Sandcurves

I have been busy doing a few different things the last couple of days, and have deliberately tried to get away from my computer.  On Saturday is my eldest son's (Mark) seventh birthday party.  We are doing it at home, hiring one of those jumping castle things, and then we will braai with family in the afternoon. 

I am also polishing up my Gimp skills to create an invite, but I don't want to say to much, certain people may read my blog

So, my plan for the day is to stay far away from my computer, clean the garden and stuff like that.  Maybe I'll put up some of the pics of the weekend (at least on Flickr).

I have added a photo section to See Namibia at see-namibia.com/pictures/.  Go have a look and give me some feedback.  I did already ask my Facebook Friends what they thought and will still make some tweaks to how it all looks and works, based on their feedback - but not till next week. 

I also have lots of bits and peaces of stuff done for that site and for Sandcurves, so next week will be a busy one.  Enjoy the weekend, I'll be blogging again on Monday. 

Read on...

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about CSS.  On the one hand, trying to get your website to work in all the available browsers, and perhaps even worrying about cellphones and stuff like that, it gets tricky.  People have different screens, people set different fonts as their defaults and otherwise change the way they use the web. 

I like to sometimes have a text editor open (emacs) while using a browser at the same time, and at times I really enjoy working in Emacs using w3m to browse - and if the website was done with a layout based in tables, that doesn't work. 

I would have to be a crazy man to think that my css is much good, but it is not about the artistry for me, it is about getting certain things to work, about a logic problem.  And it is this side of CSS that is fun to me. 

So here are some of the things I have learned about CSS over the last two years or so since I started building websites:

1. Draw a picture first - Draw the boxes and think about how to do that in CSS.
2. Separate Style Sheets - I tried to build See Namibia first with styles in the header. Then you change a bit for one page, do this here, that there, and soon you have no clue what you are doing, updating one thing means changing it throughout your site. Don't try to do it that way - It is mad. I suppose you could use an 'include' to bring it in, but that is just the same thing as having separate style sheets.  Why bother.  Just do it with external style-sheets and get on with it. 
3. Get away from 'negative margins' and CSS hacks - There was a time that I thought you can't do a three column layout with CSS, without doing some stupid things.  It isn't true.  You can build a page with whatever layout you want, with just nested div tags. 
4. Keep it simple - in a couple different ways.  There was a time when I put in every 'margin:0' that I could.  When you go back and try to edit it, you have to wade through all this CSS that does nothing to find the one thing that you need to fix.  Actually, when your site looks great, go into your CSS file and delete one item at a time and see if anything changes on your site.  Do that until you have absolute the least CSS code you can get away with.  It is going to save you time in the future, and will make your website that fraction faster - with a smaller CSS file-size to load.
5. Organize - madly!  Divide up the CSS file as you need to (perhaps say smaller projects, just divide up the classes, regular tags and ids.  In bigger projects, divide by page section.  Then alphabetize the tags within that section and alphabetize within the actual tag's styling.  It sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't - not if you take it over the time that you take to build a site.  It takes long the first couple days, but after that it actually starts to save you a massive amount of time.
6. Indent - except for the tag line, indent everything else. You can do one long line, which looks less 'smart' but is still really easy to browse, but makes finding the tag easier.
7. Build for Firefox - build for the browser that is closest to where the standards are moving.  I am not an expert, but I would say build for Gecko browsers, then Webkit (Chrome, Safari) and if you really need, then do the separate CSS files for Internet Explorer. If you can just get away with one stylesheet and not have to build and fix, all the better. It may limit the look of your site, but with some creativity you can still make it look good. You can do things like rounding of corners for the browsers that support it, and just not worry about if for the older IE browser.

The most important thing for me is to have a CSS file that I can throw away and build an new one, or change any one thing I want, without having to really dig through things to much.  When you add a new app to your website, you should be able to do some simple additions just to get things straight, and you should be able to use dynamic stylesheets to do things like website testing.  Then CSS not only becomes a necessary part of building a website, but becomes really fun. 

Read on...

Warning: Dangerous levels of introspection and many warn out adjectives.  I have been working hard today to build a new section to see-namibia.com and hope to have it up and going soon (maybe still tonight), but I am kind of spent.  I have been working solid, sometimes from 6h30 in the morning till past midnight, stopping only for those things that I have to (a tweet or two, water the lawn, food, shower, and the daily outing to pick up the two boys from school, show Esmerelda that I still live). But Esmerelda works crazy hard too - supporting both of us while I try to get Frantic Naturalist to float).

