Diving in Fiji
Tweet
648 days ago
Fiji is far enough west in the Paficic that it still has an excellent biodiversity (biodiversity declines eastwards across the Pacific). I have been lucky to spend almost a year in Suva, working at the University of the South Paficic's Marine Studies Programme and International Ocean Institute. During that time, I took quite a few photographs, which I have been scanning this week from 35mm slides. As far as I recall, this photograph was off the wall at the entrance to Suva lagoon.
Diving in Fiiji, it doesn't get any better.
fiji scuba diving marine underwater
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post | 
|
Mantis shrimp at Sodwana Bay
Tweet
649 days ago
I used to do a lot of diving at Sodwana Bay, in Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa. One one dive I came across this mantis shrimp and just happened to have the right extension tube on the Nikonos.
Mantis shrimp at Sodwana Bay
From Wikipedia:
Mantis shrimp or stomatopods are marine crustaceans, the members of the order Stomatopoda. They are neither shrimp nor mantids, but receive their name purely from the physical resemblance to both the terrestrial praying mantis and the shrimp. They may reach 30 cm (12 in) in length, although exceptional cases of up to 38 cm have been recorded [2]. The carapace of mantis shrimp covers only the rear part of the head and the first three segments of the thorax. Mantis shrimp appear in a variety of colours, from shades of browns to bright neon colours.
Called "sea locusts" by ancient Assyrians, "prawn killers" in Australia and now sometimes referred to as "thumb splitters" or "claw shrimp" by modern divers — because of the relative ease the creature has in mutilating small appendages — mantis shrimp sport powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning or dismemberment. Mantis shrimp can break through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon.
I hereby certify that attempting to pick one of them up can be quite a painful experiece.
mantis shrimp sodwana underwater marine
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
Galapagos sea lion
Tweet
650 days ago
I have been priviliged to visit the Galápagos Islands, and recently scanned alot of my photographs from there, which were on 35 mm slides. The Galápagos Sea Lion (Zalophus wollebaeki) breeds on the Galápagos Islands and – in smaller numbers – on Isla de la Plata (closer to Ecuador). Being fairly social, and one of the most numerous species in the Galápagos archipelago, they are often spotted sun-bathing on sandy shores or rock groups or gliding gracefully through the surf. Being so ubiquitous in Galápagos, I have a lot of photographs of them, including a few that I managed to take underwater. Technically, the photograph below is pretty crummy, but I like it so thought I would put it up as today's picture. Feel free to grab it from Flickr, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
Galápagos sea lion. Not the clearest of pictures, but I think it is cute
nevertheless. The location was Bartholomew Island.
sea lion sealion Galápagos underwater
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
Scanning 35mm slides
Tweet
651 days ago
For the past week or so, I have been spending most of my evenings scanning my 35mm slides. The quality of the pictures is much better than what I have ever been able to get with a digital camera. I am using a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 scanner, for which I had to set up the dreaded Windows on a PC which I am not allowing anywhere near a network. The scanner has an adapter for multiple slides, so I can scan 30-60 slides at a time depending on the thickness of the mounts. Paper mounts are problematic though, and as a lot of my pictures are on Kodachrome, this means I have to be there to untangle messes. But it is going well, I should be finished by my 98th birthday, hopefully sooner.
Pelargonium photographed somewhere near Vanrynsdorp in Namaqualand, South Africa.
Since I will not be doing much other posting for a while, I will try to post 1-2 of the pictures every day for the time being. All my pictures are Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licensed.
scanning 235mm slides nature photography flower namaqualand coolscan
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources: a knowledge network for building capacity in software engineering
Tweet
667 days ago
This is a talk I gave at Stellenbosch University a few minutes ago. It was at a workshop on African Knowledge Networks, held the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies.
The presentation from Chameleon ( http://chameleon.uwc.ac.za is below. Note that there is no synchronization between audio and slides. If I manage to do that, I will make a new blog post with the sync.
You can download the presentation from Chameleon.
AVOIR collaboration africa
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
Beyond the traditional learning management system again
Tweet
681 days ago
Beyond the traditional learning management system again is another talk that I gave at the Department of Public Service and Administration in Pretoria two weeks ago.
I will try to sync with the podcast on SlideShare when I get a round tuit.
elearning ple education
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
Moving to Johannesburg
Tweet
683 days ago
It has been an open secret for some time now that I had been offered the position of Deputy Vice Chancellor (DVC), Knowledge and Information Management at the University of the Witwatersrand. I have not been able to make it official due to the lengthy procedures involved when a higher education instution recruits for senior management positions such as DVC. However, this process is now complete, and I can make it official. My new role as DVC at Wits will begin in the third week of January, and my last day at UWC will be January 21, 2009.
It has been a remarkable time at UWC, where I have been in a very similar role for the past 6 years. We have taken UWC from a place where it was pretty much ignoring technology, to the point where IT pervades absolutely every corner of the campus. For the last few months, I have been touring the IT facilities on campus, and I am confident when I say that UWC has achieved IT penetration, not just in technology but in use, equal to any higher institution in SA, better than most, and probably in the top 15% in the world. It has not all been rosy, and there have been some failures, but in general, a lot has been accomplished.
Moving to Wits will give me a chance to face some new challenges, different from the ones faced at UWC 6 years ago, but certainly considerable opportunity to help make an very good university into a really great university. The macro vision of the Vice Chancellor is to make Wits into one of the top 100 universities in the world. What more a challenge could one hope for than this one?
I will make a post to thank UWC for the opportunity it has afforded me to grow, and develop as the time of departure draws nearer.
personal
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post | 
|
DPSA workshop: eLearning technology considerations mindmap
Tweet
694 days ago
This is the mindmap from the DPSA workshop session on eLearning Technology. It is included here for the benefit of people who participated in the workshop.
Download
This post has not been tagged
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |  |
Educational Techniques for Young People by an Old Dude: videos
Tweet
699 days ago
Educational Techniques for Young People by an Old Dude: rap and remix as socially networked learning opportunities
| Part 1 |
| Part 2 |
| Part 3 |
| Part 4 |
education 3.0 rap remix elearning e-learning
|
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post |
|
Educational techniques for young people by an old dude: rap and remix as socially networked learning opportunities
Tweet
708 days ago
Livecasting was done at 14:00-14:45 South African Time on Wednesday Oct 1. Unfortunately, it did not quite work out how I meant it to. There was no setup time, so in the rush I forgot to put on the audio, and left the phone pointed at the audience. The video is jittery, but if you download it it plays fine. The talk is podcast though, and the podcast is below the video. Please note that as I do various demonstrations, the video here will change.
I HAVE TURNED THIS OFF TEMPORARILY
Abstract
Rap music began in the 1980s, but is still a popular part of youth culture today. It embraces the notion of taking parts of different music sources, and mixing them together (remix), and using the results to create musical poetry that can contain new lyrics and embrace deep meaning. The results are shared among friends, and with the advent of social networking technologies, rappers may have a substantial online following without ever talking to a record label. This remix and sharing culture is a metaphor for education, yet we seldom make the connection, and almost never exploit its potential. This talk focuses around the technologies that we have deployed in support of a Social Content project for Western Cape schools to explore how the technology can help to create an educational remix culture. It also demonstrates some uses of commonly used youth technologies such as cellphones, MP3 players, and Mixit to facilitate educational remix that can happen using the Social Content site.
