Notes from the Cape

Spread the Story, Stop the Disease

2008-10-03T19:43:02+02:00

You need to see these photographs. They're both powerful and moving. They highlight the awful disease XDR -TB (the so-called drug-resistant TB), a new and deadly form of tuberculosis that is threatening to become a global pandemic. This is already a massive problem in South Africa.

By viewing and passing on this link we can help to spread awareness, which is the first step to halting the disease. XDRTB.ORG (http://www.xdrtb.org/)

(As background, the photographs were taken by leading photojournalist James Nachtwey and were 'unveiled' on October 3rd, 2008 in more than 50 cities on seven continents as a deliberate attempt to highlight this new danger faced by the world.)

Tags: XDR -TB James Nachtwey

Pinotage on Tap

2008-09-28T20:02:42+02:00

We have just got back from the Diemersfontein Pinotage on Tap festival in Wellington. And that is exactly what it is - Pinotage on Tap.

When you arrive, you are given a wine glass and a picnic hamper, and from then on you help yourself to the new release of the Diemersfontein Pinotage - straight from the barrel.

Pinotage on Tap

The Diemersfontein is famous for it's chocolate flavours, hence its nick-name "the Chocolate Pinotage". It really tastes like rich dark chocolate.

No Imitations!

Aside from the picnic hamper, there is loads of food, including strawberries and a chocolate fountain - all you had to do was to help yourself.

Strawberries and chocolate fountain

Live music was provided, the highlight for me being James Stuart (remember the Usual and Bright Blue?)

James Stuart

It was a very relaxing and chilled out Saturday afternoon, but if you did feel at all stressed, you could go and shoot some paintball.

Paintball!

We were very lucky with the weather. It was raining all week, but Saturday dawned sunny and clear, but the ground was still very wet - just have a look at my foot. I suppose that this is a bit like a more civilized version of Woodstock!

Muddy feet

Lynne, Craig and Lois

Our good friends Rory and Lynne

We went up to Wellington with Rory and Lynne, and we spent the night at a really lovely guest house, ending off the evening with a chilled out braai, and then a well deserved sleep!

Pinotage is a uniquely South African grape.

Tags: Pinotage on Tap wine Diemersfontein Wellington

National Braai Day

2008-09-21T16:25:18+02:00

Don't forget the September 24 is National Braai day (BBQ for the rest of the world). It has been cunningly planned to be on the same day as Heritage day, which is of course a public holiday.

Braai Day - 2005

So, don't forget to invite all your friends, buy some wors and chops, and go and have a letter South African braai (oh, don't forget the beer).

Beer Chicken - Braai Day 2006

Or, you can do what we are doing and have a braai on Tuesday evening, so we can sleep late on Wednesday.

To find out more about braai's, have a look at Wikipedia

Tags: South Africa braai day bbq heritage day

A case of poor engineering

2008-09-16T13:13:47+02:00

Recently, Lilly, who are one of the major manufactures of insulin, changed he design of on of their insulin pens. One would think that a major pharmaceutical company would spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that the pens work fine, wouldn't you? Apparently not! Take a close look at the images below.

Can you see how the needle on the top pen sticks out over the end of the closed en on the bottom? Yes, if you put a needle onto the insulin pen, the needle sticks out by about 3mm, and the cap is too short to fit onto the pen. So, you either have to switch to a shorter needle, or get a new pen!

Here you can see how the cap will not fit with the needle attached.

Pretty poor design...

Two onions to Lilly!

Tags: orchids and onions Lilly insulin pen

A beautiful spring day

2008-09-13T16:41:19+02:00

This morning awoke with a hint of what Summer is going to be like. It was a gorgeous, sunny and wind-free morning. So, I celebrated it by going cycling (since I have just registered for the Argus Cycle Tour next year). I was not the only cyclist on the road - there must have been at least 100 or more enjoying the fine weather.

My original intention was to just cycle to Simonstown, but somehow I was having such a great cycle, that I ended up cycling all the way to Millers Point - about 2/3 of the way to the Cape Point nature reserve. The total distance that I covered was just over 40km - which is the furthest that I have been since my back surgery in December last year.

Looking from Millers Point across False Bay towards Muizenberg - it is only 20km, but it looks much further in the photo!

Well, my back behaved beautifully, in fact the only part of me feeling any pain was my backside - more time in the seat will sort that out! Oh, and my legs are starting to hurt a little!

Being out on the road again was really invigorating, my mind cleared, I felt fresh, and I spent a good two hours enjoying nature (and of course the traffic jam on the roadworks in St James).

I took this while stuck in roadworks - the world's ugliest train on the world's most beautiful track

The cyclists were not the only ones out on the road - I also saw several groups of SCUBA divers gearing up; getting ready to enjoy the clear water.

