So take it like a man…..and by that I meant you motherfucker.

I’m pissed at several people who don’t have the common courtesy of answering a direct question. Some old friends, some new friends. Some other who commit to and then cancel on outings at the last minute, or just plain flake out. The ones who’s “maybe” is not “maybe”, it’s “I’m gonna cancel, just not right now, I’m working on an excuse”. I gave thought to the gifts going with the tickets, I give thought to your tastes when I invite you to shows.

Fuck it. I’m over it I’m having the time of my life and just wanted to share it with people I care for. I’m quite good at taking no for an answer, so don’t be shy, just don’t leave me hanging.

So this is how you build your own gnome catcher:

1: Find yourself a pipe. Everyone has an umbrella pole, so I opted for that. Next find something you can shove your cord through the pipe with like a wonky, thin feather duster. I used an old slackline for the noose, use whatver cord or thinnish rope you have lying around. The important thing here is that the shover-tool is of smaller diameter than the pipe.

And on that note: to the dumb ass (or is that numb ass?) who bragged to me about having so much “anul sex”: If it’s really that comfortable it just means his dick is much smaller than your asshole. Whichever is bigger or smaller it’s really a lose-lose situation. And please, please, for the love of God, use a spell checker.

2: Shove that cord through. Yeah, do it baby, no lube.

3: An unexpected but welcome bonus of using the umbrella pole is that you can thread the sling through the locking mechanism thus preventing you from pulling it through during a misguided capture attempt.

So I’m off with my posse to go lynch myself a gnome. Watch this space….

A day as Gaddafi. Two stunning women very dear to me driving me around town on a gnome hunt

So this is going to be one of those not so neat posts, just a random bunch of things I remember happening and some stuff I’m planning to do…..and a pic of sexy girl, just because I can.

I mailed that musician, but it seems he does not remotely recall the incident and he reckons it could not have been him. Not the result I expected, but at least it was not negative.

My Kefir from Elmarie is still going strong (not yogurt as I thought before). It’s grown from a grain that’s actually hard to find, can’t really be bought and has some amazing health benefits. What a great gift!

My property transfer and bond registration is finally done. There will be drinking of fancy wine this coming Friday night!!

I’ve lined up a potential climbing partner who sounds like he has the same sort of goals as me, hope to start climbing with him soon. I may also get to take a Scottish guy on holiday climbing too, from our conversation it sounds like we’ll have great fun. I took out a Elna and her kid climbing and she’s now hooked - so much so that we’re putting up the bouldering wall. I’m really quite excited about it, pity I’ll have to wait until Sunday to finish it.

Last weekend I went down to Umdloti with Elna – her friend had a wedding and it sounded like fun just driving down for the hell of it. The weather was not great so we did not climb or fly the kite, but it was really fun nonetheless. We arrived about 1AM Saturday morning and had a few celebratory tequilas at the local pub before going to her friend’s house where we would be staying.

The wedding was a bit unusual for me, but the food was fantastic!! We ate leftovers until Monday. Thinking back of the neighbourhood we stayed with all the views of lush green bush, humid air, the sounds of the frogs in the swamp and the birds everywhere I really get why people love the place so much.

A change in lifestyle
I’m staying in my mom’s place, babysitting the cat sorta thing while she’s in the USA. Not knowing how long she was going to be and the whole move happening a bit hastily most of her stuff is still there and my stuff in storage. That’s gotta change as I found out I have at least another year to go.

In an apparent moment of weakness Elna offered to help me , or at least rope in a friend with some interior decorating skill to help me out. There’s nothing wrong with what’s there, it just does not feel like mine.

I’m planning to hold a wine tasting thing soon, so I’ll have to get cracking on the dining room for starters.

Speaking of which, the wine tasting is part of a larger experiment – I’m looking to find something different to do in terms of making a living. Bringing the wine up from Montagu will in no way make me rich, the idea is purely to experiment with doing something I would not normally have done, trying something new, getting in touch with new people and having fun while doing it.

I’ve been talking a lot for a long time about doing various things. The time do has arrived. I’ll be focussing on quite literally de-cluttering my life – catch up on all my admin and get the house neat and then to start doing, specifically the following:

• Get the wine tasting thing done
• Build a small aquaponics setup
• Learn about and practise share trading

I’m super excited and motivated to make things happen. I don’t have great expectations of anything specific happening, I’m just very keen to try it and see what happens – I do have great expectations of something happening, having fun and learning something new. Will keep you posted…

Last time I was still aiming for a roughly 75 degree overhang. In the end I threw out all the fancy angle calculations and fit in the wall as best I could within the space available. I got lucky and found a spot where I did not need to cut the ply wood in order to shorten the wall and in the end result is pretty much what I hoped for…. perhaps slightly steeper than previously planned (I’ll get around to measuring the angle eventually), but what the hell – get a bit stronger and it’s the same thing, right?

