Capesummer on The Singemonkey

December 08, 2024

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 20:48:49 +0000

From fancy nonsense about old film cameras to a good old phone pic. Had the old man around for lunch and @withoutaleaf introduced him to phō 🍲

I’ve been indulging in 80s nostalgia this weekend. I watched Cobra with Stallone for the first time since I saw it on vhs in about ‘87. Today I watched Pretty In Pink (great but WTAF with those last five minutes?) and we’re going to check out Desperately Seeking Susan properly on my old projector now now. Mostly enjoying catching up on iconic ‘80s movie moments I missed or was too young for at the time.

January 31, 2023

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:38:13 +0000

Today marked two years of our weekly bird count at the Liesbeek Confluence. Terna has had me up for it at 6:30 this year - excruciating for me except that it’s close to the dawn and the light is beautiful. Also Ana had hot rooibos tea and it was a treat sitting on the grass with them and looking out at this familiar scene.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:12:30 +0000

The Boi in one of his brief spells of wakefulness.

Watching lens reviews can sometimes be useful. I discovered this ttartisan 50mm f1.2 is quite a bit less sharp and contrasty focused at its minimum distance at f1.2. So stopping down to f2 makes quite a big difference when focused close like this.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:05:21 +0000

Bun’s current top-favourite spot. We call it her tube.

January 20, 2023

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 12:08:21 +0000

Another perfect day in Africa.

October 29, 2022

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:20:53 +0000

Well I’m sure you’ve all just been dying for another of my blockhouse walk photodocs… I had a cold and was waiting to come right before re-embarking on exercise. Hopefully the fact that I’m typing this rather than lying dead from a stroke means I waited long enough.

For the first time I decided to listen to music on my walk. Well… you add that mountain feeling to those music feelings and you can get pretty close to ecstasy, no lie. I had some thoughts:

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:47:13 +0000

A second of quiet dignity among quite a bit of camera-inspired hamming.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:42:52 +0000

What @sad_ivan once called, “The cheap showiness of nature.” That blorange Cape sunset taking things over the top.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:40:30 +0000

Sunday fun draws to a close chez @goflow42 and @jason66c. Old friends met. New conversations were held. @withoutaleaf cooked up great troughs of mussels in wine and garlic.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:35:59 +0000

Sophie is an old lady now but still full of beans. Enjoying riding in #eljaguarazul avec @sophdex who deigned to let @ezlemoen pilot the sapphire chariot.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:31:00 +0000

This little South Indian place in Newlands was great for lunch at the end of our river walk. But their claims to sell real Nepali momos were a bit exaggerated. Tasty dumplings they were. Nepali momos though? Nah. There’s a real gap in the market for a Nepali restaurant in Cape Town, I think.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:23:49 +0000

A very long time ago they made a little walking route from Rondebosch through to Claremont along the Liesbeek. Even though most of it here is canalised, it’s still a very lovely walk from Observatory to Newlands for lunch on a summer’s day - especially because the locals all along the route have planted up a storm of flowers. Although it’s a domesticated section of the river, there’s still no shortage of life, such as a pair of African Black Ducks with a small swarm of ducklings.

October 30, 2021

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 22:20:10 +0000

Perched where she can see who goes up and down the stairs.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:36:41 +0000

This guy asked me to take his pic when he saw me with my camera this morning near the Observatory station. He’s a local and I used to know his name, but was all thinking about camera stuff and forgot to ask. So there’s a weird thing with digital cameras: people are usually satisfied just to see themselves on the back of the camera. Now I’ve got a bit of a scheme. I want to get one of those Instax printers so I can make a print on the spot from the camera. Unfortunately it won’t be this one. The XE1 came out in 2013 and doesn’t have any wireless connectivity. But it’s something I plan to put together in the future because so many people don’t have any pictures of themselves - for memories or to pass on to loved ones. Pics on phones often end up disappearing with those phones. And few people ever have their picture taken by anyone who’s learned much photographic technique. So I’d really like to be able to make a small but high quality print when I take a picture of a someone I’m not in digital contact with. The instax printer uses a photographic printing technique so the quality is a lot better than that of other portable printers - but the prints are about $1 each. So I’d still have to be sparing.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:28:25 +0000

@withoutaleaf and I had breakfast @rust.coffee.bar this morning. It sure is nice to be able to do some quasi-normal things during this lull in the pandemic now that we’re fully-vaxxed. I even got to be in a room with my whole band - six people in total - on Monday evening for two hours. It felt very good indeed after nearly 20 months.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:23:51 +0000

If you’re ok to completely abandon any hope of ever owning your own home, the smashed avocado on sourdough toast @rust.coffee.bar here in Observatory is really damn good. That’s a joke, of course - based on some inequality-justifying hack’s ludicrous argument for why millennials don’t own homes. But not joking about the yumminess of this toast.

