as pretty as Michael’s.

Return to the Oos Kaap

Posted on January 19, 2016January 19, 2016

Last year’s journey to the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape apparently proved to be such a success with the kids that having offered them the opportunity to return, it looks like we’re going to head back there this winter.

Last time was memorable in many ways: some good, some not. Even the journey there gave us two road related blog posts. This time around, we’ll know which activities we need to book in advance, how the resort works and have the opportunity to catch up on the stuff we missed out on last time.

The birdlife round there is spectacular – hence this quota photo of a Giant (it’s not actually that big) Kingfisher* (which has the excellent Linnean name of Megaceryle maxima – half Roman Emperor, half Transformer robot villain) – and with the new camera, I’m already looking forward to some pointing and shooting.

Anyway, that’s something positive to think about (if not the drive), albeit a loooong way off right now.

* Other kingfishers on show last time around included the Pied and the Brown-hooded.

Here and There

Posted on January 18, 2016January 25, 2017

It’s no surprise that it’s around this time of year that the meteorological differences between my hometown and my adopted hometown are at their most distinct and obvious. That said, it’s always something of interest when there’s concurrently snow in Sheffield and a heatwave in Cape Town. Yesterday was one of those days.

That’s Sheffield on the left, by the way.
Eagle-eyed readers with knowledge of the False Bay coastline (it’s a small subset, but it must apply to someone), will already have noted that Fishhoek, Simonstown and the rest of the Peninsula are missing from the horizon on that apparently rather washed out second shot. That’s due to the thick smoke from the fires currently burning in Elgin over the weekend, (as you can see from the helpfully annotated image below).
Sadly, I don’t think this view will be quite the same a it was a couple of weeks ago.

Meanwhile, as Flickr friend SheffDave’s photostream confirms, things were altogether colder and whiter in the Steel City.

Personally, I don’t particularly mind either sort of weather, as long as I know it’s coming. The effects of the snow and cold can be overcome with warm clothing (or finding a pub with a fire); the somewhat unpleasant heat by wearing fewer clothes (or being lucky enough to live in a house with a swimming pool).