Author Archives: alistair

Symonds drops a streaker

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Today Australia lost another cricket final when they were beaten by India. That’s pretty pleasing, but what I really enjoyed was a moment when a streaker running past Andrew Symonds was dropped by a deadly shoulder charge.

The force of Symonds’ shoulder sent the man to the ground and security and police swarmed before taking him from the field.

The Aussie cricketers are often extremely annoying but this incident has given me an excuse to like a great player like Symonds. Here is a report from Cricinfo.

Update: I saw this series showing the incident which I liked. The second image is awesome – the guy is flying!

Pipe track photos

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Jules and I went for a quick walk on the Pipe Track last night to have a little wine and watch the sun go down on a fun weekend.

We got a couple of nice photos too. This is Table Mountain viewed from the side – the Pipe Track passes above the Camps Bay area so you get interesting angles on Table Mountain.

New project – Do Stuff in Cape Town

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I have been working on a new little project which I would like you all to take a look at. A couple of weeks ago I had the idea to set up a Wikipedia-like site for things to do in Cape Town. A site where anyone can easily add and edit information about activities in Cape Town.

I have set up a framework that I am pretty happy with – the geek in me has really been enjoying this. I also populated it with some sample activities.

It’s still very early days (Jules can’t stand the logo) and things are still changing and improving, but take a look and let me know what you think. If you feel up to it you can add/edit activities pretty easily and even anonymously.

Here is the link.

Another pools post – swimming pool illusion

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Yet another blog post about pools! This time there is a round up of “cool pools”.

The best by far is this “inverse pool” illusion created by having a shallow pool with a glass bottom above a room. To people above the pool it looks like others are walking around underwater. To those inside it looks like they are in the pool too. Pretty cool effect.

Photos taken at the right time or from the right angle

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I recently found three blog postings with some pretty cool photos:

There are a few rubbish pics, but most of them are worth a look (note that you may have seen some of these in forwarded mails). Here are some of my favorites to whet your appetite.

Tiger jumping off a boat

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I really like this photo from National Geographic showing a Bengal tiger jumping off a boat in India. The tiger had escaped the reserve she was from and landed up in a village bordering the park.

That didn’t go so well for her because the villagers got together and started throwing burning sticks and stones at her. In an effort to escape she hastily climbed a date palm where she was eventually tranquilized and captured by rangers (here is a video of the action – I haven’t watched it).

They saw to her wounds and then released her back into the reserve – which is what you are seeing above. Apparently there are only 1,400 Bengal tigers left in the wild so it’s cool that they saved this one – and she was pregnant!

Demo of colorblind vision

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HowStuffWorks has this article detailing colorblindness. Quite interesting reading – but there is quite a lot of detail. Included in the article is this demo simulating how the world looks to those who suffer from colorblindness.

Click on the buttons to see what the image looks like to people with different types of colorblindness. This means that they would not notice a difference in the image when the button is pressed.

How long can a person last without food or water?

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When I read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth my imagination was caught by a part of the story where the heroes are lost without water for days and almost die of thirst. The superb Adrift and Survive the Savage Sea both tell stories about people struggling for survival while lost at sea. It seems that people can survive quite long without food, but lack of water kills pretty quickly.

How Stuff Works has a pretty detailed article on the subject at the moment. What are the answers?

  • How long you can go without food depends a lot on the circumstances. Some people last longer than others. Temperature makes a big difference. Pretty much the same thing for water – circumstances make a huge difference.
  • “Most doctors agree that healthy humans can go up to eight weeks without food as long as they have water”
  • In ideal conditions “a human can probably live for about 3 to 5 days without any water“

At the end of the article they have included a little story about a hunger strike by some IRA prisoners in 1981. Nine of these guys starved themselves to death with one guy lasting 73 days without any food!

National Geographic news photos of the year 2007

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National Geographic has a gallery of the best news photos of 2007. Most are pretty cool – here are some of them.

This is an exhausted US soldier collapsing in his bunker in Afghanistan.

Park rangers carrying a mountain gorilla that had been shot in Congo. The rangers think that illegal charcoal traders killed this gorilla and several others.

This one shows the “shock and disorientation of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.”