October 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 15:22:45 +0000

The calming summer scene of cricketers in their whites. A sport like no other - as if concocted by Oscar Wylde on a hashish binge.

Apologists for the brutal British Empire like to pretend they bestowed all kinds of gifts on the colonies they looted (funny how Japan has all those things anyway despite never being colonised). But the only thing that probably wouldn’t be here had they not been that’s worth a damn is the game of cricket.

January 31, 2021

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 18:04:24 +0000

Trinket enjoying a rainy sunday.

January 23, 2021

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:04:29 +0000

This fat boy is as tranquil as ever - fastidiously washing his face. He’s taken to lounging about in the shade outside - including in flower pots with his limbs hanging out. One day he’ll let me photograph him like that.

January 23, 2021

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:00:57 +0000

Trinket overcome by a truly savage yawn. She at least gets to go out visiting the neighbours by her wall-top pathways.

January 03, 2021

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 13:16:59 +0000

Balcony Birds No. 6. This one was exciting. We’re almost positive this is a juvenile Rufous-Breasted Sparrowhawk. It makes sense that it would be coming around here trying to murder our sparrows. These kinds of hawks are built for manoeuvrability - they can zip between the branches at speed to surprise perching birds.

Aparna spotted this through the window and I was lucky enough to grab some hand-held, unstabilised pics - and got a few decently sharp ones. Lightroom could only partially compensate for the heavy purple fringing due to the older teleconverter dealing with the intense contrast against the sky.

November 14, 2020

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:46:12 +0000

These ones are greater flamingoes - although their pink beaks are underwater. Almost a retro-80s, vapour-wave kinda thing going on with the colour scheme and the ripple patterns.

October 27, 2020

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:05:09 +0000

The strange, Plutonian flowers that @withoutaleaf’s ma left us before they moved back to India - years ago now - have begun to bloom and it’s going to be a bumper year. This is especially enjoyable given my indifferent gardening. It’s still sunny out there so I propped up a sketch pad as a reflector to ease the contrast.

October 26, 2020

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:40:14 +0000

Spoiled Boi got a comfy spot provided under my morning balcony coffee chair. Taking a load off those big paws.

October 26, 2020

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:33:35 +0000

Balcony Birds No. 5. I used to be confused about what this was. It’s not a turtle dove. It’s a red-eyed dove - cunningly named after a feature that’s really difficult to spot with the naked eye. The easier way to tell is that they’re much larger than the Cape Turtle Dove, which is really quite a little thing. The Red-Eyed Dove is almost pigeon sized. It also has a pinky shade to its head and breast while the turtle dove is… dove-grey. They really are lovely, gentle things. Even if they’re not exactly geniuses.

September 01, 2020

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:57:50 +0000

An odd pic of me that @johnthevudio found from 2003.

March 12, 2020

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:09:32 +0000

Skitten has made the rocking chair by the bedroom window its own perfect bed. It even uses my old Tanzanian blanket as a pillow.

February 11, 2020

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 12:31:08 +0000

Remember kids, when you buy your hiking boots, choose with the idea that you might still be wearing them as many years in the future as you’ve been alive to that point. Reducing and reusing are better than recycling.

February 10, 2020

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 12:12:25 +0000

@furiousgreencloud and I climbed up a stairway up the side of this old barn after dark and watched the lightning reveal the distant mountains by lighting them up from behind while the warm wind ripped around us.

February 09, 2020

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 12:05:57 +0000

Meme-tastic. Memes are thoughts that propagate - funny images are just one example. Before Richard Dawkins became a general troll and dickhead, he was a brilliant biologist who changed our understanding by noting that genes seek to propagate - not organisms, which are merely the vessels for those genes. He also hypothesised that human ideas could propagate in a way completely analogous to biological evolution - with ideas simply sticking around because they had the right properties to propagate rather than because they were particularly useful. The term, ‘memes’ was coined to describe these units of idea that could stick and propagate. These little piles of stones seem a pretty fine example to me. Someone made a first one and then…

February 08, 2020

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 09:48:46 +0000

The last light reflecting off the clouds after sunset rides the wine-dark Indian Ocean waters.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 15:49:14 +0000

@furiousgreencloud learns the art of birding the old fashioned way - with a big-ass fieldguide and a pair of West German binoculars. We were visiting her aunt Sharon at her house on a beautiful farm outside Moreesburg. I’m not much of a birder but I hopefully conveyed some of the basics.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 14:15:57 +0000

Getting stoked for the first @krakatoa_band show of the year. @thestripedhorsemuizenberg is such a baller spot to hang out in the summer afternoon - surfers drifting in and out from the beach, comfy chairs, craft beers and cetera.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:48:45 +0000

This struck me as the most South African weekend scene I can imagine - from the end of World War II to today, kids hanging out getting treats on the weekend.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:25:27 +0000

@furiousgreencloud contemplates the sunlight leaving Africa for the Americas with a seagull at Storms River Mouth.

