Planarchy Archive - August 2003


 

Humming

Well, as I'm sure you'd have expected, I took a lot of piccies whilst en France. Many will surface at some point I'm sure.  But, in the meantime here is my current favourite..... it's a Hummingbird Hawkmoth AKA Macroglossum stellatarum, not native to the French Alps but a migrant from warmer climes further south.  Apparently these inch long specimens sometimes get as far as England, though I've never seen them!.  To get this far probably uses up all of the three generations that they can manage in a good summer... and all for what? Puts my humble summer trip by car into perspective anyway.

Anyway, these moths transfixed me as soon as I came across them and I spent ages trying to freeze their frenetic motion on digital film.  I think this shot is the closest I got but It wasn't easy, they don't half move quickly! 

20030830   17:05

Comment   |   permalink    |    blog home

Neighbourhood

Well for the last ten days or so and until about 7:20am CET this morning, this was our neighbourhood....(today's Photo Friday theme guys!) miss it already.

20030829   20:27

Comment   |   permalink    |    blog home

Pretty Fly (for a fly-guy)

Why do we not appreciate the beauty of the common or garden fly like we do it's buttery third cousin.  Is it just because of it's distasteful (to us) habit of eating shit?  An extension of the cute fluffy seal nasty shark phenomenon?  I'm not saying we should welcome them into our houses, schools and workplaces, I'm just saying even things with unpleasant habits can be beautiful.

Let's face it, this one looks really cool.... albeit in a sort of 1960's Sci-Fi sort of way. 

20030828   19:77

  |   permalink    |    blog home



Deja Vu?

OK, back to holiday related photos today, as we're still away, apparently....

I think I've mentioned before my habit of taking the same photo over and over again.  It's part finding something photo-worthy and part striving for the perfect shot.  One of the often taken, near traditional, shots from holidays with Zee as long as I can remember is the shot of our first two beers.  But trawling through old photo albums I found the picture below......from a much earlier (Pre-Zee) time.

20030826   00:666

  |   permalink    |    blog home



Transplants

Not very new, it came out last year, but it has been spending time on my CD player recently.  It reminds me very much of mid-era Clash though I can't put my finger on exactly why......a bit shoutier, maybe.

Also worthy of note is it's length.... 45min 20 seconds.  In the good old days of home taping, when trying to fit albums onto C90s, the 45 minute album was something of a holy grail.  Would the tapes have had the spare 20 seconds or would I have been frantically playing with the pause button to try and lose those precious seconds from the inter-track pauses?

Whatever, the spirit of Strummer dances in these grooves I'm certain.

20030824   00:99

  |   permalink    |    blog home



Dinosaur Features?

Today's treat from my 'umble photo album is, as you can see, the Tuatara.  I encountered this lovely specimen in a room sized glass cage in Rainbow Springs, Rotorua, EnZee.  The strange mix of bush/garden and zoo was not on our original list of things to do but, on failing to find the louge we ended up here.  And for the Tuatara alone 'twas worth it.  Fascinating creatures, the last remaining dinosaurs it says here.

20030822   00:66

  |   permalink    |    blog home



Push me

As they say, never work with children or animals. Two llamas (llamae?) and the only picture you want is one that makes it look like a certain two headed beast. But would they pose for it? Oh, no.

20030820   00:88

  |   permalink    |    blog home



London Calling

Well, we at DKNZ towers have gone away to France for a few day's R&R in my leetle bro's house dans Les Alps. But fear not, that does not mean no blog.... although I expect to be away from the trippa dubya for much of the time a little black PHP magic means that pieces will still appear every couple of days or so.....  Is this cheating?  Do I care? 

So, we start with my third trip to France in the summer of 1982.  We'd just graduated and eleven of us arranged a week's camping in in Deuville.  To say that we had the occasional argument would be an understatement.  But I was still talking to the three other guys and two of the guyesses by the end of it so it wasn't a complete disaster.

In the picture above, we thought we were re-creating the cover of the Clash's "Combat Rock"

We were doing nothing of the sort of course (but there were four of us and we were on a railway line!). 

But we thought we looked cool.  Oh dear.

20030818   00:77

  |   permalink    |    blog home