A note on the grips: I found a few of them still had sharp seems left from the molds, but it’s breeze filing them down. Also, I’m used to grips from public indoor gyms which are relatively smooth from all the traffic, these ones are still quite rough and hard on the skin.

Had my first session on it last night – this morning I can feel a faint ache in my forearms – lekker!!

Prospecting on the Vaal (News24):  “A controversial mining company has been given the rights to go prospecting for coal in at least 162 spots next to the Vaal River.   

The Department of Mining awarded the prospecting rights without notifying landowners next to the river – something that is required by law.

Environmental experts agreed that it could lead to coal mines next to the Vaal River and that this would mean an ecological disaster for South Africa’s most important river.”

And yes, the aforementioned mining company has ties to President Zuma.

Another mining house is moving in on Bronkhorstspruit (News24): “….a mining company which wants to start an open-pit coal mine bigger than 1 000 rugby fields in the Wilge River catchment area right outside the town.

Duvenhage said on Facebook if Muhanga Mines were allowed to mine in this ecologically sensitive area, 21 natural springs would either dry up or be polluted with acidic mine water.

According to a report by an independent environmental expert ….. ‘No area can ever be completely rehabilitated after mining’”

The Exxaro mining company has been told to cease it’s Mooifontein operations AFTER they managed to (translated from Beeld) “almost completely destroy the wetland. Environmental specialists estimate that it would cost R200m – R400m to rehabilitate the wetland to some degree”

(Aside: Exxaro subsequently denied having be told to halt operations - more on that here. Furthemore, there are widespread concern over the apparent gross over estimation of our coal reserves – read more on that here and here. )

Our electricity problems in recent years ( our governments’ other shining example of resource mismanagement) was a national joke. But I don’t think it would be so funny if there are no more water left to drink – hard to make fun of that.

I believe, and please feel free to amend and add, we need:

• A zero tolerance attitude on water pollution from the president down to the municipal managers of sewerage plants.
• Adherence and strict enforcement of current law. No prospecting along rivers: Prospecting = future mining.
• Aggressive and visible action with regards to current problems.
• New legislation where needed to address loopholes and grey areas, as soon as possible. Looking at the acid mine water disaster unfolding in Gauteng and the Exxaro Mooifontein closure, it’s clear that what’s done can never be truly undone – we need to stop doing the damage first and then try to fix it later.

 Please help if you can:

• I’ve requested campaigns to be launched at www.activist.co.za and www.avaaz.org. Please encourage them to take action and launch a campaign on our behalf by either posting a comment of support on this site or contacting them directly and also requesting a campaign to be launched. Make up your own email, or use this as a template:

Hi

Please launch a campaign on the behalf of concerned South African water users. Our government is not doing enough.

I (we) believe <and please feel free to amend and add> we need:

- A zero tolerance attitude on water pollution from the president down to the municipal managers of sewerage plants.
- Adherence and strict enforcement of current law. No prospecting along rivers: Prospecting = future mining.
- Aggressive and visible action with regards to current problems.
New legislation where needed to address loopholes and grey areas, as soon as possible.

See an article on http://www.chicks-dig-scars.com/a-run-on-our-water for some details of current problems, some links to sources, messages of support etc.

• Pass this information along to your friends & family. It might be common knowledge to you, but some people are blissfully unaware of country’s water woes.

 I for one would like to be able to swim in (at least some of) our rivers.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.  ~Cree Indian Proverb

Photo by Nico van Wyk. The Wilge river running through the Ezemvelo reserve are among the rivers threatened by planned mining activities.

Swimming in the Wilge rivier

As you can see I spent many hours with state of the art CAD software to carefully plan every detail

The plywood sheets come in a standard 8×4 foot or 2.4m x 1.2m size which then has a significant impact on the dimensions, unless you’re willing to do a lot of cutting, which I did not want to do. If I recall correctly I picked the 10mm thickness. Missing in the picture is a possible second strut extending from point A to the ground. The sheets would be placed on their sides making the wall 2.4m wide.

