Category: recommended site

Day 437 – Photos and postcards

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A run on the mountain yesterday, a surprisingly hard game of football in surprisingly warm conditions this morning.
I are a bit broken. I have sat down to blog and I might never be able to get up again. But it’s all been fun.

Today: A photography competition judged by someone called Trevor.

Win A Canon Kit Worth R68 999

Decent prizes there, including the chance for your image to be featured on the Sea Point Prom, where it will be seen by literally thousands of people every day. And also some cyclists.

But then you look more carefully, and there are separate prizes for Pros and Ams. I have to say that while the Powershot is very nice, the R6 and that monstrous 800mm lens (that’s clearly not it in the image above) is far more tempting. So, do you have to be a Pro enter the Pro arm of the competition? What exactly is a Pro in this context? I regularly take photographs in exchange for money, so can I enter that one? Especially now I’ve got my nice, new, big lens (bought from Orms, by the way). And while we’re getting the props in early, I also follow Trevor on Instagram and once advised him on Facebook of a good place to get a laptop screen fixed.

I’d say that I’m pretty much a shoe-in for this one.

All I need is a decent photo of a bird. Hmm.

And then, this.

I love the Postcard from the Past twitter account – I said it was good back when it started.
An image and a line or two from any postcard in Tom’s collection, presented without context and thus really prompting some thought into what exactly might have been going on in the writer’s mind (or on their holiday).

I have a virtual concert to attend on Thursday evening, so sadly it’s going to be difficult for me to do this one, but if you are interested, all the details are available on the link just above the image above.

[too many aboves, above? – Ed.]
[Nah – no-one will notice. I’m just going to hit the Publish button.]

Day 430 – Six degrees

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Not the temperature last night in Cape Town (although it wasn’t far off).

No, this:

Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people on average are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

And, building upon that, this:

Of course, you don’t have to use the example(s) above. You can try anything. I checked out Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump (further than you might think), and Sheffield United to László Bíró (every bit as far as you might think).

And while it’s working out just how many connections there are there between the two things you want to check out, it gives you slices of Wikipedia trivia to keep you entertained. e.g. “798,944 (12.8%) Wikipedia pages have a title that doesn’t contain a space”. Pub quiz-tastic stuff.

There’s no real point to this except to waste a bit of time, but then that’s pretty much the same as life, right?

Go play.

Day 429 – My music

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A quick shout out for a new page added to my site in answer to a number (1) of enquiries about what sort of music I listen to. There are a few playlists that I have compiled for myself on popular music streaming service, Spotify. But while I made them so that I could listen to them at appropriate times in my life, there might be some appropriate times in your life that you think might be better if they had a decent soundtrack.

Don’t worry: the catchily named My Spotify Playlists page is here to help.

There’s a quick description of each of the playlists I have on offer, then you can click through and have a proper look and follow and/or recommend them if what you find there is agreeable.

Quick note: Playlist For A Chilled Braai is my particular favourite goto for many occasions, not just for a chilled braai.

And if you ever want to go straight to that page without having to find this post, then there’s a little Spotify logo button up there in the top right that you can use (right next to the buttons for my Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages).

I know, right? So thoughtful.

Day 425 – Le gouffre de Plougrescant

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If you’re going to build a house on a windswept peninsula jutting out into the North Atlantic, you’re going to have to find some way of making sure that it stays safe when those North Atlantic storms come rolling in.
I found reference to just such a place on the internet today. And how cool is the protection in question?

Obviously, that’s not the North Atlantic in the foreground. You wouldn’t need too much protection from that.
No, the ocean is behind the house, which is situated on the North coast of Brittany:

Castel Meur, a small stone cottage in Plougrescant, France, was built in 1861 in a precarious position at the tip of the peninsula. To protect it from the frequently violent coastal weather, the house was positioned with its back to the sea and flanked on either side by two giant boulders.

Just as well, really, because the next stop due west from here is the coast of Canada. And that’s a lot of Atlantic to have to hide from. The house itself faces South-South-East, meaning that the rock on the left (as we look at it) is doing the hard yards as far as storm protection goes. The one on the right is clearly just there for the photographers. Although, its unique setting did become a problem at one point:

The unusually located cottage became known as the House Between Two Rocks. It has been passed down through the generations and is currently a private home. Its use in tourism campaigns to attract visitors to Plougrescant – specifically one world-famous postcard – became a problem when the house gained fame as a tourist attraction and tourists treated it as though nobody lived in it, some even climbing on it and damaging its roof.

The owner took legal action and won image rights for the house, which can no longer be used in advertising to draw tourists to the region. This is a private residence, and visitors are not welcomed onto the property.

Found via Atlas Obscura dot com, whose lead story (at the time of writing) is:

[link]

…and includes Passages in the Isle of Man, but not Meisho Maru 38 at Cape Agulhas. And that’s a bit odd, given that they have already written about the Meisho Maru 38 previously on their site. Surely just click the ADD button for a nice round 19, no?