Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, there’s no harm in helping others out at this time of year. Or at any time of year. But generally, people seem more predisposed to being generous around the festive season.
So how about buying a bed for a homeless person in Cape Town?
We’ve been here before, but here’s what they do and how they do it.
5 nights for R60 ($4.20, £3.21). Click here or just Snapscan if you can.
Thanks for your support.
Indeed. And what’s possibly more amazing than that is that someone managed to get a FT article out of the fact.
Here: https://www.ft.com/content/8c1d4e0c-2180-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b
Mmmm! Catchy URL!
And how do you get enough data to write a FT article about Post-it notes?
I have spent much of this past year asking people in tech and tech-heavy companies about their Post-it habits.
And it seems that they continue to be popular.
Who knew?
I read this very interesting NYT article and thought that I should share it with my readership.
Obviously, I have many apps on my phone that use my location to offer me better, more accurate services. Indeed, some apps rely solely on tracking my location and sharing it with others. And for me, that’s really not a problem: the benefits far outweigh any potential negatives.
If I was in a job where that sort of information could compromise my security, then yes, I would be concerned.
But if anyone can weaponise my weekly visit to Pick n Pay by hacking into the logs of my location pings, then good luck to them.
It’s mid-December and I’m beginning to write a few posts for the upcoming weeks in order that I don’t have to write a few posts during the upcoming weeks. Bloggers need a break too, you know.
I watched this video today: a comparison of golf and photography, which (eventually, excruciatingly) gets around to the point that much as you don’t have to break a course record each time to play a round of golf to enjoy your day, neither do you have to manage to get amazing photos each time you take your camera out.
Be realistic. Manage your expectations. Concentrate on getting the basics right. Don’t sweat the stuff you can’t control. Have fun smashing the ball around the course, never mind if you don’t hit the green every time. Enjoy getting out and about taking photos, and worry less about the results. Learn from your mistakes.
It’s all good advice.
I’ve taken over 12,000 photographs this year. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and I make that over 1,000 each month. And this month hasn’t even finished yet. The vast majority of those were for a work project, and I’m pretty happy with the way that things worked out there. But maybe only around 120 of those were real top-notch “keepers”.
I’ve been doing some rudi… ag… look, it’s about 1%.
The joy of digital photography is that you can go and shoot almost limitless numbers of images in the hunt for that 1% or that 120. Had I not been a) traveling and b) often under time pressure, I’d like to think that I might have managed the same number of good shots (or even more) from a much smaller overall total. There are different ways of getting a reasonable amount of decent photos and this high volume approach suited my needs for this project. Incidentally, if I did the same project again, I’d also probably manage a better ratio: it was a steep learning curve.
As for Flickr, I uploaded “just” 143 images this year, against my overall average of 630. 35 of that 143 were from our Karoo road trip and 17 of them were from the above mentioned work project, meaning that just 91 (64%) of them were from “non-specific” occasions.
And of them all, I can count just 10 that I think are really good. Not worldbeaters, not course records, but just decent images that I am properly happy with. 10 out of 143 out of 12,175.
Sadly, very few of that 10 can be used as easy blog fodder over the festive period, because I have already shared them because I liked them so much. Which leaves me the choice of about 133 mediocre images to put on here until whenever I start “properly”blogging again.
Lucky you.
A bit of a mishmash of stuff I didn’t write, but that I think you should read today.
But first off, a health warning. How’s your energy frequency today? I’m still recovering from the weekend and my bad back, so I’m only mid-50s.
Oh, and Fresh Food = Death. Who knew?
Seems legit.
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Next: CLIMATE! SeeOhToo is huge, glaciers are melting, and it’s not quite as hot as it was 4 years ago. I’ve said before that I’m not going to get too deeply involved in this debate, but I enjoyed reading this article on the subject. Again, I’m not fighting the science, I’m fighting the reporting of the science.
I asked the Australian climate scientist Tom Wigley what he thought of the claim that climate change threatens civilization. “It really does bother me because it’s wrong,” he said. “All these young people have been misinformed. And partly it’s Greta Thunberg’s fault. Not deliberately. But she’s wrong.”
I would not like to see us motivating people to do the right thing by making them believe something that is false.
Been there, too.
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Here’s an interesting twitter account: FootyQuakes
Measuring the seismic effect of goal celebrations in the EFL Championship.
Amazing.
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A brief intermission here, as I just asked someone at a multi-million Rand business (we’re talking 9 figures here), and was told that I could pick it up in Bellville. I don’t want to go to Bellville, so I asked for it to be sent via email, and was told:
We do not send so many pages via email.
Wow. Should I ask for a fax?
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And – vaguely linked, actually – I’ve been using WeTransfer to share some files recently. While the files are uploading, you get offered links to wepresent – their photographic essay site. Some of the stuff there is pretty good.
I’d advise https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/nuuk-york-state-of-mind/ and https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/corey-arnold-aleutian-dreams/ but the whole site is worth a look.
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Enjoy your day!