Josh Reisner

Cape Town 1/9–1/14

I spent six days in Cape Town, with gracious hosts Ewald and Jenny Wessels. I visited the District Six Museum, the waterfront, Kirstenbosch, Table Mountain, among other places. Die Antwoord was not playing a show, unfortunately. I think the highlight was driving this car around Cape Town and learning my way around.

Things I should have photographed:

• The aforementioned car

Game Drive 1/8

Jane’s father Hugh took us all out on another game drive after we returned from Mozambique and this time we didn’t get caught out in an epic rainstorm. The highlight of the drive was seeing a Cheetah having dinner. It seemed very anxious that a larger animal was about to show up, but that didn’t happen. It hardly noticed us a few feet away watching.

Kate Howe Makes Things

I recently completed a new site for Kate Howe using the Isotope jQuery Plugin. Sort the projects to see it in action.

Mozambique 1/3–6

Jane, Lu and I drove to Mozambique for a few days in Jane’s green car, which developed a penchant for honking randomly at the least (or most) opportune times. We went to Maputo and Praia do Bilene. Here are some photos:

Things I wish I had photographed:

• The scuba shop owner with the toe tag tattoo
• The “Africa” nightclub in Maputo
• The two sketchy guys who followed us around Maputo after the nightclub
• The old islamic teacher I met from Swaziland
• The border crossing
• Jane and Lu
• The green car

New Year’s Eve Game Drive 12/31

Jane’s parents Jo and Hugh took us for a game drive through the Karongwe Game Reserve. We saw lions, zebra, buffalo, rhinoceros, wildebeest, and lots of other strange-looking animals.

The lions were particularly spectacular. It was hard to photograph them, because we were instructed not to stand up in the game car, since that would be interpreted as a threat.

The main thing this gallery is missing is an audio recording of Jane’s niece Sophia and her continuing narrative about what candies would be available in her ‘paradise.’ She’s going to freak when she reads Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Blyde River Canyon 12/30

On my third day in South Africa, Jane, Lu and I explored the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve. These photos are what it feels like to be in that part of South Africa. Red earth, green vegetation, lots of baboons.

Grand Turk 11/29–12/6

I was in Grand Turk for a week to hang out and get an open water scuba certification. Here are some photos:

Things I wish I had the presence of mind to photograph:

• John and Ray
• The Turks & Caicos National Museum
• John’s boat
• Nat and Lamar, my scuba instructors
• Anything, you know, underwater
• Air Turks & Caicos

Pine Cay 11/11–11/29

I spent a restful few weeks in Pine Cay in the Turks & Caicos Islands. I caught up on some work and swam in the ocean. Here are some photos:

Things I wish I had photographed:

• Mom and Jim
• Phil Austern coming to visit
• The huge dolphin that swam past me
• Thanksgiving dinner

Mood-Tuner

Here’s another fun site I just finished up: Mood-Tuner for my friend Kate. It’s the companion site to an iPad app of the same name (App Store link).

Whereas my recent site for Ksenya scrolls horizontally, this has little modules that move around and expand and contract. It uses the amazing isotope jquery plugin by David DeSandro.

Ksenya Samarskaya

Here is a fun project I did recently for my friend Ksenya: a blog that scrolls horizontally. She did the design, I did the coding. It uses the open-source CMS we developed at Bureau Blank, and there’s some jQuery to make the columns and image popups.

It didn’t take too long either, which is great when it’s a freelance project. According to my notes, it was under 30 hours.