Tails’ Blography

My best friend, bf, and I went out to the West Coast National Park to see the flowers in bloom. Apparently they’re supposed to be quite something. I say “apparently” because we didnt really see that many flowers hehe.

We packed a picnic basket, packed our cameras (bf used my Sony and 300mm lens), and off we went. We drove all the way there, paid our R33 each to enter the park (thanks, Viia!), drove about 8km only to realise we were low on fuel and probably wouldnt make it around the park and home again. Sigh. So we loaded up Garmin on my cell, shook it like a Magic 8 Ball and asked it where the closest petrol station was. It pointed us in the direction of Yzerfontein, 12km away. Off we went, refilled, and returned anew and with much gusto!

The first critter we came across was a tortoise crossing the road (see image). Of course Viia and I bounded out the car, cameras at the ready, knelt down on either side of the little guy…and grimaced in pain! That gravel was demonic on our knees! Fearing the pain if we moved, we stayed put and made do with the shots we could get (I got the tortoises attention…hehe must have been the gigantic L lens hehe) and eventually he grew bored and wandered off while we painfully got to our feet and returned to the car.

We continued on and saw some Ostrich and ostrich behbehs! They were so cute, but alas, too hidden in the long grass to get a decent photo of. Moving a little further, we thought we saw a flower, but were mistaken, so we continued on, still feeling hopeful.

We came to a beach spot where people were milling about and we got out to take some shots. It was fairly windy there, so we didnt linger, and moved off to find the next stop, which promised to be a picnic spot. When we arrived there, people were setting up their braais in the designated areas (being National Braai Day ‘n all for us) so we scrambled amongst the rocks looking for a sheltered spot, which we found and promptly set up our stuff and had lunch. We milled there for an hour or so, marvelling at the weather that was overcast, yet very warm. If it hadnt been cloudy, we would have melted!

After lunch, making sure to pack up everything and not litter, we stood around taking some more pics and then moved off to continue through the park. We eventually arrived at a summit where we took some shots of (woah!) flowers! and the scenery and each other. We were naughty, though, getting out of the car despite the “Please Remain In Your Vehicle” sign hehe.

Continuing on, the clouds got darker and more threatening, but by some chance of luck, a patch of cloud broke and the sun shone down onto the field of herd animals we were approaching. They were quite close to us, and my 300mm lens worked perfectly, so we stopped and got some shots of the behbeh buck and ostrich. We moved on a little way and found a small area of purple flowers, so of course we bounded out the car yet again and took some shots (we just had to get flower photos before leaving haha). Just as we were about to leave, we stopped off at the last lookout point, and took some shots. This is when it started raining hehe so we got back in the car and made our way home.

The day was super relaxing, and we ended up at Viia’s to have some tea and snuggle her rats. Unfortunately by that time Michael was plagued with a headache, so I ended up driving us home in his car hehe. I always get nervous driving his car…I keep forgetting he has a boot (trunk) since my car is a hatchback…

Maybe next time we’ll see those flowers…

Me with the 24-70mm L beauty

Michael and the Sony

Awesome view from our picnic spot

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

A field of flowers!

The last little bit of sunshine before the clouds took over for good

Today is Sunday and, of course, I’m recuperating from another OC LAN weekend (link best viewed in Firefox). This LAN was a fairly small one (probably around 200 +-450 people over the whole weekend), as I believe there are quite a few religious holidays, as well as the LAN being rather soon to the previous one.

One thing that did happen that was out of the ordinary was the Drug Bust. Yup, someone, or three, were arrested for drug possession (R500-R600 worth of weed) and some other drug paraphernalia. Now I wondered if I’d be moaned at for blogging about it, but quite frankly, I think people should know. At least it shows there is little to no tolerance of drugs, which makes the event a safer environment…’cos let’s face it, a lot of kiddies attend OC. And they should be kept safe. I dont think a drug bust is bad publicity, after all, where there are kids, there will be drugs. It would be silly to expect otherwise, however sad that sounds. They should know it’s just not tolerated.

