Sunset

Another one. Taken a while back, but even that day I walked a bit to find this shot. I doubt it's great, but hopefully you'll have an idea how breathtakingly beautiful it was for me.

Alarm Bleeps...

I recently had to change my alarm on my car... I don't know if I *had* to, but the auto-mechanic said that the alarm was giving trouble, and well, my feeling is, that if I take it back to him every time, I can have what he's used to in the car. It wasn't cheap, but hopefully it will add to reliability.

The interesting thing about this alarm though, is that the "On/Off" bleeps are inverted from how the old one was. My old one was :
1 Bleep : On
2 Bleeps : Off

Our house was always set up like that, and I recall the installers saying "the amount of letters after the O is what it means".

So my current alarm is:
1 Bleep : Off
2 Bleeps : On

How do I get used to this? Well what I did was I decided that when it goes Bleep, it's my car saying "Hi!", and when it goes Bleep-Bleep, it's my car saying "Bye-Bye!".

So now, when the card says Hi, I say Hi back, and when it says Bye-bye, I say bye-bye back. This will hopefully get me used to it.

Face book - Application privacy

Well... I know I won't be using the "Send Secret Thoughts" application anytime soon.

Rain in the cape

Yesterday we had rain so highveldlike which we don't often see here. Hail, thunder and lightning, and high volumes of rain in a short time. This picture is after the rain has been gone for at least half an hour, showing how the drain pipes can't handle the sheer volume of water. Fascinating and scary.

Kulula EMERGENCY Poolboy

I'm no amateur,
this is not toy.
I'm an expert in my field,
I'm emergency pool boy!
I'm a jet setter,
I'm a jet setter.

When H2O needs fixing,
Kulula is my ride,
if swimming pool is greener,
on the other side
I'm a jet setter.

I provide a personal service,
more personal than you think,
satisfaction is guaranteed,
nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Jet setter!

Love the advert, reminds me of Desperate Housewives.

Beinjing Pollution? -- Cape Town

So Beijing has a lot of pollution... I believe it's pretty bad... but Cape Town's is pretty bad too if there is no wind blowing it all around.


That part there you can almost see... that is Table Mountain. There is a whole lot of mountain that you cannot see in the picture.

If you look carefully at this picture, you can see a mountain range (Stellenbosch's surroundings) on the right of the image... There is also, if you zoom about 300% onto the middle of the image, you'll be able to see a hint of it still there... but to the left of it it's totally obscured.

Cape Town is set to host quite a lot of games of the 2010 Fifa World Cup here, and if the Olympic committees had issues there, similar issues could be raised here.

We in Cape Town also need to get our act together in terms of pollution.

Card shark

My cousin tossed this card about 5m across the room (missing his target by about 50cm) only to have it peg into the banana. Pretty sweetly too. I found it a little bit frightning and visions of bullseye in daredevil came to mind, but cool enough to share.
Yes... We ate the banana afterwards.

Animals

When I drove to work this morning, I was driving behind a guy with a bakkie, with 2 dogs in the back. They were loving it. I know that Gary Larson in his Farside comics often thinks about what it would be like in our world had dogs (or cows, or flies, or other animals) been just like us --- almost.

Anyway, what fascinated me was (as dogs always do) how they wanted to keep their faces in the "wind". I suspect it has something to do with the wind otherwise bothering them in their ears, but maybe it just gives them a sense of freedom.

Another thing that fascinated me, is the fact that dogs, even though they do not really invent new technologies like cars, understand quite in real terms, the implications of these technologies. They know not to run in front of the car, or not to jump off the car while it's moving.

The last thing that fascinated me, is the interspecies relationships. Dogs and cats interact. Birds and hippo's have sybiotic relationships. But is there really times in the wild where species interact to such a way that we can really call it friendships? Interspecie relationships thus far is extremely rare... So two thumbs up for everyone of us with an interspecie relationship! :-)

What linux *must* change

I don't want this to be a tech blog, and it will never be... Anyway...

I've been an advanced computer user (programming, modifying, etc) for more than 20 years now. I've worked on Apple II, DOS (from 3.0-the end), several Windowses (95,98,2000,NT,XP,Vista), and several linux distros (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Red Hat, Gentoo). And there is this part on it that totally gets me confused and not wanting to explore...

THE ROOT DIRECTORY:
/bin
/boot
/cdrom
/dev
/etc
/home
/initrd
/lib
/lost+found
/media
/mnt
/opt
/proc
/root
/sbin
/srv
/sys
/tmp
/usr
/var


Hello? Can't we use a "little" more descriptive names?

