Long weekend, part one

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Ah. The opportunity of four days of rest & relaxation.
Ja, right.

Easter weekend used to be the time that spring started in the UK. Not this year, I hear. But while spring cleaning the garden was the norm there, I find myself doing the same here, despite the fact autumn is setting in – it was only 29°C today. While spray-painting some railings, I found time to grab some quick autumnal pics betweeen coats:

Now I find myself, tired and aching, with the only three of my sixteen jobs done. The only one that looks even vaguely like fun is “Buy Beer”. I might try and stretch that one out as long as possible, since the rest involve hard work and no beer.
Therefore, I’ll be doing a meet and greet session at Ultra Liquors in Wynberg from 8-6 tomorrow. If you’re coming along, please bring one of those KFC buckets.
Not only will the food be essential, the bucket will surely come in useful after sampling bottle store wares all day.

The End

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Hi.

I’m going to keep this brief, because it’s a difficult thing to write. Following on from yesterday’s post and the situation it described and following a lot of thought during a very sleepless night, I have decided to pull the plug on 6000 miles… with immediate effect.
While I have enjoyed much of my time writing all sorts of nonsense on all sorts of subjects, it has become too difficult to fit quality blogging into a hugely busy schedule.

The rise and rise of this blog has made me very proud and I would hate to see it deteriorate to the level of certain other sites. Therefore I think it’s best to go out at the top – or as high as I got, anyway.

Many thanks are due to Mrs 6k for putting up with this extra individual in our lives and to The Guru, without whom much stuff would never have happened. But most of all to you, the readers – especially those loyal and regular commenters.

It’s been a fun ride.

Cheers.
6k.

Noon update: Some of my favourite other April Fools included “Labour’s new “Tough Guy” approach” to the election campaign in The Guardian, News24’s “National Anthems to be banned at the World Cup” and The Independent‘s LHC II on the Circle Line brilliance:

It would mean that two beams of protons would be travelling in clockwise and counterclockwise directions at 99.999999 per cent of the speed of light, within feet of Circle line passengers stuck in perpetual immobility.

None of which had me fooled for a moment.
Just like you and this post, right?

Twelve sorts of hectic

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Damnit. This is going to be one of those annoying admin posts, isn’t it?
Well, yes. Sadly it is.

Unlike some of the local bloggers, for me, work is definitely not a sideline. I enjoy my job and I like making a difference. But sometimes, work goes super crazy and leaves no time for anything else. This is one of those times.
While I’m hugely grateful to whoever decided that we could have a four day weekend (I guess that would actually be Pontius Pilate, although I suspect that there may have been political interference in his big decision), it does seem to be the case that the work of five days work has to now be fitted into four. Bear in mind that last week was also shortened by Human Rights Day and next week is prefaced by Easter Monday (or Family Day as it is known here) and you can understand that there’s suddenly a lot of work that needs to be fitted into not very much time.

Since I am still not allowed to bring anything other than clerical work home after that time that our son (then 8 months old) was found chewing a vial of MDR-TB in the playroom, and still annoyed by the fact that bacteria consistantly fail to observe public holidays, I’ve been a bit snowed under – hence the recent epidemic of quota photos etc. And for that, I apologise.
If blogging were my full time occupation, I fear that I would be teetering on the edge of the precipice of unemployment, with my manager’s boot all too ready to apply the required nudge to my arse. Fortunately, that’s not the case, but the downside of that is that you don’t get the high quality writing you have come to expect and love from 6000 miles…

Not being religious, I am still holding onto the forlorn hope that this weekend will not come with too many committments and time will therefore be available for Quality Blog Postings, the production thereof. However, with two small kids to entertain and bugs that will certainly need attending to at some point, maybe you shouldn’t hold your breath.

Dan and Dan on the Daily Mail

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We’ve had more than a couple of run-ins with the useless tabloid rag which is Britain’s Daily Mail here on 6000 miles…
There was that Peter Hitchens racist nonsense, their laughably inaccurate reporting on the Fishhoek shark attack and then, more recently, the whole Jacob “Vile Buffoon” Zuma thing during JZ’s state visit to Britain.

It is, without a doubt, the most disgusting piece of racist, middle-England, scaremongering purveyor of  bullshit that I have ever had the displeasure to read.
And, as Britain goes down the drain, it’s steadily getting worse.
So I was hugely amused to see that Dan & Dan have done a little ditty entitled The Daily Mail Song.

The “cancer from your…” verse is just perfect.

Now, I think I’m going to go and wash my computer.
And, to be honest, so should you.

UPDATE: Right click/Save as to download the mp3 here.

Cape Town’s Cat’s Eye Traffic Signals

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I’m ridiculously excited about this.
An interesting development in the interesting development which is taking place at the bottom of Buitengracht ahead of the World Cup is the addition of cat’s eye traffic signals to the junction with Western Boulevard. These nifty little lights run right the way across the junction, along the painted white line of the lights. When the signal is red, they show red and when the lights change to green, the cat’s eyes switch off, effectively disappearing.

Here’s one of them in action:

cat's eyes

That’s one just in front of the white line. And on the right is a guy selling newspapers who is already bored of seeing cat’s eyes traffic signals.
This is an especially good junction to launch this new technology in Cape Town, since there are six lanes leading up to these lights, meaning that the traditional traffic signals are pretty sparse.
Which is probably why they put them there.

It’s something that I haven’t heard of anywhere else in the world, although I’m sure to have some Dutch bloke on here saying something along the lines of “Yesh, obwioushlee we have had theesh in Hamshterjam for sheveral yearsh already” or something similar. It just sounds like something that the Netherlands would have thought of first.

Probably the best view of these lights in action is from the pedestrian footbridge spanning the inbound lane of Buitengracht. You know, the bridge that wasn’t actually there last week?

It’s amazing how much positive change the World Cup has brought to Cape Town and its infrastructure already.

EDIT: OK, apparently some people just aren’t getting it. I didn’t think it was so hard, but in order to enlighten the unenlightened and in the interests of road safety, I have been to the 6000 miles… graphic design office and asked them to come up with a diagram for me.

Times are obviously tough in the graphic design department right now.

But anyway. Here are three lanes of the junction in question. You’d be in one of these if you were turning right into Western Boulevard. 
Now, imagine that you’re in a car in Lane A. Look how far you are from the traditional traffic signal on the right hand side of the road.  Blimey. You might miss that and cause a nasty accident by colliding with another motor vehicle traveling across your intended route.

Fortunately, in the road in front of all of the lanes are the new cat’s eyes. You can see them on the diagram above represented as small rectangles with red dots in. Which is pretty accurate, because that’s actually what they look like IN REAL LIFE!
They are LED cat’s eyes, which mean that they shine whether or not you have your lights on, whether or not it is day or night. And when the traffic lights are set to red, the two sets of cat’s eyes in front of each lane shine bright red too.
When the lights change to green and you are free to go, the cat’s eyes switch off and, because they then become just small discs of flat metal in the road, you don’t see them. Astounding.

Thus, it’s like having road-based traffic lights right the way across the junction, and not just on either side of this (very wide) interchange.

Get it now?