Month: April 2009

Sunset after rain and thunder

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After the rain and thunder of yesterday, I knew that sunset must be something different.  And I was not wrong.  I took this photos looking east, opposite direction of the setting sun.  I love the picture above with the different cloud colours .. the reddish part that pick up the reflection of the setting sun the then the white pieces that was hidden from the sun.

More here – My Photo Gallery – Sunset

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Low hanging clouds – winter is coming

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On Tygerberg Hill are some radio masks and this morning one of the masks was sticking out above the clouds.

It is an overcast day here in Cape Town and the air is starting to get nippy.  Winter is on its way but there is something not right with the weather here in the Cape.  What is this with the thunder this morning and it is not the first time this month.  We are not suppose to get thunder and lightning here in the Cape. 

More photos here: My Photo Gallery – Clouds

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SA Elections 2009 — done my part

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I got the mark to prove 🙂

Went voting at Kido Kids in Van Riebeeckshof at around 9:15 and was done in about 20 minutes.  Everything went as smooth as clock work, even for voters from other districts and provinces (they could only vote national). The only party I saw at the station I voted at was the DA as shown in this picture.

For those that has not voted yet, use your constitutional right and go and vote.  Remember by not voting you also loose the right to criticise and/or comment about anything South African. 

More photos here:  My Photo Gallery

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Emptiness and lonelyness.

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From I Wrote this for You.  How true is this for so many people.

I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone. Then this is my life and maybe, however unlikely, I’ll find my way back there. Or maybe, one day, I’ll settle for second best. And on that same day, hell will freeze over, the sun will burn out and the stars will fall from the sky.

Canon Powershot SX10 IS — playing with the zoom

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Today I played around with the zoom on my Canon SX10.  Here are some of the results:


100mm F5.7 1/500s ISO200 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto
This was taken at the maximum optical resolution of 20x (560mm equivalent) with no digital zoom.  To give you an idea, this guinea fowl were about 200 meter from where I took the photo.  Not bad at all.

This is the same quinea fowl as above and the photo was taken from exactly the same spot.  Only difference was that I added 2.28x digital zoom to it.  That is about 1276mm equivalent.

100mm F5.7 1/500s ISO200 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto
To be honest, I was very surprised at the quality of the digital.  One read and hear so much about how useless digital zoom is, but from the above it sure has its uses when one needs to get in closer to your subject.

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Greatodds .. not a good weekend :-(

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As mentioned previously, I am playing around on Greatodds and the past weekend was not a good one. The bets, 6 and 7 in the graph are the bets from the past weekend.  Bet 6 I can still accept, that was on the US Masters and I took a bet predicting the winner and reducing my risk a bit by including a side bed for that person to be in the top 5 if not the winner. Well the person being Tiger and he ended tied for 6th.

Bet 7 was on the Super 14 and consisted of predicting the winning team in 4 matches.  Here I had 2 right and 2 wrong.  The 2 I had wrong was SA teams that went 100% against the trent.  Who would have though the Bulls winning against the Thars after losing the previous 2 weeks against lessor teams.  The other bet is the one that really threw me, maybe Greatodds paid the Sharks a small fee to loose 🙂  I was expecting the Sharks to looses sometime but against the Cheetahs of all teams.  That just does not make sense.

Ah well, their still is some money in the kitty and I will just have to build it up again from next weekend onwards.

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Installing original (Gold) Windows XP on new PCI/PCI-e based motherboard

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I was asked to install Windows XP on a new PCI/PCI-e based machine.  I tried to convince the person to install Ubuntu but since this person is a photographer, she wanted Photoshop. Yes I did explain that GIMP can do everything Photoshop can do.

I only had an original (Gold) Windows XP and when trying to install this on a new PCI/PCI-e machine, the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) happens.

Here is how to solve:

  • Ideal solution – convince the person to install Linux (Ubuntu).
  • Easy solution – find a Windows XP install disk that includes either Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3.
  • If you do not have that then you will have to make your own Service Pack slipstreamed Windows XP install disk.  I had a copy of Service Pack 3 lying around and this is what I had to do:
    Follow the instructions at http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp3_cd.htm to create the install disk.  Be sure to follow the instructions to the T, particularly the one that say something about Emulating a Floppy in Nero when you burn the CD.  If you leave that default, the CD will not Boot.

This slipstreamed CD should boot fine and the Windows install should now go through without BSOD.  It still boggles my mind that the original Windows XP (even with SP 1) did not know anything about PCI interfaces.

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