Friends of Hwange Trust Screensaver

Working on Chirundu.com, I get a lot of requests for me to publish appeals for help for the many charities in Zimbabwe and for the most part, I am happy to do what ever I can to help.

The other day one came in that really struck a cord with me as wildlife and particularly the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe is close to my heart as it is where I first really got interested in wildlife photography. It is also where after spending a week there with a guide, I for the first time knew that I would really like to become a field guide (safari guide).

That is why I am posting about the Friends of Hwange Trust (FOH), who need your help:

The riends of Hwange Trust is a group of dedicated Zimbabwean conservationists who have taken into their own hands the care of the wild animals and maintenance, particularly water supply, of Zimbabwe’s largest national park.

Since 2005, FOH has been responsible for 10 key northern waterholes in Hwange National Park. These are Kennedy One, Kennedy Two, Makwa, Sinanga, Tshebe Tshebe, Mabuya Mabena, Shumba, Tshompani, Inyantue and Shapi.

Because of the price of diesel (a single borehole engine uses around 500 litres a month) alternative methods of pumping have been explored. Since 2007, five Poldaw windmills have been established at Kennedy One, Shumba, Mabuya Mabena, Shapi and Tshompani waterholes. Whilst the windmills are robust and affordable, their pumping capacities are limited. Their function is to provide a head start for the waterholes so that they are at least as full as possible by the start of the long dry season, thereby reducing diesel requirements for the drier months.

In the dry season (July – November) the pressure for available water increases, especially from elephant. The Lister engines are kept running continuously and the need for diesel is at its maximum.

How you can help
Link South Africa, a company in New Zealand is selling a wildlife screensaver to raise money for The Friends of Hwange Trust.

So please sacrifice a couple of coffees this week, spend 10 Kiwi Dollars downloading our screensaver, and help The Friends of Hwange Trust save many many animal lives in Zimbabwe, while you get to enjoy Zimbabwe’s beautiful wildlife on your computer screen every day!

Click here For more information and to download the screensaver

Related Links

• Friends of Hwange Trust Website
• For a list of all the Zimbabwe Charities on Chirundu.com
• The Chirundu.com Profile on Link South Africa

Evernote

I have been using Evernote for about a week now and it seems that almost every day I find another useful use for it.

What is Evernote?
Well basically you can use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer, phone or device you use, and all For free.

Evernote is a note-taking, idea-saving application that has now been adopted by over 3 million people.

What is cool is that it syncs up your notes with a remote server, so accessing your latest notes on multiple devices is automatic. When you upload images, Evernote will OCR (optical character recognition) them to make them searchable. You can embed files as well, though only PDFs, .txt and images with the free version. The premium service enables a few additional features such as embedding any kind of files and increasing the amount of bandwidth allotted to you per month.

I tend to use it a lot for my to-do lists and it make organising my daily tasks really simple.

I love it - you should try it and no, I'm not getting paid to write this!

http://www.evernote.com/

Safari-Guy’s Posterous

Just discovered a new blogging platform, called Posterous and it is interesting because to add a new entry all you have to do is email your account and the post gets created for you. Now I know that you have been able to do this on other blogging platforms for a while, but to be honest I never really bothered to set it up. With posterous, it is easier to do it this way than use their fiddly interface.

Anyway foe SEO purposes, I have created a new account, that you may want to check out: Safari-Guy’s Posterous, where I plan to post most safari related stuff.

New Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ100 Camera

Panasonic have just brought out their newest cameras in their Superzoom Lumix FZ series, with the awesome looking Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ100 Camera.

I know there are many people out there that may say that I am crazy and that I should not even be considering buying another compact superzoom camera, rather I should get a digital SLR. Yes, I know that the SLR takes better quality photos... but can they also take full HD quality video, and how much do they cost and then there is the added expense of buying a even half decent telephoto lens. Add to this the size difference making a SLR a pain in th but to carry around, I think that for my purposes, a super zoom camera is the way to go.

I think the choice is between the FZ100 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ45 (FZ40), which has also just been announced and is actually the real sucessor to the FZ38 (FZ35), but is a little cheaper than the FZ100.

If you are interested, I have done a bunch of research on it, which you can read on the photo section on my Safari Guide website:

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ100 Review
• Panasonic Lumix FZ45 / FZ40 digital superzoom Camera
• Best Superzoom Cameras 2010