Everything but the Kitchen Sink

01:10 pm - I'm not so bad after all!

I have spent a fair amount of time developing web based applications lately. And let me be honest here: I'm not bad at it, but I'm not a top-of-the-line specialist, either.

So what a pleasure it was to discover a user interface bug in the online banking application of my bank in Holland! It's a huge application that processes millions of financial transactions per day and they have obviously spent millions and millions of euro's on it (hey, they're a bank) but still the odd form processing bug has slipped through. For some reason when you enter a payment description using quote marks, the text between the quote marks just disappears.

Well - if a high budget application, developed by a team of serious professionals, still has the occasional hiccup like that, maybe I shouldn't feel so bad about it happening now and then in my code...  :-)

Current Mood: giggly

06:10 pm - Clarkson on safety - South African style

Top Gear Live has visited South Africa this week. I'm a big fan of the BBC show and I would have loved to go to the live version, but unfortunately I'm somewhat impecunious at the moment and tickets were not exactly cheap. I did manage to catch a radio interview with Jeremy Clarkson, though, in which he called Johannesburg "the safest city in the world".

In a column that Clarkson wrote for the Times in 2009, he already described Johannesburg as "the city for softies" and stated that "Johannesburg is Milton Keynes with thunderstorms. You go out. You have a lovely ostrich. You drink some delicious wine and you walk back to your hotel, all warm and comfy. It’s the least frightening place on earth. So why does every single person there wrap themselves up in razor wire and fit their cars with flame-throwers and speak of how many times they’ve been killed that day? What are they trying to prove?" All the armed guard that Clarkson had been assigned to keep him out of harm's way had to say was "Pah", and Clarkson himself described "the quiet, bougainvillea-lined streets of Jo’burg" as "tranquil".

This has made a lot of people very angry, and has caused them to question Clarkson's sanity. I am not sure why. Jeremy Clarkson (described by the BBC as "not a man given to considered opinion") has suggested in the past that we save the planet by feeding veganists to cows, that the best we can do for the inhabitants of rainforests is to napalm them, and has claimed that man is not responsible for global warming - if indeed there is such a thing, which his constant riducule of all things environmental does not suggest he seriously believes, either.

I could not help thinking about Jeremy Clarkson's statements when I saw this afternoon's headlines. I did not select any - this is the list in full as of today, 17:00:

• Four million in jewels stolen from Cape Town university
• Transvaal Landbou Unie: "Stop farm murders"
• Woman killed on way to wedding
• Woman hit by train in Stellenbosch
• Woman shot dead in robbery
• Three hurt in vechicle collision
• Church minister's wife murdered
• Man killed in house robbery
• Nine injured in Johannesburg Taxi accident
• Five robbers shot dead for a bed
• Man nabbed for brother's murder

02:41 pm - Driven crazy

I have just had my first driving lesson again. After I flunked the last test by a hair's width my touris visa expired, and I had to wait for my residence permit extension to be issued before I could apply again. Meanwhile I have been driving in the real world. So everything I've learned during my previous driving lessons, about half a year ago, is gone. Everything.

The problem is that it's not driving I have to learn. It's procedure. It's like learning to dance - and I keep tripping over my own feet.

For example, when I go through the parking exercise, my normal routine would be to just park the damn car. But no - in order to pass the test you must:

• stop the car,
• pull up the handbrake without letting the ratchet slip,
• put it in neutral,
• check your rearview mirrors and blind spot on the site you want to park at,
• indicate,
• do a five point check (left hand side blind spot, left hand side wing mirror, inside rearview mirror, right hand side rear view mirror, right hand side blind spot),
• depress the clutch pedal,
• put it in reverse gear,
• check both blind spots again while starting to move;
• keep the wheels straight until the first pole outlining the parking bay is lined up with the corner of the rear window;
• turn the wheel until it locks;
• continue until you see the three poles outlining the other side of the parking bay in your wing mirror,
• straighten the wheels,
• continue reversing until the front corner pole of the parking bay lines up with the outside of your wing mirror,
• turn the wheel into the other direction until it locks again,
• continue until the car is parked and then bring it to a stop;
• pull up the handbrake without letting the ratchet slip,
• put it in neutral.

Current Mood: exhausted

03:34 pm - It was twenty years ago today... (With apologies to the Beatles)

It's twenty years since F.W. de Klerk (sometimes jokingly referred to as "Flat Wheel") made his famous speech to parliament in which he announced the ANC's unbanning and Nelson Mandela's release. A lot of things have happened since then - some good, some bad.

