Sunday, August 12, 2012

Perseid Meteor Shower!

So last night was the the annual Perseid Meteor Shower and I took the opportunity to head out to the desert and camp out for the night. Drove about 1.5 hours from my house out in to the desert and camped out. This morning I woke up at 5am, drove home, took a shower and by 8am I was in a meeting at the office!

Click here for some more info on the Perseid Meteor Shower

If you are reading this on Sunday Aug 12... It may not be too late for you to go out and see the meteor show... 
Aug 12th is actually a better day then the 11th that I went out!

Over the course of the night I saw over 150 meteors, most of them standard shooting stars; which are impressive to say the least! But out of all that I saw there were 6 truly spectacular ones... Like unbelievable computer generated ones! Huge and bright with very long sparkling tails that covered 50 degrees in the sky from tip to tail! Magical!

In total I took 54 pictures, most 30 seconds in exposure... Some of them you will see below... But of all 54 I only managed to capture ONE meteor... Unfortunately it was in one of the pictures I planned to delete.

Because its pitch black (no moon at this time) you really cant see anything so to set up the position of the camera you take test shots and instead of waiting 30seconds to see if the camera is aimed as you want it, what you do is lower the exposure and boost up the ISO to the max of 12,800... This results in a very very poor quality and grainy image but it serves the purpose of aiming the camera. This is the type of picture that captured the meteor.... After a bit of post processing I can make the picture worth showing!

On top of that the meteor that came out was very very dim. I probably would not have seen it with the naked eye.... The big meteors are 10,000 times bigger and brighter then the one you see below!



Please click the pictures to make them bigger and to see them in even better
 quality click the options button and download the picture!


Pics taken with a Canon 50D 10-22mm glass.


What you are seeing is the Milky Way.




Hope you liked the pics... If you did leave a quick comment below!

Now I am off to pack! Tomm night I leave on a 10 day trip to Scandinavia which starts off in Iceland where the Aurora Borealis is forecasted to be in full swing!



Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Peak at BCN....

Cap de Creus, Spain... More to come...

Click for larger version.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

1 Year Anniversary!

Well folks... Today is 1 year since the 1st post on the blog and it been a lot of fun and a great way to keep in contact with friends and family! Glad people enjoy my ongoing blabbering and pictures... Helps keep me sane!! :)


Total hits to the blog: 4,495!





Top 10 most viewed posts:


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Enough of the past... What does the future hold?

Here are a couple of sneak peek pictures of a recent trip to South Africa... Still not done doing the post processing on all the pics!
















Here is a map of the trips I have planned (so far) over the next 12 months. Some are purley for pleasre others are work and pleasure :)









But certinly the most exiting trip I am looking forward to is
Climb For Colombia! www.ClimbforColombia.com





Where hopefully joined by friends and family like you I will lead an expedition to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise money for one or two select  charities in Colombia! Stay tunned for more info and let me know if you are interested in joining!






All the best!
AEGS

Saturday, June 23, 2012

King of the Lagoon Kiteboarding Competition 2012!

Last weekend was the annual King of the Lagoon kiteboarding competition at Soul Kite Boarding Center in Ras Sudr...

1st of all props to Morgan, Cat and everyone else for putting on such a cool event.... At least for me its not just about kite surfing but its about having another world to go to and relax with friends away from Cairo!

Killer event flyer by Amy E!


Besides going to our own little kiteboarding world, last weekend in particular was the perfect weekend for the event b\c there was a lot going on in Cairo/Egypt from the political stand point... The "rulers" of Egypt were going to decide if the parliament/constitution and such were going to be dissolved and if one of the presidential candidates was going to be disqualified. Lets just say there was plenty of potential for some bad things to happen... And if things are going to turn ugly wouldn't you rather be on the beach with friends kiteboarding instead of locked up in Cairo!!!


So of course me who always like to be prepared for the worst... Got together 3 jerry cans of extra fuel, passports, computers, hard drives and everything I absolutely needed in case we had to evacuate the country. Good thing about being in the Sinai peninsula in case we had to evacuate is that its easier to get out though the Sharm el-Sheikh airport then the Cairo airport, 2nd there is always the option of driving to Isreal or worst case we could theoretically kite board from Sinai to Jordan or Saudi Arabia!!!! :) OK OK... Maybe I am over reacting just a little...


So... Back to the event. There was 4 competitions during the weekend.

Big air: Who can jump and stay in the air the longest and land the jump. Stopwatch timed...
FreeStyle: Go out and do insane tricks! Person with the most points wins.
MasterGuru: Participants pick a trick they have been trying to do but have not accomplished before. They go out and have 15 minutes to try and pull it off. You do your trick, you are a Master Guru!
Down-winder: Start line is at a beach up wind and the finish line is 22km downwind at the Soul beach!

Right before the big air event I inflated my 12 square meter kite and found out it had a small leak... Luckily a good friend lent me one of his kites.... Wind was pretty good and some people were doing 5.2+ second jumps... I had some really nice long jumps but kept being to greedy and trying to stay up as long as possible meant I did not land any of the big ones.



Monday, June 11, 2012

Still Alive!!!!

Hello everyone.... Sorry for not posting much in the last few weeks/month or so.... Been all over the place and busy.... Most of all I had a hard drive failure. I was able to recover all the data but the drive was unstable so I have not installed all my photo editing software again... Good news is the new HD arrived last night from the US!

From the planning side I have been working a lot towards the 2013 www.ClimbforColombia.com trip and a trip later in the year back to South Africa!

Coming soon are pics of two weeks I spent in South Africa, a couple of Jeep and Motorcycle trips plus a kiteboarding weekend!

For the time being check out this album of pictures I took mostly with my iPhone... I was under the impression they were being uploaded to FB but turns out the sharing settings were messed up....

Fotos Never Seen Before.... Almost... <Link

Here is a preview of the full album of 200+ fotos!











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