Every day…

Every day, I am blown away by the beauty of the mountain.
(When it’s visible and not hidden behind shedloads of dark grey cloud, obviously.)

This was from my drive home tonight.

Full size with option of spankingly large desktop background size here.

Pedants (you know who you are):
This doesn’t count as a quota photo because I’ve already posted today.

From here to here…

…to here to here.

The best thing about the internet™, if you have the time and the inclination to pursue it, is the way that one cool site can lead you to another to another. Sadly, this adventure trail all too often ends at one, but just occasionally you’ll get a decent run. Here’s one I managed earlier.

I started out at Sorry I Missed Your Party, a regular on my bloglines reader. Like many sites poking fun at others on the web, this one can be a bit hit or miss, but unlike many sites poking fun at others on the web, it’s more often hit than miss. Today’s post was Lazy Man Party Costumes from which one picture stood out for me, by virtue of just being “properly done”:

That photograph (found here) led me to this Flickr photostream, which features – amongst many other things – some amazing shots of London, where I have never lived.

Those photographs – some fun, some serious, some point and shoot, some obviously thoughtfully composed – were taken by Landon HowellA Conservative Southerner in Seattle™, who obviously has a talent for photography and whose blog is perfect reading material for me – unrestricted and eclectic ephemera. Wonderful stuff.

Recent posts that stood out for me were WWJW, wherein a mother asks the best method of making a costume for her teenage son to attend a Halloween party dressed as Jesus.

So — what would be a good Jesus-robe (or just any plausible Jesuswear. This would be daywear, not Jesus eveningwear) that we could buy, in a nice natural fabric?

And gets a variety of answers. As you might expect from such a request.

And then the amazing story of Elena Desserich in Love Notes:

When 6-year-old Elena Desserich new she was going to die from paediatric brain cancer, she started writing notes to her younger sister Gracie so that she’d know something about her big sister after she was gone. 
What Elena’s parent’s didn’t realize was that Elena was leaving notes for them as well, and started finding them everywhere after she passed.

The full story is here. Heart-breakingly sad, but somehow incredibly positive as well.

As I said, one requires time and inclination to follow this sort meandering path through the web and at this point, I discovered that I had comprehensively run out of the former, even though I still had a whole heap of the latter in reserve.

And so this evening, I fully intend to continue from where I left off and – though this may seem ever so slightly sad – I have to say that I’m quite looking forward to it.

It never rains…

That’s a complete lie. It rained all day today and it also rained a bit yesterday, even though the sun was shining at the same time.
Apparently, in the UK this is known as a “sunshower”, although I’ve never heard that expression. Still, I only lived there for 30-odd years.
In Cape Town, where the weather is just plain weird, this sort of thing happens far more often. It happened yesterday and I photographised it.

I have been told that the phenomenon is known as a “Monkey’s Wedding”. However, I have never dared use that phrase, just in case it was one of those Old Skool racist things that were “perfectly acceptable” to use “back in the day”, but that one – quite rightly – can’t say now.

However, having done a bit of research (ie.I googled it), I have discovered that the phrase comes, in fact, from the isiZulu umshado wezinkawu , meaning (perhaps unsurprisingly) “A wedding for monkeys”. There is no further explanation as to why this is the case. However, it would seem that I am safely able to use the phrase from now on without fear of prosecution.

There’s also an Afrikaans version, which Wikipedia tells me is jakkelstrou or “Jackal’s Wedding”.
This, it seems comes from the dainty little rhyming couplet:

Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou,
As dit reen en die son skyn flou.

Which actually makes perfect sense, because I did notice that there was a jackal in the back garden who seemed intent on marrying the wolf’s wife while the rain fell and the sun shone faintly. With hindsight, that probably would have made a more interesting photo than the one above.

I’ll try to remember that for next time it happens. Sorry.

Just another Stadium pic

Since I was passing the Cape Town Stadium and – for once on this rather gloomy Cape Town day – it wasn’t raining, I decided to snap a couple of pictures to track the progress on this architectural masterpiece, which doesn’t look anything like a Polo mint.

Although all the tower cranes have now come down, there’s evidently still some work being done on the roof, mainly by a solitary guy in an orange hi-vis jacket with a large Johnson.

Now that might not look all that impressive, but when you step back (or rather zoom out) and see the bigger picture:

Well, rather him than me.

You can see more pictures of Green Point Stadium in my Green Point Stadium set on Flickr.

Man at work

While you and I were living it up and drinking at the weekend, The Guru was also living it up and drinking. And then coding. Some say he codes better after a bottle of red wine. Or two. Some say they have never seen him wholly sober.
All I know is that he is working damn hard to iron out the little nuances which the multitude of web browsers chuck at part-time web designers these days. The Guru is a thorough animal and is determined that this project (and therefore this blog) will be all sparkly with all its bits in the right places; whichever browser you choose to use.
Consequently, things may seem to be a little out of place from time to time when you visit here. Please feel free to mention them in a comment somewhere. Especially if you are using a mainstream browser: i.e. IE. But do make sure it’s the most recent version. The Guru doesn’t have time to go back into the annals of history just because you’re still living in 1994 and using Mosaic.
He has coding to do and red wine to drink. 

While we’re on admin stuff, here’s a few more bits ‘n’ pieces:

  1. Made in Oxford is an exhibition by Oxford Flickr users. I lived in Oxford for 9 years and while I constantly wax lyrical about how photogenic Cape Town is, that goes for Oxford too. The Flickr blog showcases a few great examples.
  2. I popped some new photos up onto Flickr myself. Nothing too spectacular, just point and shoot fun with the kids this weekend.
  3. And if you were wondering if you have it in you to become a fantastic photographer, you can find all the information you need here at 27/6.com. It might just be easier than you think.

Right. I must away. People to do, things to see.
Or something along those lines.

EDIT: Damn, I think my short-term memory is going. Two more bits of admin stuff that I had forgotten.

  1. Welcome Wiggy’s World to the blogroll. Probably the best blog written by a Newcastle United-supporting, football-playing marquee salesman from Mansfield that I have read this year. Or at least in the top 3.
  2. New spam technique (which had me confused for a while): Copies of existing comments from the blog (including one of mine). Presumably, the theory is that because the comment in question has made it past Akismet and moderation once, it’s regarded as clean. Clever. But it didn’t fool me. Eventually.

In other news, I think my short-term memory is going.