Shameless Self-Promotion: August 2009

Well here's a post I should have done about three weeks ago but you know how it goes....

August was another bumper month for me in terms of published tech articles - pages I wrote appeared in three consumer magazines:

• COSMO: my regular Gadget Girl page, of course,

• House & Leisure: a special one-off gadgets page focussing on glamorous gadgets, and

• Elle Decoration: a possibly regular page, of which this was the first (things went a little up in the air all of a sudden so I remain rather confused at the moment). Each Elle Deco Tech page is themed and this one focussed on gadgets for kids - I had a lot of fun writing it.

DOMINATION! (::cough::)

If you can still find any of these issues on the shelves grab them, buy them, and keep me in a job! (If you can't - because this post is so late - then steal them from a friend. It won't help to keep me in a job but my writing will enhance your life in mysterious ways - and who wants to miss that?)

Prime Circle At The Launch Of The Nokia Music Store, Johannesburg

[ Flickr link: Orton Effect ]

Above: Yes, yes, it's an Orton Effect....

In April Nokia held a press function in Johannesburg to launch the Nokia Music Store in South Africa. The special music guest was Prime Circle, which played a great set that lasted about 20 minutes.

I don't have much to say about it, so here are some photos (they were taken with a Sony DSC-W290 Cyber-shot digital camera, which I was testing for the July issue of COSMO for my gadgets page):

[ Flickr link ]

Above: The man behind the scenes who sorts out all the awesome (and unpacks and then repacks it in boxes and trunks).

[ Flickr link ]

Above: Smile!

[ Flickr link ]

[ Flickr link ]

And finally, a song:

I was also testing a digital-video camera while filming this (the Sony DCR-SR47 Handycam) so see the YouTube page for notes on that here.

Frosti The Terrorist Albino Squirrel

[ Flickr link ]

Above: He looks stuffed but that's just because this photograph has frozen him in time.

We were taking a leisurely stroll near the top of The Company's Garden on a rare, beautiful winter afternoon last week when -

*bam*

- an albino squirrel suddenly appeared, blocking our path.

"It's an albino squirrel! Squee!" I exclaimed. "I must take a photo!"

My delight at seeing an albino squirrel for the first time was soon tempered by the realisation that this was no ordinary albino squirrel, this was a terrorist albino squirrel. He ran up to us (thankfully not with a little squirrel gun in his fearsome albino paws, for all would then have been lost), vibrated and twitched as though we were supposed to provide some sort of offering to appease him, and then, when other squirrels came near, he chased them away before returning to stare us down with his hypnotic albino eyes.

This repeated, over and over, giving me enough time to take close-up and action shots. I was so preoccupied that I forgot to run away in terror, which is probably just as well, as I think he could run faster than us and, as I said, his albino paws were fearsome.

Above: The Anatomy Of A Terrorist Albino Squirrel - roll over the image for comprehensive notes (if that doesn't work or your JavaScript is off, view the interactive presentation here).

Eventually he grew tired of us and our lack of offerings and ran off to try and uncover a nut that a previous squirrel he had just chased off had already tried to uncover (I began to suspect that this wasn't a particularly smart terrorist albino squirrel), and then he ran over a fence to Gardens Commercial High School, presumably to bully and terrorise school children, except I don't think any of them were there as they're all off having Swine Flu at the moment.

Whatever. One drama at a time.

Above: Menacing.


Previously Glimpsed In The Company's Garden
* The Man In The Bright-Orange Bio-Hazard Suit