Ten Favourite Smells...

“It was very pleasant to savour its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present.”

                      "Like Water for Chocolate" ― Laura Esquivel

I love the smell of fragrant flowers, baking cinnamon buns, that sweet clean scent of a just bathed baby.  Funny, isn’t it how good smells are a big element in our sensation of comfort?

There’s so much of the pleasure lost today – fruit that’s been irradiated and in cold storage for weeks doesn’t have that intense, fruity aroma of a vine ripened, sun warmed granadilla.  And let’s not talk about those perfect, beautiful tunnel grown flowers with no smell at all… so disappointing, they may as well be plastic.  

Of all the five senses, smell is most linked to our memories, our past; but best smells do change, our “noses” develop, and our olfactory abilities can be trained.  I have many, much-loved scents although I don’t know when or how they all became so special, but pleasant smells are very personal and we all have our picks. The following ten in no particular order, are my favourites …

• Freshly baked bread
• Frangipani Flowers (Plumeria)
• Lavender and beeswax wood polish
• Approaching summer storms (smell of rain)
• A bowl of freshly picked, sun ripened lemons
• Roses – (preferable dark red Damask roses)
• Vanilla
• Fresh brewed coffee
• Eucalyptus (Blue Gum)
• Ripe Cantaloupe (Rock melon, Spanspek)  

These are mine. What have I left out?  What are your favourites?

Kalahari Dreaming…

I never knew my father; his shadowy presence prowled around the edges of my consciousness. Once or twice, we met.  Central to the plot of my own existence...

... Welcome. Please go to Wildmoz to see all our new articles on Africa as and when they appear. For more, we are publishing all our African Folktales in their full version in e-books for readers, PDFs, etc. as well as in hard copies. Keep a look out for these wonderful little stories for children and adults alike at Wildmoz.com. Collect for yourself a set of twelve, in the format of your choice...

Lake Nyasa

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Famous...what good is that?

My father was a writer… He was famous – in an obscure way – although better known for other things. His are not the best or greatest works I’ve ever read, although some of his books are considered classics.  But as I said, he was famous for other things…

... Welcome to this folktale. Please go to Wildmoz to see all our new articles on African Folktales as they appear. We are publishing all our African Folktales in their full version in e-books for readers, PDFs, etc. as well as in hard copies. Keep a look out for these wonderful little stories for children and adults alike at Wildmoz.com. Collect for yourself a set of twelve, in the format of your choice...

Protest Internet Censorship with WordPress...

Join Wikipedia, WordPress and all the other online communities who are blacked out in protest today against SOPA!

Go to WordPress and add your name to the protest, if you're American; or sign the international petition (scroll to the bottom of the page) to the US State Department, if you're not. Together, we can make a difference!

Wikipedia to black out; will go dark for 24 hours...

 

Don’t Let It Happen!

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – may look good from far, but is far from good! Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, AOL and others have all spoken out against the proposed legislation and its threat to the Internet…and now Wikipedia! Please bear with me people, THIS IS IMPORTANT! It has the potential to affect us all and although I'm politically neutral, it is important that we stand up for basic human freedoms and the freedom of expression.

For some time now, I have had the Support Mozilla link in the upper left side of this page.You may not be American, and English may not be your home language; this doesn’t matter! If you use the Internet, this legislation will affect you…Read more here at Time Magazine...

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2104586,00.html#ixzz1jirpzbdZ  

The latest, on-line giant to get involved in the protest against SOPA and PIPA, is Wikipedia. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the 18th; Wikipedia will black out the English language version of its website for twenty-four hours. Many other online communities such as Reddit, Boing Boing and others will be joining the protest.

Although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. The following excerpt is from The Wikipedia Open Letter…

“We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression… Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia… We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it…!”

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Bookmark with Facebook, share on Twitter, share on Reddit.com, share on Digg.com.

Do what you can to make your voice heard.

With all the social media available, just take a few minutes to put in a word, somewhere, even if you’re not American, in support of a free Internet.  Imagine, for a moment, what life would be like for all of us if we were to lose this remarkable resource…

WordPress…I Slay the Lion…

I can get myself into tricky situations!  There were times over the last eight days or so where I seriously doubted my sanity. I mean, every kid over ten can build their own website – so what was I trying to prove? 

