The Notion to Blog

Have you ever stumbled up at some ungodly hour of the morning to take a leak and return to bed with your mind taking on a mind of its own.

It racing with all sorts of thoughts and ideas and you can’t fall asleep again.

I had one of those recently and I thought of something quite profound. It was so profound that I googled it later to see if I was maybe the first to think of it.

Turns out its been used in lyrics in some arb song before.

It probably sounds corny now but it sounded brilliant in the early ours of the morning. Anyway this is my profound thought:

When you generalise, you could be spreading general lies.

How often do we exaggerate the truth to support our story? Its so easy to lie if the person you’re speaking to isn’t an authority on the facts.

That’s my epiphany. I hope to never generalise by spreading general lies.

I would like to convey my appreciation for Antony Kay’s consistent outstanding service over the years. Since they installed our burglar bars and automated gate more than 4 years ago, they have always been very efficient and prompt when ever we’ve had problems with our gate.  Usually they come out the same day or very next day first thing in the morning.  This morning was no exception after I called late yesterday afternoon.  My battery needed replacing and the gentlemen were prompt in arriving and sorted the problem out quickly.

Their website is at http://www.automaticgates.co.za/

Since Corner House, a “come as you are” club in Cape Town closed down, I’ve been searching for a worthy replacement of this once soulful, oblivious and therapeutic haven.

Its no coincidence that Oblivion in Claremont, Cape Town is where I had my second internet date at the very same club and where I proposed marriage.  After 5 years, I’m totally devoted to the same woman who is now my wife.

On many occasions as a married a married couple, we’ve frequented Oblivion to try to relive the abandon that Corner House offered.

Today is very likely the last time I set foot at Oblivion.

With pre-meditated platonic motive, I recently complemented a girl at Oblivion on her dancing skill on my way to the bar.  She coldly responded “why aren’t you with your partner?”

I should have replied “I was complimenting you on your dancing, not your looks.”

Its then that I realised what had been bugging me the past few visits at Oblivion.  Its a singles bar.  Where single folk go to pick up other singles.  Some go for fun but most of the young people that go there have their agenda written all over their faces.  I don’t blame the single people, some who are over 30 years old still searching for their soul mate.   Why would a single person want to waste their time on a person who is “taken”?

As a married guy, I don’t share their agenda and I can see why I would be a waste of their precious hitching time.   Hey, all I want to do is dance and enjoy the music without being seen as a weirdo looking to pick up single woman.

I don’t understand how Julius Malema can spew hate speach like this (taken from this article on iAfrica)

… they do not care about the development of this country, they are forever obsessed with whether they are going to be attacked or robbed.

The very next day a gentleman was trying to help a victim of a hijacking and he became victim himself.  He was shot and is now in a critical condition.  You call saving another person being “obsesesed with crime?” Taken from myBB

Malema’s racist hate speech is a cancer that’s eating this country alive.

For the record, I’m no racist.  If Malema were white and he was saying the type of the things he’s saying I would hate him too.

JF Kenedy was assisinated for being a good leader and inspiring the country to greatness.

Malema is South Africa’s Hitler.

You do the math.

Have you ever been browsing the internet and had numerous tabs open in your browser and accidentally closed the wrong tab.  This is especially frustrating if you’ve laboriously searched for this page and finally found it by clicking through many obscure links.   You curse because you know your history is already 100 pages long and you don’t know which history item it is and you’re NOT going to try trace your clicks.

I discovered a handy menu in Firefox when you “right mouse button click” on the tab bar.  There’s a menu item “Undo Close Tab” which restores your closed tab as far back as you want.

I read an article today on My Broadband with the opening paragraph:

With the South African government pushing the use of open source software and businesses realising the benefits of open source, the demand for IT staff with Linux skills is growing.

I know this article has more of a Linux Operating System slant, but open source software is not confined to Linux. There are hundreds of open source applications for windows too. As a software developer our technologies we use are mostly from the open source world. Some of the software is unrivaled from the comerical world. Tools like Subversion (Source Control), nHibernate, nAant are some of the best known multi-platform tools. Everyone knowsn MSN, Paint and Winzip, but few windows users know Pidgin, Gimp, 7zip as free superior alternatives to the aforementioned respectively.

