A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog

WordPress 3.1, Ubuntu 11.04 and not Much Time to Play
In the very local news, Wordpress is turning out to be a supreme pleasure to work with. It's solid, incredibly customisable and superiorly well documented. Of course, being in Montreal for a few days, I don't have much time to spend polishing the newly ported template, but that will come in due time. I apologise for the current lack of pictures, this too will be remedied soon. Ubuntu 11.04 Beta is out and I am installing it as we speak. Or maybe it will be Kubuntu. The la...
Wordpress is live!
Well, I've by-passed the beta stage and gone directly to Coriolistic Anachronisms Version 2.0, WordPress-powered! If you are reading this, things are looking good. I'm hoping that the transition will be seamless. Of course there remain many cosmetic details to sharpen and a keen eye will detect quite a few small differences and template variations. I will be polishing the looks and functionality over the next few weeks. All comments and feedback are quite welcome! Pleas...
In the News: Testing Wordpress
March 27, 2011
I have been an unconditional fan of my blogging engine Serendipity for as long as I have been a blogger myself. It's been fun, reliable and very stable. The great advantage of Serendipity is that, while being PHP-based, it uses Smarty templating - a user-friendly approach that has made my skin design rather easy. But times, they are changing. While still as good as it was, Serendipity isn't used by so many people and the team of (very) dedicated developers is small, whi...
My ears are burning, did someone say Ubuntu?
"Once upon a time, in a faraway digital land, ruled a mighty king called Windows the 7th. He was very popular among his subjects even though described as unfair, moody, full of bugs and cheap. But most peasants had gotten used to a long, unflinching ruling by the Microsoft dynasty and while the king's shortcomings yielded never-ending worries about his innumerable idiosyncrasies and utter failure to help the people feel safer and cared for, most went about their daily busi...
If it's Tuesday, this Must be Firefox
March 16, 2011
Not so long ago, while the dreaded Internet Explorer was dragging so deep into self-sabotage that web developers were blowing fuses just thinking about it, a neat little browser was born and began a swift ascent to the limelight. Its name was Firefox. Soon the fox was imposing itself as a leading browser, banking on increased security, standards compliance, customization options and raw speed. I adopted it early and loved it dearly. But eventually, as all things once impr...
Sunset on Table Mountain, Part II
March 12, 2011
It would appear that, distracted by other issues, I spaced out and forgot to post half of the pictures associated with my previous Table Mountain Sunset story. So here they are. These are all HDR images, hence the slightly groovy hues and enhanced mid-tones. Triple-bracketed exposures blended together by Tim Farrar's now defunct FFDD script.  
Sunset on Table Mountain, So Beautiful the World Could End Right Now
March 9, 2011
So you have gone the touristic route up one of the world's most impressive natural wonders. You are standing at the top of Table Mountain, the city of Cape Town sprawled at your feet and beginning to shimmer with all her lights as the sun readies to set beyond nearby Table Bay. You might not have bothered venturing off the mechanical track and rather opted to board the Swiss-made cable car for a swift ascent to the summit, one full kilometer above the ocean. It wasn't c...
A Visit to Cape Agulhas, Southernmost Tip of Africa
March 5, 2011
In 1488, when Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded a spectacular Southern African cape in his effort to establish a route towards the Far East, he named it Cape of Storms (Cabo das Tormentas) - it would later be renamed Cape of Good Hope (Cabo da Boa Esperança) as it indeed brought hopes of a new route to India. He had found the tip of the Cape Peninsula south of Cape Town that I have already posted about, see An afternoon on the Cape of Good Hope and A night on the...
Sunset Over the Klein River Estuary
March 2, 2011
Once in a while - not so often, sadly, but enough to make it addictive - we find ourselves in a place that completely overwhelms our senses and suddenly, a sharp dividing line is drawn between daily acceptableness and a rare, momentary near-perfection. This needs not happen in a clash of thunder, the roaring of giant waterfalls or around a shark feeding frenzy. Sometimes our mind can be so bewildered by the simple sound of rain drops, the soft glittering of snow on a su...
La Descente de Manhattan or Running Too Far, Too Long
February 28, 2011
A few nights ago, as I routinely fought the pre-sleep chaos in my mind and attempted - once again - to figure out where the water in high pressure fire hydrants comes from, I also decided I wanted to run a marathon. It was a fuzzy idea and soon, darkness got a hold of me and I fell asleep and oblivious. But in the morning, surprisingly, the thought was still there. Now, I have said before that I would never run a marathon, frown and disdain. I don't like crowds and certai...
Walker Bay Nature Reserve
February 27, 2011
A few kilometers down from the Stanford house, on a very narrow sandy track through dry vegetation, we found an isolated section of the Walker Bay Nature Reserve. The beach was endless and clean, framed by high sand dunes and cold, turquoise ocean. A solitary Cape fur seal came surfing down the breaking waves and soon was gone. On our way in, we had turned left and bypassed a small gate; we realized on our way back that we should have paid a small entry fee. The guard just...
Birdwatching in Stanford, South Africa
February 24, 2011
The generous invite from Chris and Tracy had actually been received half a world away on a freezing New York night, as the four of us sat tucked away from the cold in a Lower East Side joint eating pizza. "You must go to the farm," they'd said enthusiastically, "you guys will love it there. There are birds everywhere, you can kayak in the lagoon, go sand-surfing down the dunes, you can use all the toys, Land Rover, quad bikes, it's quiet and remote. Simba will show you in,...