“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (14/08/2010 5:32pm), where I will appreciate it so much more.

One of the exhibits at the Pretoria Zoo is this delightful seal. He was very friendly, and came to the window to blow bubbles at us. This is actually a bit of a lucky shot as he moved very quickly, and wasn’t in the right place to reflect my friends back at me in any of the other shots.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Faces in the water), where I will appreciate it so much more.

I was going through my catalogue of shots taken with my antique Pentax ME-Super film camera, and realised that I clearly have some sort of affinity for sunsets. So, I decided to pick some of them and stick them up here, in their grainy, sometimes washed out, sometimes messed up glory.

Most of these shots are from my balcony, but a few are from around the country.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (A Compilation of Sunsets), where I will appreciate it so much more.

Myself, Jan and Justin made our way to Pretoria central at about 6am one Sunday morning. Being able to stand in the middle of Pretorius street and stare down it’s empty length is a humbling experience.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Pretoria Central, Sunday Morning, 6am), where I will appreciate it so much more.

Freedom Park is a beautiful monument located on Salvokop, just north of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. The park is dedicated to all those who have fought and died for freedom in Africa.

I recently joined a group of photographers at the monument, and these are a few of the shots I got.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Freedom Park), where I will appreciate it so much more.

I got some shots of the WITS students from the Coalition for a Free Palestine who are currently holding a vigil outside the Department of International Relations and Cooperation on Soutpansberg Road, Pretoria.

(My apologies for the wonky white balance. I wanted to get the shots on the site as fast as possible.)

Taking these photos was nerve wrecking. It’s a busy street, and just about every car was hooting. (Which is really scary if you have to stand in the road to compose a shot.)

I quite like this play with words.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Apartheid Israel), where I will appreciate it so much more.

This last Friday, after a business meeting on the campus of the University of Pretoria, I decided to hook up with a friend of mine who works in the Computer Science department. So, I gave him a call and asked if he was available for a coffee. He said sure, if I was willing to wait a while, as he was busy checking out an ARG that was being run on campus by some multimedia students, if the rumors are correct..

Interested, I joined them to catch the tail end of the day’s activities. An excited crowd had formed outside the campus chapel where, after some shoving and neck-stretching, we managed to read a note that had been stuck up on the wall some time earlier. The note was accompanied by some cans of black spray paint, and implored the crowd to go to another location on campus and graffiti a url on to the wall.

The excited crowd, which now included a pretty excited me, moved halfway across campus to the dedicated graffiti wall, where we egged each other on to do the deed, which was shortly done. Some DVD’s with the url on were discovered nearby, and some handy geeks with laptops were roped in so the crowd could watch them. The DVD contained instructions for the next move, one that would, unfortunately for me, have to wait until the next week.

As an ex-avid gamer, who’s been bored to death for a few years now by the lack of real innovation in the computer gaming scene, I have to say this latest development has me very excited. Combined with the budding field of augmented reality, especially on modern mobile devices, this is probably the gaming arena of the future.

There’s a new way of interacting, of playing games, that’s on the rise, and this time it’s going to be a lot more real and much more exciting.

Count me in, and bring it on.

Update: There’s now also a Number 13 Wiki. Rad.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Number13.co.za (update)), where I will appreciate it so much more.

A lovely discoloured (cross processed) photo shot with my Holga from my balcony. Off in the distance near the horizon, about in the centre of the image, you can see tallish white buildings. That would be the ladies’ residences of the University of Pretoria, in Hatfield.

Here is another shot of the same scene a while later.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (A view of Pretoria), where I will appreciate it so much more.

If you were to look closely at this photograph you will notice my name written in the bottom right-hand-side corner. To obtain this effect I took a small triangle of clear plastic, wrote my name on in and stuck it to the inside of the Holga, flush with the film. This is an interesting Holga mod as it does not damage the camera and can be done in minutes with very little effort.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Glimpse of a forest), where I will appreciate it so much more.