When you are building a company, I think you think long and hard about what you are doing (and if you are going to be able to pay the bills).  But you (or me, at least) get a little nostalgic and think about all the things that brought you to where you are. 

I thought I would call this post "In the bushes with friends" but thought that would give you the wrong idea (smile). I don't want to tell a history lesson, either - I'll bore you with that later.  Just thought I would do a quick summary of where the idea of Frantic Naturalist came from. 

I had some guests in December when I did the two week stint at Sossusvlei (SDL), and when they got on the plane before returning home they asked out the window "Is there any way to contact you?"  I shouted back, "yeah, just Google 'frantic naturalist' and you'll find me. 

Their quick response - "Frantic Naturalist, perfect name for you"

So, Frantic Naturalist has grown on me and fits who I am today (well, when I am not being a geek behind the computer).  I didn't earn that name quickly, it took some time.  I'm not sure if you want to be called Frantic Naturalist, but I love it (as a company name, not to be called that myself.)

But, to get to the point, I didn't really mean that name to be about me.  I have give the name for my company some thought (like 20 years of thought).  I always knew I was going to do something like this.  We chatted about it at school. 

Anyway, I wanted to be clear that the company is not just about nature.  Huh?  Yes, I wanted the company to be about people.  About people who cannot wait to get out in the bush and discover it, understand it, photograph, explore… lovers of nature. 

The name 'Frantic Naturalist' already comes with me for some time - I didn't like 'fanatical naturalist' or 'crazy naturalist'.  I wanted that sense of urgency - like "man, I can't wait to go out on our first game drive..walk...boat trip"

Of course, when it came time to register the domain, it was available, surprise, surprise. I still have the website, frantic-naturalist.com, though the site needs a total re-build. 

Anyway, why this focus on people? It is very simple, the best, best, best experiences of nature I have had, have been experiences I shared with others. 

So these are the people to blame for my wacky company end:

• Past guests (none of whom would likely have found this website, I would guess) - I have been such a lucky person to have taken the most awesome people in the world around the bushes of Namibia.  I have had the most fantastic experience of working with guests that I not so much guide, but rather share this amazing, almost surreal, shared experience of nature.  I am not lying, either.  I have guided some people with slightly less enthusiasm, of course, but mostly it has been the other way.  People get sucked in and we have a great experience.  Of course I have the luxury of having done mainly very upmarket private guiding in the last few years, but really, it is not just those people.  I struck it lucky and have learned so very much.
• People I worked with.  Everyone.  Good or bad, I learned from everyone.  There were some bad, really bad, and I have sat through many a disciplinary hearing as chairman and learned all that side of things too.  But there is very much the other side of it as well.  I have worked with some of the coolest people.  I have had nearly 20 guides work under me over the years - I want all of them back.  I still know many of them today.  My guiding team (that I left at the lodge and trained up) are still there, and still phone me just to chat.  Training teaches you so much.  When you train, you have to be sure your own field knowledge is good.  But it is more than that, you also have to teach new guides to not only tell people stuff, but to share the bush with people.… To create an experience every time you go out.  That is why we did so well with Trip Advisor in those days - and they still continue to do well today. 
  There were also the guys who trained me in the early years.  Very special people. 
• My buddies in my school years and nature conservation studying time.  Thanks to Facebook and the Internet I have been able to get back in touch with many of them, and they still help me out today.  We didn't worry about passion or creating experience… we were to busy having a good one. 
  At school we ran around the Mau escarpment and in the Rift Valley.  My sister told me that our class was known as "bushmen" for years after we had left.  A lot of us enjoyed being out there. 
  At Saasveld it was much the same, except perhaps we knew more of what we were enthusiastic about.  And I started birding for real (or, I started keeping a list).  Our "Africa Club Nights" where discussion was restricted to a few specific topics, were such fun. 
  There have been some special friends since then, like the astronomers.  The last time I was running around the desert was with my buddy Frank, who took many of the pictures I use for my avatars and the great Namtoge video I have on the See Namibia blog.
• Of course, family as well.  My parents are more bush people than me.

So, it's with that cool background, with those cool people, that I am looking forward to building up my little Safari Business.  So, building my new website and starting with just bookings, that is just a stepping stone.  I want to try hard to deal direct as much as possible, without involving other agents, I want to deal with people.  Frantic Naturalist, bushes and friends - that is what I want it to be like. 

Read on...

I like to measure, quantify, count, list, work stuff out.  I like to understand things, down to their basics.  I want to know how my computer works, down to bits and bites.  I want to understand arid systems ecology, down to the finer points, as much as that is possible.  I like to measure just for it's own sake. 

