Day 150 – Flying things

A quick trip just up the road to Kirstenbosch this morning yielded some decent (by my standards) photos.

Mainly of flying things, it seems.

A pair of Cape Sugarbirds entertained us for a while, flitting between proteas and aloes and there were plenty of Southern and Greater Double-collared Sunbirds around.

And then this little guy, lime green and hidden amongst the lime greenery:

He’s a Forest Canary. He’s rightfully very proud of those eyebrows.

Who wouldn’t be?

And then, as a bit of fun, an exhibit from the Cycads and Dinosaurs exhibition. I’m not a huge fan – I don’t think the gardens need this sort of… “gimmick”(?) – but the little kids love it and I suppose it’s just a one-off thing and it’s educational so [shrug emoji].

The flying dinosaur is very unrealistic, mainly because dinosaurs died out tens of millions of years ago about half the metal used in the sculpture are quite clearly big fat scaffolding poles propping it up into a gliding position.
But take those out with photoshop and apply a bit of a dated filter, and…

… just a bit of fun, but I might try and get a better, more threatening angle next time – difficult because you obviously have to stick to the pathways. (Have a look at one slightly different effort here as well.)

A nice morning out before it got too busy and too non-social distancey. Yes, even in the wide-open spaces of the Botanical Gardens. Back home for a blog post, an afternoon nap and a Sunday evening braai, I think.

And we’re already a third of the way through that already.

[photos here]

Day 149 – Sunday morning, 4am

I don’t generally do much of Sunday morning. You may say that I am wasting the best bit of the day, but “wasting” is a very subjective term, and if I have the chance to grab a nice, warm, cosy lie-in in winter – well, I’m not going to object. It is after all, “the day of rest”.

So it would have to be something very special to wake me up at 4 o’clock on a Sunday morning, and yet I actually do find myself tempted by this…

 

 

If you are reading this and thinking that I’m hinting at a suitable birthday present, thank you, but please don’t. I’m really undecided on whether this is a thing I want to do – I mean, it is something that I want to do, but whether I’ll feel that way at 3:55am that day… mmm… I’m less sure.

And then there’s the rest of the family. I mean, you spend all that money ($15 = R39,000,000) (ish) and you get up at 3:55am and then you listen to a concert on headphones so as not to wake the kids and the (probably bewildered) beagle?

I’m unconvinced.

That said, “their only show of 2020″… And the new stuff is really good

Plenty to think about. And plenty of time to think about it.

Day 148 – Fire view

I found a network of webcams in California (and up the rest of the west coast of the US) which are used for checking out wildfires. You can view them anytime, even when there aren’t wildfires. They look out right across a lot of the countryside and so you can see for miles and miles.

However, when I looked at them yesterday, there were some wildfires. (Spoiler: that’s actually why I was looking at them.) And one of them wasn’t miles and miles away.

One of them was actually very close to one of the cameras:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the feed from this camera just north of Santa Cruz had gone down. This was the last image that was seen from it – some 6 hours before I visited the site.

But if the fire crews were wondering where they needed to be to fight the fires, well… it really is right here.

 

(That’s… er… here.)

Day 147 – Signing

I’ve never really wondered about the size of footballers’ feet. I’ve always just assumed that they bought (or are sponsored, more likely) a suitably sized pair of boots and then they’ve just got on with the job in hand.

I think that I am probably correct in this assumption.

One of the many key components of Sheffield United’s fantastic achievements over the last couple of seasons was our goalkeeper, Dean Henderson. He has, for the last 2 years, been nothing short of incredible.

(Note: I’m aware that much of this montage doesn’t make our defence look ever so pretty. But hey, it’s a team game, and Hendo was the last line of that defence. Did the ball go in the goal? No? Then it’s all good.)

The problem is, he wasn’t ever actually ours. We were only just borrowing him: he was on loan from some other smaller club over the mountain on the A57 Snake Pass.

Now, the time has come for Dean to return to that other club, signing off with this IG post yesterday:

Once again, thank you for everything! Once a blade, always a blade!

That would have left a worrying hole between the posts for us. And this is going to be a difficult enough season to get through as it is.

Fortunately, having checked the FA rules, the club discovered that they were allowed to replace him, and they’ve done just that, bringing in £18.5 million worth of Aaron Ramsdale.

I’m not sure what size the relative keepers’ feet are, nor who sponsors them their footwear, but those are some seriously big boots he has to fill.

Still, having watched him for Bournemouth this season, I have no doubts that he’ll be able to do just that.

Welcome back to Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane, Aaron Rambo*.

 

 

* I don’t make the rules

Day 146 – My sort of video

This is my sort of video. 5 minutes filled with neatly explained facts and trivia. And what amazing trivia. I mean, yes. I knew that the Arctic Circle wobbles and I knew it was heading north. But I didn’t know just how that would affect Iceland. Or how they had altered their Arctic Circle monument to deal with that. (Genius, by the way.)

And since I can now add Youtube videos to my log with seeming impunity… Have this:

And the lengths that someone would go to just to find out a piece of (interesting but) mostly useless information?

Well, I liked that too.

Spare yourself 5 minutes and see if Kolbeinsey (for that are the Most Northern Part of Iceland) is still there.