The good thing is that Apartheid was abolished. Apartheid was a bad idea. It never really worked, and in hindsight a lot of grief and a lot of damage to both the country and its people could have been prevented if in 1948 wiser heads had prevailed.

The bad thing is that while Apartheid is gone (and good riddance) the things that fuelled it still persist: discrimination, inequality, fear, greed and hatred.

What most people outside South Africa did not realize at the time (and I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for just coming out and saying this) is that the ANC's primary goal never was just to obtain freedom for black South Africans. That was a key item in the ANC's strategy and the primary motivation for black South Africans to support the ANC, but it was not the ANC's primary purpose - not then, and not now. The ANC's primary purpose was to achieve ANC domination in South Africa. Not black domination; not a distribution of wealth and power as a function of demographic distribution or suitability for a task, but power and wealth for the ANC, its members, and the members' friends and relatives.

The "struggle" against Apartheid has ended long ago, but today the ANC's main symbol, and part of the party emblem, still is a fist raised in the air. The "born free" generation (i.e. born after 1994), now in the late teens, are as fanatically opposed to all things white as their parents were, and the ANC Youth League and the Young Communist League leave no opportunity unused to decry everone with an opinion different from theirs as a reactionary apartheid, and when doing so they usually mention machine guns and their willingness to kill for the Cause - whatever that Cause may be these days.

Most ANC heavies have become millionaires over the past 20 years, and their friends and families are very well off, too. Parastatal companies have been systematically looted by politically connected "managers" who have awarded themselves multimillion Rand salaries and invariably left the company much worse for wear. Crime is rampant, the economy is instable, unemployment figures are downright unbelievable (the official figure being over 27% but the actual figure being closer to 45 to 50%) and everything has fallen into disrepair; from buildings and cities to roads, the electricity grid, the telephone network, the water system... well, the whole infrastructure, really. The poor are till poor and are not seldom worse off (from an economic point of view, at least) than they were under Apartheid.

So. Did de Klerk make a mistake, then?

No. He didn't. He was absolutely right.

However, his achievement lies not in having had this Great Idea and engineering the end of Apartheid. His accomplishment, for which he deserves due respect, is the fact that he had the spheroids to look reality straight in the face and accept the inevitable: neither colonialism nor Apartheid were, and are, sustainable in the long run. We managed to fool ourselves for centuries, but in the end it never worked out.

The worst legacy of Apartheid is not a moral one, though - it's a very pragmatic one. For decades South Africa has been a pressure cooker with a big fire underneath. Apartheid was the worst possible response to this simple fact: it tried to contain the pressure by bolting the lid onto this pressure cooker ever more tightly. The higher the pressure got, the more tightly they bolted it on, for fear that the seal might blow. De Klerk rightly saw that ultimately there were only two possible courses of action left: take off the lid, or deal with the inevitable explosion, which was only a matter of time and would have been much worse.

Unfortunately, by that time it was much to late to open the safety valve and bleed off the pressure gradually. That would have taken more time than was left until the whole thing would have blown up. There was just enough time to let of a little bit of steam, and then pop the lid and hope for the best.

In short, the problems that South Africa faces today are, for the most part, not the result of the change of government. They are the result of the simple fact that the change occurred much too late, and therefore much too rapidly.

Colonialism creates its own worst, and most fundamental problem. Foreign settlers move in, take over, and create a society according to their own methods and culture. This is, by definition, a society that enjoys no support from the indigenous people who have lived there since the dawn of time. Otherwise such a society would have been in place when the settlers disembarked. The simple fact of the matter is, then, that colonialism creates cities, a government, an infrastructure, laws, and everything else that makes up a society, that can be maintained only as long as the colonials are in control. When colonialism is abolished, the societies that it has produced have to collapse.

In a perfect world, the colonials would recognize this fact, accept reality, and endeavour to make the changeover a gradual one, spanning at least a generation, preferably more, so as to arrive a transition rather than a collapse. Unfortunately reality is different: those in power will deny reality, dig in their heels and resist the inevitable change for as long as possible until everything goes to pieces.

An unfortunate side effect of all this is that is allowd for everything, from incompetence to shameless looting by grinning politicians, to be blamed on the legacy of colonialism and, in the case of South Africa, Apartheid. It allows the new generation to deny its responsibility, an opportunity it is not slow in taking. Currently South Africa is hampered by a culture of entitlement, in which the older generation looks to the government and demand houses, jobs, free healthcare, free education, free water and electricity, while the younger generation is prepared to fight for all these things because fighting is what their parents did-- rebels without a cause.

