Lightning Quick Post

A Welcome to Steevo in cali. Steevo is one of those special people we can only hope our kids come into contact with while they go through the school system. I love the 'activism' in his posts. Steevo is a high schoool teacher, and a no nonsense all round good guy.

We having freaky weather here... A typical summer afternoon thunderstorm at 6am on an early winters morning? With hail? wtf is that about? Nearly crapped myself when lightning hit a tree or something in the park over the road while I was still dreaming about making out in parking lots....

Had to rush downstairs to unplug the PC. I have lost 3 power supplies, a mother board and graphics card in the last two years due to the phenomenal lightning we get here.

I took these a couple of summers ago....

A quickie

Welcome first to Le New Follower: Randy Pennington. Perhaps I am just doing something wrong, but if you have a blog or a profile at the very least, please comment somewhere here so I can make the welcome more official by linking to you. EDIT: I suddenly realised who you are Or just pop in and say hi :) Perhaps even drop me a mail (it's on my profile) and let me know a bit about you... I will have sleepless nights otherwise - like I do cos I know so little about Torchy!boi.

So today was uneventful.. My youngest joined me cos the ex is off to some social (obviously child-unfriendly) thing. But that's typically closet lesbian (Did that sound a little bitter?)

We watched a couple of DVD's. I made pasta for late lunch, then we joined Iain for a sundowner at Le English Pub (Not to be confused with Le Irish Regular). It's closer and next door to the Rasta style place where Iain was meeting his gf later. He made a bit of an ass of himself trying to show off his enormous general knowledge of the universe, fucking it up spectacularly. Luckily my daughter knew more about what he was talking about than he did. Let's not forget that she takes after Dad in the knowledge department. Hmpphh... He lost some points today - in both our books. Sadly, he is irritating me more and more as time passes. How do you break up with a friend?

Then Patrick texted me to tell me he is having a beer with an old school friend of ours (whom we both had the hots for, and who is rumoured to be closet). So I answered that he should tell G that anyone who drinks [insert beer brand] has got be gay. No answer yet lol. And no talk of Cape Town hehe.... methinks he was in drunk and horny texting mode last night. I guess the week will unfold the plot.

Client came to collect some Photoshop work today. Happy as always of course. We went through some photo's for an album I am putting together - he will be back tomorrow after I have done the layout so we can order it all online and pay with his card.

The afternoon beer has made me sleepy as it is apt to do, so I am off to bed. Shit, I am following so many blogs now, it is becoming difficult to keep up and comment where I need to.

Sometimes I feel like this...

Welcome!

And a warm welcome to Andrew from Boy Around Brisbane. He is quite new to our little commmunity, so pop in and have a beer with him. I mentioned to him in a comment that Brizvegas is one of my favourite cities in the world. Partly because one of my favourite people in the world has made it her home for the last twelve years. And let's not forget Surfer's Paradise during schoolies....

And some more pics from my album...

I know he won't mind me posting pics of him on the net. I used a friend's studio and we all got wondefully happy on red wine afterwards.

Seagulls of course

Seen at my birthday party this year :) and I didn't even have to pay for him to be there

From The Sethy Album of Proud Pics

Rescue work during floods

Sunset from the balcony of where I used to live. I miss the place.

In the Karoo. They bite. Really hard.

My favourite beach. The water is cold most of the year, but in midsummer, it is welcoming and a magnificent snorkelling and scuba spot. Situated within the Storms River Mouth Nature Reserve. I never swam this day, but my daughters braved it. Pretty much the whole day.

The Beacon Isle Hotel - Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

Poll Time!

So since I don't know from Google Analytics how old my visitors are, and since I am a bit of a stats whore, I really would like to know what age groups are actually popping in here.

Since I love to ramble, and offer unsolicited advice sometimes, it would be nice to know to who and how it should be directed.

And a little reward below for your efforts...

Some more 1,000 post pics

Our Luxury military accomodation during the summer

All the crap we had to lug with us on our 150km outing

Taking time to enjoy the countryside on our outing

Ooooo.... Army shooty thing. I used to train boys on how to use these things

Our luxury accomodation on our little outing
I had a wet dream one night in my fn sleeping bag (wtf?)