Somehow, certain things get measurements that don't really make sense, but I just keep right on measuring.  One of those, is that I measure some undefined quality of my years as they drift by, by how many leopards I have seen. 

Why, I do not know.  Why leopards, instead of say, lions or elephants or ground woodpeckers?  Well, I have had years with over 100 lion sightings, and when you go somewhere like the Chobe at the river front area (near Kasane, in Botswana) you can't say that you have "an Elephant sighting", practically the whole drive is one long elephant sighting.  I remember a time that Tsavo was like that.  Or the Ewaso Ng'iro River in Samburu/Buffalo Springs. 

So, at times you see to many of those.  And of course, you don't want to go the other way, where things are so localized that your chance of seeing them is limited to where you go. 

No, Leopards are practically everywhere, but in most places you very rarely see them.  Of course, I think anyone who has spent a little time running around the African bush, starts to think that leopards are a little special. 

Come December last year, I still hadn't seen one, and my stint at Sossusvlei Desert Lodge near the end of the year saw me get frantic trying to find one of those animals.  I dipped (to borrow some birding terminology). 

This year I have only done one tour, but I was really lucky and had a really quick glimpse of a leopard. 

In my childhood we basically didn't see leopards.  There were a few glimpses of things that may have been, but I don't have a clear recollection of a nice leopard sighting. 

It has really been in my guiding years that this metric has become 'a thing' with me.  So, for the record, here is, to the best of my recollection<, my score card. 

• 1998 - One, mid day, near Halali
• 1999 - None, not one. Though I did see wild dogs in Bots a few times, so made good like that.
• 2000 - Nothing, though I spent some time tracking them in the Namib, until they would go into the hills.
• 2001 - Two, one at a distance on a dead zebra foal we had seen in the day.  After closing the lodge, a few of us went out with a spotlight and found it.  Three was a hyena, and we could only tell it was a leopard by the way it moved, and comparing the size to the hyena.  Number two was at Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa, where I was doing some guide training. 
• 2002 - None
• 2003 - None, but I was in Windhoek for most of that year. 
• 2004 - Our fist amazing sighting on the NamibRand.  It was a training drive (this time me training a bunch of guys hopping to become guides). It was sitting on some granite boulders. 
• 2005 - Two, both on game drives in the Namib Rand.
• 2006 - None, I was a manager in the lodge and did very few game drives. 
• 2007 - I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like 5 sightings. 
• 2008 - It all went nuts and I saw 11 before I left the lodge in June, then one in the Palmwag concession, and then one in Etosha at Olifantsbad waterhole.  In a desert country, that is a really, really good year.  I think very few other guides in Namibia would see that number of truly wild leopards.  Considering all of those sightings but one was in the desert makes it all the more special. 

And then the rest you know, 2009, zero, 2010, one.  I may be doing one short trip in August, and perhaps have a lucky number 2, but at least I can relax, 2010 is fixed up, I've seen my leopard.

I'm feeling lazy today and want to spend time with my boys, I'll put in some of the links to the places later, promise. 

Read on...

Today, BloggersUnite is asking bloggers and writers around the world to use their voices to raise awareness about empowering people with disabilities [ reference ].  Having grown up as I did (in northern Kenya where my parents worked with the Rendile people), it is a subject I feel strongly about. 

To contribute, I'll chat about three thing, stuff from when I was a kid, my dreams for Frantic Naturalist, and giving credit to some organizations in Africa, making a difference to people with disabilities. 

When you are in rural Africa and deal with destitute poverty, people with disabilities becomes an big part of what goes on around you.  It was never a major focus, but there were a number of things that my parents were involved in to make a difference.  The most memorable for me (and I am sure for them as well) was when they started getting these super heavy duty wheelchairs made. 

Being cripple in the Kaisut Desert for a kid is just tereble.  They sit with the ladies in the house, and usually don't even talk to you if you visit.  There lives are terrible. 

But we couldn't just get them normal wheelchairs, the Kaisut desert is literally just rocks.  They would break in no time.  Now my memory if faint, but I think my parents got someone to make a wheelchair out of solid steel tubing and that kind of material.  There must have been some worry that the little kids who where going to use them would not be able to move them. 

We need not have worried, not only did they have the ability to play, but every kid wanted to push them.  They had suddenly become the novelty.  It wasn't just a short term fix either, because my parents still live there, many of those first kids have grown up and become very well educated, of course much of their education also funded through my parents project. 

