Category: flickr

When I go…

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When I go, I don’t want a big fuss. I fully intend to be around for a long time yet and then I’ll just quietly slip off if that’s OK.
No lying in state for a week (especially if it’s summer) for people to come and pay their last respects and comment on how I’m looking so much better than I did last week (when I was, at least, alive).
No fancy horse-drawn carriage parade through the street while crowds of wailing locals throw flowers and rocks as I pass by. I don’t need that.

All I really ask is a few close friends and family, Morten Harket’s Spanish Steps and some decent tuna and cucumber sandwiches at the wake.

Oh – and not to be stuck in the back of a Medi-Sprint bakkie next to some TB specimens and a box of flat-bottomed 96-well assay plates.
If that’s not too demanding.

People ask why I’m always carrying my camera around with me. Well, it’s because if I didn’t, I’d miss stuff like this.

I have no idea where Medi-Sprint were delivering it to, but I guess there probably wasn’t actually any real need to sprint, when you think about it.

Medi-Sprint’s tagline is: We Deliver – You Relax.

Half Price Cape Sunsets

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The Table Mountain Cableway are offering half price trips up the mountain after 6pm for the next four months:

sunset

Table Mountain Cableway: Four months of sunsets at half price.
Cableway goes ½ price from 6pm.
Valid from 1 November 2009 – 28 February 2010.
Adult return R80.00. Child return R40.00 (under 18).
Information line (021) 424 8181. Cableway operates weather permitting.

sset

I haven’t been up the mountain for ages and this seems like the perfect excuse for a few beers and some stunning views.
And this time, I’ll take my camera!

Spiders on Halloween

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We had a great time this morning at the Porters Market in Tokai, buying expensive bread, expensive juice and other expensive stuff.
The quality of the produce there is undoubtedly good, the prices are outrageously high. Still – a good time was had by all, a massive bagel was had by Kristen and a gingerbread man was had by Alex.

Coming home, we have been playing in the sun in the garden and the pool, sorting out a few chores around the house and – in my case – photographing a spider’s nest in the back garden. This one is about tennis ball sized and probably belongs to a rain spider.
Mrs 6k isn’t a big fan of spiders, but I think they’re amazing and the nests – made from leaves encompassed in a silky web sack – are incredible. I sprayed this one lightly with water so I could capture the intricate structure.

Bigger here. I guess that’s perfect timing for Halloween, but that was never my intention. It’s so bright and sunny here that Halloween darkness and creepytude seem a long way off.

You can see more of the day (and the spider’s nest) on the flickr set I stuck together really quickly just now.

From here to here…

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…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 Howell – A 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.

This is it

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I have been waiting for the perfect time to share this little bit of video footage with the 6000 miles… reading public.

And this is it. Because today marks the release of the Michael Jackson documentary and this is my bit of Michael Jackson tribute.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m no fan of MJ and I am more than ready for the whole thing to go away now. Which of course it won’t.
So, if you can’t beat them, join them and show the world your love of Michael. Sham on!

Which brings me to this video. Please allow me to set the scene:
It was filmed in Trafalgar Square, London UK on Sunday 5th July 2009 – 10 days after Michael popped some propofol and shortly thereafter, his clogs. A group of (mainly) middle-aged women had got together and were self-consciously dancing around a CD player which was quietly knocking out MJ hits.
Rarely have I seen a group so uncomfortable in their own skins. This was clearly the first IRL meet-up of an MJ internet forum. No-one knew anyone else and all present seemed to be disappointed with the turnout, the company, the organisation, the venue and the weather.

Until the forum loony turns up. Dressed in white crocs, cream opaque tights under white fishnets, blue polka dot shorts, a dark Union Jack top and a floppy hat, she (at least, I think it was a she) promptly demonstrated how MJ would have done things if he’d been a MJ forum loony.


MJ never did it like this

Note how the others in the group aren’t quite sure how to react. Two of them attempt to turn the loony dance into some sort of  Thriller move. It doesn’t work and they give up and try to ignore the loony.
In the end, it turned into two tributes – one with some middle-aged women shuffling around a cd player and one with a loony prancing all over Trafalgar Square. 

Just how MJ would have wanted it. But with less small children.