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It certainly has been an eventful start…

I’ve been stationed at ABSA for the last few days, standing in for one of my colleagues while he is off on paternity (and annual) leave. I’ve also flown down briefly to Cape Town to attend and photograph Sheelagh and Andrew’s wedding.

Flying to Cape Town was a bit weird for me. For the last 9 or so years, I’d been used to travelling up from Cape Town to Johannesburg or Durban on vacation or to visit friends and family or for work. Now, I’ve reversed the destinations… and I must admit, Cape Town no longer feels like home to me. I felt very much like a tourist in a place I used to call home… me, the person who swore he’d never live anywhere but at the coast.

I landed Friday morning, was picked up by Louise who took me to go get my supplies I needed for the wedding (18 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and spare batteries for my Canon EOS 500n), then spent some time with her and her family until meeting up with Rob for lunch after which I spent the rest of the afternoon with him and some of our mutual friends, Andrew and Mervin, that work with him at Tellumat. That evening, after picking up Lou again, we met up with some guild mates from Awakened Guardians at Century City for some drinks, etc and finally wandered over to Cattle Baron to meet up with some of Lou’s friends.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was in Cavendish Square, photographing Sheelagh and her Mum- and Sister-in-Law-to-be during the various stages of their hair-styling. Then we bundled into Lisa’s (Sheelagh’s best friend) car, went to go fetch dresses and bags and headed off to Monkey Valley in Noordhoek to get  started with their makeup. After a while I decided it was prudent to make myself scarce so the girls could change and get dressed and went to go check my surroundings for the shoot, judging light levels and backdrop inclusion from various angles.

The ceremony was very nice, the bride looked stunning, the groom looked nervous (though that may also have been due to some stiff breezes swaying his kilt) and everyone was very happy for the newly-wed couple. We took some group photos on the lawn and then the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaids wandered down to the beach with me for some shots their.

In retrospect, the path we took was not the best one (coming down was ok, climbing back up was not as easy) as the loose beach sand made climbing some of those dunes rather… well… interesting at times.

We finished up at 11pm that night after the traditional cake-cutting and first-dance photos and I left for home, wishing the newly-weds all the best, promising to visit in Australia sometime in the future.

The next day, aside from sore muscles, I spent relaxing, chatting to Rob, listening to music (I introduced Rob to the group ‘E Nomine’) and catching up a little, talking about his planned move to Australia to be nearer to his daughter, my goddaughter, Timeah.

Before long, though, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We stopped briefly along the way to get something to eat and unfortunately, cut it a little too fine as with some unaccounted for traffic, I ended up getting to the check-in counter 2 minutes too late to check in… I begged, pleaded… everything short of threatening, but they were stubborn and would not let me check-in.

So I got put on standby for the morning flight. Fortunately Rob had not yet driven too far so he was able to pick me up again and I spent the night there.

I called several people to tell them what had happened, including Matt, my technical manager, as I was supposed to be back at ABSA in the morning.

Bright and early, I was back at the airport and then my ordeal really began. For unbeknownst to me, all the Johannesburg and Pretoria people that had been on vacation were there trying to get back home as well… Suffice to say, I did not get onto the 6:30am flight. Or the 9:15 one. Or 10:20 one. Matt arranged for Reshan, one of my other colleagues, to stand-in for me at ABSA, so at least that was taken care of.

Eventually, they squeezed me onto the 1:00pm flight and I arrived home, very agitated, annoyed and heartily sick of airports just before 3pm. Matt, was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off at home where I promptly collapsed and swore not to get onto a plane for another few months, at the very least.

Yesterday was back to ABSA… back to a semblance of normality. Here until the 18th, after which it’s back to the office and my new favourite pastime… log analysis.

I’m not one for socializing with work colleagues much, but I’ll admit I have a soft spot for those with kids, like Yolanda, the project manager here at ISA.

She’s always talking about her 18 month old daughter, Taneka, and I noticed that the only photos she has of her are taken either with her cellphone camera or with a small digital camera.