I know that is sort of dull story (you know, they did other stuff, like save 2000 peoples lives… but that's there story, not mine), but the point is that we had this connection with making a difference in the lives of people with disabilities and it still has meaning for me today. 

As a conservation student I was lucky to go one day to Karoo National Park when I was a trainee conservator at Addo Elephant National Park.  We went to catch Klipspringers.  It was really cool, chasing these things around the cliffs with a helicopter and catching them in nets. 

But there was one interesting thing I saw at Karoo National Park that I hadn't seen before, a 'blind trail'.  I thought, one day I need to get involved in that kind of stuff. 

Now, our company is a full on for profit company at the moment.  We are not 'doing well by doing good' or anything like that, just want your money.  But I have a very keen long term plan to do the following with the company:

• Make the travel agent work well enough to employ a few people
• Get on of the real Safari Gurus (I have a few people in mind) to come and help me start up the Frantic Naturalist safari company side of it, ideally in about two or three years. 
• And then, five, seven, whatever, years down the line, to implement a whole different side to Frantic Naturalist where we do a number of things that I dream of, such as environmental education on a rather unique way, I have an idea for a lodge called 'bent bush lodge' where we'll do a lot of exploring and things like that, and lots of ideas.  I don't want to go into detail, because my plans will change and it all depends on being profitable in the first place. 

But the main point I wanted to make was that I would hope, very, very much that we will incorporate opportunities for people with disabilities to experience nature.  I am quite clear on what I would like to do, but for now, they are pipe dreams. 

But Africa is full of people with disabilities, and there are many great organizations making a difference in Africa today.  As I am not directly involved in that kind of thing at the moment, all I could do was Google and hope that my giving some of these organizations credit would make a difference in people's lives down the line. 

I'll focus on Angola.  If you know much of what has happened in Angola since 1975, you'll know that the country is has gone through one of the worst civil wars on the continent. 

Perhaps the one thing that made this war so terrible was that it was so well funded.  Angola has both oil and diamonds and that money was part of what fueled this terrible war for so many years. 

When Savimbi ended up looking like a sieve (you know, full of bullet holes, some say when the MPLA shot him, his own guys also shot him in the back… just rumors, I don't know.) in 2002, the country breathed a sigh of relief and the war finished perhaps quicker than any other war of it's kind. [ ref ] 

Anyway, war finished, but a shattered country was left behind with the tough job of fixing itself.  There is still money, maybe more than ever, but there is also so much left broken by the years of war. 

Perhaps the very worst thing is the devastation to children.  A whole generation is growing up with the trauma of war in their past. 

But of course it is not just the psychological trauma, one of the effects of a very well funded gorilla war is landlines.  Because it was gorilla war, the best weapon was anti personal mines.  Those despicable, horrid things dismembered thousand and thousands of people. 

That has been well documented already, even lady Diane did her bit.  But there were a lot of these mines, and many were not found for a long time after the war.  Till today there are many people dealing with disabilities in Angola, very many. 

So, for what it is worth, here is some link love (to use the blogging parlance) for some of the organizations I came across in my Google search. 

• ddpuk/LARDEF - DDP (Disability and Development Partners) and LARDEF (Liga de Apoio à Integração dos Deficientes) partnership.

  LARDEF’s vision 'an environment without barriers where disabled people are included in society and their rights are respected' and their determination to support and integrate disabled people in society continue to be impressive. [ quote from the website ]

• - Africare-Angola - Though they don't actually say it, when working to improve people's livelihood in Angola, I am certain they would be focusing a great deal on people with disabilities. 

  Africare is committed to assisting the Angolan people by increasing their access to health services, education, clean water, and improved livelihoods.  [ quote from the website ]

• - Leahy War Victims Fund - Working all over the world with victims of landmines.

  The Fund provides a dedicated source of financial and technical assistance for people living with disabilities, particularly those who have sustained mobility-related injuries from unexploded ordnance, antipersonnel landmines, and other direct and indirect causes of disability, including preventable diseases that might result from interrupted immunization campaigns. [ quote from the website ]

• Southern Africa Federation of The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled

  Southern Africa Federation of The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled is a non-governmental human rights organisation founded in 1986 in Zimbabwe by disabled people for disabled people as an umbrella organisation for the national Disabled People's Organisations in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) [ quote from the website ]

• Handicap International in Angola

  In 2006, Handicap International, began working with partners to consolidate local coordination capacities and to provide training and technical support in the area of Mine Risk Education. [ quote from the website ]

Honestly, I didn't find much when searching for it.  I would like to add more organizations and if you know any doing good work, please let me know and I'll add it to the post. 

Read on...