False Bay - as calm as it gets (it is called False Bay because the 'real bay' is Table Bay on the West Coast of Cape Town)

The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest in the world, yet is has the most variety of any floral kingdom in the world. The spring flowers are just starting to come out. It is kind of odd - for about 2 weeks in spring, the local bushes burst into bright flowers, and then the flowers dissapear as quickly as the appeared, to appear again in a year.

Fynbos (finebush) flowers

It was a bit of a relief to get caught in the Fish Hoek main road traffic. In a stretch of 500m, there are 4 traffic lights! Fish Hoek is really pretty, but very conservative. They are the only suburb in South Africa (as far as I know) that does not allow the selling of alcohol. In fact, there was a huge outcry when restaurants were allowed to serve alcohol.

Fish Hoek Main Road

So it was great to be back on the road, and I am feeling so inspired to get out there and continue my training!

(sorry about the poor picture quality, that is the best my phone will take)

Tags: Cape Town Fynbos Cycling Spring Fish Hoek False Bay

Never Forget

2008-09-11T09:22:06+02:00

Craig Strachan

1 million Mp3's on your PC

2008-09-10T15:25:11+02:00

Yesterday, I watched a technology presentation by Chris Anderson on TED.COM, recorded in 2004. He said that in 2008 (ie: now) you would be able to store 1 million songs on a hard drive costing about $400. Now, assuming that a MP3 is about 4meg big, you will need 4 million meg to store 1 million songs, or approx 4 Terabytes.

So I took this to the test. Currently, you can buy a 1 TB hard drive from BestBuy for $150, so a 4 TB drive will be about $600, so not too far off. In fact, it will probably be spot on by the end of the year. Hey, wait a year and you will probably be able to store 2 million songs.

Locally, a 750gig drive from Chaos is about R1600, which equates to approx R8500 for 4 TB of storage.

But what is really scary is that you can store over 1 million songs on your home computer for less than R10000, which is less than 10c per song! Now just pause and think about that. We can freely share music (mostly illegally) at no cost, and store it at an igsignificant cost. So, how is that going to affect the music industry?

Food for thought...

By the way, if the average song is about 5 minutes long, your new collection of 1 million songs will take about 9 1/2 years to play in its entirety!

Is it really spring today?

2008-09-01T09:33:19+02:00

Today, the first of September, is supposed to be the start of spring, when you can start putting the winder blankets and clothing away, and to start thinking about going to be beach, sundowners at the Brass Bell, and of course long afternoon braais.

Well, you could have fooled me. Yesterday was one of the coldest days this year (at least it felt that way) - I counted four hail-storms in the afternoon, and it snowed on the mountains - at the end of August!

These pictures of my garden were taken at 12:50pm - in the middle of the day.

While I can't wait for spring to arrive in full force, I think that we are going to need a little more patience before it arrives.

Toastmasters International Convention - opening

2008-08-15T09:53:00+02:00

The International Convention opens with a parade of the flags of all 90+ countries in which Toastmasters is represented. Because Lois is District Governor, she carried the flag of South Africa, and because I was feeling politically-minded, I carried the flag Zimbabwe.

Lois - South Africa

What I did not realise at the time is that because the flags are paraded in alphabetical order, the Zimbabwe flag is the very last flag to be presented before the flags of the host country and the flag of the home country (ie: Canada and USA).

Zimbabwe and Zambia

We have got three Toastmasters clubs in Zimbabwe, so I hope that I showed a little support for them.

Two really big countries, and a really small one (USA, Canada and Zimbabwe) - the current US to Zim dollar exchange rate is approx 1 US $ to 2.5 million Zim $

Safe in Calgary - but almost never made it

2008-08-08T20:31:00+02:00

We arrived in Calgary, Canada last night. However, we almost did not make it. We were flying out of Philadelphia airport via Toronto, but when we went to check in, it seemed that were were booked onto an earlier flight, but via Denver! There had been some miscommunication between me and the travel agent!

Thank goodness that there wa extra space available on the Toronto leg. So, 3 orchids to the very helpful lady from Air Canada that managed to sort everything out for us so that we could get onto the Toronto flight.

Calgary is a very pretty (and clean) city. Downtown has loads of great restaurants and pubs, mostly located on 8th Ave - Steven's Walk.

Calgary Downtown

We had dinner at the Unicorn which was a great pub. I was told that they do the best fish and chips in the world, and they were pretty fine. We will go back later this week.

Not to be missed is the Calgary Tower, a climb of over 540 feet, with a great panoramic view from the top. They even have a section where you can stand on glass, and look straight down - an adrenalin inducing experience.

A long way down...

View from the top of the Calgary Tower