November 10th, 2007
My brother and I are taking a 2 week road trip through Namibia next week. We will be camping mostly. I have created a page detailing the trip. It’s more a guideline than a fixed plan, but we hope to visit at all those sites with some stops in between. I have used the internet extensively to plan this trip along with some word of mouth suggestions on sites and accommodation facilities. Some websites that I have come across that have been most useful have been:
Namibia-Travel.net - Lots of good general information and pointers to places of interest
2 Busy Camping - Nice list of camp sites across Namibia
Kamp SA - Detailed information on a lot of camp sites with regards to facilities, power points etc.
The Card Box Travel Shop - General information and a nice cheat sheet for people planning a road trip
As with our trip through Europe I hope to blog my way around Namibia so pop in from time to time. I just hope MTN does not let me down like it did in Europe with data coverage, else I will be forced to use a prepaid Namibia SIM.
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October 26th, 2007
We drove up to Mossel bay on Wednesday for a nice long weekend. On the way here we stopped at Rooiberg for some wine tasting. We also hit a small speedbump in Robertson called Klipdrift. I have been wanting to stop at the distillery for a while now and we had some time to kill. I was really impressed with the setup and the guy who presented the tasting was really nice. I bought a bottle of Klipdrift Gold (yum). They do regular tours of the distillery to demonstrate the production process, so we will have to pop in again sometime 
Yesterday we drove out to Wilderness for lunch at Pomodoro. I had a lovely bacon and Gorgonzola pasta and a bit of a tan outside in the sun. I also managed to find some honey comb which I have been craving for about 3 years now but have been unable to find (horaay!).
Today we woke up to a windless summer day. After a bit of shopping for this evenings braai we went down to the water park on Diaz beach. We spent about an hour on all the rides and had heaps of fun. After that we went to go and chill in the Jacuzzi and took a long swim in the heated indoor pool.
Being on holiday rocks!
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September 29th, 2007
Welcome back! Yes it has been a while. The run-up to Henriëttes’ departure to the UK consumed a lot of time and the aftermath was spent getting back on track with all the “little things” that had been left undone. We are now the proud owners of two Sphynx cats (we adopted Henriëttes’ babies). They are more than a handful, but they come with an endless supply of cute, so It is futile to get to worked up when they are naughty. Ciara made it onto Die Burger’s website in their photo competition in April. I was quite pleased with myself, they had received over 2000 entries in the first few days and they only posted about 6-8 each day.
I got a nice new Dell Latitude D820 notebook which I am very happy with. I have already had the opportunity to test the next business on-site support and found that Dell were true to their word. My DVD/RW drive started burning coasters. So I mailed them the Saturday, received a reply with a case number on Sunday (remember my warranty is only business days). Monday morning 8:05 I received a call from Dell to confirm where they should courier the drive to. Tuesday morning
8:10 the courier was standing in the reception area with my replacement drive. What an absolute pleasure! So yes buy Dell! They also have a multi-cover option which includes accidental damage and theft, which for me worked out way cheaper than insuring it with my insurer!
We had some good weekends with Donovan and Laurel in Barrydale. They have a really nice wine cellar in the town, I especially enjoyed their pot still 5 year old brandy. We also made a trip up to Mossel Bay to visit Henriëttes’ folks. I got up early one morning and took a walk on the beach. I managed to take some nice pictures.
Good friends of mine Derek and Meg got engaged (about time - who am I to talk). Congratulations, we are looking forward to the wedding day!
Leon (who has been more diligent at maintaining his blog than I) and I spent an afternoon walking around in the Intaka wetlands situated next to Canal Walk (sadly they don’t seem to have their own website). I never realised how big it was! It is literally teaming with bird life, so I can highly recommend that everyone goes to see it. The only thing that is a bit of a joke is that they claim to be an award winning wetland stretching 16 hectares. However the whole Century City area was a massive NATURAL wetland before they drained most of it and started construction. So while you may be doing your bit for the environment you are still hypocrites.
I have a heap of picture to sort and upload so keep an eye out in the coming weeks.
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March 23rd, 2007
Sunday evening we had a final braai with Rob, Henriëtte and Henriëtte’s parents before Rob left for London on Wednesday. The mood was rather dark, but everyone tried to keep a brave face. I kept thinking: this is the last braai in the back yard, the last few drinks together, the last time we’ll all be together (for a while at least). The goodbyes at then end of the night were difficult and emotional.
We went through on Tuesday evening and helped Ron sort out some last minute items before departure early Wednesday morning. It ended up being a classic all nighter, but I managed to catch a hour or two before getting woken up to escort Rob to the airport. I felt a bit like Judas delivering Rob to the Romans (well the English at any rate), but at least I didn’t get paid for it 
Check in was painless (Rob’s hand luggage weighed almost as much as his luggage - haha). We watched the sun rise from News Café while having a last drink and a bite to eat. We made some jokes and took pictures of Henriëtte wearing her invisibility cloak (watch Eric the Viking). Then suddenly it was really time for Rob to go. Goodbyes suck and they suck even more when you know it’s pretty much for good. Rob and Henriëtte have been really good friends to us for a long time now and the bonds run deep, having them severed so suddenly is tough.
