Category: learning curve

Estonia’s coastline

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More stats for your next pub quiz.

Estonia’s coastline: It’s extremely long, given the area of the country.

Estonia is nowhere near as big as:
1) Romania
2) Poland
3) Iran
4) Namibia
5) Saudi Arabia or
6) Algeria

but because of its crinkly outline and many islands, it has a ridiculously large coastline.

Some of it freezes over, as well.

You could add South Africa to that list above, too. An area 27x that of Estonia, but a coastline just 74% the length of the Baltic state’s.

And South Africa has a lot of coastline. The whole of the bottom of a continent’s worth.
I’ve seen at least some of it.

It’s worth remembering that while none of those big countries above are surrounded by water, neither is Estonia, with borders with Russia and Latvia, and a long (not countable for these purposes) coastline along Lake Peipus.

What a stat.

Paris loos

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If there are 9 million bicycles in Beijing (and I’m assured that there are), then there must be almost that many public toilets in Paris.

Seriously:

There are 8.34 public toilets in every square kilometre of Paris.

And like a question about the titles of Alfred Hitchcock movies, this is bound to come up in a pub quiz near you at some point. So remember it.

France in general has a lot of public loos.

Why? Well, there are some good reasons:

French municipalities take a proactive, centralized approach to providing sanitation facilities, considering them essential street furniture and a human right for residents, elderly, and visitors.

And some… er… less good ones:

The proliferation of toilets, including automated toilets and older-style urinals, aims to combat the prevalent issue of public urination, especially in high-density areas.

Nice.

Still, everyone (in France) benefits from the number of local loos, so perhaps it doesn’t really matter why they’re there. Visitors to Paris are 70x times more likely to be able to find a public toilet than someone visiting Ljubljana.

Meanwhile:

As of April 2026, the City of Cape Town, in partnership with the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) and Streetscapes, operates a targeted public toilet initiative in the CBD, offering nine high-usage mobile toilets.

Nine! (not nine million).

Still far better than Slovenia, mind.

Moth

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I’m a big fan of our local supermarket, but this isn’t good:

Not the Futurelife, which is high in protein, high in 19 vitamins and minerals and high in Omega-3.

That’s good.

An aside:
Did you hear about the man who got hit by a truck carrying Omega-3 capsules?
He escaped with Super Fish Oil injuries.

But no. I’m talking about what’s on the box, not what’s in it.

Could that be a pantry moth, and if so, might we have discovered the source of our recent pantry moth problem? They’re proper little bastards, getting into all your dried foods, pastas, cereals and the like.

This Nuisance is known to reproduce at an alarming rate and cause thousands in damages. The Meal Moth or Pantry Moth frequents homes and described by Moth Control Cape Town Experts as being the number 1 Flying kitchen intruder. These Pantry Moths feed exclusively on grains, cereals and other human food matter.

See?

This is a second encounter with them. The first ended with us throwing a lot of food away. And so I’ve gone in with the big guns blazing this time around: all of the sprays, all of the swatting, even some pheromone traps to lure in the horny males.

And it seems to have worked. For the moment, at least.

But what’s the point in irradicating these destructive little shits of you’re going to be constantly replacing them with the food you brought in from your local retailer?

I’ve passed on the photos and information to the supermarket in question.
Hopefully, they can get this sorted.

But it’s worth just checking your cereal boxes and the like, so you don’t get infested as well.

Photos done

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I don’t do many photoshoots, but I did one last week.
It’s been a bit of a mission, and more work than I expected, but the images are finally all edited and ready to go.

It’s a good feeling.

As ever, I’ve learned a lot about taking photos and editing photos, and how the two processes can be better aligned – when I stop learning, I stop photography – but actually, I’m really happy with the results.

Now, the anxious wait until the client (hopefully) likes them too.

Because many of the shots are of people, I can’t share them on here. But part of any event is capturing the ambience and the vibe, and the view of the mountains in the sunset wowed many of the crowd that evening, and it was definitely worth capturing, because that will be a part of many people’s memories.

I think I can share one of those images here.

“Ooh. Look how he’s almost lined the dying tree up with the mountain peaks.”

Yeah, that’s just raw, natural talent right there.

#Blessed.

But these pics aren’t going to get themselves onto the client’s desk. I still have to do that bit.

So let’s go. Because today is going to be a busy, busy day.