Category: learning curve

It’s hard work

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Honestly, when it comes to keeping fit, the younger generation just don’t know how good they’ve got it. And obviously, I was the same when I was the younger generation, so fair enough. But wow – keeping fit as you get older is HARD WORK.

Sarcopenia – the age-related progressive loss of muscle mass, strength and function – is a real thing, and while it (allegedly) starts at 30 years old, I never really noticed it until fairly recently. But now suddenly standing still (metaphorically, and literally) is just not good enough. You have to work twice as hard: once to build the muscle mass, strength and function, and once to overcome the age-related progressive loss of muscle mass, strength and function.

That doesn’t seem fair.

But honestly, you still need to live your life as well. All work and no play and all that. There’s zero fun (as far as I’m concerned) in devoting all your time to just trying to stay fit. You need to enjoy your life, and not make every decision about your health.
And so when I saw this, it rang very true, and I did actually laugh:

Yep. That’s me.

I will occasionally do a 7am run, but you’re not ever going to see either of the others in any way, shape or form.

And if that means that I have to work even harder in the gym and on the road when it comes to keeping fit and combatting my age, well, so be it.

Business must be good

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The economy is in a terrible state, so we’re told.

And actually, you only have to look around to see that that’s a pretty accurate synopsis. Unemployment is through the roof, costs are rising, inflation is up (and doesn’t seem to really match what’s happening on the ground), and we’re all feeling the squeeze. Multi-factorial stuff, but most of those factors can be narrowed down to a few knobhead politicians.

That’s for another post.

Sadly though, things still need doing. And we have a job that needs doing on our house, which is long overdue. It’s a project that will hopefully save us money in the long run, but it is going to cost a chunk of money up front. Like tens of thousands of Rands. And so, as any sensible person would, I contacted six different expert companies to get some comparative quotes.

Well, dear reader… Business must be better than we all thought.

Fair play, one contacted me back within a day, and we set some stuff up.

Less fair, but maybe ok kind of play, another one contacted me back after a few days, and (after a bit of misunderstanding), arranged to come out for a site inspection. But then didn’t turn up. Staff sickness apparently – when I called them. And because we all understand that these things happen, we rearranged another appointment and then they didn’t turn up again.

Red flag central, and an easy call for me.

I sent a Whatsapp saying that I wouldn’t be taking it any further, and I got a message back saying:

Great. No problem. Fully understand.

Wow. “Great”, really?
(And thanks for the apology for wasting my time.) (Twice.)

But even that was arguably better than the four who didn’t even bother to reply to my original message.

I really don’t get it. I’m literally wanting to give you business: to give you a lot of money for doing a job that you are apparently very good at. I’m doing the hard yards; I’m opening the dialogue and excusing you from doing the whole, time-consuming, costly, cold-calling marketing thing. Just give me a call.

But you couldn’t even be arsed to get in touch.

Business must be really good.

And so what do I do now? Because I’d selected those six companies based on the good reviews they had, and so now I must start selecting others that had less good or fewer good reviews. That’s already pushing me to seventh best and below before we’ve even taken into consideration that ? of them probably won’t even reply (data from a May 2026 study, n=6).

Because the thing is, much like voting for a political party in an election, selecting the least worst doesn’t necessarily make them any good. It just makes them less bad than the others. And in this case, the bar for that is so low that it’s a tripping hazard in hell.

So what choice do I have? The job still needs doing. And I still need to protect us from potentially being ripped off.

So here we go again, I guess.

Brilliant.

Long Exposure

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I quite like long exposure photographs. And not just from other people. I’ve had a go at a few long exposure photographs myself.
I think my record length is 4 hours. And it worked out quite well.

But those 240 minutes pale into insignificance when you learn about what Jonathon Keats, an experimental philosopher at the University of Arizona, is doing.

His is longer than mine (stop it). His is going to be 1000 years long.