So, I offered to take some photos of them together, down at a local park in Fourways, around the corner from where we both stay, well, close being a relative term in Johannesburg

I went through 3 spools of film… going to hand them in on Monday and get them scanned to CD.

I must admit that the afternoon reminded me of times with my friend Rob, his daughter, Timeah, who is also my goddaughter. Bouncing around a park or playground, taking photos, laughing with the kids, being a kid at heart myself again.

In some ways, I think I’m living out my Mother’s wishes for a grandchild through these sessions. With my godchildren (I have 3) and the children of those I call friends, I get to capture photos of them the way I would one day hope to do with my own child.

Anyway… on to less somber thoughts…

That afternoon also set the mood for the weekend… I’m house-sitting for another colleague, Matthew, who is away at Kruger Park for his birthday weekend away with family.

It’s been a relaxing time. No noisy housemates. No fights at home. Not having to lock my groceries away because certain people cannot keep their hands to themselves.

So I’ve spent the time watching the Animax channel on DSTv, enjoying some of Matt’s wife’s homemade coffee icecream (to die for, I might add), playing a bit online and trying to understand the though processes of their cats, Storm and Jewel, with no real luck…

Hope everyone had a good weekend as well. Back to work tomorrow.

It seems that some sites are made simply as time-sinks. You wonder onto them by chance, sign up and before you know it, you’ve lost hours if not days of your life clicking through the site. This series will feature some of those time-sinks I’ve found over the years.

Gaia Online (Main Site)

Gaia Online Wikipedia Entry

How to best describe Gaia Online?

I think I can sum it up as an anime-themed forum turned web-based MMO.

Why an MMO?

• You have a fairly customizable avatar (even from starting) and can continually kit this paper doll out as you play. You can initially customize the following:
  • Hair style and color
  • Eye style and color
  • Mouth style and size
  • Skin tone
  • Gender
• You accept quests and receive rewards for completing them.
• It has a virtual economy and marketplace.
• It has events “in-game” and it’s own timeline.

Over and above that, it has, what has been called the web’s largest forum, with over a million posts made daily, over a billion posts in total and 2.5 million unique users per month (stats from Wikipedia).

It’s annoyingly cute at times but fun for those times when you just cannot be bothered to log into World of Warcraft or browse your usual websites (whatever those may be…)

Last night, Craig came to visit me so that I could design his business card for him to take to TechEd 2007. Because he had a function on earlier in the evening, he only ended up coming through to me around 10:45pm.

After some casual banter, we got to work and were doing pretty well until I screwed up and closed the file I was working on… meaning we started again. From scratch.

In the end, it was probably worth it though, as it provided a few laughs and a chance for Craig to tease me about saving as often as possible. We also discussed Microsoft’s Silverlight and a few of the other goodies that Craig has been playing with lately.

We finished up around 12:30am… this is the finished result. Front and back.

And Nyctan, my first World of Warcraft toon, is reborn…

Well, transferred to a new server and playing with some new guild mates in the guild, Thunderwalkers, but you get the idea…

For many months, I haven’t played this old fella… he’s been getting a little mouldy and probably was growing roots, sitting in Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, Outland’s first region you enter into.

The catalyst behind this resurrection is one of my work colleagues, Gary (known in game as Trygor) and his lady, Kati (who plays Vulpine), who run a guild on Dath’remar, Oceanic server. They wanted me to level a new character there and help them, as I have more experience in the game than most of the guild members, but I don’t have the heart to re-level a toon from scratch anymore. With one level 70 already on my hands, and this toon not far behind, it was simply easier to do a paid character transfer over to the Oceanic server from Stormrage, than struggle from the beginning again.

Funny… when I was on Stormrage, I had little or no interest in levelling Nyctan. Now, I enjoy the challenge of trying to match the accomplishments of my rogue, as a feral druid.

If you’re looking to play with some casual players, who like to just play, without the pressures of raiding, or expectations that one has to be the best his or her class can be, then come visit us on Dath’remar server and send a whisper to myself, Trygor or Vulpine if you want to join in the fun.

Beware of Trygor when he begins serving drinks though. His “Mark of the Wild” branded Mojo is pretty potent.