Old age makes you blinder

I have worn glasses or contact lenses since the age of 11 or so and am short sighted, as well as having astigmathism. I now wear contact lenses most of the time, only taking them out in favour of glasses late at night when my eyes become tired.

Last night while taking out and cleaning my contacts I managed to tear one. Not really a huge issue in this age of disposables, except that I was wearing the last pair from a six pair box. So this morning I had to wear my glasses but unfortunately they don’t correct my vision as well as they might, working well close-up but not too well at distance. I am not comfortable driving with them so I got another older pair out and wore those while driving. They correct my vision perfectly at distance but not so well close-up.

I was lucky enough to get an optometrist appointment this morning and went off for a check-up. It seems that I have reached that stage in my life where a single lens is not able to fully correct my vision and the optometrist recommended a pair of reading glasses to be worn over my contacts. Although I can see perfectly well up close with the contacts, the reading glasses will give a little bit of extra help that will give me more comfort and less eye strain. I had never heard of this before and found it quite odd but according to this page it is an accepted practice, and if getting used to bifocal contacts is anything like getting used to bifocal glasses I prefer the reading glasses option.

My site is fixed

Thanks to some assistance from our BOFH I have got my web site working again. Note though that I haven’t updated it in a long time. I will remedy that but I’m still not sure just what use I want to make of it. The main problem is that due to firewalls and other security issues I can’t update it from home, which means I have to edit an offline copy and sync it onto the server when I go to work. This is fine normally, but when I’m on leave it makes things a little awkward, and of course there are those evenings when I want to host something quickly from home, in which case I’m buggered. It is also a static site, making updates tedious to apply. I should probably just take some time to make it dynamic and perhaps build in some kind of remote updating mechanism, but time is limited and there are so many other things I would like to do with it.

Clueless, Not Thirsty

Here in the Western Cape province of South Africa, a winter rainfall region, we are having a serious drought, having had very little rain last winter and in previous years. We have had strict water restrictions for several months and these have just been tightened up even further, allowing gardens to be watered with handheld hoses for only 30 minutes per week. No sprinklers may be used and hoses may not be used for washing cars, hosing down paving, etc. Our lawn is dead as are those of many other homes, as we have only been watering shrubs and flower beds.

Earlier this morning I overheard a colleague telling another that she had been cheating by using a sprinkler in the middle of the night because her lawn was dying. She doesn’t care if she is penalised for excessive water use as this will be cheaper than replacing a dead lawn. I’m amazed that people can be so selfish and short-sighted at a time when alternative water sources are being investigated to try and avert the looming crisis. Unless something major happens or is done, it is clear that within a few years this region will have insufficient water to sustain the population. People like my colleague are certainly not helping.

Panoramas

I have been dabbling with panoramic photos, stitched together from several overlapping photos. Mostly these are landscapes or cityscapes but as Sunbathers, the photo below shows this need not always be the case. It was stitched together from four separate hand-held frames. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version. The original, full-sized photo is much more detailed but somewhat too large to display here.

Sunbathers

My Site is Broken

While I have been on leave there have been some networking changes at work that have cut my web site off from the net.  I have tried to fix this from home but wasn’t able to, so I have redirected the URL to this, my blog.  I may fix it when I get backj to work, but I have been contemplating shutting it down and focusing only on the blog as it is far easier to update.  I will give this some more thought and then decide.

Just Incredible

elastigirl Saw The Incredibles last week.  Cool movie, but what really struck me was how hot the Helen Parr/Elastigirl character was.  I can’t say if it was Holly Hunter’s voice, the red hair, the hippy figure or the whole package that did it for me but I have had her in my mind ever since.  Does that seem a little strange, finding a cartoon character hot?

Sublicious

I’ve heard of Subway before but with them being in the US and me being in South Africa I’ve never had the chance to try their sandwiches.  But they are opening franchises here now and there is one in the newly opened extension to our local mall (Somerset Mall) so I have been able to try them.  I am impressed, having bought sandwiches from them twice I can definitely say that these are right up there in the running for the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.  So if you’re in the vicinity of Somerset Mall (or another store) give them a try.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

Ysterplaat 2004

So we went to the air show on Saturday.  We were there at 7am when the gates opened and only left around 6pm when the last aircraft had flown.  Rory and I sat and stood on the flight line all day and I shot over 600 photos.  As you can imagine, I was exhausted and as I am responsible for cooking on weekends we hit McDonalds on the way home.  After eating and a shower I started sorting through my photos from the show but was soon nodding off at my keyboard so I went to bed around 9pm.  Yesterday I had some things to do so it was mid-afternoon before I got to working on my photos.  Sorting the keepers from the throwaways proved a bigger task than I expected so I only managed to process three photos last night.  I expect it will take me at least until next weekend to process and post all the ones I want to display.  Here are the three I have done so far.

2004-12-04_cheetah01

2004-12-04_shackleton01

2004-12-04_buccaneer01

Air Show Fever

After a break of over a year we once again have an air show within striking distance.  So tomorrow, myself and the boys will be off to Ysterplaat AFB to see all the old favourites flying.  This time I have a decent camera so I’m hoping to get some good photos.

A Pleasant Day

My boys went hiking on Table Mountain this past weekend so Mela and I had all of Saturday and Sunday morning to ourselves.  After dropping the boys and some of their scout buddies off at Table Mountain I went down into the city to visit some camera stores.  Although it’s been almost five years since we moved down here I haven’t been into the city centre before so I got a little lost but eventually found my way to a parking garage that was situated between the two stores I planned to visit.  On my way to the first store I found a bargain book store and bought a few older British photo mags at really cheap prices.  I was actually visiting the camera stores to buy a 58mm to 5mm step-down ring but ended up coming away without one, but with a monopod and a photo backpack.

I took Mela for lunch at The Orchard in Grabouw and we continued on to Hermanus.  Looked around the flea market briefly then went down to the cliffs to see if there were any whales about.  There weren’t but we found the whale crier.

whale_crier

He told us that he had spoken to people at Die Kelders in Gansbaai, across Walker Bay and that there were many whales there.  We drove the further 45km there and sure enough there were about 10 whales there quite near to shore.  They were jumping quite a bit and I took some photos but even with my telephoto lens they were just a bit too far away for decent photos.

Mela fancied tea and cake so we thought we would stop in Hermanus for some on the way back but when we got there at 6pm we found that the tourists had all gone home and the coffee shops were either closing or already closed.  Instead we stopped at the Spar and bought a chocolate cream cake, took it home and made our own tea to have with it.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day but it was a bit much for Mela and she felt pretty lousy on Sunday.