Taking a trip down south today. Through this:
Not sure who this is by, or where it’s from, but it looks a bit Swellendammy to me. Either way, the barley and the canola in the watery sunshine is so very Overbergesque.
I’ll try to keep my eyes on the road.
Yeah. It’s a British warship, but it’s named after a place on *that side* of the Pennines. Still, it was deemed worthy of a 21-gun salute from Signal Hill this morning (thus alarming thousands of unaware Capetonians who thought we were under attack and prompting a flurry of hits on this old post), and it might also be something you want to go and see on the public holiday and pseudo long weekend.
Hey. Great news. You can.
The ship will be open to the public on Heritage Day, 24 September. This will enable members of the public to board and view the ship. Visitors will be able to tour the upper deck, view the impressive weapon systems and see the new Wildcat Helicopter and her aircrew.
As with all these opportunities, you should probably expect long queues, but if you can get on board, you should probably expect quite a tour as well. Details are on that link above.
I have worked out that the Umhlanga (can you pronounce it correctly?) lighthouse is the most photographed in South Africa. That conclusion comes from looking for photos of various SA lighthouses on Flickr and the North Durban one being by far the most plentiful in the search window.
Yes, many lighthouses are iconic landmarks, but not all of them are quite so photogenic and convenient for a nearby conurbation. Joburg has no lighthouses. Cape Town has the Green Point lighthouse, but it’s more of a red and white Minecraft block than an actual tower. And Cape Town has so much more stuff to look at too. Cape Agulhas is certainly iconic, and geographically important, but it’s a long way from anywhere big. So in many ways, Umhlanga is the perfect balance of large local population, tower, and not too much other stuff to look at (don’t @ me).
I’ve never been to Griffiths Island in Victoria, Australia, nor do I have any desire to go there, but someone on Flickr did go there and they took this photograph:
Google tells me that Griffiths Island is near the legendary Port Fairy, where men are men and have ever such delicate wings. I don’t ever have to go there because someone went and took this beautiful image. I’m looking forward to test driving the new camera down at Agulhas this weekend, hopefully (in the nicest possible way) preventing anyone from having to go there ever again, as well.
Those of you who know me, or who read this blog on a regular basis, will probably be aware that I am partial to the odd glass of brandy when and where I can slip one in.
And things over the last 24 hours have conspired to deliver not one, but three Marlon-related bottles of joy. Some 10 year old KWV Potstill brandy, some “ever so special” Courvoisier cognac and some St Rémy glass-encased deliciousness. I’m going to be kept wasted happy for several (if not more) evenings.
And then I spotted this – Brandy Homes:
Well, I have one of those now, but these are the places that brandy is made – the local distilleries. I’ve done several of them already, but now you can visit them all with this handy new feature on the sabrandy.co.za website:
A Brandy Home is a place where you can sit back, relax and learn all there is to know about brandy.
The story of brandy is fascinating – it takes five litres of the finest wine to make one litre of spirit. And then it has to mature untouched for at least three years.
There is so much to discover – the heads, the heart, and the tails. Not to mention the Angels’ share… Plan your visit to a Brandy Home today. It’s a great outing and something completely different!
And there are maps and guides and ratings – a nice resource. SA does a lot of really good wine tourism, and with the troubles caused by the new visa regulations, it’s such a sensible idea to encourage some additional brandy visits with summer coming up (which, along with spring, autumn and winter, is my primary brandy drinking season) and worth checking out.
Disclaimer: No brandy was exchanged for this post (yet – my contact details are here, Brandy people), I just like the idea.
NASA TV is launching a dedicated 4K channel
Here’s the skinner:
NASA has announced that it will launch a new 4K television channel dedicated to showing UHD footage on November 1st.
The space agency is working with a company called Harmonic, a video delivery infrastructure company, to launch the channel. NASA is calling it “the first ever non-commercial consumer ultra-high definition channel in North America.” Harmonic is providing NASA Television with the ability to deliver the 4K (2160p at 60 frames per second) video. NASA’s 4K channel will primarily feature the UHD footage that the agency has been filming on the International Space Station over the past few months, as well as 4K time-lapses created from images taken aboard the ISS.
Which sounds like something that would be right up my street. And super educational for the kids as well. Also, can you imaging one of those 4K time-lapses on the big screen at a party or something? Magic. But hang on…
You will be able to access it on the internet on most devices, provided you have access to a connection of 13 Mbps or higher.
And that’s going to instantly rule out 99.9% of South Africa. Even if you’re going to use your 3G HSDPA or LTE mobile connection (which would easily be fast enough), with that sort of download, you’re going to chow your monthly bandwidth allowance in about 1.4 seconds.
Not great.