Home sweet home

On my way home in a few hours. Travelling by car. +- 10 hours drive, with sweet Katie Melua singing into my ears. It is time for a well deserved break!UPDATE: Drive went well and oh did Katie spoil me rotten, her new album is great, I highly recommend it!

So at last, home sweet home and may the blogging take a little break...(maybe a few hours or so)....

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here are some shots from my phone during the drive.

By: Gregor | Monday, November 28 at Monday, November 28, 2005 | |

Thou shalt not mis-spell blogspot

So I sent a friend of mine my blog link www.gregoogle.blogpsot.com and spelt it wrong, instead blogspot I wrote blogpsot…and this is where it took me, to the The Amazing Bible Studies website. Interesting! Then I tried some of my friend’s blog url’s with this typo and this was the result…

http://www.rantofnote.blogpsot.com/
http://reflectit.blogpsot.com/
http://peterbarlow.blogpsot.com/

And so my quest has begun. After checking out the Page Source I discovered that Fastclick.com plays a part in this religious spiel. And it turns out that Fastclick.com is an online marketing service and has "the ability to continuously provide unique solutions for online marketers, publishers and partners..." It sure is a unique idea as this typo (ps instead of sp) can occur very easily. But how in gods name is this type effective to every single blogspot address mistyped? Try it out, type in any bodies blogspot address with the typo and have fun because this site is "an incredible testimony proving the bible true, plus a commentary on the near future".

Where could I find an explanation for this, on a spiritual or technical level, either will do!

By: Gregor | Saturday, November 19 at Saturday, November 19, 2005 | |

Pictures from the people for the people

The money raised through my last exhibition during the South African National Arts Festival has found itself a worthwhile cause. I have called it Project: Your Snaps / iisnaps zam (xhosa).

FujiFilm sponsored me 50 disposable cameras in September which I will utilize to teach the people of the Grahamstown community to use effectively. This project will last about 10 months and requires me to travel into the location weekly and teach children and elders how to use the cameras, however giving them entire freedom on what they perceive as important to document.

All film will then be processed and printed in Johannesburg by B&H PhotoDigital and handed back to the community members. Printing, processing, mounting and framing costs will be covered by the money raised through my previous Project: Pictures for Life. With this new initiative I have integrated my passion and am making it accessible to the people in the location. With this I also hope to raise some community upliftment and create some enthusiasm/motivation, teaching people a skill which they could maybe adopt for a future cause.

I am also busy integrating Dutch multimedia and photographic artists into this project, with whom in collaboration we could produce ‘glocalized’ images which could ultimately be exhibited overseas and locally. Keep an eye on this blog I have set up for this initiative...

By: Gregor | Friday, November 18 at Friday, November 18, 2005 | |

Here is an interesting account about Air France

Read Colin Daniels account on the service of Air France...or let's say, the LACK OF!

...and read his letter of complaint to Air France by Colin...vive la blogosphere!

...oh, and another cool story I found. Read this post from The Register how Air France took over and got rid of the domain name www.airfrancesucks.com. I dedicate and have linked this domain to Colins post...

By: Gregor | Thursday, November 17 at Thursday, November 17, 2005 | |

The countdown is on...

So, in 21 days I'll be airborne (NOT WITH AIR FRANCE), and landing in Munich via Dubai (which means maga-shopping spree). And from there I will be spending week of skiing at the Mondi-Holiday Bellevue resort in Austria and another week of ice cold fun at the Casa Carezza resort in North Italy.

I need to brush up on my Italian because it sure seems that my English or German knowledge won’t bring me too far. Here is an extract from their website explaining some of the facilities at the Casa Carezza:

"The 17 flats (some provided with car garage) are all furnished and equipped with TV color, direct phone line, safe cassette. Bath and bed linens are available behind a payment. The Residence is also supplied of sauna, solarium UVA, tavern, ski deposit zone." 

Have a look at this webcam...it looks like a typical small mountain town with the stunning view of the Dolomites. These mountain towns all look very similar but have their own individual flare. I have not been to this one yet, so look out for some feedback from the snowy (hopefully) Dolomite region.

