psukhe

I've never been able to decide whether these shots look better in black and white or colour. Here's the b/w version. The colour shot is here. Any psukhe reader got a preference?

In times when we feel introspective, it's very easy for things to take on an exaggerated importance. This one didn't. It's real and needs some kind of concerted effort to bring it to a rapid and sudden stop.

I heard someone talking about shark "finning" on the radio last week and found myself shocked at how it affected me. Millions of sharks are being butchered this way annually.

This is a "finned" shark. I'll say no more than it's fins have been hacked-off for soup making and it's body thrown back into the ocean, where it has drowned because it can no longer swim and force water over its gills.

I have no love of sharks, for all the reasons you can imagine. That aside, try and imagine (if you possibly can) how it must have felt during the minutes it lay there, it's life ebbing away.

It seems like forever since Julian (June last year; London) and Laura (October; New York and now London) left to live overseas. As parents we were predictably distressed to see them go, but as emigrators ourselves, we could hardly complain.

Opportunity beckoned them both and if we, or they had had a crystal ball, it’s highly possible that they might have waited out the economic storms of recent months. But foresight isn’t in our genes and off they went. Julian has worked as a waiter and is now moving up the food chain (literally) and found work as a sous chef.

Laura has had lamentably little success finding work anywhere and is now planning to seek greener pastures in Australia.

And, to quote Bill Cosby; “I told you that story, to tell you this one.”

We’re off to London to see our kids on Thursday. We’re both hugely excited at the prospect of us all being together again and chances are, we’ll quickly fall back into our usual food/drink cycle, just like being at home. Julian has already sent me a blizzard of web pages to visit; most featuring pubs that sell real ale, or restaurants that we just have to visit…

Di will also use the opportunity to catch up with her sister as well as some old friends, while I will be able to see my father who is now 84. I plan to see some friends too and am looking forward to indulging myself in a long planned excursion in anorak-land. But more about that another time.

When I booked our flights, the full impact of the economic meltdown hadn’t been felt and Turkish Airlines were offering not only a good deal, but the ability to stop over in Istanbul on our route back. We’re both looking forward to seeing the city that straddles Europe and Asia, with it’s multiple cultures, tastes and sights.

Of course, if we’d booked after Xmas, we could be flying directly to London for half of our Turkish fare. Validating the belief that the best decisions are made in retrospect, this one was no exception. But thinking about it, I’d still rather have the opportunity to stand on the shores of the Bosphorus and watch the sun settle in the west than save a couple of thousand Rand and miss one of life’s great views.

So, we’re off and the one issue that couldn’t wait was the April wallpaper/calendar. It’s posted below. As before download, install and enjoy.

When I re-built the site, I decided that I would update it more frequently, but with less ado. So, less Bing!-s, but more content. If you haven’t yet, bookmark the site and pop back every few days; hopefully, you’ll always find something to look at.

I sent an e-mail to friends and clients recently, asking if they could think of a reason why I shouldn’t cut the umbilical and dump Telkom permanently. I got lots of responses (thanks to all), every one positive, but have yet to put the plan into action.

I’m sure I’ll get to it real soon now ;-)

Meantime, I’ve beefed-up the communication options available and in addition to e-mail, landline and cell phone, you can also find me (as Paul Perton) on any one of the sites below:

I will be away for a couple of weeks from the end of this week and rather than miss the April wallpaper, I'm posting it now. Here is the list of screen resolutions that has been requested. If you don't know which is right for your computer, check your control panels, or whatever the system preferences are called on your computer.

To download, click the one that suits you and depending on which browser you use, the file will automatically download. Either it will arrive as an image inside your browser, or as a JPG file. From your browser, save the file with the same filename to the location where your desktop images are stored. If you received a file, just move it to the appropriate directory. Once done, change your preferences to select the calendar pic as your desktop image.

We've just spent a couple of days up country, visiting Sutherland and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), just a few kilometres out of town.

SALT is the world's largest optical telescope, with a mirror measuring 11m across. It is able to capture light that was emitted around five billion years ago and is the home of many scientists pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. It is about 400km from Cape Town and well worth the visit.

The pic of the telescope below shows the 90-odd mirror panels that make up the reflecting surface. Each mirror weighs around 100Kg and is precision moulded in Russia using a very stable, low thermal co-efficient resin. The units are then sent to Kodak in the US for profiling and finally, aluminium coated at Sutherland before installation. Every mirror is computer controlled and laser aligned before every viewing session.

