Category: the lockdown diaries

Day 139 – More from Muizies

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Instead of doing the jobs I should have been doing yesterday, I had a play around with one of the images I took on Monday at Muizenberg.
I quite like how it came out, although I’m now quite a way behind with the jobs I should have been doing.

My only real issue (other than those jobs) is that it looks like the sky was added later. The sky wasn’t added later: that was the sky that was there when I took the shot. But – for me, at least – it would have been better (with hindsight) if there wasn’t that unfortunate natural gap between the rooftops and the drama.

But maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself. I think I’ve turned an OK shot into quite a nice image. And I’ve learned quite a lot while I was doing it.

Day 138 – UFO

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Remember when I saw a UFO over Cape Town back in 2012?
That was all happily explained as being an experimental NASA/Space Force/USAF high altitude plane.

And so we happily went back to mocking those people who insist that they see these sort of things on a regular basis.

Well, that was until I glanced through some of the photos I took while out at Muizenberg yesterday. And I saw this:

It seems that the literally thousands of people illegally on the beach yesterday were not alone. Check out that traditionally saucer-shaped object, traversing across the azure skies above False Bay. And I promise you that I haven’t photoshopped it in there (like I have that sort of skill anyway) – this is a genuine image taken with my camera and all I’ve done is cropped it ever so slightly to centre the object.
Here’s the big version so you can have a closer look.

It is – quite clearly – a flying saucer. And weirdly, I’ve lost all my memories of the rest of the public holiday and I have a bit of a sore backside this morning.

But that’s probably down to the copious amounts of Milk Stout I enjoyed while braai’ing in the afternoon.
After all, there can’t be any other reasonable explanation, right?

If anyone else in Cape Town saw anything weird in the skies yesterday, please get in touch.

 

 

 

 

 

Or… I mean… you could just glance at the uncropped version, featuring a Cape Gull dropping a white mussel onto the beach to break it open. And why not? It was about lunchtime.

 

(sorry)

Day 137, part 2 – Youtube plugin test

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I’ve been having a few problems with embedding Youtube videos on the blog.

They appear just fine, but when you go back, some weird additional coding has been added to each embed code, and the video no longer shows.

Just a big gap. Embarrassing.

So I’m trying out a plugin to assist me with this problem. Let’s see if it works.

If there is no Hans Zimmer/Alan Walker crossover video above, it hasn’t.
However… well, I guess you can work out the alternative.

That said, this problem never seems to manifest itself immediately. So let me revisit this in a few days time and see what’s going on.

Thanks for reading this far.

Day 136 – Long read takeaway

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This is a long read about America.

 

 

I’m not really into long reads or America, but I actually found it rather interesting.
A combination of anthropology (obviously), epidemiology, sociology, history and politics, with some really interesting facts thrown in here and there. I learned stuff.

Since it’s Sunday – the day of rest – you probably have the time (although perhaps not the inclination) to give it a go. Yes, I was being sarcastic about the time thing.

This was one of the paragraphs from early on in the article, highlighting just what we’re up against in getting a vaccine developed and giving us any chance of getting back to a “normal” life.

And that before we’ve even thought about production, rollout and uptake.

Sobering.