/bin Ok, so by now I know this is binaries... but which binaries? I'll tell you one thing... ALL the binaries are not there. (Also please note... not a recycle bin - shouldn't be "emptied".)
/boot is good. Like it keep it.
/cdrom... well, it's good enough on it's own... almost like D:\
/dev devices maybe? This isn't perhaps the development libraries? (I'm trying to convey a point...)
/etc well, this is where it all started. What is /etc? What's the difference between that and /usr... and /usr and /home? I've tried to explore it, but it's got about 2 gizillion "files" in it... Windows has "Program files" where the space messed everything up for the first 2 or three years... but one thing I can say is that it's descriptive.
/home I know now. It's good, and can stay. But what is /usr then?
/initrd I have no idea. Something with initialization. But it's not part of /boot.
/lib This I know is libraries. Thinking of it as a literal library may make it easier to accept the total levels of chaos in there... (sorted chaos, but to the untrained eye, it is chaos) *phew* and don't get me started with the cryptic library names.
/lost+found Well, at least it's descriptive. I have no idea how to use it... or what even goes in there. But it's descriptive.
/media This makes sense, and wasn't there years ago. It's a good addition. And in a way makes /cdrom unneccasary.
/mnt GRRRR... I know now (ok for about 12years now) what is a "mounted" device. But we have media now thank you... /mnt or /media... why both?
/opt I dunno... I think it's new from the old days, and I assume it's options. Why doesn't it then go into /home?
/proc Again... No idea. Procedures? Processes? No idea, never visited there.
/root Okay... I know what / is... /root? I assume it's root's /home folder?
/sbin ... Uhmmm /bin is binaries... sbin? No idea.
/srv This one is new to Hardy. I assume it's server stuff. Dunno, don't care.
/sys *sigh* what is in here? Must be "system" stuff... but what isn't covered in /dev /opt /proc /boot /initrd?
/tmp Now here's one I can identify and understand. We don't even need an "e" because the data is so temporary we don't have time for the "e". So /tmp can stay, I'll be forever grateful.
/usr Well... see the comments on /home and /etc
/var No idea... Variables?


A fresh windows (vista, XP, etc... /etc?) install has about 5-8 "folders" in the root. It "hides" all the stuff that I don't want to know about. And it all looks clean and understandable.

Please Mr. Shuttleworth or Mr. Torvalds, please, please can we make this part a bit easier?

Cuil

Well... they've got a decent concept. BUT I don't believe them that they don't use my private data. Because, I search for word vine (a really cool game) on CUIL, and it found (on an image)... Vine Trellis... a Magic: the gathering creature... Now I ask you, how did a search engine that doesn't poke around in my private data, know that I have an interest in Magic the gethering?

Another issue that bothers me... is the navy blue on black background. I like navy blue, and I especially like black as a background... but no... they don't go together well. I cannot read the "preferences" (If you select it with you mouse you can read it) link.

Irene drive in Somerset West

When I first arrived in the Western Cape this view made me understand what makes it special to stay here. You can see the whole peninsula, and on a clear day (like yesterday) the view takes my breath away. I'll post my first panoramic image now as well, don't know how well it will turn out... as it's a feature of the phone, and let's look at the result.

A quick review of Firefox 3.0

Well... I think it's... very much like the old one.

The look and feel has been changed a little, but not enough to make me feel uncomfortable with it, and also not enough to say it's a huge improvement. So

Look and feel : Still very good, +1 on the old one.

Size of download : Chunkier, so -2 on that. I liked the fact that firefox 2 was still small and lightweight. Firefox 3 is almost 8mb.

Ease of installation : Very easy... Just as any normal windows application. +0 (the old firefox was just as easy)

Ease of porting from old Firefox : Very easy... +2 (technically porting from the old Firefox is so easy you don't have to do it... but it gets +2 brownie points for getting all my addons for Firefox 3 (those that weren't compatible already)

So quick review...
+3 vs Firefox 2.
+8 (it should be a horizontal 8) vs IE.

Pre-arranged funeral

In KZN I found this window... What is a pre-arranged funeral? It sounds just a little bit below board...

Proclaim Allah?

Radio Tygerberg has never been a station I listen at all so forgive me any misinterpretations I might have here. It's their democratic right as much as it is mine to do whatever they think is good. I just have a feeling that christians will be much less tolerant of a booth in public mall stating "We proclaim Allah".

Vodacom poster

However much I enjoy wit and humor in advertisements, this one was maybe just a bit too graphic for me. I have to admit that it grabbed my attention when I saw it, as it speaks to how I believe many view their phones. However I've always been really uncomfortable with the idea of having any thing foreign in my body.

Music Evening

This is a "Potbrood" (pot bread) that we baked that day, and then I snatched this photo of the cat camping on the guitar case. Reminds me of the musicians of Bremen (? -- Help me if I have the place wrong).

Sunset II

I drove a while to get this shot. It was taken on the Tierberg, and i got the light to play some tricks which was awesome. If I were rich then I'd like a spot up there, or maybe Plattekloof.

Sunrise II

The thing about sunrises in Cape Town, is that the mountains are in the way. So in a way the sun's angle on the earth is often not so perfect for nice sunrises, but we often have spectacular sunsets... However table mountain gets in the way in high summer periods.

Sunrise I

What I like about winter is the fact that I can sometimes rise early enough to appreciate a sunrise. As Pep I can get onto the roof and have a pretty decent view of the sunrises.

Moths...

I finally got my phone's photo blogging feature to work, so i'm now posting all my pics i want to now.
These moths were just a little smaller than my hand... Unfortunately i don't have one where their (there were several) wings were opened more.