Dimensions:
I wanted to use 4 sheets for the actual climbing surface giving a total of 4.8m flat surface, and the cut one in half for the kick board and head board – important components according to my research on the internet. Some more research led me to believe that a 70 degree angle would do nicely.

So, how tall must the struts be? Enter some basic trigonometry. I know I wanted the angle at A to be 70 degrees. The rules say that the sum of the inside angles must be 180 degrees, so knowing the angle at C is 90, the leaves 180 – 70 – 90 = 20 degrees.  I also know the length of the long side (hypotenuse), so my calculations is relatively easy.

Short strut at kick board: Kick board is 0.6m, so just little more would do.

Longest strut at head board: Kick board + Head board (1.2m total) + the BC side of my triangle in dotted green.
:: sin 70 = BC / 4.8
:: sin 70 x 4.8 = BC
:: BC = 4.5 (rounded)

Thus the longest strut (and total height of my bouldering wall) would be 5.7m. Nice.

I can follow the same procedure to calculate the length of the strut supporting the feet of the struts ( and add extensions as needed for the extra stabilisation as indicated)

:: cos 70 = AC / 4.8
:: cos 70 x 4.8 = AC
:: AC = 1.65 (rounded)

You can test the whole thing by checking if these two calculated sides add up to the hypotenuse – Pythagoras said : AB squared = BC sqr + AC sqr. You do that one yourself (mine works out, taking into account the rounding I did)

Brilliant. Except in the mean time I moved from my smallholding with the large open spaces. The next available space I had was limited by a high (but not high enough) carport. I had to cut down to 3 sheets for the flat surface, increase the angle to somewhere around 65 degrees and shorten the head board and kick board.

Life happened shortly after I had drawn up the plans for the revised bouldering wall and I’m now limited to a garage with roof trusses starting at 2.9m.

Soooo, I bade an emotional farewell to the headboard and kick board.

Using trig, knowing my height and hypotenuse lengths, I endeavoured to calculate what angle I’ll end up with – no use if it’s too steep for me. (In the meanwhile I found this lekker little trig calculator).

Oops. Insisting on using 3 full sheets will land me up with an overhang of around 54 degrees – too much for me. Cut one in half (making it a 3m flat surface) gets me 75 degrees – just about perfect!!!.

So what’s the moral of the story? Go simple and get it done, as soon as you can. Always planning for the ultimate killer design sometimes (most of the time in my case) costs you a lot of time modifying it to suite your actual needs, while in the mean time you still don’t have anything to show for your efforts. You could have had something simple right at the start and build on from that.

The ultimate bouldering wall is the one that you can climb on, right now.

I’m painting my plywood sheets now and hope to finally have this thing up in the next week or two, plain and simple.

It was a short one, but we’ll miss it no less.

After all it was a good little week, and all weeks go to heaven, I think.

The status report:

Wild-wild-outside:
Short holiday in the Freestate went well, no climbing done but got in PLENTY of sleep. Was worth it.

Projects:
Went to see Jaco from www.Refilwe.org, and we’ve got a partnership of sorts up & running. They’ll start preparing and let me know when I can drop of the equipment for our aquaponics project. I’ll stay involved and poke my nose in as much as I can, and try and come up with a manual of sorts. The idea is to get the fish farming up to speed and then slowly introduce the vegetable beds, adjusting as we go along.

BlogSale:
I’m desperately trying to organise shipping for the Draganflyer. Raul from Spain is a keen buyer, now I just need to deliver it… which is easier said than done, unless you’re willing to spend more than a plane ticket’s price on sending over a large suitcase weighing 12.5 kg. But we will persist, myself & I – I’m sure something suitable will pop up.

…and all the rest:
Then there’s the weekend. What to do, what to do. Hmmm. Got some climbing lined up with some friends. Then there’s the garage to clean out. And my “dumping room”. Eish. When that’s all done I may just have the space to start that elusive bouldering wall project. But I reckon it’ll go quick. Plenty time to play around

Wow, what a week. It feels like a lifetime since last weekend, in a good way. Not that I’m not REALLY looking forward to leaving work today, but it’s been a good week packed full of interesting conversations, new opportunities, ironing, washing floors and sleeping like a log in my now almost totally dark bedroom. I’ve settled in to my new place - it’s sorta starting to feel like mine and it’s comfortable.

I also found out that I have the entire top story to myself, which in a meaningless sort of way is quite nice. King of the hill

So, what’s new you ask?