January 25, 2020

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 20:55:26 +0000

A boat heading into the sunset - a rather tedious metaphor for mortality.

January 25, 2020

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 20:53:48 +0000

I’m having one of my oldest and dearest friends, @furiousgreencloud, to stay. It’s always been too long. I’m having a knee issue so we took the cable car up and skulked among the fynbos on a beautiful windless evening atop the mountain.

January 09, 2020

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 18:04:10 +0000

Winter caught us on the way to the Striped Horse where they’ve got a fire going in January.

December 09, 2019

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 16:47:17 +0000

This little dude was super bored out to lunch and was amusing himself by playing a game with @withoutaleaf which involved squishing his nose against the glass. When he actually licked it his people thought maybe it was time to intervene. May he carry his eccentricity with him through life.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:34:02 +0000

The braaimaster of the day. Tanya decided she was going to leave the souties to handle the braaiing. Astonishingly we actually had edible food without burning the place to the ground. But it’s still usually better to leave the fire to Afrikaaners who know what they’re doing.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:31:04 +0000

Just because he’s a madman doesn’t mean you don’t want to know him. Wild Frank will always be wild.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:29:23 +0000

A very dear friend who I don’t think has ever appeared on my insta before. A man with a giant heart. One of our greying gang of school friends.

November 22, 2019

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:21:42 +0000

Skitten is adoring its balcony. It says “ak” and “gnka” out of pure enjoyment when we’re out there in the mornings soaking up sun and tea. This change of house has been an enormous quality-of-life bump for our little old Maatjiesfontein lady.

November 22, 2019

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:18:18 +0000

Trinket is being pretty conventional this summer - taking her 19 hrs a day mostly in bed.

November 22, 2019

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:16:25 +0000

Summer updates. Our chonky chap is still improving his mid-morning sleeping technique.

November 10, 2019

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 08:53:46 +0000

Another Sunday morning kibble run for hangry kitties. This time in summer.

February 25, 2019

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 12:34:58 +0000

I literally got every detail of our weekend gig wrong - except the venue. It’s on SUNDAY the 3RD at 3PM.

To be fair it wasn’t all my fault. Plz pass on to interested parties. .

February 22, 2019

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 19:24:15 +0000

I don’t know what time it’ll be and I misspelled Muizenberg. But it’ll be a reverb-soaked spectacle.

February 19, 2019

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 23:06:03 +0000

Every so often they sleep snuggled up like when they were babies.

Slow photography months for me. Today I spent a mind frazzling time learning about 5 months worth of Javascript in 24hrs. #fakingittilyouremakingit might be the single strongest way to learn. They should teach airline pilots that way. “Just get in the cockpit. Sound confident on the intercom. Google the startup procedure. One of our experienced pilots will email you back within two hours if you get really stuck. #bigkittens #gremmies #catsofinsta #salaciouscrumb #effietrinket #crumb #trinket #sleepycats #capesummer

February 11, 2019

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 18:18:41 +0000

My daft boy derping out with his tongue out.

February 07, 2019

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 12:47:08 +0000

Summertime sleepiness for Skitten and her no.1 fan, Mr. Salacious Crumb.

January 21, 2019

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:04:36 +0000

I used to be mystified by salad. I have no idea why. It’s super easy but it seemed like sorcery for some reason.

January 15, 2019

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 15:01:49 +0000

Back home in Obz. We’re tired. So #tacotherapy .

December 09, 2018

Sun, 09 Dec 2018 14:21:56 +0000

Here we are again. Linko’s Sichuan 🌶 beef soup. The hottest thing I’ve tasted in Cape Town. And it’s low carb if that’s your deal.

December 06, 2018

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 18:21:27 +0000

We’re eating with a view of Cape Town’s mysterious Theosophical Society headquarters.

October 31, 2018

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 12:43:35 +0000

Early lunch at Hello Sailor. It really looks like summer out there on Obz lwr Main. Listening to a podcast about Qt and the future of being able to package python projects for execution.

October 31, 2018

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 11:09:38 +0000

This Saturday afternoon at SurfaRosa in Cape Town. We commence the summer at a braai session. Our most exciting show of the year. Start the summer right. Braai on the pavement. Craft-beer, cocktails, pizza, and blood-stirring live music inside.