Last Of The Summer Braaiin’?

That is a legendary title for a post. And yes, I recognise that I announced the onset of winter a couple of weeks ago, but after that dreadful day, apparently summer sobered up, had a bit of a sit down,  realised it missed us all and popped back to prolong itself a bit.
That’s why last week we had this:

While today we were treated to an absolute cracker, with cloudless blue skies, not a breath of wind and temperatures of 30°C.

Perfection.

Mindful that these meteorological conditions have other places to be and can’t stick around forever, we used the time wisely to get in a nice early evening braai:

And while, to the untrained observer, it may appear that there is some sort of breeze blowing, this is Cape Town: our smoke is so used to being moved rapidly in a northwesterly direction that even in flat calm conditions it just comes out of the stack and heads that way automatically.
It is Pavlovian smoke, but you don’t even have to ring a bell to influence its behaviour. This is good because I don’t actually own a bell.

With dwindling supplies of braai wood, now comes a tricky seasonal decision. One must balance the amount of wood one owns, because while on the one hand, you don’t want stacks of wood getting wet and being useless during the winter month, on the other, there will be days when you just need to braai and you just need to have the requisite materials to hand.

It’s a fine line, generally best trodden, I find, by sticking two bags of rooikrans in your garage and having some briquettes on standby.

I shall arrange this tomorrow.

Your Man Reminder

I know I posted a video yesterday too, but this – via my wife’s facebook page (and, bearing in mind that it’s 2½ years old already, probably several other places too) – tickled my fancy. (Not in that way, you understand, but my fancy did indeed find itself tickled).

There will be those who will cry out about the stereotyping of women as individuals psychologically susceptible to the sight of a male model’s body and there will be those who will be aghast at the objectification of male body (ja, right).

There will be those who wonder about the true nature of my fancy and what on earth I am doing posting this on 6000 miles…

Me? I reckon that the ends justify the means in this case. If the message gets across to just one more woman because of this or if one more life is saved, then it’s a winner and its detractors must sit down

Well done, RethinkBreastCancer.com.

Here’s a link to the app and a helpful QR code for Android users.

chart12

And, because it’s for a good cause, an iTunes Store link as well.

Glowsticks and Waterfalls

You know I like my long exposure stuff.
So this, via here.

Photographers Sean Lenz and Kristoffer Abildgaard of From the Lenz have come up with a brilliant light painting concept that produces gorgeous results. For their project titled Neon Luminance, they dropped glow sticks into waterfalls and then used long exposures to capture the bright and colorful trails as the sticks were carried down stream.

And here are some results.

glowwaterfall-4

Beautiful.

glowwaterfall-8

And there’s more here.

After dropping the sticks into various waterfalls in Northern California, they used exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 7 minutes to capture the movement of the sticks. For variations on the theme, they used different colored sticks and bundles of sticks strung together.

As for me, I’m still meaning to do this.

I’m (Still) Not Finished With You.

Big News today is that Liepollo Pheko has decided to lay a charge of intimidation against Andre Visagie.

Who they?
Well, they were some of the parties involved in the notorious “Touch me on my studio” incident back in April 2010. You can see the video here, but in case you had forgotten, Times Live has a handy reminder for you:

In April 2010 Liepollo Pheko and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging secretary-general Andre Visagie were debating race relations in post-apartheid South Africa on the set of Africa 360.

When neither would let the other speak Visagie lost his temper, pulled off his microphone and started walking off the set. He turned back, walked towards her and said “… and you won’t dare, you won’t dare interrupting (sic) me…”.

Host Chris Maroleng intervened, during which he famously ordered Visagie not to “touch me on my studio”.

And then, as Pheko classlessly smirked, came Visagie’s pièce de résistance:

Visagie walked around the desk at which he and Pheko had been sitting, turned to face Pheko, and said: “I am not finished with you.”

Those words struck deep, it seems. So deep that only now, 1096 days on, Pheko has realised that she felt intimidated by Visagie.

Heaven only knows how she has carried on with her normal life, of being a policy analyst, social entrepreneur, senior executive, thought leader and social activist plus Managing Director and co-owner of  management consultancy, Four Rivers Trading and Executive Director at NGO/think-tank, the Trade Collective, in the intervening period.

Quite what Mr Visagie had – or perhaps has – in mind for Ms Pheko is unclear. That’s probably why at each and every public event she has attended in the last 3 years, she must have been hugely concerned that the aging Mr Visagie would perhaps turn up and talk loudly at her in broken English some more.
In some ways, maybe she was almost desperate for it to happen, praying for that defining moment of release when Mr Visagie, having said his piece turned to her and added “Now I am finished with you”. But that moment has never come and it seems that the last three years have been nothing but a waiting game for Ms Pheko – and indeed for Mr Visagie, one would imagine.

And so, after somewhat belatedly realising that she was being intimidated back in 2010, Pheko is to finally lay a charge of intimidation against Visagie. These cases do tend to go on a bit, so one wonders exactly how long it will be before she is finished with Mr Visagie.

It should be noted that the timing of her decision has everything to do with the constant worry she has felt since Mr Visagie informed her of his lack of closure back in 2010 and nothing to do with her name being put forward as a possible presenter on Given Mkhari’s new Gauteng based radio station Power FM.