On EDGE

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Towards the end of last year, Vodacom upgraded the internet service in Suiderstrand from EDGE to HSDPA. That was great, although quite why they didn’t go all the way and make put an LTE connection in, I don’t know. But perhaps that’s because I’m not a mobile telecommunications expert. Maybe there’s more to it than just plugging in one ‘magic box’ instead of another. Who knows?
(Obviously, mobile telecommunications experts know, but I’m not one of them.)
(I may have already mentioned this.)

The whole HSDPA thing is great. It allows Skyping, blogging and Flickring without the constant frustration of waiting. For.

Things.

To happen.

But sadly, today, it’s gone away again. And we’re back to EDGE. Once more, I don’t really understand how this can happen. Surely you either have a connection or you don’t?
The strength of the signal remains solid – it’s the speed that isn’t there. S’odd.

Still, recognising the need of my readers, I did manage to upload some pictures to flickr. <~ That’s the link, right there.

17015976046Of course, it hasn’t cost any more to upload all those photos, since we’re charged by MB and not by time for our internet these days. It did take nearly two hours though. And that’s easily enough time to get through a nice bottle of red wine, I have discovered.

Elements

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A day of contrasting meteorological conditions, from heavy rain, to hot sunshine and then back to a sudden and vicious squall in the evening, which almost put the braai out. Crikey.

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This was earlier in the day: more cycling – this time down to the southernmost point and the wreck of the Meisho Maru on the way, before battling back against the wind and rain to a well deserved hot bath and hot chocolate.

On Yer Bike

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And so it’s Easter. And while regular readers will be aware that the celebration means little to me, I’m happy to hypocritically enjoy the public holidays that come with it.
It’s tough to observe only certain public holidays and your choices will almost certainly get you into trouble with someone.
Besides which, a bit of misplaced Christian privilege never did anyone any harm, right?

Easter is synonymous with Spring up in the distant Northern Hemisphere, which means that we must be heading autumnward here on the Southern Tip. But you’d be hard pressed to believe it on this banger of a day.

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The Boy Wonder and I grabbed a couple of bikes and ascended the 160m hill up the back of the village, where we were rewarded with viewz 4 dayz over at least a couple of oceans and across the Agulhas Plain.

It was a great way to work off some excess energy (him) and to work off the mild hangover induced by a 2006 French blend and some rather lovely brandy last night (me).

Tomorrow, the same team intends to visit the shipwreck down the road. Hopefully, there will be less babalasness to recover from on the way.

Although, I make no promises.

Niche

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Some time ago, we featured the Bollards of London blog on here. Sadly, it seems that that venture has disappeared from the internet. What a load of boll…ards. Presumably, they found them all and there was nothing else to document. But there are still plenty of other niche blogs around, and here’s one:

Pylon of the Month dot org

Yep. Really.

I know electricity is a bit of a sore point around here at the moment, but Pylon of the Month is actually rather addictive. I’m currently back in early 2010, close to beautiful Sheffield, looking at a stunning pylon-related sunset. The site has been going since 2008 and despite being a British based blog, even featured a snap from Somerset West (ugh) to open 2015. There was one from Japan last year as well. Cyprus, Scotland, Greece, Bulgaria, France, Ireland and Sweden are all also represented.
Wow. International.

It isn’t just pylons though. There’s a bit of information about the locality or the reasons behind the author being where he was when the photo was taken. And (perhaps because he’s a physics teacher near Oxford) then there’s educational stuff too. TIL about Stockbridge dampers:

A Stockbridge damper is a tuned mass damper used to suppress wind-induced vibrations on slender structures such as overhead power lines. The dumbbell-shaped device consists of two masses at the ends of a short length of cable or flexible rod, which is clamped at its middle to the main cable. The damper is designed to dissipate the energy of oscillations in the main cable to an acceptable level.

Without which, power lines would be wobbling and failing all over the world. Thank you, George H. Stockbridge, for your surprisingly simple – yet effective – invention. And you’ve all seen them, you just never knew what you were looking at. I love stuff like that.

Anyway, never one to shy away from getting involved in mildly odd stuff (at least on the internet), I’m going to submit a photo wot I took (of a pylon, obvs) to potm.org and see if I can get SA another place on the 2015 board. Watch this space. Or rather watch that space.