RICA... well stupid

RICA is forced upon us in South Africa (it's some act where you have to register your sim card so they can track you in case your number/sim is used in crime). I registered today, because I upgrade my cellphone contract tomorrow (or it's due anyway).

But if you, like me, are a bit of a techno guy, then you don't get snail mail anymore. So how do you prove where you stay? My edgars accounts, my vodacom acccount, my bank statements, all goes to my email now (I started that just before RICA came, and now what?!). So I went to the police station to fill in an affidavit to state I stay where I stay. It worked fine... but what bothered me about it all is that my address is on my ID, and my ID is required for RICA. So yeah, stupid if you ask me. :-/

Spier - Moyo bathrooms

I don't know how some stuff gets past senior management. Maybe they don't know or they don't see it. But I can't see how a place that asks so much money to eat there, can be as crass and tactless about which toilet is which...

What do you hate buying the most?

There is always a cognitive dissonance in me when I have to buy toilet paper, and refuse bags.

In retail terms, those are called "grudge purchases". This is because, well, the one you pull through your buttocks, and the other you just throw away. The point is, you don't want to spend a lot of money on stuff that you just want to throw away.

I remember once buying toilet paper, saying, "I can't believe I pay this much for what I'm going to do with it". Then the sales assistant replied, "yes that's a lot of money for what it's for". But you see there is a difference. It's for a clean buttocks - now that's a worthy cause, one I'm willing to spend some money on. But what you do with it... not stuff I want to spend money on. A grudge buy. I don't buy the cheapest toilet paper anymore... because I think that's a rip off too. So the lesser of the two evils, are the double ply thick decent toilet paper.

On to refuse bags. Now with these I haven't found anything that I am really satisfied with. The expensive ones are definately better... but are they worth the premium? Searching for the above images, I found there's a gazillion different types of refuse bags... clearly a diverse market. But where do I fit? I like cheap, because... well, I'm sure you can figure it out, but I am not happy with them. They tear at the worst times, they are just not worth it... but neither are the ones with draw strings, or scented etc. or heavy duty. Just give me decent quality at a decent price. That's all.

What do you hate buying, but have to? What is the brand/choice you've settled on and why?

BING story

I sat at work, and noticed my colleague had BING open in their "side" bar in IE. Oh, I didn't know she's such a techie that she can even knows about BING. Turns out, no, she doesn't know anything about BING, she just types "google" into microsoft's search engine, and continues to the top link. :-)

McDonalds on Durban road (Bellville RSA)

I was at McDonalds a week or two back... and I got stuck in the drive through. They were cashing up or something (it's a 24h McD's and it was about 8:30 AM), and but it took me 25m to get through it... And I didn't order anything, I needed to be somewhere else at 9:00 so I needed to get out there quickly.

So I was unhappy, and I voted with my feet... yeah... but that doesn't change anything. So I emailed McDonalds South Africa, and logged a complaint. But you see, they still have not come back to me. So my consumer blog is starting.

Consumer blog too

I've decided I'm going to give consumer reviews on products that I like, or dislike for whatever reason. It'll often be on the marketing of the product, or the packaging, or just the usage etc.

I'll be posting my first consumer review shortly...

Real Life Spammers...

I got a SPAM email today from Glenrand M-I-B... Except that it wasn't from them...

from: By Design
reply-to: postman@housemail.co.za
to: xxxxx@gmail.com (I removed my email here to reduce my possibility of SPAM in future)
date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:51 AM
subject: Policyholders reminder: get building cover at a premium rate
mailed-by: kscope.mcentre.co.za

I have a policy at Glenrand (my car is insured there), and I haven't had any problems with them. So they are reputable... more so than AIG I guess. :-)

Anyway, so I send them an email saying that these people are emailing from no-where, and it's the first time I've received such a SPAM email from them... and the fact that it's not sent by an email address at "glenrandmib.co.za" really reduces the authenticity of the email.

Also, the spammers has added a lot of their own detail to the mail (which makes it better I guess?) Colleen@kscope.co.za... but also a telephone number! So I phoned Colleen at 021-462-2291. Asked her how she got hold of my email addy... She asked if it was the first time I've received any emails from them, and I replied yes, and wanted to know where she got my email addy.

