Cold wet & gloomy in Cape Town...

...just the way I like it! The unseasonal summer we've had for most of this winter is really bothering me, I like winter to be WINTER! We expect it and prepare for it, I'd like to enjoy it before the sweltering humidity of summer bears down on us again! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a comfortably warm summer too, even more enjoy the longer days and summery evenings, but it all has it's place!

That's enough about the weather. Being the 12th of August is now 12 days that I've been dry, nearly half a month. Not that anybody gives a shit about me and my problems, but I'm quite proud of this fact, and that it's not really bothered me too much yet. The dreaded withdrawal cravings from previous quitting hasn't afflicted my psyche yet for the most part, though admittedly there have been moments when the thought of sneaking off to my local boozer for a bottle of 3 Scotsmen has been a bit of a nag on my resilience, but I resisted. Honestly, I'm feeling better for it, my mood in general has improved and I can feel my brain starting to wake up again and re-load some of those dormant old memories that seemed to have faded into pickleness!

Last night my cousin Lauren popped in for a visit over some fish & chips. Lovely to see her again and catch up on news from the family up north. Especially my little old granny whom I've guiltily not spoken to in a while. I'll call her this weekend for a good long chin-wag. According to Lauren she's struggling with her health and also her memory sometimes. Shame, I so wish I could just pop in to see her regularly, she really is a special person, one of the few legendary icons we encounter in our time, and one of greatest inspirations of my life!

Anyway...

So I've now lost 2 days in a row of studying, much to my frustration. Last night we had a visitor, and the night before I behaved like a kid again. I've got this silly arcade style computer game that my dear mother introduced me to called Angry Birds. I sat down to have a quick 10 minute game when I got home and eventually got up after 10.30pm, way past my bed time, having wasted the entire evening on the highly addictive waste of time game, even practically ignoring my family. Yes I felt bad about that, but more so that I lost a valuable day of learning my photography. I've finished working through Module 1 of the course, now I need to tackle assignment 1, which is going to require some serious thinking.

And apparently assignment 1 is easy, compared to the rest. There is a closed group on Facebook for students and tutors on this course worldwide with hundreds of fellow students at various levels of the course, and the comments from the guys on the further modules and assignments seem to be sweating, though the photo's they are producing as they progress as stunning, which means the course is working and producing results! This excites me immensely, I can't wait to be taking stunning photo's in the near future because I have the technical skill to do so!

So long story short (OK too late for that), this weekend, by the time the Sunday night movie starts I'll hopefully have assignment 1 submitted. This in between a 3 hour band practice tonight and a big gig tomorrow night. My band (The Pits) is playing a show called V8 Thunder, we are one of great local 3 great bands playing, I think it's going to be an awesome gig. It's at Obz Cafe in Observatory, Cape Town. I'll blog about the gig afterwards.

Back on the monotonous drone about my photography, I have decided on my next purchases which will be fairly soon, in the next month or 2:

• Nikon has just released a new Prime lens, it's a 50mm, f1.8 prime and apparently it produces stunning results, and being a prime lens (fixed focal length) it's reasonably cheap. 
• A set of Kenko Extension Tubes. These basically turn a "standard" lens into a macro lens of the same quality as the standard by extending the focal length between the lens and the sensor. These combined with the 50mm prime will make for stunning close-up photography at a fraction of the price of buying a decent quality macro lens.
• Remote control shutter release.
• Lens pen for cleaning my lenses safely.

I also want to invest in a 2X teleconverter, basically an attachment that doubles the focal length of any compatible zoom, eg my 200mm will effectively become a 400mm. This is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a telephoto lens, but at around R4000 it's a bit too expensive so will have to wait a while! Meantime I'll have to resort to hijacking mom of her great big 400mm job. Bet for certain the next big purchase as far as lenses go has to be a decent ultra-wide angle "fish-eye" (as I've mentioned before a few times). And don't forget the portrable studio kit!

Anyway, I need to head off home, load up the drums, and back to town for rehearsal!. I'll waffle on some more over the weekend!