Anyway, so a few kids (read: three) were arrested, and the LAN continued unintterupted. I was a bit miffed about the girls’ bathroom being moved so far away (it’s now literally all the way across the dome from where I sit, up some stairs, through a winding passage and voila. I dont know, maybe I’m the only one who gets so miffed about it, but yeah, walking through that passageway alone really makes me feel unsafe. I dont think anyone would hear if I screamed if I were attacked. It just gives me the shivers…

So, of course, as I said in my last post, I was getting a Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L lens to play with at the LAN. And oh boy, I’m IN LOVE with this lens. Aside from the speed and quietness of the focussing, no postprocessing sharpening needed on the photos I took at all! They’re already tack sharp (when my shakey hands dont ruin it haha). Gosh, I love this lens! Though I do wish it had image stablization on it. Then it would be perfect! I pushed my camera a bit this LAN by pumping the ISO to 1250 for most of the indoor photos. The grain is noticable, but I dont think it necessarily ruins the photos. In some cases it gives it more feeling. Well, of course thats just my opinion. I could be biased *wink*.

So, without further delay: photos!

Just after we finished setting up

Tis like a ‘bull’ in a china…err OC LAN

Muh Windows logon!

A sleepy lanner

A random view of the LAN

Sweets!

A photo of me taken by my bestest friend

A very sleepy lanner who unwittingly provided some entertainment for us photographers…hope he was ok though…

An artistic shot whilst outside on a “cigerette break” with friends

A view over the LAN

mmmm coffee

This weekend past was another OC (Organised Chaos) LAN. For those who dont know what a LAN is, basically you pay R140 entry, bring your PC along on the Friday evening, connect it to the network, and play games like Call of Duty 4/COD4 (among other things) with (approx 700) other people on the network until Sunday afternoon. Of course, you dont have to stay the entire time, but the die-hards do. By Saturday morning their are tents, pillows, mattresses, and sleeping bags all over the place.

This month, we arrived on Saturday morning, since I was recovering from a sore throat (which subsequently turned into a head cold afterwards…sigh). We set up and got settled in. By this, I mean we plugged in our PCs, had a game or three, then went in search of food in the form of cheese burgers and chips from the local cafeteria.

Normally it gets extremely cold (around 3 degrees celcius) and we freeze our asses off despite jerseys, jackets, sheepskin slippers and a hotwater bottle, so this time we added a sleeping bag to the equation. Wow, what a difference! I’m definately bringing one to every LAN!

After hours and hours of gaming (mainly COD4), swearing, chatting, and laughing, we were paid a visit by a friend who’s never been to OC. Needless to say, after showing him the ropes and letting him have a go on the PC’s, he was hooked, and might bring his own PC next time. Score!

Each month lately they’ve been trying to have a theme, and this month’s theme was Tie July. The person(s) with the best tie(s) could win a 1 terabyte (I think) hard drive each – very worth it! I’ll snag a photo of the two winners from the OC Fan page on Facebook to show you (credit to Sheldon, the OC ‘tog).

I baked gingerbread cookies to take with (I even made one in the shape of a tie, but I didnt need it cos I wasnt there on Friday), and they were a hit! I made O’s and C’s, and offered them to the admin, friends, as well as random people I passed along the way. It was great!

Without further ado, photos! Of course all taken with my new Canon 40D! I’m positively loving the new cam, by the way! It handles noise so much better, it seems to capture light better than my Sony, and its very speedy!

Setting up

Just a look around at what it looks like on a Saturday morning

The OC gingerbread cookies I made

Another look around at our neighbours

A view from where I was sitting during prize giving on Saturday night

They dropped a CRT monitor from the Velodrome ceiling…it went BOOOOOOM!

Everyone goes in for the remains

What was left…

Our friend who came to visit

The bf gaming…

The bf and myself gaming!

