Welcome everyone to 2026 and also welcome to this, the traditional yearly transition blog post, in which I ramble a bit about what happened in the past year and what I would like to happen in the coming year.
Betty’s Bay sunset on the first day of 2026. Do note the HDR on display systems that support it. Thanks AVIF!
Well will you look at that date… Merry Christmas everyone!
I would also like to welcome you to the 263d edition of the Weekly Head Voices, a surprise even to me that it managed to get this far!
26th wedding anniversary hike, this time a forbidden route starting from Rooi Els
I was partially inspired by Martin Fowler’s “writing fragments” to just get this post out there. In his post, he makes the case that social media comes and goes, something I’ve seen happen more than once during the 25 year existence of this blog, and so he just plonks together a bunch of things that he found interesting and publishes that as a blog post.
This edition of the Weekly Head Voices, which proudly started coming at you from the Southern bank of the Crocodile river, looking over the water into Kruger National Park, right before being ignominiously ignored for an extended period of time and then finally being revived on the road (literally, I’m sitting in the passenger seat with my laptop on my… err.. .lap, thanks driver-spouse!) back from St Francis, covers the period of time up to when it eventually, hopefully, finally gets published.
This edition of the Weekly Head Voices covers the period from Tuesday, April 22 to Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Another beautiful view from Clarence Drive
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust
It’s father’s day today.
When I woke up and went to say good morning to Genetic Offspring Unit (GOU) #3, she gave me the card she made, with a rainbow and a red heart and a sweet hand-written message in 9-year-old Afrikaans.
This wildly-non-weekly 260th edition of the Weekly Head Voices covers the period of my life, exceptionally patchily, from Wednesday, March 12 to Monday, April 21, 2025.
The photo above is from a little family hike down to the Palmiet river mouth, next to Betty’s Bay. GOU #3 (now 9), seemed to enjoy the first bit, but then suddenly did not, which usually leads to quite a bit of complaining. It was really great to see her perk up again when I returned with the car to pick them up more quickly than she expected. (All of that running exercise has a purpose you know.)
Well hello there you old-school blog enjoyer, you internet connoisseur you!
(I just learned that the English connoisseur comes from the now obsolete pre-1835 French spelling. The originators of the term have since moved on to the new and improved connaisseur (like the Dutch, which is why I was briefly confused), but in English we are stuck with our quaint little oi.)
Welcome to the year 2025!
We are all still waiting for our flying cars, but if you don’t like the indistinguishable-from-human talking AIs you got instead, you can have this traditional yearly transition blog post here to keep you busy in the meantime.
The Seal Point Lighthouse in Cape St. Francis
Welcome everyone to one of the final WHVs of the year!
This one covers the period of time from Monday 9 December to Friday December 20 of the year 2024.
Scene from an extremely special hike up the Palmiet river.
My life partner and I very recently achieved a quarter century of official togetherness.
This, the 257th edition of the WHV, covers the period of time from Monday November 25 to Sunday December 8, 2024.
The view right from our lunch table at Stellenbosch Reserve, Haskell Vineyard
Haskell vineyard has made previous appearances on this blog in WHV #99 in 2015, in WHV #181 in 2019 and perhaps in other posts. I strongly suspect that some of the good friends mentioned there were the same good friends we were so fortunate to spend this Sunday lunch with!
The title of this post is another nerd-dad joke I probably should not have made, but which I simply could not resist.
Whatever the case may be, I’m happy that it’s out, just like this, the otherwise extremely modest 256th edition of the Weekly Head Voices!
A scene from our Saturday family and friends hike in Jonkershoek.