“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” Tim O’Reilly

In short

I would rather be pirated and out there, than obscure and not pirated. It is almost impossible to control how and when my photos are used, so go ahead and use them. But it takes a lot of time and money to take and post the pictures, and while comments and traffic are great, they don’t pay the bills.

So please pay me if you like my photos or are making money from them. Just use the Paypal button on the sidebar.

The more you donate, the more I can shoot. The more I shoot, the more photos you get to see. And of course you get to feel great by doing a good thing!

On Friday evening, Lois and I went to see a band that we have been wanting to watch for a while, The Lentil Collective. They were playing at a small venue in Muizenberg called The Melting Pot. Yes, the Lentles were playing in the pot. Let the jokes begin.

Anyway, they are a rather eclectic band; a mixture of folk and acoustic pop, with a healthy amount of looping and sampling added into the mix. They describe themselves as “folktronica”, which is pretty accurate. But you can decide for yourselves, just go here and download their music (for free). I really enjoyed them, they are just some guys wanting to play some great music and have some fun. Fairly laid-back, fun and original. Really worth listening to.

If you see them playing, head down, you will hear some great music.

While this bill is a US bill, it will have a profound effect on ALL Internet users, and you can lodge your protest as a US or non-US person.

You can find out more information here: http://sopastrike.com/ or here http://americancensorship.org.

I went from home to the entrance of the Cape Point Nature Reserve, and the roads were surprisingly quiet. This was not the case on the return cycle; by then Cape Town was awake and about a million people were headed off to the beaches along my route.

Anyway, I cycled for 56km so I am ready for tonight’s dinner out :-)

This year is no exception. On Saturday the mountain just above Boyes Drive was on fire, and the fire-crews were using two helicopters to dump water onto the fire. Because it was so close to my house and I live right next to the vlei, I watched the choppers collecting the water out of the lake before dumping it onto the fire.

It was pretty amazing watching the choppers, incredible skill in dropping down to grab the water, and then dumping it right on the hot-spots. This is in the cross-winds and flying through all the smoke. These are amazing pilots.

Thankfully, they managed to put this one out quite quickly, and there didn’t seem to be any major damage. We have had some pretty major fires in the past.

Here are the rest of the pics.

Here’s hoping for some more wonderful summer weather.