I’ve organised a trip to Wellingtons Dome<whoohoo>.

I’m getting to see an old friend tomorrow and then I’ve got a small freelance job to make up for some of the millions I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks with the move.

In my post last week I spoke of my “Teach a man to fish” project: I’ve now made contact with Vernon who sounds very keen on the project, and who I believe will be getting back to me soon with possible venues to set up the project - this is a very exciting development for me and I’m very anxious to see the end result.

I was fortunate to see this slide show on climb.co.za - I have no idea how large the entire stream is, but it’s well worth it, promise. View it in full screen mode if possible, and make sure to have your headset / speakers turned on (tip: buy them chocolates and whisper dirty little things to them, usually does the trick ) A must for anyone into photography and / or climbing. Or just beautiful stuff. Or something

Rock Climbing Slideshow by Dirk Smith from Dirk Smith on Vimeo.

And then for some more inspiration, something quite different. To quote the source site, TED: “Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

Astonishing indeed.

And to top things off, I’ve been having a relaxed afternoon at work following an intense medieval LAN battle with my co-workers. My washing is done, I just need to pick it up, then pick a spot with suitably hot chicks to have a cocktail at before heading home. Who knows what the rest of the night holds?!

I’m in exactly that position – no crag close enough to reasonably reach after work during the week, and even the closest indoor climbing gym is slightly further than I’d like to drive to regularly – not to mention the peak hour traffic en-route.

The idea:
A free standing construction which will be relatively easy to disassemble and re-assemble. My living arrangements are somewhat unstable at the moment – I don’t have a permanent place to put up a wall, so I’ll need to be able to move it without too much difficulty. Building it indoors is also not an option at the moment.

Whats needed:
Some plywood, pine beams, and artificial grips. Bolts & nuts to put it all together and some paint to protect it all from the elements.

The Design:
I’m going for a simple design, almost exactly the same as this sketch from the Gecko Grips site (where I also bought my first set of grips), except of course I’ll have some additional construction to make it free standing.

So far I’ve gone after building metal brackets to bolt everything together. It’s been a pain, I’m seriously considering ditching that plan in favour of plain old wood screws.

I’ll post up some progress pics & details as I go along, watch this space.

Ursula doing the "Preying mantice ninja move" (not an officially recognized climbing move, but it proved effective in the end)

Someone also decided to removed some hangers, which I replaced on the day. A few bolts needed tightening too.

Francois in touch with his inner baboon. The surprised look is a result of realising what the sticky stuff he felt earlier actually was

Other semi-related news:
The Boven Rock Rally is coming up next month and Gustav has afforded me the opportunity to be a part of the organisation pending some work to be done by this coming weekend – hopefully a big announcement on SANCL.org next week!!!

Summer is coming and the time to go to Wellingtons Dome is running out as the summertime temps will be unbearable.  If that does not materialise, I’ve got some unfinished business at Swinburne, and I’m still keen to check out Harrismith – dug up that guide book earlier this week: there’s a 3 pitch grade 14 with my name on it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are pretty much status quo. After SEVERAL day’s cleaning, the place is starting to resemble a state called clean. Some more grass to be cut, and ooh, while I’m on the topic let me phone the shop for a B.F.T. – the “T” is for torch……and the B is a capital, bold “B” at 15 000 000 candle power. Who needs a gun when you can singe retinas at 50m?

<phone call>

hmmmm, so much for service. As the specific BFT is discontinued, they won’t ship the stock between branches, so I’ll have to take a 200km drive to the branch that still has stock and back if I really, really want it. Thanks Outdoor Warehouse for service that makes the government departments look reasonable.

Right.

That’s it, I’m done.

I’ve been looking for a new theme – the old one does not do the SANCL structure any justice – and came across what I consider to be a brilliant theme exposing the tree structure of the different leagues.

With the University Leagues keen to join after a briefing by Neil Margetts (Chairman and founder of the GSCL ), the bouldering guys showing some interest and the SA Schools League finals around the corner, this is a perfect time to unveil the new look.

What still needs to be done is to show the live ranking system. Most, but not all of the school kids have signed up, so it might well be time to show the rankings. The kids missing on the rankings might just motivate the late adopters to actually get their butts in gear and sign up – it’s free after all?!

I’m also considering launching a competition for the desing of a SANCL logo. I’m not much good at drawing and it might be a good way of attracting some attention to the site. Watch this space….