Ok, so I’ve never watched this movie but I always hear about it in the US TV programs and movies… Here’s a link to “It’s a wonderful life in 30 seconds” re-enacted by bunnies… Its kinda funny. 😀
Category: General
Ok, so I was just at the Belgian Consulate fetching our passports (with nice new Shengen visa’s inside) and, while waiting for the lift to come to take me back downstairs, I ended up reading their evacuation procedure. (The building is the old IS building in Rosebank – where I used to work in 2000)
Anyway, they were all kinda normal. “Don’t panic”, “switch off your pc”, etc… but what caught my imagination was the “Take your handbag/briefcase/visitors and leave the building”… Do they mean to imply that visitors are like handbags/briefcases? I could just see some poor female employee swinging her handbag and her visitor over her shoulder and exiting the building. That should, after all, be perfectly normal behaviour according to this sign.
Categories
Travelling…
I just realised today that I’ve not mentioned a thing about my up-coming trip overseas… Tomorrow Christie and I leave… our trip takes us to London (Via Paris – just a stopover and plane change, not a visit). From London we’re either going to catch a lift with the in-laws or take the tube and a train to Southend-on-Sea, where Christie’s grandmotner lives.
She’s not doing so well, which is what caused our trip (which was planned for early next year) to be moved to December. So while its not a happy reason for taking a trip, we’re going to make the most of the stay and try get into London for a day or so to see some touristy sites.
We leave for London tomorrow (21st), arrive there on the 22nd, and leave London again on the 27th. Again our flight goes via Paris but this time (unlike on the way to London) we are stopping in Paris and being picked up by my mother (who lives in Brussels), and we’re going to go stay with her for about 7 days visiting various touristy sites around there. (Brussels, Brugges, Amsterdam, etc)
We leave from Paris again on the 4th of January and arrive in Johannesburg on the 5th. So , I hope you have a very Merry Christmas, and a wonderful new year! I’ll be contactable via e-mail over that time but considering the amount of touristy things we’ll be doing, I doubt I’ll respond too quickly.
Here are some links to the various place’s we’re going…
| Places [Wikipedia] | Links |
| London | London [Wikitravel] |
| Paris | |
| Southend-on-Sea | Southend-on-Sea [Wikitravel] |
| Brussels | Brussels [Wikitravel] |
| Brugge | Brugge [Wikitravel] |
| Amsterdam | Amsterdam [Wikitravel] |
| Johannesburg | Johannesburg [Wikitravel] |
I hope the links are useful… They have info on great places to see, things to do, where to buy stuff, how to travel, where to stay, etc… and if you find anything special out yourself, you can just add it to the page. (That’s the joy of Wiki’s) I’ll post an update (with pics) when we get back..
I *knew* there was a reason I was subscribed the the Windows Mobile Team‘s blog….
Today they posted an entry about Handango giving away free software… Check it out! It looks like they’re doing PalmOS apps too…
I’ve already started downloading my first SmartPhone app… Ok, so I don’t have a smartphone yet, but I will. (As soon as I either decide to move to MTN who are advertising the iMate SP3, or as soon as Vodacom get their act together and start offering the phone.) But until then, I’ll be stocking up on free software for my soon-to-be new phone each week till 31 January 2005.
Waaaay back when my whole class at junior school had a “music class” (which was part recorder lesson and part music appreciation), we had a cool teacher (Mr Downham) who at one stage mentioned a theory of his that music styles would repeat themselves, and that perhaps one day we would be listening to the latest thing music which would actually be some form of baroque or other classical style.
Its something that’s stuck in my mind for some reason, and through out my life I’ve often noticed when the “latest style” has had some similarity to older music. Generally its a re-take on some mainstream style/trend from a while ago, but I was just listening to a playlist of mine in WMP10 and started thinking, “hey, I don’t remember adding my mod files to this collection” (and by mod files I mean mod/s3m/it and other such files)… So I looked at the playlist and I found out that it was playing “Parade of the Athletes” by DJ Tiësto…
Certain bits of the songs just reminded me of the old “chip” mods from an AGE ago, and (I think) some of the stuff by Future Crew… (Not sure if I’m getting my demo groups mixed up) Anyway, I kinda missed those times with the old 8bit sound cards (or simply just the PC speaker) and the excitement of finding out so many new and cool things. Using usenet to read up on the latest “scene” news and finding demos that did amazing things on my little PC that I didn’t think were possible with just a 5kb executable. I still have a part of me that wants to go to one of the “demo scene” competitions (I’m not even sure if they still exist).