For my purposes and to tell a good story, M and I assigned our own hall-of-fame status to five top website platforms out there, and WP became the lion.

 

King of the Beasts

I wasn’t even sure that my antiquated old PC would survive but it did and this post proves I’m still here. 

And the men in white coats never even appeared in my neighborhood, so looks like the heat’s off. 

Coolest of all? I hand-built my first website, by myself and I’m waaaay over 14 - so take that, all you junior, internet geniuses.

If I can do it, then anyone can! This is a written guide – complete with pictures - that I hoped would help everyone from babies to baby-boomers build a website…assuming they need and want one. 

This new site was built on the WordPress CMS platform. I started with a blank slate – a new domain – and hand-built it through 1 & 1 Hosting, deliberately taking no shortcuts or CMS handouts.

The saga unfolded on our tech site – MozimaxWeb - under the WordPress tag. There were eight entries in all, detailing the necessary steps to build a WordPress.org website from scratch. 

I had something to prove. Our sons have their own web hosting business in the UK. Mom was going to prove baby boomers can do it too. I wrote each entry as I did the steps in sequence. 

It was all included, from registering the domain to setting up a MySQL on the server. Setting up the FTP account was next so that the files could be transferred from my computer to the web host in order for WordPress to access them.

When the FTP account was good to go, I had to download an FTP program to my computer and I chose FileZilla because it’s free. 

Imagine the total bliss when I clicked the “submit” button and the WordPress screen popped up to run the install. But that was nothing – nix, da nada – compared to seeing the next window open – SUCCESS!

The high from that little accomplishment lasted until the following week when I had to start the whole procedure all over again with Drupal. 

But that, my friends, is another story. To see my new beginnings, please go to carimostert.com.

  

Elephants Crossing the Chobe River…

The project I wrote about here is almost ready to be revealed. Along with the completion of this particular venture, exciting possibilities have appeared; prospects that cannot go unheeded and I’ll be sharing more of these new paths before long.

Elephant - Zimbabwe

Sitting here, very close to the southernmost tip of Africa, the elephant doesn’t feature much in our local wildlife scene anymore.  Back in the day (Oh, about 300 years ago) there were many elephants in the Cape.  Human expansion over centuries has almost eliminated elephants here, and today there are only a few known specimens of Cape elephants living near Knysna and Addo in the Eastern Cape.

Elephants Crossing the Chobe River - Botswana

Fortunately, for us and the elephant, there are other parts of Africa more tempting for elephant habitation… here’s a glimpse of what life can be like if you’re an elephant, without pesky humans plowing up the natural bush, paving over the savannah, sticking buildings everywhere and just generally getting in the way.  

Uluguru Mountains - Tanzania

Imagine, having a whole slice of river all to yourself – and your other twenty or so relatives.  Mind you, if I had a choice, I’d pick this lovely pool and these pretty little falls in the Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania… Mmm, and not so much family; at least not to bathe with!  Imagine, after the heat and dust of the plains below, this is waiting...

Anyone for a Swim?

The picture of the Chobe River is too small - I have purposely selected "large" for these photos so that you can click on them to see the elephants (and the scenery) better.

A Whole New Year…

After an unusually full holiday season, the beaches and the roads are emptying as the holidaying multitudes head back to daily routine and into the promise of the New Year. 

Marking one of the highlights of the season; this short hiatus between the old and new; the past year can be weighed by the entries in its diary, lending impetus to change and growth. I so love this time of year with all the reflections on the year just gone and the potential of the year unfolding before me.  I love the new diary in my hands; the blank pages thrill me with anticipation and as I transfer important dates and anniversaries, I find wonderful surprises, accomplishments forgotten in the bustle of the busy year just gone. 

One New Year’s Eve, in Scotland; I think 2008, I was sent a quote (see below) that has impacted on me ever since… The simple thought that potential could exist in my life was a 180 degree shift from where I had been and opened a whole new world of opportunity. Everything, anything became possible and as the reality sank in I was freed from a lifetime of self-contempt and all the damaging emotions that come with being in that place.  I still walk through the rooms, planning improvements, contemplating changes…But now it is with a pleasurable anticipation... 

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room-by-room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

~ Ellen Goodman