Will the "new" South Africa that F.W. de Klerk spoke of twenty years ago outgrow this phase? We all hope so. But nobody knows for sure. Time will tell.

Current Mood: thoughtful

10:10 am - A good look at the bottom of the barrel

Feeling financial security drop out from under you is quite a shock to the system. One moment you feel financially secure; the next you're trying to come to grips with the fact that you are suddenly impecunious.

As such shocks go, none of this is pleasant. It is a wake-up call, though: while you know that security is only relative (as millions of people have found out since the credit crunch started) it does server as a wake-up call and a demonstration of how volatile things actually can be.

Yesterday afternoon I dealt with it by means of some serious gardening. That usually works for me. I have been thinking about putting in a herb garden where I will grow thyme, rosemary and stuff like that. So I selected a suitable plot in the back of the garden, paced it off, and started to dig it over as a first step in cultivating the soil.

Today calls for some constructive worrying. I have already taken a good look at my finances, made an overview of all fixed expenses and what's left of my income, which gives me the gap I have to bridge. It won't be easy to make ends meet, but it looks at least within the realms of possibility. My main concern at this stage are the upcoming battles with the legal system in order to obtain a driver's license and a more permanent residence and business permit, which is going to cost yet another huge amount of money. I have no idea at present how I'm going to cover those costs. And then there might be more (at present unforeseen) medical expenses.

On the plus side, I've only got a few small, casual jobs in the pipeline (web site maintenance and small networking jobs, mostly) and there are still some outstanding invoices waiting for the clients to become solvent enough again to pay. But that's about it for the moment.

So. I should have lots of spare time in which to find other business. I am resolved to take this as an opportunity to keep on slugging and not give up. But it will be interesting.

Current Mood: worried

06:58 pm - And then the music stopped

This afternoon the recession caught up with me.

For the past 18 months or so I have made a living working on a project for a start-up company, under contract. Unfortunately the start-up's core business was digital advertising. Since advertising budgets have just about disappeared, they have been forced to "suspend all activities indefinitely" as of tomorrow morning. I have been working for them almost full time, so effectively I've lost my job. And my income, until I find something else. Which, in the current economic climate, will be challenging. Just about everyone is completely strapped for cash. They tell us that the recession is about over, but so far I can't see it. All I see around me is companies who have been feeling the crunch and now the crunch is turning into a bite.

While it lasted this project was a blessing, because it allowed us to get my loved one's health sorted out. It covered the medical expenses, without which she might not have been around any more. But every last cent has gone into healthcare. So right now I'm going to have to tighten my belt seriously.

Hold thumbs.

Current Mood: scared

02:06 pm - A quick worldcup reality check

With the Soccer Worldcup games, to be held in South Africa, mere months away, the spin doctors are getting more and more removed from reality. Therefore, as a public service and free of charge, let me provide a bit of a reality check here.

Ticket sales

• FIFA says: "Since the draw (on Dec. 4), we have seen a flurry in terms of ticket sales ... the sales have gone very well, we are extremely delighted."
  
  
• The facts: around the time the above statement was made, FIFA relinquished more than 450 000 of the bed nights it initially reserved to local hotels and guest houses.

• FIFA says: "It's sad that every morning when you wake up people are saying you should not go to South Africa ... it's insane and it is completely wrong", and: "Some things that you read have no basis in reality anywhere".
  
  
• The facts: Crime is rampant in South Africa. The authorities have openly attempted to suppress crime statistics; whatever statistics are available are generally believed to be fudged; meanwhile South Africa ranks among the top three of countries worldwide for rape, assault and murder. Last week alone hundreds of people have been robbed, mugged, raped, stabbed and shot - sometimes over as little as ten Rand or a cellphone. It's not that last week has been special in any way - on the contrary, the problem is that it's been a week as any other week.  I'm not even going to try and provide links here to cross-reference this statement - that job is just too big. I suggest you follow South African mainstream news services for a week or so and see for yourself: it's little more than a body count, interspersed with news about corruption on a daily basis among politicians, public servants and civil employees.
  

