Day 657 – Webcams

We’ve covered the Isle of Man webcams quite extensively on here, not least when some kind soul popped out into the cold to wipe down one of the lenses for me, using – it turned out – a duster on a pole.

Amazing.

Well, now I’ve stumbled across a channel on Youtube on which you can watch some South African (actually exclusively Western Cape) webcams – live.
Strand, Clifton, Ceres, Milnerton and Muizenbeagle are all represented with impressive HD feeds:

…(albeit occasional wonky horizons), and so you can check out the surf, the chicks and the fynbos from the comfort of your home.

Click through to their website and you can view other places like Durban, Pretoria, Kruger National Park and even Tau Lodge where we went, back in… (yikes)… 2007!

Happy viewing, viewers!

Day 651 – Inspired

If you think I was feeling pretty inspired yesterday, you should see me today. I have revisited Inspirobot after seeing someone on social media using it. Remember those terrible inspirational posters on beige office walls in the 80s and 90s? Now you can make your own… or get this website to do it for you.

Inspirobot describes itself as:

“an artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for endless enrichment of pointless human existence”

And, at the click of a button, will supply you with any number of inspirational posters to get you going, make you pause, and… well… inspire you.

I had a few clicks today, and included in my haul were these gems:

The more you have, the longer it lasts, see? Like a viral load in a Covid infection. Or depression.

And:

Aim high. But not that high.

Also, always remember this:

Clearly, it’s sometimes difficult to spot the distinction.

And then finally, these two, which came back to back:

The latter undeniably proving the former.

Sure, there’s plenty of chaff amongst the Inspirobot wheat, but there are enough decent grains to keep you clicking the button and having a good laugh or a surprisingly deep think every now and again.

Day 643 – Lancet Covid Editorial

This is from a couple of weeks ago (and this post was written a few days ago), so maybe everything’s already been sorted now, but in the unlikely event that it hasn’t, this: [or PDF]

The challenge now is to determine the level of COVID-19 that is acceptable for individual nations in a fundamentally interconnected world.

Indeed.

A good overview of what we’ve done and what we need to do, but no real answers here, besides the “politicians must do better” plan. But we’ve kinda been hoping for that for a number of years now and it hasn’t quite materialised.

Weird.

Day 638 – Theme tunes

This may only be strictly relevant to my British audience. Or to those who have watched some British TV series. But this is really clever stuff from Darrell Maclaine on Youtube. Classic TV theme tunes as they would have been recorded by famous international music stars. The joy is shared between the nostalgia, the talent and the sheer incongruity.

Where else could you hear Michael Jackson singing the theme from Dad’s Army?

Or Paul McCartney doing Are You Being Served??

There are loads more at the link above.

Simple fun. Brilliant.

Day 633 – It me

Spotted yesterday, this:

If you look at how other people gained their super powers: getting nibbled by a radioactive spider, being born on Krypton or having shedloads of cash and a cave under your mansion (is this right? – Ed.), most superheroes have had it fairly easy.

I haven’t had a spider bite, I was born on earth and I don’t have a mansion or a cave. So it looks like I’ll have to go via this route. And looking back at the last 5 months of my life, I would absolutely argue that this so-called “super immunity” – if I even have it – is absolutely not worth the effort.

I can’t even fly.

Rubbish.