Today was an admin day. With nothing in the way of World Cup action taking place in Rio I decided to sort out all the accumlated mess that has built up over the last couple of weeks. This is an inevitable by-product of being on the road a lot - you need quiet time just to sit down and tidy up images, work through receipts, check the FIFA calendar, archive pictures to another drive etc etc.The internet in the apartment I'm staying in isn't the fastest in the world, so I decided to try out the FIFA open media centre in Rio. This is different to the stadium media centre, not being in a stadium primarily. It's a place where any media folks can congregate, use desks, power and fast internet, as well as doing interviews, editing video etc. It was the fast internet that I was after, so I loaded up my shoulder bag with my laptop, external hard drive, camera and a couple of lenses and headed out.The open media centre is in Forte de Copacabana, which you might realise is a fort in Copacabana, at the south end of the beach in fact. It's a proper fort that sticks out into the sea, with big guns and a museum, and active soldiers wandering around. General public are allowed in if they buy a ticket. My FIFA credentials got me into the fort complex and into the media centre, where I had to re-register and get a new, different pass to allow me to work there.To say the location is quite good would be underselling the place. You get a rather cracking view of Copacabana beach, Sugarloaf, and the gently undulating sea. It was fairly warm as well, about 27C today, so after booking myself in, checking the calendar, email etc, I popped down to the Confeitaria Colombo which has just become my favourite spot in Rio, where I had a very late breakfast which was probably lunch. Because of the entry fee the place isn't throning with people unlike the beach front cafes. The view was idyllic and I was nicely shaded by an umbrella, so I sat for an hour or so with my cheese and ham on toast plus a Coke Zero and watched the world go by as my files copied over to my external hard drive.I had time to wander around the fort a bit as well. It is now mainly run as a museum, and you can go inside and look at the gun emplacements, living quarters and so on. I had a quite educational 30 minute sightsee. Here are some pictures - my Dad would like it a lot.You can see more in the growing Brazil Misc gallery which of course you can get at by clicking a picture.As an aside, there's loads of really interesting bird life here (feathered). Lots and lots of birds I've never seen before - very colourful and unusual, though they are probably the Brazilian version of starlings and sparrows. I didn't have the ability to get a decent picture of them unfortunately, but it might make for a little sub-project if I get bored. Above Rio you can see flocks of big eagle-like birds of prey circling on the thermals, often joined by frigate birds which are the most amazingly cool looking things.To get back on track, after some further fiddling and Skype calls to London and Berlin in the media centre it was nearing sunset (approx 4:30pm) and I wanted to get a few sunset pictures. I had seen some rather cool looking rocks just south of the fort, so blindly wandered over there before being told by a soldier to sod off and go out the main entrance like everyone else. This I did in a hurry as the light was going quite quickly. I swiftly moved along the road that goes between Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, which is only 300 meters or so, as Copacabana was already shaded from the settting sun, and as we all know Ipanema is really quite cool at sunset.I found out you could get to the rocks from the north side of the beach rather than through the fort. It seemed like a lot of other people had the same idea as me, and I joined throngs of folks sitting on the rocks at the top end of Ipanema to watch the sunset, which didn't disappoint.With such "full fat" light and colour I was on the lookout for anything and everything interesting, so here are a few pictures taken in the space of about 15 minutes.Honestly you'd struggle to take a bad picture in light like this. The On Landscape boys may not like it as it's not at all subtle, but wow is it impressive. And it does it day after day after day.With roughly a million police around, the place felt very safe, especially as I had buddied up with 3 Americans who were celebrating the USA getting through to the knockout stages - good on them! We had some beers and hot dogs in a beachside cafe while watching Algeria and Russia draw 1-1, sending Algeria through to the next round and Russia out (bye bye Fabio Capello).I also had confirmation that my application for the Uruguay v Columbia match had been approved so that's me sorted for Saturday in the Maracana - should be a good one, though with Suarez banned from even being in the stadium I suspect Columbia may come out on top. It's knockout from now on, so the heat is really on.