Well, she said they either got it from their "client" or from a website... My email is available in the world... but that still doesn't give you the right to just SPAM me...

What worries me though is the fact that I have a policy with glenrand, so they have a bit more information about me than they legally should have... and that's not cool.

www.kscope.co.za believes they give a special service... but in my honest opinion, it's just spam...

A quote from their website:
"Step 1: We find new clients for you by creating an email database of 10 000 prospects specifically for your products and services using international search engines. We have specific software that selects the prospects in your market. Your database of 10 000 new prospective clients could be local, national or international."

Linux vs Windows (the old days, and now)

In the old days, (lets say 8 years ago)... most hardware didn't work on linux except with a LOT of work. In those days, stuff used to "just work" on windows. However, these days, things don't "just work" on windows... You need to install drivers (back then windows had about a list of 100 vendors per device, and had a something that should work with your hardware)... These days, you need to download a driver from the internet (which you may had to do then too - but then it was 1mb), and they come pricy when it comes to bandwidth. 45mb for a driver? You must be f#%king kidding me... Wait... you have a hardware abstraction layer you have to connect to... how hard can it be? 45mb?!!! The *whole* linux kernel is less than that (I believe... I think it's 27mb).

I'll be just naming the product I have in mind here... HP OfficeJet 4255 all-in-one. I think it's a shame that driver sizes has increased as much as they did. I don't know whether to blame windows or the companies, but the bottom line is: linux does it with much less bandwitdh, and probably much less effort.

The fact is just that linux is getting with the hardware curve, and windows is almost falling behind it. (And the vendors creates the drivers themselves!)

A vista driver 163mb (same product)... That's 3/8 of my cap of a month.

Alternate rules for Boule

I've got a miniature boule set. I bought it marked down at Edgars... Anyway, it doesn't have the "target" ball.

So, I have six marble sized balls, with which I want to play boule (or a similar game).

So I've devised these rules (they are not yet refined but bare with me):
* Players alternate throwing (this may need to change?)
* The player with the most balls creating the smallest triangle (in circumference) gets 1 or 2 points (1 for having 2 of the 3 "points", and 2 if he has all 3 points).

Throwing last seems to be a big advantage... I'll be testing these rules over the holiday, and I'll give a follow up post on how it goes.

Freedom!

In the software community, (especially the free software community) there has been great amounts of talk about what is free software. GNU and Richard Stallman has a definition, and so has our "common sense"... what is free? Well, it costs nothing, but according to GNU it doesn't *have to be without cost*. For them the true freedom is to be able to do what you want, and add and edit what you want with the software (for this case I'll add knowledge to it).

I never quite understood it. Why would anyone ever stand in the way of this type of freedom? I still don't know why people would stand in the way... but what I do understand now, is why Richard Stallman is so fanatical about being given the freedom.

I've been trying to push a freedom of knowledge base... and some people (who are responsible for documenting systems etc.) cannot seem to fathom that wiki-based knowledge is
1) empowering for those who use it (they can teach themselves stuff they never had access to),
2) grows at exponential rates
3) self regulating
4) for the good of all
5) multiplayer notepad. (I love that)... though it was first cliched for IRC.

They think that the knowledge won't be audited, and that people will start to follow the wrong principals. But if the wiki is active enough, and they (who are people who can authorize is) are active on it, the knowledge will continue to be passed on, and on and on.

And if someone inhibits those awesome features of a wiki, then I feel the need to passionately fight for the right of freedom too.

Open Street Maps

This is the wikipedia for maps, which I think is a kind of a ubuntu way of life for the world. Everyone with a GPS should log their travels and upload the roads into the Open Street Maps!

I wish I had a GPS so I could easily add to this wonderful project!

Open Office 3.0 Calc vs Excel

This post might be edited later, or further posts will follow.

Excel (and Access) is the benchmark no doubt when it comes to the two Office packages. If Open Office can do what excel can do, and DO IT THE SAME, then there's no reason to pay for MS Office...

Anyway, here is something that Open Office Calc does differently, and I think it's cool, MS Excel does this differently (it grows the selection to the width of the merged cells).

Technians?

I can understand that you get break in transmission when your people can't even spell technician. Small things tell a huge amount about incompetence.

