We visited Bulshoek

As a company we went away to Bulshoek dam this weekend. It is located a couple of kilometers on the other side of Clamwilliam. I have added some of the non-work-related pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Panaramic of Cape Town

Last weekend I took the camera out around Cape Town and took some panoramic pictures. I am loading them to show how beautiful the mountain can be. ;)

Panoramic Cape Town

Since I don't have Internet access at home at the moment I will not be able to update as often as I like. When I get the opportunity. I will pop a new picture on the blog.

Shy Guevaras

Last night we went to Klein Libertas in Stellenbosch to go and see Shy Guevaras perform live. Charl and Dedre invited us to join them. Charl works with some of the band members. I took the trusty Camera along to snap up some pictures and video.

I really enjoyed this evening. The bands performed on a stage outside. The weather was absolutely perfect and the music was awesome. I will be donating the pictures to the band so that they can sort through them for their website etc.
Check out their website for some song downloads. If you get the opportunity to see them live, do so. It was worth the drive to go and see them.

I will post some pictures of the other bands (Bed on Bricks and Taxi Violence) once i have sorted through them.

I will also try and upload a video I made of one of Shy Guevaras' s songs.

Gone Fishing

We got up at 6 this morning, took a drive out to Brandvlei near Worcester ( about 100km from Cape Town). The Stean, Charl and some other friends (that don't have blogs ;) wanted to go fishing. We went along for moral support and taking pictures.
Here is a dragon fly that I caught on "Film". Here is a picture of some of the guys fishing in a stream that runs under the N1 (Highway running out of Cape Town.) it is a bit of a walk, but worth it. If I wasn't taking pictures, I would probably have swam here.When I got home this evening, I saw this nice cloud formation...
I also have to put another sunset picture ;)

The Sun sets over the weekend

The weekend is over and nothing much to say. A nice sunset on Saturday.


The clouds made some interesting formations. I think we should go somewhere and get some sun rise pictures sometime.

From the beach

Took this picture over the weekend before the sun set. i have always loved the way that the sun beams shine out from behind the clouds.

Thanks to you.

I have been checking the stats for the blog and have found that there are a few people that come visit on a regular basis.
I would like to thank you and I would like to hear from you. Please send me an email or a comment so that I can hear what you like and don't like about the blog. Also I would like to hear what kind of pictures you would like me to go look for. :)

A visit to the beach

After returning from a client this afternoon I decided that we must get out and do something outside. So we drove out to Bloubergstrand to take some pictures of the sunset.

There was some amazing sights with the sun disappearing behind the clouds and breaking through small holes.

The last picture here is of the sun breaking through the clouds over Robben Island.

Emergency photo shoot.

I received a phone call this evening: " Hello?...Hi?..Leon....Can you hear me?... are you getting pictures of it?" I opened the curtains and saw why the phone call. Thank you Salome and Emile , Again... ;) The sky was almost on fire.

What a sun set.

Thank you Emile, I had to take a short drive to get these but I think it was worth it.
So far I am impressed with the quality of the pictures of the Panasonic FZ-50.

Rooivalk

I have finished working through all the pictures and have also uploaded a video I made of the South African Rooivalk performing a 360 loop at the AAD 2006:

Africa Aerospace and Defense 2006 show at Ysterplaat

We left early this morning to get a good parking spot and see as much as possible before there was to many people. We spent most of the morning walking through the displays. Some amazing vehicles and arms.
I will post most of my pictures on my PicasaWeb space. We got to see the last flying Shackleton, ThunderCity's 4 restored English Electric Lightnings, the Rooivalk do a loop, the new Gripen Fighter jet, and a "missing wing man flyby" by the Silver falcons as a tribute to the pilot that crashed and died in the sea on Friday afternoon. My condolences to the family and friends. I will try to post one or two of the video as well and update here accordingly ;)

Just click on this picture to see the entire gallery of pictures.

Africa Aerospace and Defence 2006

Sep 23, 2006 - 119 Photos

Finally a picture to post

I took these pictures today as the sun was setting. It has been a while since I have been able to get a decent picture or any picture for that matter. i hope that you enjoy these. If ever anyone wants better quality versions of these pictures please contact me.

Tomorrow I am going to the air-and defence show at Ysterplaat so I hope to have some more pictures to put online tomorrow night.

New Camera

I have finally got my new camera ( Panasonic DMC-FZ50 ). I have not had a chance to take any pictures yet. I will be going to the airshow at Ysterplaat Air force base on Saturday. Will take a few pictures there.

Will also be going to Bredasdorp on Sunday to go visit some family. Hope to have something to publish by then.

Free Energy?

Well, this is not from Cape Town, but it sure are hell would help around here. I found the story on Digg first. It looks like this Irish company found a way to generate more energy from an electro-magnetic reaction, than they put in. So I thought lets start finding more about this company and this story. Here are some of the interesting links that I have found so far. Remember that you can't believe everything that you read on the Internet. :)

Here is the Patent Pending. Interesting read.