I do remember one local demo group from durbs(? I think they were called Asphyxia) who put out some awesome Turbo Pascal tutorials which got me interested in assembly and 3D graphics… I even ended up helping some guys at school learn trig and other fun maths concepts using their 3D tuts. Oh, the good old days… 🙂
Categories
Employee abuse…
So this looks like its the latest meme on the blogosphere, but check it out… I got this link via Craig Patterson‘s blog about the game industry. He got it via a post on Jason Olsen’s blog, and the actual link is by a spouse of a guy that works at EA…
Read it! You’ll be happy you don’t work there…
When I was growing up I’d often hear people say “if wishes were horses, I’d be riding” (or something like that…) Today I’m saying “if wishes were smartphones, I’d have the iMate SP3”
But no, wishes aren’t smartphones, and Vodacom don’t seem to be keen to help a geek like me get my hands on a one either.
Locally, Leaf Wireless started importing a new version of the iMate PDS last month and a smartphone, their press releases are: PDA (i-Mate PDA2k) and Smartphone (i-Mate SP3).
Motorola do the MPX200 and MPX220. The MPX200 uses older technology and doesn’t do bluetooth, the MPX220 uses the newer Windows Mobile, has bluetooth and a few other things. Unfortunately its not in SA yet… I e-mailed Motorola SA about a month ago and was told it would be here in November/December. I mailed them a few days ago and was told that the launch was postponed to somewhere around December 18 because they didn’t have stock when the original launch date came. But they also warned that the December date was subject to stock availability, and I’m guessing SA is not a big priority for Motorola so we’ll probably only see stock next year. 🙁
Now in the mean time I’ve been following these phones for a while and I was most pleased that they’d be launching around the time I was eligable for a cellphone upgrade. I could officially upgrade my phone on November 5th this year. Since I knew that Motorola hadn’t launched yet, I resigned myself to getting the iMate SP3. I was thinking that since the press release came out almost a month ago, Vodacom would certainly be offering it as one of their upgrade options.
Unfortunately I was very mistaken. Vodacom have “discontinued” the old version of the iMate (a logical move since its replacement is out), but they haven’t started offering the new one. I also found out that they have “discontinued” the MPX200, which is less obvious since its replacement is not yet out. There is no indication from them as to when they might actually get hold of the new versions of the iMate and start offering them.
It is most frustrating… I *WANT* a smartphone, and I *WANT* it now. 🙁 Ok, so enough pouting and whining… I’ll just try waiting a month and see what comes of it…
But for those of you who are most fortunate and have one of these babies already, check out this link I got in the latest “Microsoft Insider Update” newsletter (click here to subscribe) – Download award-winning applications for Windows Mobile – free!
Looks like there are some cool apps for these phones. Now I must go and prepare myself for the long wait till December and the new list of phones I can get from Vodacom…
Categories
10 Years of freedom…
Ok, so I had to make at least one post with that title this year… No matter how much that slogan is beginning to irritate the heck out of me, I just had to do it. (Anyone know if there is a “Slogans Anonymous” or something like that I should check out?)
I saw a link via slashdot about Press freedom, which linked to the Third Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. And South Africa is listed 26/167… So we’re in the top 16%.
Ok, so I just now thought I should probably check to see where we were last year (2003)… We were 21/166 (Top 13%). And in 2002 we were 26/139 (Top 19%).
So the over all trend is that we’re moving up in regards to press freedom, not that I guess you could draw too much of a conclusion from only three year’s data, especially since comparing by % kinda gets affected by how many countries were ranked. Anyway… At least we’re kinda free. 🙂
Categories
Feeling better…
I read Craig Paterson‘s post “I feel so much better…“, and checked out the link to “YOU ARE NOT INADEQUATE” by secretgeek. Its really cool, and something I think a lot of us need reminding of. I’m glad someone came out and just said it. 🙂
Ok, so this file extensions quiz is doing the rounds in the dotnet.org.za blogs, so here’s my result…
Now I’m not sure if that’s such a good thing or not… Is that really me?
[Update: Ok, so I took the test again… now I come out as….
All just by changing 2 answers (IIRC)… Now comes the dilemma… which one am I? Oh the strain, how will I live with this double life? When will it end? Who am I really? *sigh*
Ok back to reality – I wonder how many different personalities I could get if I keep answering that quiz? Could be fun. :-)]