My hot man!

The bf, Chris & Ferdie

Winner #1

Winner #2 – I really LOVE this one!

Dont worry, no spoilers! Just opinions (which you shouldnt read if you dont want to go into the movie with expectations….like if someone says, “oh the beginning was terrible”, while its not a spoiler, I find myself watching and waiting to see when the terrible beginning starts an ends…anyway, I digress…)

So my mom and I went to watch it together on Sunday night, and firstly, let me say, I have a huuuuuge girl-crush on Hermione!! Man, she’s HOT!!! Shew!! *rapidly fans face with hand* I thought my only Harry Potter crush was Severus Snape *lesigh* That button-down jacket he wears…oh my! Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I can tell you off the bat that I enjoyed the movie. But! I’m not sure if I enjoyed it for the movie itself, or just because its a Harry Potter movie and they’re always great.

As a standalone movie, I wouldnt say its that great. Also, if you havent read the book, you might find yourself a little lost as to who’s who and why so-and-so is doing this or that. I read the book when it was released (ages ago), and even I struggled to keep up with the story, often finding myself realising afterwards who the character from 5 minutes ago was.

I heard, before I watched it, that it ended suddenly. This may be slightly true, but I personally felt the ending coming, so it didnt surprise me by just fading to black or something as I expected from what I’d heard. Also having read the book helped, as the ending made sense. I guess I can agree that they could have beefed it up a little bit, or something..cant quite place my finger on it. I also felt they rushed through a lot of it, but this is only after thought, as while I was watching I didnt feel rushed at all.

So, if you count the movie as a means to an end (pairing ‘HP & the Order of the Phoenix’ with ‘The Deathly Hallows’) it was great. The special effects are awesome, Quidditch looking especially believable now, the characters are great as usual, Hermione is hot, Ron is bumbly and adorable, and Harry…well he’s perfectly Harry.

They left out some parts of the book I would have liked to have seen, and I’ll probably find more when I reread the book now, but I’m happy they split The Deathly Hallows into two parts, not rushing and cramming everything into one movie. So, bring on 2010 & 2011!

PS: Isnt this cute and fitting!

Last night myself, my bf, my family and a few others were treated by my aunt to The Rocky Horror Picture Show being presented at The Barnyard Theatre in Willowbridge.

We sat on the balcony overlooking the stage and audience, so we had great seats. We got there early, ordered pizza, I bought a bottle of wine which I shared with my mom, and snacked on chips and sweets which we brought in. I’ve never seen the Rocky Horror movie (yea yea!), so I went in armed with only the synopsis in my head that I had read a few hours before leaving. I knew the gist of the show, and I tell you, I loved every minute of it!

Of course, the moved quickly through the movie, and added humour here and there, and of course everything was theatrical. The singing, accents, and costumes were spot on (so I was told ) to the movie, and I found myself enthralled all the way through!

Half time brought lots of chatting, more wine, and I got to meet one of the cast and I snapped a photo (with her permission). The make up was brilliant, I just had to get a shot! After half time we all got up and did the Time Warp, as instructed by “Dr Frank N Furter”. Lots. Of. Fun!! Then the show continued and once again I was enthralled. Posters of “Rocky Horror” were being sold and my cousin bought one and managed to get it signed. After the show, I managed to meet three other cast members, namely “Dr Scott” and “Columbia”, and I was glad I got to thank them for a fantastic performance.

We werent allowed photos of video of the show, and I was too chicken to try my luck, so you’ll have to make do with seeing the photos I got before the show (click each for larger), at half time, and after the show. The show ends today for Cape Town, but they’re showing in JHB next, so if you’re there – you’ve GOT to watch it!

The poster of “Rocky Horror”

Michael and I (the camera makes us look pinker than normal…I swear!)

The view from our seats

The view to the right of us

Looking directly over the railing at the audience below

On of the cast members who came by at Half Time