Some pics to go with the 1,000 things

My last Jump
It was a show jump into an Agricultural show in the middle of nowhere.
The pilot doubled as the photographer...

The pilot was a mad fuck!
(I think all para pilots are)
Water Jump to qualify for my "C" License
It was really weird jumping with an old "C9" for this

Initiation into the para-club after my first jump :)
And all I got was Coke afterwards!

Good old Cessna Super Skymaster
Beautiful to fly, but highly impractical.

Piper Twin Commanche
A Bitch to land...

Some pics

I'm a little down, so just thought I would post some more beach pics.

Client still hasn't paid, so I am broke as fuck. It's depressing as hell.

Enjoy....

I Hate Politics

What is it about African Politics?

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has just announced the dropping of all charges against Jacob Zuma due to 'political interference' in determining the timing of announcing charges against him These charges involve bribery and corruption. Serious Bribery and Corruption.

So they are basically saying: Yes, there are charges, but because there was impropriety earlier on in the case("abuse of process") by the then Head of the NPA, they have decided not to pursue the charges.

Jacob Zuma is the President of the African National Congress (The ANC). We hold elections on the 22nd April, and the ANC is bound to win (though not by as much of a margin they previously enjoyed). But they are bound to win. It is still a case of loyalty to a particular party than any kind of common sense, but that's the state of the nation right now.

Jacob Zuma will be our president. A man very strongly suspected of accepting bribes is going to rule our country. The very same man has had rape charges dropped against him. During that trial, when asked if he was in any way afraid of contracting AIDS when he slept with the said victim ... er consentual sex partner... he said that he wasn't, as he promptly had a shower afterwards. A fucking shower?

If he runs for president, I would rather vote for this guy...

Pics of Shannon Swimbabe

Shannon gave me permission to use and repost his pics as long as I link back to his site here...

He is still my all time favourite speedo model, and a really great guy going through his own shit, as we all do. Check out his blog, and give him some encouragement when he needs it from time to time.
Hey Shannon, if you pop in and you would like me do something on any of your other pics, let me know. And let me know what you think.

Sethy the Photoshop Guy

New Album! Yay!

So another tidbit about Sethy.

I grew up as a photographer (Clues in my Real Journey posts). But I have always enjoyed the post-processing aspect. With the advent of digital and Photoshop, my world was turned upside down. I embraced the change hungrily - though I miss the cocoon of the darkroom and associated smells.

I helped introduce digital into this country, working as product manager for one of the first importers. I did radio interviews, toured camera clubs, and made people comfortable with the fact that their 35mm camera and slide show days were numbered.

I love new technology.

In the bad old days, I did weddings using a Mamiya 220. I took a grand total of 48 pictures at each wedding. The album consisted of 12 8x10's, all hand printed and mounted to perfection.

Wedding photography covered the cost of my other passions at the time. Before I finished highschool, I was an accomplished pilot with over 400 hrs, and had completed 500 para jumps.

Needless to say, after doing over 800 weddings in my youth, I want to puke if someone asks me to take photo's at a wedding these days. I have never been outstanding behind the lens. My specialty was the darkroom stuff.

So these days, I do photoshop work as a hobby for a couple of photographer friends of mine. It pays the beer bills. Basically, I make their mediocre photography into something that looks professional. The flavour of the month is coffee table book type albums. Being in this lovely country, we often end up being the last to adopt new trends, and this has been one of them.

Finally, we have found a company that prints the stuff fairly decently, and Howie - my favourite Barmitzvah photographer - collected our first samples yesterday, and delivered them last night.

Woohoo! They are Excellent! I have other ideas around the album concept, but have held off till I was happy the quality would be good enough.

Excuse the messy table. It is Charlie the Budgie's spot, and his personal space hygiene is not his strongest point

Bored. Some pics to enjoy.

And I'm not yet ready to post the next in the Journey series. it will come out during the weekend though.

I enjoy playing around with images like this

Some more beach pics...

As usual, any temptation to repost should be avoided...

Thanks

Sethy the photographer.