Here is one of the pics I shot there. I've posted more on Flickr

It is Monday as I start this post. The time is 09:11 and the house should be heaving with workmen.

But it isn’t.

The builder hasn’t pitched to work on the snag list from the alterations which were finished in December. His guys haven’t been here since Wednesday last week, having abandoned their work because of the gale force winds whipping the village. No-one wants to be freeing windows gummed-up with varnish when there are 80 km/h gusts ready to pluck you from your frail perch. That was fine, but the weather today is ideal...

I've been scratching my head for a while, as to how I might post photographs regularly, but without the use of an established forum, like BlipFoto, in which it is all too easy to get lost in amongst hundreds and thousands of other users.

"Well" I thought, "psukhe is due for a facelift, so why not do it there..." My plan is to post regularly, possibly daily depending on what I see and get a chance to shoot.

This first posting is several pics; I simply couldn't decide which one, so posted three ;-)

Here is the list of screen resolutions that has been requested. If you don't know which is right for your computer, check your control panels, or whatever the system preferences are called on your computer.

To download, click the one that suits you and depending on which browser you use, the file will automatically download. Either it will arrive as an image inside your browser, or as a JPG file. From your browser, save the file with the same filename to the location where your desktop images are stored. If you received a file, just move it to the appropriate directory. Once done, change your preferences to select the calendar pic as your desktop image.

A new look psukhe, based on a fully standards-compliant CSS template designed from Free CSS Templates. Dammit, these are tightly written and well-proven designs. I can see no point in re-inventing the wheel and all I am asked to do under their Creative Commons Licence is ensure I have given credit where it is due. Consider that is now done.

The header photo is mine - I plan to change it regularly. This one is almost self-explanatory; a spectacular sunset over the Cape Peninsula.

From a technical perspective, I've spent quite a while personalising the design; making the individual elements do what I want and giving the whole thing my own look and feel. That's the beauty of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - it is possible to do just about anything in just a few lines of code.

Not every part of the site is finished, there are a few things still to be done, but haste got the better of me. I will sort the wallpaper downloads and re-post. I will also start archiving. It would be good to hear your thoughts about the new look - after all, I can design and re-design to my heart's content, but if it doesn't appeal, then I'm pretty much wasting my time.

We had an overseas visitor staying with us recently and took her to some parts of Cape Town that most of us wouldn't normally dream of visiting. The highlight for all of us was Langa, Cape Town's oldest township.

Run by the City of Cape Town from the Guga S'Thebe centre, the tours use local guides and after a brief introductory talk, enabled visitors to walk the streets with a very knowledgeable guide. Nothing is hidden, not even the worst of slum accommodation and overflowing drains.

We spent more than two hours wandering around the southern side of Langa, right as far as the boundary between the N2 Gateway and the N2 highway itself. Here the shacks of Joe Slovo as it is known, rub shoulders with new low rise homes and the established houses that clearly point to this part of Cape Town's palpable middle class.

The guide underscored our own opinions; Langa is peaceful and largely safe. Nearby Guguletu (Gugs to most Cape Townians) is the exact opposite; he said that he would not advise us to go there and was even nervous about entering the township himself.

A great morning out, well organised, well run and (relatively) as cheap as chips. I heartily recommend it. To book contact Bulelane Kula on +27 (0) 73 447 9983.

If you would llike to see some more pics from Langa, hit this link.

Before you ask, the watermark on these pics has become a necessity. The theft of images from sites across the Web has become huge and is still growing. Not for the first time, I was recently sent a collection of "The World's greatest images of 2007" to find myself looking at a photograph that was either taken by someone standing beside me on a very narrow ledge above the Devil's Gorge in Livingstone (Zambia), or it was my pic, that had been pirated from Flickr.

Until that moment, I had been using a Creative Commons License which required anyone using one of my images to do no more than give me a byline credit - in exactly the same way as I was required to acknowledge the code for this site (see "all gussied-up" above).

So, I've changed my mind and scrapped my CC license. The way to stop this kind of pilfering is to be pro-active and watermark my stuff, so I've tried to do it as inconspicuously as possible. If that doesn't succeed, I suppose I'll have to be a bit more heavy handed :-(

Imagine the scene; Oude Libertas Amphitheatre, Stellenbosch, a magnificent balmy evening. Karen Zoid comes on stage and proceeds to rip the evening air to shreds. Waaaaaa! This chick can rock.

Sorry, the pic doesn't do the performance justice.