For people whose internet connections are not on ubuntu itself

http://apt.alturl.com/ rules. Put in what you need (library), and use downthemall with a filter on *.deb, to get all the files. Set the downthemall to skip the existing files, and you can get your own little offline repository going.

Mshini Wami - For new anthem and Bok emblem

I quickly made this from the current logo and the wikipedia AK47 article.

It comes from my lunch discussion I had about the bok emblem, and how we should really have Mshini Wami being sung, rather than our anthem, because the "Stem" part is embracing the old afrikaner regime.

Anyway, my personal take on it is, we should keep the Bok emblem, because IT DOES NOT represent the negative stuff of the past. I'd remove the anthem, and sing Shosalosa.

Wordpress vs Blogger

I was recently invited to co-post at the tenletter games blog, which is hosted on Wordpress.

For me, the way blogger lays things out's user interface is cleaner than Wordpress's.

In the above screenshot, you *might* notice the publish button to the right of the editor. In user interfaces... that should really be at the bottom of it.

However, the features at wordpress is really cool, from pingbacks to statistics and other cool things make it really good.

So, my recommendation (if you don't already have a gazillion blogs) - blogger is "simpler, better, faster". Wordpress is more features, more complex.

My Daily Web Experience

This will take you through my typical day of being on the web...

1. I log onto gmail.

There I check if I have any new personal emails (not tons a day, often none, sometimes a bit more). I try to reply to them ASAP, though obviously work goes first.

I also check for any progress in my Diplomacy game. I'll respond to them ASAP too if I deem it appropriate for my tactics/strategy.

I am subscribed to several lists and blogs, so some of them automatically goes to it's label, and leaves the inbox (typically high traffic lists), or some lie in my inbox for my perusal. The most important lists are:
1. Lazarus mailing list.
2. Slashdot
3. Facebook junk
4. The straight dope
5. My church's mails
6. Seth Godin's Blog
7. Lots of other randoms, like ToME or Open Office's newsletter or KDE's newsletter and so forth.

2. I look at my iGoogle rss feeds
Then I am taken to my iGoogle feeds... I have some blogs on there, and some webtoons. I've got more on there than I actually read, so maybe I should reduce it? Anyway, those that I still read regularly is:
1. xkcd
2. Basic Instructions
3. Happysad
Those that I have, but don't follow,
4. Dilbert
5. Cyanide and Happiness
6. Calvin and Hobbs

I have some news feeds on there too, news24, and BBC (i think).

Blogs on there
1. Tenletter
2. De Naakte Priester
3. Ker!ching retail
4. Some cricket blogs
5. Keo

3. Random searches and browsing
Other than that... well, not much. I'll browse wikipedia from time to time, and I'll join the freenode server on Mibbit (an IRC webclient).

If you think there is something absolutely essential I'm missing... let me know!

I also run a very cool wiki for myself (which sports a decent TODO list, but also other useful information).

Popular Mechanics

I don't generally read their magazine. But the South Africa edition, for the month of October 2008, had a long article about how google make us think differently. Quite interesting, and quite ironic, as they say that we generally struggle to read more than one page at a time now, because of the way the internet is structured now... and then the article is about 4 pages.

Anyway, their graphic designer made a mistake... hopefully not (maybe it was intentional?), but they wrote htpp, instead of http.




Whoa... that's a bad error to go past everyone...

SVN frustrations

Again... I don't want this to be a techie blog (probably because I'm in the land of the blind, and I have one eye... and I've seen the land of the sighted...)

Anyway, my searches on google failed to help me here, so I am hoping this will help people out. (THIS IS DONE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!)

My SVN kept dying (during checkout - and afterwards during update). And leaving me with a state where neither svn up, or svn cleanup would work. Giving me this error:
svn: Error processing command 'modify-wcprop' in

The advice other people gave, was to remove the directory and start over... this works ok, but the trouble is when it's in the root of the 50mb svn... then remove the directory (and it's subdirectories) won't work.

Here's what I did, and again... NO WARRANTY.

I deleted the .svn/lock file. Then I just did svn up, and it completed it!

Anyone reading this, that know and understand why this is a bad thing please comment. Also if you did it and it worked, also please comment.

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.