We wish you both the best in your new life “on the island” and hope to see you again soon!
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March 23rd, 2007
I just got spammed with backlinks to all sorts of questionable websites, so comments have been disabled until I can find a better verification system.
Posted in Rant | No Comments »
March 16th, 2007
I decided it was time to start printing some of my pictures. So I went to Canal Walk and gave Kodak and Photo Connection the same 15 photos to print as a test. The results were rather surprising. The prints from Kodak were really dark, something which is probably fixable. The pictures from Photo Connection, in stark contrast, were crisp and bright so it was not difficult to pick the winner.
One thing that I did however notice was that there was a serious amount of cropping and resizing going on. Kodak had cropped the top and bottom and Photo Connection had resized them to fit leaving large white borders on the sides. Both of these options did not really thrill me and what thrilled me even less was the thought of having to go and crop/resize all my pictures manually for an optimal fit.
So I went digging to find out what the deal was. The “standard” print size nowadays is jumbo which is 15 x 10cm. If you divide 10 into 15 you get a ratio of 1.5. So I then took the dimensions of my digital images which, at its largest, is: 2816 x 2112. When divided it gives you a ratio of 1.3333. “Aha!” I thought, “this explains it all, but how does one solve this?”. So I started looking at simply changing the dimensions of my pictures to fit, but that looked terrible. I then started looking around for a bulk cropping tool, but I was not very enthusiastic about it. I then happened to notice on the Kodak envelope there was an additional size option listed: 18 x 13cm. This gave me a ratio of 1.3846 which was almost perfect. I then called Photo Connection to find out if they could print this size, I was informed they did not, but there was a digital print size called 6DSC which is 15 x 11.25cm and when I crunched the numbers it worked out to a ratio of 1.3333. Horaay!
So it was off to Photo Connection with about 500 pictures. The following day I received a call to find out if I was sure I wanted all the pictures printed (I did). After all they had a special on and at R1.39 a print it was a great deal. Oh no, that only applied to the Jumbo size, this was going to set me back R2.90 a print (for a mere 1.25cm extra). I did however manage to talk them down to R2.40 a print. So I went ahead with the order. I was not disappointed. They did an excellent job, and while it cost me a lot it was worth it not having to look at cats with missing ears and people with no foreheads. I also bought photo albums specially for the size which set me back R100 each, but can take 300 photos.
So photography is working out to be an expensive, but enjoyable hobby.
Something else that Leon showed me is the ability to compile your own photo book. You can download free software from My Photo Book to compile your book, then hand in a CD at any participating store and they produce a bound book with the cover of your choice. Pretty nifty!
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »
March 16th, 2007
I’m trying to catch up on blogging all the items that have flown by in the last month or so…
We got our wedding pictures from Zani sometime in January. They are absolutely stunning, everyone who has seen them has been impressed. The small holding provided such a nice backdrop and Zani really made good work of it. So for those of you needing a photographer we can definitely recommend her We also got some great pictures from some of our friends who attended. Thank you all!
Posted in Life | 2 Comments »
January 18th, 2007
We went to Maynardville Open-Air Theatre on Tuesday to see the production of Romeo and Juliet. We met up with Leon, Sylvia, Wicus, Margie and Stephan before the show for a picknick. Leon talked me into trying some sushi, which was actually pretty good 
. I let them all taste some 99% Lindt, with mixed reactions. LOL. The play was excellent, I did however find myself briefly napping through short bits of it (I blame it on jet lag and lack of sleep).
The first few days of work have been a little disorientating (after a 5 week break) but I’m getting back into the swing of things.
Last night we caught our first glimpse of comet McNaught. What a stunning sight. I called Leon and he was taking pictures out at Big Bay. I’m hoping to catch some pictures myself if the weather clears (yes the rain they have been predicting since Monday finally arrived).
I just updated my WordPress to 2.0.7. It seems there was a rather nasty security flaw and a number of high profile blogs got hacked (fun fun fun).
Oh yes and they have also announced rolling blackouts for the whole of South Africa (grrrr).
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January 14th, 2007
So its been a wild two days back at home. Saturday we picked up Rob and Henriette from the airport and dropped them at home where I had left my one car. It sounded a bit funny when I started it, after being left standing for a month, but I took it for a bit of a drive and everything is fine again. The rest of Saturday was spent doing washing and sorting out the flat. We also had to do some shopping for food etc. The cats still love us, they did actually appear to be happy to see us and have been very attention seeking.
We opened the wedding presents last night. Thanks to everyone for the wonderful gifts; they are really appreciated. The new kettle came just in time as the old one started leaking again.
Today we went to my parents house for a braai with Salome’s family. We showed them all the pictures we had taken and gave them the presents we had bought for them on the trip.Â
I intend to go back and update the posts I made while touring Europe. It will be mostly to fix the formatting introduced by the email client on my phone and to clean up spelling errors. I will however also add more detail if I remember something entertaining and some links to places of interest.
Tomorrow is back to work after 5 weeks of holiday!
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January 12th, 2007
We are back! Flights were uneventful (thank goodness) we did however manage to get squeezed in between two screaming kiddies on our first flight. Salomé also had some problems equalizing on the decent which was rather unpleasant.
Customs let us pass straight through, horaay!
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