His creation is simple: A small copper cylinder with a pin-sized hole sits atop a steel pole. To ensure the device survives the ravages of time, the tiny opening was pierced through a thin layer of 24-karat gold. Over the next 1,000 years, sunlight that enters the contraption will slowly fade a light-sensitive surface covered in an oil paint pigment called rose madder, resulting in an extremely long-exposure image of the landscape.

This is essentially a very (very) fancy take on a beer can solar tracking photography experiment. For which the current record is 8 years (and that was by mistake).

The camera in Tucson isn’t Keats’ first venture with experimental long-exposure photography. In 2014, the researcher worked with a team to distribute 100 cameras to residents in Berlin, instructing them to hide the cameras until 2114 for the next generation to retrieve. He has previously installed several other Millenium Cameras at Arizona State University in Tempe, Amherst College in Massachusetts and Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Keats hopes to keep installing additional Millennium Cameras in new locations around the world, from the Austrian Alps to Chongqing, China.

I guess that South Africa doesn’t make the list. Despite being plagued by the same issues as the rest of the world as far as Climate Change, rampant development and loss of natural habitat go, our local skollies also have a bit of a scrap metal fetish, and a camera full of copper and 24k gold will definitely be enough for a quick fix. It’ll be lucky to last 1000 hours, let alone 1000 years.

I mean, as a project, it’s very adventurous and impressive and all that, but I quite like the idea of being able to actually view what I’ve spent the time and effort creating. Jonathon isn’t going to have that privilege. Unless something very remarkable happens in the medical research field over the next couple of decades.

I’d find that incredible frustrating. But if he’s at peace with it – and I don’t really think he’s got any choice in the matter – then fair play.

It’s just disappointing that no-one came up with a similar plan back in 1023 (which was admittedly about 800 years before the invention of photography), so that we could see what the results looked like before we pop our collective clogs.

Lighthorse

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“Haha! He’s misspelled “Lighthouse” in the title of the post!
What a muppet!”

But… actually not.

Because, please bring forth the Lighthorse of Jeju Island.
The red one.

Amazing. A 12m tall Lighthorse sitting on one of the Iho Hang breakwaters, west of Jeju City on Jeju Island, South Korea.

But you know that Lighthouses always look better in red and white?
Well, obviously, there’s a white one too:

These are modelled on the Jeju Pony – a rare, ancient breed native to Jeju Island, and were completed in 2009. And while they’re not exact replicas of the actual animals (I mean, the horsey ones aren’t those colours and don’t have a light on their heads), they’re a lovely twist on the traditional big tower with a light on the top.

And if you want more animals made into functional buildings – in this case, specifically lighthouses – then you need look no further than… er.. Jeju Island, South Korea, where they also have a 13m high Lighturtle.

That doesn’t really work as well as the horse one, does it?

Anyway:

It’s not just the name that doesn’t work. For me, this one is cheating a bit. That’s just a lighthouse with an added turtle, not a turtle lighthouse. Not that I don’t admire the effort. Just that if you set the bar so high with the red and white horses, I just think the turtle should be rearing up on its hind legs flippers and balancing the light on its nose.

Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

Seize the day

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I’m writing a quiz.

It’s a fundraising thing that I’m presenting next month, and while the best quiz experience is the one that you take part in (and win, probably), for obvious reasons, I’m not allowed to take part this time. And so I want to make this one right up there for all the people who can do it, and are spending their hard-earned money in this economy to help others out.

It’s been a while (like lockdown) since I have done a quiz (from the writing the questions point of view, at least), but it’s fun to be back.

Well, sort of.

I’ve actually been pussyfooting around for a couple of weeks, jotting down questions (and answers), since I managed to delete all the work that I had previously done (entirely my fault, rookie error, despite being far from a rookie). Since then, my stupidity has been irritating me each time I return to the project.

But today is the day to break the back of this thing and get all the hard yards done.

I know that some people who read the blog will be going along, so I’m not dropping any hints or tips for them, but who knows: maybe I’ll chuck a few questions or even a whole round out on here once the event has happened, so that you can all test your knowledge of [redacted] or even [redacted].

So I’m seizing the day right now, and I’m going to nail the specialist round.

And then I’m going to get a coffee.