Quentin's blog

I’m finally putting online some of my old trip videos from the early 2000’s. This one is my trip to Angel Falls in 2005.

This was a two day trip starting from Canaima, which itself is a long way into the hinterland of Venezuela and required a light aircraft flight from Ciudad Bolivar and overnight stay to get to. Once in Canaima, I stayed overnight in the small village and then we embarked on the trek the next morning. The motorised canoe journey took most of the day to get to the base camp, where food was cooked over an open fire and we all slept in hammocks for the night. The next morning, we got up early, had breakfast, and then set out to trek up to the falls. This was not a particularly hard trek, lasting just over a couple of hours on moderate terrain through the forest. Once there we were able to swim in the pool below the falls and explore a little around the parque. We then returned to base camp and took the motorised canoe down river (quicker than up) to return to Canaima and a return flight to Ciudad Bolivar.

As I get older, I have been reminiscing on the good old days of computing when 32K of memory was amazing and programs came on punch cards. So, in a bid to re-live my youth I have been creating old computers systems from my school days using simh and trying to create the good old games that were available on them. You can find my efforts all on the Retro Computing page.

As well as travelling around the world periodically, I also like to take pictures and make videos. I am, admittedly, not very good at this. Still those images I do make I feel the urge to share. It is in this spirit that I bring you some of my drone videos.

The first one shown here is my best effort to date in terms of making a complete video rather than just clips of flying about. Ovingdean, near Brighton, is a nice little beach that is mainly only known by locals. During the winter it becomes very quite and is great in a winter’s afternoon sun to lounge with a hot cup of tea from the local cafe and read a book. And fly drones, of course!

One of the original aims of this site when I set it up back in 2006 was to share some of my travel videos. As it is, life and work and the like all got in the way and so I never properly got around to posting videos or writing them up. So, here is some catch-up stuff with some more to follow.

In 2007 I did some diving in Cuba, visiting a wreck in Varadero and the also the Bay of Pigs. Nice easy dives and quite fun. Cuba is a great place for diving and the whole country is a real experience. Rather than get a all-inclusive package, which many people do, I got return flights to Havana with Virgin Atlantic and then just back packed around the country. There are some really great places off the usual tourist trail but the best bit was how welcoming the Cubans are as I spent most of my time staying in Homestays with local families. In tourist places you can get away with English (or Russian) but off the beaten track Spanish really helps.

Across the Savannah the rising sun begun to crest above the scrubby grass. An antelope grazed nearby. Disturbed by a noise in the bush, the antelope darted to the left just as a small bird with feathers that looked like golden flames in the early morning sun rose into the air. Behold! A phoenix has risen from the dust of an old website and a new dawn of blogging has begun.

Welcome, come one and all to this new realm and feast upon it’s gifts.

Whilst having a dig around in my old email, I came across this email from 1995 which reminds me of just what a great time the rave and dance music years were:

———-
From: dup
To: uk-dance
Subject: Little Red Raver Girl
Date: 14 September 1995 12:40

# I found this while clearing up my mail. It’s from *1year ago* from
# SFraves. Man, it feels like history! I thought some of you might
# enjoy “comparing mythologies”.
#
# Dusko

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I’ve made another video, this time from my trip to Australia. Uluru Sunset is a trip I made to Uluru (Ayres Rock) to see the sunset and has been sped up to show the changing colours or the rock. Enjoy!

I’ve got around to posting my first video to YouTube. This was a vid I made back in 2003 which is of a beach party in southern Thailand for a friends birthday. It was filmed on a secret beach on the east coast of Koh Phangan which is only accessible by sea. One the people there was a friend, Dave Gilbertson, who sadly died sometime after. For this reason I dedicated the video to him.

OK, so Im new to this blogging thing and deeply suspicious of its value. For the most part I think that bloggers are people with nothing to say and too much time on their hands. I count myself in that group at the moment, but await to be inspired by current events or whatever life throws at me.

Still, for those of you who want to you can now comment on the bus widget and I should get less junk email.