Tag: flickr

Wedded bliss

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We’re off to a wedding this afternoon. Attending weddings is becoming a more unusual pastime as most of our friends have already tied the knot already. In fact, I’ve had to have a scroll through Flickr to try and work out when the last one was.

It turns out that it was nearly two years ago at Morgansvlei near Tulbagh. The weather that day was superb and it looks like today’s events in Noordhoek will be equally sunny. It should be a great evening.

Incidentally, Mrs 6000 and I are not so far from our own 5 year anniversary. I mentioned this to a friend and he said that in that case, we were also not that far from the 7 year itch and we should watch out. I assured him that neither my wife nor I suffer from any chronic skin conditions and that he must be mistaken.

Anyway, I’m sure it’s nothing that a anti-histamine and a hefty dose of penicillin can’t sort out, right?

3000 photos from civilisation…

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I have just noticed that I have a total of 3,000 items on my flickr. Cue the celebrations.

This image of Alex “doing magic” (his words when he saw the photo) yesterday evening was amongst the upload that got me to 3,000 items.

Statpr0n: Of the 3,000 items, 22 are videos and 2,978 are photos, of which about 4 are actually quite good.

Another reason that South Africa can’t host the 2010 World Cup

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Forget the Angolans, the sharks and the naughty people with knives.
Have you seen the number of flippin’ terrifying bugs there are out there?

Even in my Cape Town garden (which is actually in Europe), there’s some nasty stuff about:

And I haven’t even mentioned the killer bees and the moths, (which are probably, like, killer moths).

Once the Daily Mail gets hold of this kind of information, FIFA will have no choice but to bow to the mighty pressure Paul Dacre and his band of right-wing underlings will place them under and the tournament will be moved to Australia, which is already home to some nasty racist animals but let’s not make a fuss about that.

Bedroom visitor

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Last night, we were visted by (what I think is) a Pompilidae wasp.

We see these wasps fairly regularly dragging huge spiders across our garden – it amazing to watch. At first I though the spiders were dead, but not so – just paralysed.  Here’s the story:

Spider wasps are long-legged, solitary wasps that use a single spider as a host for feeding their larvae. They paralyze the spider with a venomous stinger. Once paralyzed, the spider is dragged to where a nest will be built – some wasps having already made a nest.
 
A single egg is laid on the abdomen of the spider, and the nest – or burrow – is closed. The size of the host can influence whether the wasp will lay an egg that will develop as a male, or an egg that will develop into a female – larger prey yielding the (larger) females.

When the wasp larva hatches it begins to feed on the still-living spider. After consuming the edible parts of the spider, the larva spins a silk cocoon and pupates – usually emerging as an adult the next summer. Some ceropalines lay the egg on a still-active spider, where it feeds externally on hemolymph.

In time, that spider will die, and the mature wasp larva will then pupate.

Niiiice!
Fortunately, I didn’t need any stinging to knock me out last night. Heat and exhaustion did the trick.

Snow-ta Photo

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I’m watching Tranmere v Wolves in the FA Cup (and currently Tranmere are all over the visitors like an aggressive gravy) so I’m giving you a snow-ta photo.
It’s like a quota photo, but with snow (see what I did there?).

This is one my Dad took on New Year’s Eve. Beautiful.
My parents arrived back home on 10th December from a 6 week tour of  Australia. It was 3°C in Sheffield that day and it hasn’t got that warm again since. The forecast until Friday gives a daily maximum of 0°C or below.

Happy days.