Gold Mines

... just before I go back to bed, saw this story on Google News:

Thousands trapped deep inside gold mine in South Africa
More than 3000 miners were trapped a mile and a half underground in a South African goldmine after the lift shaft was shattered by falling equipment. ...

This is why we only went down to level eight the last time (Peter's first time) we visited Dalny Mine in early 2004. Dalny is Zimbabwe's deepest gold mine: 40+ levels / 1 mile down - shallower than many of the big mines in South Africa. We had to be able to climb out in case the mine experienced one of the unfortunate but increasingly frequent ZESA outages...

I hope all the miners get out okay. The Elandsrand mine is 2.2 km (~1.5 miles) deep, there's limited oxygen, and deep mines get really HOT at lower levels. There were parts of Dalny where the miners set to work wearing only gumboots and safety helmets. Really! While the miners were generally delighted to have visitors, females - including the occasional lady geologist - were not made welcome in those areas.

And part of me wonders what the heck the Elandsrand management were thinking with a mine that deep having only a single personnel-ready lift shaft.

“They are still in good condition but are angry, hungry, frustrated and want to get out of there,” Mr Boqwana said.

Indeed.

Prague Photos

Most of our Prague photos have been posted, and I hope to post the remainder in the next day or few.

Somewhat inconveniently for the viewer, I have not been publishing the posts in chronological order i.e. an 'older' post might appear on the site after a 'more recent' post - so something published tomorrow may be further back in the blog's history than what's already there. (I hope this makes sense... it's 4 am and it's not clear if I'm perfectly coherent).

Apart from innate disorganization there are a couple of reasons for this:

• Collating pictures - we went to the same spots on several days so I took multiple shots of whatever-sight-it-was (e.g. the Astronomical Clock, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, etc) - to spare the viewer deja vu I've collated the shots for each of these.
• Choosing pictures - I still haven't decided which of the umpteen shots of Prague Castle at sunset to post, but we're getting closer.
• Binning pictures - playing with the new lens I took an awful lot of experimental and simply awful photos. It takes stamina to go through 800+ shots, even when a lot of them are simply junk.

... thanks for your patience gentle readers.

As a side note, even in the shoulder season of early September, Prague was heaving with tourists and Irish soccer fans. This made it tricky to take clean shots - either a tourist/s would pop up in the frame, or there would be a mob of people elbowing for position to take their own shots. The Astronomical Clock is pretty cool, but every hour there would be a horde of people waiting for Death to do its dance - being crushed by a mob is not my idea of fun. From a safe distance it was amusing to watch a gathering crowd of people wait for ages - 20 minutes or more - only to disperse within a couple of minutes after the hour. Clearly marking off boxes on the must-do Prague checklist.

The crowds also explain why I won't be posting too many shots of the old town square or of Charles Bridge as a whole, and why my Týnský Chrám (Church of Our Lady before Tyn) shots are not of the famous front of the church, but rather from around and behind... these angles are more interesting than the usual bog-standard postcard shots anyway.

Oddly while the major sights were overrun with people, there were some very cool spots that were simply deserted. I stumbled on David Černý's Hanging Out entirely by accident, and there was absolutely no one around. The only people in my later shot of the scene are my two companions - i.e. Peter and a Czech mate.

okay, my brain has obviously melted - back to bed for a few hours' sleep.

Prague Leprechauns

Upon our arrival in Prague we went out to Cěrný Vůl and took a nap, then went into the city to the main square Staroměstské Nám.

A surreal sight greeted us: a heaving sea of emerald green- (and sometimes flag-) attired young men. That evening Ireland was playing the Czech Republic in a qualifying soccer match for Euro 2008.

Peter, Nora and Jason decamped to a cafe serving strong Turkish coffee, and I wandered through the Irish crowd. The good-natured slightly drunk young men took me back a dozen years to nostalgic memories of my bartending days in Cork City. Though the Czech police were keeping watch there didn't seem to be any trouble beyond the occasional drink accidentally knocked over.

The Irish fans sang songs, kicked plastic soccer balls around and generally had a good time. They were just happy to be there, with a great atmosphere and no malice in mind. Contrastingly, I doubt I would ever choose to walk through a similar crowd of English soccer fans... Though Ireland lost 0-1 to the Czechs, quashing their hopes of advancing in the tournament, we didn't hear any reports of subsequent bad behaviour.

New Blog

Rather than cluttering up this blog with talk about technology, I've started another - Testing Testing - http://baobabtech.blogspot.com/ - where I can indulge my inner geek and post away to my heart's content about technology and photographic technique (or lack thereof!). I've been playing with the new Nikkor 18 - 200 mm lens, so there's already material for the photo-geeks in the audience.

Though we haven't been posting much about our travels since China, there are subsequent pictures from Cambridge and elsewhere on Images Across The Earth - http://baobabgallery.blogspot.com/. We are off to Prague soon, and I'll ask Peter to provide his usual witty reports.

New (Web 2.0) Toys

As part of my continuing fascination with maps - and justified by my professional 'need' to be on the bleeding edge of mashups and all things Web 2.0 - I've created a Platial mapkit, which is now visible in the blog's sidebar. The sidebar is a bit squishy, and some people may not like the pop-up widget, so here's the link to the original (larger) map at Platial.

I've started out by adding places we've been to recently / that are relatively nearby. Over time I'll try to dredge my memory for locations that are further away / in the distant past. One cool feature is the ability to embed images and url links, so the map and the photo blog are mutually referential. Platial also offers the ubiquitous Web 2.0 ability to add tags and comments. Since the images and stories were from specific times as well as places (duh - this is a travel blog), it would be great if Platial added a date field. For now I've put dates in the comments.

Click-drag the map to move around, hover over the pins to see where they are and a corresponding image. Clicking on a pin will open up a window with more info, where you can add comments too.

Back on the topic of user feedback (I told you I was using 'work' to justify this), unfortunately I find the Platial widget a little... ugly. Orange, while popular among the web crowd, is arguably my least favourite colour, and it clashes with the style of these blogs. Hopefully over time Platial will allow the user to tune the mapkit's colour scheme.

And props to Blogger, which allows one to hack around with things. It seems daft that Typepad charges hundreds of dollars per year to provide the same level of flexibility. Blogger is FREE!

August update

We haven't been travelling much recently, though April brought a wedding in South Carolina, and July a short jaunt to Montreal for the Jazz Festival.

Peter went to Kentucky overnight for work, and I made a trip to New York for visa purposes - both were all work and no photos. Otherwise I've been puttering around taking photos close to home, often of the earth in bloom. Yesterday we went to a local farm for a glorious if windy day outside. We returned with loads of fruit, and lots of photos of bumblebees busily pollinating sunflowers - quite a feat (for bees and photographer) considering that the sunflowers were waving wildly in the wind. Good to have a fast lens!

As noted before, I've been very pleased with the images from the 18 - 70 AF-S DX Nikkor lens. The Quantaray zoom left a lot to be desired and quite frankly wasn't worth carting around China. So I am very excited (though until it arrives a little apprehensive) that I've just ordered the reputedly wonderful 18 - 200 mm AF-S DX VR Nikkor lens. Apparently Ritz Camera has them in stock right now, though they sell above list and sell out really quickly from all reputable vendors. For Nikon enthusiasts interested in more on the lens and where to buy it, see Ken Rockwell's site.

Photos

Our photos are almost all up - just the Yang Tse / Three Gorges left to go.