Steorn's homepage

Someone of the forums reported that they had similar theories 8 years ago but could not prove it. (Then 12 hours later he is no longer sure about it and he original post has been removed.)

Search results for Google News on Steorn

A blog entry where Eric Burger discusses the Video challenge that Steorn made to the Scientific community.

Here is a news entry on the Irish Post website regarding the research that Steorn was involved with in May 2006 and earlier.

Here is a bit more details about the patent and devices that they are working with.

Some other Magnetic related devices that has to date not seem the market place...

MEG

Hoax?
Why post this story on a games site?

Connection with Halo 3 of XBOX 360?


I will wait for the results to see what happens, if anything before stating that this is a working solution. There has been many similar stories where people find ways of doing something better and then just get sweeped under the rug...

This is an experiment for me to see what the Internet and the news will report around this story.

The 3 main lines that people seem to follow are:
1. a marketing scheme to get email addresses,
2. a huge marketing scheme for the Xbox 360 (Halo 3) and a lot of work would have been put in to make this an advertising hoax
3. there could possibly be some truth in this.

Time will tell.

Blogger Beta

Tonight when I checked my blog, I saw that there is an option to sign in for the Blogger Beta so i signed up. Thought this was going to be painful exercise, but was pleasantly surprised at how well to conversion went. the new Control Panel is a dream to use and the live editing is brilliant.

Now to just get a new camera to post more new pics. I told Bret from The Spot that I would try and post a Panoramic shot of Sutherland. I will now try and upload this picture.

Oe,Oe, the spell checker in the Beta Blogger is also a bit nicer and faster to use... Now lets hope that I type the correct words for it to try and check... ;)

No update yet...

Thursday and nothing yet. Nothing found and the police hasn't updated me yet.

Petrol price just went up with 31c per liter. Interest rates went up today with 0.5%. House prices still going up on average.

At least I found the invoices for the stolen items and can hopefully claim for it now. I just hope that this will at least work out.

Police Update...

Today at 14:00 the inspector that is looking at our case gave me a call.
He said about 30 minutes before our burglary another house was burgled close by. He thinks that they are related. I gave him some more information that I got from the neighbor and the landlord and he said that they will look into it more tomorrow. He will give me a call when he has more information.
I really appreciated that he took the time to give me a call on a Sunday afternoon.

We were talking about crime in general last night at a friend's house warming. It was actually sickening to think that here in South Africa we have been conditioned to the crime in such a way that we are just glad that nothing happened to us. We almost take the crime for granted. I am really starting to wonder how this compares to the rest of the world.
We don't see anything about the "petty" crimes in the news local or abroad, so how bad is it really everywhere else?

The really scary thing is that almost everyone you know in South Africa has been affected by crime in some way or another. We have had at least 3 break-ins at our office over the years. We just beef up the security every time.

Got Robbed. Part 2

The Finger print people were here now. They checked the doors and anything where we thought the person might have tried to look for things to steal, but no fingerprints were found.

The neighbor says that he suspects a white guy that may live in one of the houses in the street behind ours, standing empty. There are 2 houses that has been standing empty for couple of months already.

Just got robbed!!!

I woke this morning at 5:55 with someone bumping into a small table. I thought it was my girlfriend going to the bathroom, but then I saw she was still lying next to me. So I kept quiet and watched the person walk slowly past the bed to the bathroom. The person switched the light on, went in and closed the door. I woke my Girlfriend and told her to get out of the house immediately.
As soon as we got out of the house I called 112 the Vodacom emergency service and explained my situation. They said they would send someone. The person was still in the house at that stage.
Nothing happened for 20 minutes. I called the Police directly and explained my situation again. They said that they would send someone. We checked the back of the flat and found my wallet, my girlfriend's bag and a lot of other stuff that was thrown there. So the person had left. Another 15 minutes passed with me standing on the cold. The Police van stopped in the driveway with about 7 officers. It was the van that drops the off-duty officers at home after a shift change. I explained that the person must have left the house. They drove off to see if they could find the person in the area.

Another 20 minutes passed and 2 officers arrived. They looked through the flat, took our details and opened a docket. We could now asses that they took my Work backpack which contained my Digital Camera and as well as my Girlfriends Laptop. The Samsung laptop is useless to them since it doesn't have a working battery and they left the power cord. Then it has a BIOS password set and even then it is German laptop with German Windows. It is basically useless to anyone else, but her research results of 4 years hard work are stored on it. If anyone finds such a laptop or my Konica Minolta A200 with a camera bag and other accessories PLEASE contact us, leave a comment on the blog or contact the police. There will be a generous reward if the laptop/data can be recovered!

Edit: 2006-07-29 08:49
Do you know that they even took my girlfriend's toothbrush. The TOOTHBRUSH. No cash. My wallet was emptied, but I had no cash in it and my girlfriend's wallet was not touched and it had cash in. No cards taken.

What do we do now?

Edit: 2006-07-29 08:49
We found that he didn't take my digital camera battery charger, but he took my cellphone charger.