My daily tools that are opensource which I find indespesable are Prrogrammers Notepad, Free Download Manager, InfraRecorder, DVDFlick, Sharpdevelop and many more.

These are ALL opensource apps for windows. 99% of them can be found at http://www.sourceforge.net . Another good open source site where Microsoft has been publishing some of their tools and applications is http://www.codeplex.net. Google also has its own repository at http://code.google.com

Just thought I would add another perspective to Open Source and that its not confined to Linux and differnt flavours of operating systems under it.

Having said that, I like believe that world will one day be ruled by Linux and Android.

OS WTF!

As I consider it my duty to report rip-ffos to the public, I have to once again highlight another excessive rip-off from Incredible Connection.

You may say that I should simply refrain from walking into the Incredible Connection store. I actually like the store because and have found them to be the cheapest on 3 occassions:  Canon SLR,  Wii and Asus EEEPC.

This week I discoverd that they charge as much as 70% more than Take2 on their HP Printer Cartrideges. In my case its the No 135 color cartdrige for my HP OfficeJet

Incredible Connection: R399
Take2: R233
Ink Cartridge Recycling Shop in Plumstead: R190

This brings me to my next point. Is it worth bying recycled cartdidges?  My answer is Yes  and No depending on your motive.   “Yes” , if you care more about the earth than the colors that come out of your cartdrige.  “No” if you think that saving R40 is not worth the bad quality ink and hassle of blocked nozzles.

I took my cartdrige back for twice in one week for a recycled replacement. Both cases i got a catridge that failed to print one of the colors.

By all means, send your empty cartrdiges for recycling, but don’t bank on getting a working recycled cartridge back.

I subscribe to the world of Open Source Software.  Its great, its author is the world and its continually improved upon many times a year for the benefit of the user.  I published a list of software that I user everyday and my world would not be the same without it.

Often I find I need a job done and I don’t have the software for it.  The first place I search is SourceForge.  This is undoubtedly the biggest portal for free Open Source Software.  Occasionally, what i need is not here so I search the wider internet using Google.  I put the word “FREE” in my search because I’m not a big one for paying for software unless its really necessary (for Windows XP for example).

As Google does, it offers a huge selection of FREE tools.

90% of these tools appear to be FREE because there’s  FREE in big letters all over their page. More often that not they’re NOT FREE.  They TRIAL’s!  In other words, they expire after 30 days or they have limited functionality.  I wanted a tool to transfer records from one database to another.  I found a promising one here .  The FREE version only transfers 20 records.  How useless is that?  Why not say TRIAL version?

If you compare FREE in the open source world to FREE in the commercial world ,its not the same.  FREE does not mean FREE if its a 30 day trial.

Practically every day there are news reports like this about a taxi that has rolled and passengers that were injured or killed.

Its such a norm, it shouldn’t even make headlines, just like the weather: its there if you want to read it but you have to look for it.

If you want to travel in a taxi, face the concequences of being a statistic. Statistics don’t make headlines (unless of course a large part of the population is wiped out by taxi’s in one day).

Harsh words, I know, espeically because its peoples lives involved, but they choose to put their lives at risk every time they get into a taxi. We all know how recklessly taxi drivers are on the road in their unroadworthy vehicles, packed to capacity. They’re endangering the live of their passengers and the hundreds of others that have to make way for them.

I guess its no secret I hate taxi’s.  Arguing that the drivers need to put food on the tables and that its a mode of transport for the poor doesn’t stand up to the fact that people die in them every day.

Taxi’s should be banned unless the driver has a stringent license.   I hope the rapid bus transport system takes over and makes taxis unviable.

Personaly, 2009 will certainly be one of the best years in living memory. 2009 is the year I bought my Freelander II, got married in April, spent honeymoon on the island of Mallorca, cruised to Mozambique on the Sinfonia in November and spent the most amazing christmas ever at Halfaampies Kraal.

Its quite surreal to be spending the last day of 2009 at the office. Our dress code is strictly formal (except the last friday of the month, we’re allowed to forgo the tie),  but today I decided to venture to work in jeans and a collared shirt! This adds to the surrealness of the last day.

I hope that 2010 is an even better year. I wish this for every South African in the world