By: Gregor | Monday, November 14 at Monday, November 14, 2005 | |

On a more serious note

I took a break today and sat back, listened to La Valse d’Amelie by Tiersen, and thought to myself how lucky I am, how lucky many of us actually are. All the posts on this blog have a humorous note to them, they often reflect issues, happenings or problems, however what do they really mean? What does your specific problem actually mean?

I think many of us would/should be able to sit back and put our problems and thoughts into relation to those of others. Our daily issues and those which haunt us since our childhood are completely relative. By consciously seeking this relativity of these problems they would actually seem quite trivial. People often make up their own problems and need them in order to present a troubled self in order to attract recognition and attention. Others bottle them up and in so doing become introverts and bitter beings. And what is the use of always seeking for issues, and reeling them in especially if they are from the past. If we would take a few seconds every time before complaining, putting our problems into perspective, ordering them into categories of importance, affect and consequence and then relating them to the larger picture, I think we could save much time and energy complaining and rather focusing on what is actually important. Whilst the world around us is suffering from a vast amount of inhumane and perverse issues we are so self absorbed and obsessed that our egoistical conduct would put us to shame when presented next to those who have problems which we have been kept safe from till now. I am not saying that we should ignore and forget all our problems, but we should respect the people around us and give them some degree of dignity if their suffering has more substantiality than ours. And with respect I mean: stop complaining and moaning about trivial and unnecessary issues, please.

We definitely do not take enough time to put things into perspective and realise that our life is fantastic, beautiful, exciting and full of challenges.

By: Gregor | Sunday, November 6 at Sunday, November 06, 2005 | |

The downside of procrastination

Study breaks during exam preparations tend to mostly go pear-shape and lead to excessive procrastination. Its various forms include fire fighting, cooking, reading, drinking, phoning, cleaning, resting of the eyes and of course, blogging. But today was different; today I jumped right back onto my swivel chair and continued my academic intake due to a frightening experience. My 11:15am study break (yes my study breaks are at set times) constituted in switching on the television and being exposed to a game show on SABC3 called: “Walk the Plank”, a poor pseudo–wanna-be-version of “The Weakest Link”.

I will not elaborate much on the lack of quality concerning the presenting, the background music (clearly a mix of the unforgettable “Jeopardy” tunes and the dramatised melodies of “The Weakest Link”) and the poor selection of contenders. On this note I would like to present a question which was asked during the show and the corresponding answers to it:

What South African rodent has black and white quills? Answer given: “The Walrus”

I'd rather swivel on my chair!

By: Gregor | Saturday, November 5 at Saturday, November 05, 2005 | |

A buring sensation?

Whilst driving amid the smoky roads of Grahamstown, I decided to check out what was on fire (once again) and it was incredible. A howling wind was pushing a fire through the outskirts of Grahamstown towards people’s homesteads and the Universities Residences situated on the Hill. The fire was literally stopped a few metres from Kimberly Hall where a crowd of students with water buckets and bundles of bushes tried to fight the flames. In between the students a group of Campus Security Guards (CPU) where trying hard form letting the University buildings catch flames. Not a single fire truck or fireman to be seen throughout my excursion, which resulted in me, slinging my camera on my back keeping my finger on the shutter release and fighting some flames and smouldering pieces of wood with a wet bunch of shrubs. See more pics here by Michael Salzwedel.

By: Gregor | Wednesday, November 2 at Wednesday, November 02, 2005 | |

The devil within

So it seems our New Media lecturers, Colin and Vincent, have quite a bit of free time on their hands during ‘swot week’ and decided to warm Carly and myself up to their ongoing mischief. Clearly they decided to approach Carly first, to tell her (per SMS) that we failed our New Media course (0% to be precise) and that we are in a lot of trouble. Now, I did not believe it at first, and after a phone call with Vince I began to doubt my misbelief. But fortunately, it was all a joke, and even though I told Carly, during all her hysterical SMS’s and phone calls, it was just a joke I felt quite undecided whilst on the phone with Vince. Clearly a devil in disguise, have to watch out for him and Colin next year….

By: Gregor | Tuesday, November 1 at Tuesday, November 01, 2005 | |