Attie Heunis's Journey

The ramblings of a Caucasian African American

recent posts

about

Originally from South Africa’s magnificent Eastern Cape, my family and I now reside in Pennsylvania in the United States. To earn my keep I’m an executive for a multinational company in the Healthcare sector. I’m also a serious amateur photographer. Pro-environmental and conservation views.

  • Boks in Cardiff

    On Saturday we went to Cardiff to see the Boks take on Six-Nations Champions Wales.

    I’ve already posted The Millennium Stadium Experience on BokRugby.com so be sure to read it, but I just wanted to add here that one of the things I wanted to try out was taking action photos of the players. Unfortunately that was a failure insofar as taking photos is concerned.

    I do think that I learned some lessons. One is to have a decent tripod with a ball/joystick head. Another is to use shutter-priority. Especially in dark/misty conditions.

    I subsequently bought a decent tripod with a ball/joystick head (at £199-00 from Camera World) and I have to say I’m extremely pleased with it. Of course sports photography has a lot in common with wildlife photography. So in that respect I’m glad I went through this 1st attempt, before my trip to the Kalahari Gemsbok Park in January.

  • Will Roland Schoeman defect to Qatar?

    I have just read in an Australian newspaper that Roland Schoeman, world record holder and one of South Africa’s top swimmers, has been offered Millions of Dollars to defect to and subsequently represent The Kingdom of Qatar.

    Qatar is an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has no swimming history whatsoever. Here in my comfy armchair, I am absolutely furious that this has happened. I remembered how disgusted I was with Qatar when they bought Shaheen, a Kenyan athlete, in the same way.

    And now they’re trying the same with one of our very own.

    While I abhor what Qatar is doing, I don’t know how I would judge Roland if he took the money and swam. He gets no support financially or otherwise from any of the South African sports bodies. This really pisses me off, because without people like Roland and Ryk Neethling the administrators wouldn’t have thier cushy jobs.

    But it is not just about principles. A consequense of these principles is that sportsmen like Roland & Ryk struggle financially and they almost always have to depend on sponsorships to make a living. And you can only get sponsorships if you’re at the very top of your discipline. If it wasn’t for the American University swimming scene, guys like Roland wouldn’t be able to practice their craft.

    So even though I would be very sad to see this bright star leave SA, I’m not sure I can judge him.

    I must stress though that sofar nothing suggests that Roland has accepted the offer and I really hope he doesn’t.

  • Potgooi 16

    Attie blaas stoom af oor Afrikaanse skole en ons gesels oor ‘n paar nuwe rugby sites, die Sony Bravia advertensie, Clapham vuurwerke en ‘n hele klomp techie goed.

    Potnotas:


    of laai af.

  • Joze Gonzalez/Sony Bravia advert

    bouncing balls
    Sony Bravia advert

    I don’t know how many people have seen the new Sony Bravia advert, but I think it is fantastic. See the Sony Bravia advert.

    The music is one of the things that make it. The song is called Heartbeats and it is off the album Veneer by Joze Gonzalez. You can buy it from iTunes.

  • Bok Rugby site

    And now some more Rugby news…

    I have also acquired the BokRugby.com and AllOutRugby.com domain names. We still can’t decide which of these are better, but sofar we’re sticking with BokRugby.com.

    Again that man Brenden Nel and I have teamed up to produce a quality rugby news site. Most of it will be from a SA perspective, but there will also be loads of news from all over the world. We’re using WordPress for this one. Thanks to Boerseun for showing me (unintentionally through his blog) how good WordPress is. If you do have any rugby writing credentials, let me know if you want to contribute. The idea is to get the rugby community involved. You can leave posts without logging in either, but your first post will be moderated. This is just to stop spammers.

    Roll-outs on this site will also be done in the Web 2.0 style, so you’ll know they’re there when you see them.

    So if you are a rugby supporter from anywhere, check out BokRugby.com.

  • BlueBulls.NET

    Blue Bulls LogoI recently acquired the BlueBulls.NET domain name.

    Brenden Nel, from the Pretoria News, and I have teamed up to produce a quality rugby news site for Bulls fans. Currently the site is in the Blogger format, but we’ll be switching to WordPress soon. If you do have any rugby writing credentials or other Bull affilations, let me know if you want to contribute. The idea is to get the Bulls community involved. You can leave posts without logging in either.

    Roll-outs on this site will also be done in the Web 2.0 style, so you’ll know they’re there when you see them.

    So if you are a Bulls fan, check out BlueBulls.NET.

  • Clapham Common Fireworks

    Clapham Common FireworksWe went to see the annual fireworks at Clapham Common on Friday. I wanted to experiment with night time photography as I’d not really had any success with this before.

    I did learn a lot and I’m looking forward to the next oppurtunity, but I do think I managed to take some nice ones.

    View more Clapham Common Fireworks.

  • Anger towards Sony gains momentum

    I first heard about this on the excellent Security Now! podcast and it really pissed me off!

    Sony – yes that previously reputable company – has taken a positive step to alter your operating system without you being aware of this! No this is not some alarmist statement thrown out there to get ratings. This story has been covered all over the world by people like the Washington Post, The Inquirer and PCPro as well.

    The slight-of-hand happens when you run Sony CDs with digital rights management (DRM) software on your PC. There is a EULA that pops-up asking you if it is OK to add some software to your machine, but who reads those anyway. Plus apparently the EULA says that you can uninstall the software, which you cannot.

    This already is very dodgy, but much worse is to come! This software hack then goes on to hide ALL (not just Sony) files starting with $SYS$. This is a superb opportunity for a hacker to rename his files appropriately and nothing, including Anti-Virus software, will be able to find the offending files.

    Luckily the industry has caught on to this very dodgy approach by Sony in a big way and a right stink is being kicked up. Some people, including the podcast mentioned above, are calling for a boycott on all Sony products.

    I will adhere to this call to arms as I cannot accept what Sony is doing. Even if you do buy Sony CDs, make sure you don’t accept any EULAs that pop up when you play them (on a PC).

  • The Heunis Family

    I don’t know nearly enough about the Heunisses so I’m thinking of putting together a Heunis database. I figure that Heunis.NET will be a good place to host this as well.

    All I know of the Heunis family tree from my sisters (Katinka Ladewig and Abbie Heunis) and I (Attie Heunis) up is: Rulan Heunis (my father), Attie Heunis (my grandfather) and I think Jan Heunis (my great-grandfather). That really (and shockingly) is about as much as I know.

    Heunis isn’t such a well known name in South-Africa, but I think most of us are based in the Southern-Cape. As far as I know the first two South African Heunisses were two brothers that arrived from Holland and settled in the Southern Cape. The one was a builder and the other one worked in the forest.

    I know my dad’s cousin, Hannes Potgieter, from Alexandria researched his family quite extensively. His mother was a Chrissie Heunis so we do feature quite prominently in his research. This sounds like a good place to start.

  • ‘n Geesgenoot

    XKRENI-WPDink julle nie die is ‘n uitstekende nommerplaat om te hê nie?