• The South African government says: "2010 is an opportunity to speed up growth and develpment, to market this country and the continent to the world; and an opportunity to grow local entrepreneurship", and: "the value of hosting the world’s top sporting events lies not only in the honour and prestige of doing so, but in their power to filter down the economy and spur social change. [...] Local consulting firm Grant Thornton estimated in December 2009 that the 2010 FIFA World CupTM will contribute R55.7 billion to South Africa's gross domestic product and create 415 400 jobs."
  
  
• However, FIFA says, essentially: "All your economic opportunities are belong to us". (If you're a non-geek: No, this is not a typo. <grin>)
  
  
• The facts: cooler minds have meanwhile done the math, and point out that even if the official expectations of 3 million visitors are met (which, given the lackluster ticket sales, is at best dubious) this figure should be seen in its proper perspective. Regular tourism, on average, accounts for well in excess of 850,000 tourists per month. So the increase in visiting tourists this year is at best going to be less than 30%, although currently 25% or even under 20% seems a more realistic expectation. Moreover: while most regular tourists are from outside the African continent, most world cup visitors are expected to be Africans, who traditionally spend far less than visitors from other continents. In short, and without digressing into the gory details of spending patterns, multiplication and subtraction: soccer tourism in 2010 will account for no more than a few million Rand net profit being made on food, drink, lodging, services, entertainment and souvenirs, over what we normally see each year. Not only does that amount to a pittance per capita, country-wide, but it's not even a large fraction of one percent of the billions of taxpayers' money that has been sunk into hosting the Soccer World Cup. Its actual benefits of promoting South Africa as a tourism destination or an economic investment opportunity remain nebulous. If one thing is clear, it's the sad fact that the economic bonanza that South Africans have been dreaming of just isn't there.
  

Current Mood: working

11:32 am - OMG - it's huge!

Well then. God Steve Jobs has unveiled Apple's latest brainchild. It's the iPad, touted as Apple's "most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price".

My first impressions are... well, mixed, really. I'm not sure what to think.

As was to be expected, the iPad's  design is 100% Apple. It has rounded corners. It sports brushed aluminium and a black and chrome trim. It is flat as a mirror. It is shiney. The screen sports brilliant contrasts and vibrant colors. It has only one button. And it looks rather familar: it's a lot like they put an iPhone on a photo copier and enlarged it a few times.

Problem is, they've enlarged it too much, if you ask me. The thing is about as large as the screen of a full-sized laptop computer. That's it, probably: they took an normal, full-size laptop, threw away the keyboard and kept the display, fitted it with a touch screen, put all the electronics inside, and then they let their crack team of industrial designers have a go at it - on a Friday afternoon at ten minutes to five. So what the designers did was, they ran a photo of an iPhone front panel through Photoshop to enlarge it, added a photo of a MacBook Air seen from the side, E-mailed it back to Steve Jobs, and then hit the bar for a round of Friday afternoon drinks.

What we have here, then, is essentially a flatpanel monitor with a build-in computer that you have to hold in your hand all the time, because it doesn't have legs to put in up on your desk. Yes, it does have a touch screen. Yes, it has one of Apple's excellent user interfaces on top of its operating system. Yes, it is loaded with features. It has wireless connectivity (3G or WiFi, but not both). It will do E-mail. It will let you browse the web. It will display photo's and video, it will play music. It will run iPhone apps. In short it does a lot of things that are done very well by hardware and appliances that we already have...

On the practical side things aren't all that great, either. With a screen size of 9.5", a thickness of half an inch and weighing in at roughly 1.5 pounds,  the iPad is NOT a convenient device, or at least I don't think it is. Apple claims that it's "easy to carry and use anywhere". I beg to differ. It won't fit in your pocket, even if it's a large pocket. It is not as easy to hold while you sit and read for a few hours as is, say, a paperback. It will not survive a drop without damage. It scratches easily and collects dirt easily. And with the 9.5" screen's bright backlighting, I find the promised battery operating time of 10 hours a bit optimistic. Maybe when it's brand-new and you use it with its settings at their most aggressive powersaving-maximum, you may get about 10 hours, but six months down the line and during real use, you'll be lucky to get half that much - if that.

Also, a touch screen is not the best interface for typing your E-mail on. It would be a lot more practical if it had a kind of hinged bottom lid with a keyboard that you could... ehm... Oh, wait...

Tablet computers have been around for over a decade and a half that I can remember, and they have always fallen well short of the mark. And for one good reason: they are not practical. They do not stand up to real world use; they do not do anything that cannot be done by another, cheaper, more robust and more dedicated device, and they are (or were, until now) underpowered. Apple's marketeers now claim to have something revolutionary. Oh really?

Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that the Apple whiz kids have come up with a turkey. For starters, the iPad is very much Apple: it looks beautiful, and it will have a cult of followers who will love it so much that they will gladly live with its shortcomngs. Also, I believe that this is one of the directions that computing may be headed into. I honestly believe that the days of mice and keyboards are numbered, or at least for mainstream application. Speech recognition, gesture control, touch interfaces, and other means of man/machine communication that are tailored to fit humans rather than machines are absolutely going to take over. It's only a matter of time. How much time, well, that remains to be seen, but it will happen, trust me. And if there is one company currently on the market that can lead this evolution, it will be Apple.

Meanwhile, here's my advice to Apple. Take the iPod and make it about 50% smaller and much, much lighter. Take the display off and throw it away. Then buy the E Ink Corporation, or at least buy their technology, and fit the iPad with their electronic paper. Loose the backlighting (electronic paper technology means a reflective and not a transmissive screen) and replace it with a low-intensity lighting option that can be switched on when desired if the device is used in the dark. Replace the brushed aluminium with something more Kriegsfähig, such as silicone based plastics or a rubber-like material - as long as it's bouncy and flexible. Fit the screen with a detachable overlay that can be thrown away when scratched and replaced for a few cents. Test to destruction, and keep on beefing it up until you can throw it at the wall and sit on it without breaking it. Contour the sides and back to accommodate the user's hands in both one and two handed operation. Fit a camera and microphone. Fit IR and RF transceivers for remote control so you can use it to control domotics and home automation systems. Oh, and invest big-time in speech recognition and voice based user interfaces.

Really - didn't any of you guys ever watch  Star Trek?

Update: Engadget's first looks are mixed, too: stunning screen, stunning looks. But it's heavy, has no camera (haven't Apple's whiz kids heard of Skype yet?) and no multitasking (!) because it runs iPhone OS 3.2 - so what we have here, then, is much like an inflated iPhone that cannot make phone calls. And it appears to have no Flash support (yet?) which would mean that YouTube and the iPad will never be friends. (I find that last one hard to believe, though.)

Update 2: There is indeed no Flash support! This does not necessarily exclude YouTube usage, though, as there appear to be ways to view YouTube without Flash. However the lack of Flash is going to exclude a lot of other services and seriously cripple the user's web experience. Unbelievable.

Something that is also strangely lacking is a USB port and a card reader. Yes - no option to insert a memory stick or other USB device. While the iPad can view photo's and in fact resembles a digital photo frame, you cannot take the memory card from your camera and insert it in an iPod! What the heck were they thinking of???

In sort, the iPad is indeed what Apple announced it to be: a device between a smart phone and a laptop. However, in order for such a device to have raison d'etre, it should perform the tasks of both. So far the iPod seems to perform the tasks of neither. It doesn't "fill the gap" between the two, as Apple claims it does. Instead it sits somewhere in the middle of the gap, marooned.

No... I have yet to be convinced, I'm afraid.

Current Mood: geeky

07:56 pm - The road less traveled

The roads in and around Johannesburg are in an apalling condition. Cracks, bumps and floodings are common. Lines and other road markings are worn away and are either barely visiible or have completely disappeared. Potholes and holes so large they cannot properly be called potholes anymore are everywhere. Tyre fitment centers can barelhy keep up with the damace caused by these potholes (as I can confirm: I'm on a waiting list to have my wheel and front end fixed after my car came out second best with a pothole) and according to wheel and tyre centre operators at least 60% of the damage they repair these days has been caused by potholes.

On our trip to KwaZulu Natal several weeks ago we discovered that the roads there are, if possible, even worse. Roads there can be so full of potholes that they're more like dirt roads strewn with chunks of asphalt here and there. Not surprising, then, that some potholes there are left unattended for years until they are large enough to overturn cars. According to road and transport officials there is not enough money to fix all these problems quickly - or at all.

Fortunately it's not all that bad. The road that goes past Transport Minister Sbu Ndebele's country residence, for example, is immaculate. Unfortunately it took 5.36 million Rand to upgrade it to a point where the minister's 7-series BMW is no longer at any risk of pothole damage, so it's quite understandable that there's no money left to fix the other potholes in the rest of the country (which take on average 500 Rand each to fix).

The minister's road is likely to remain pristine for quite some time. According to a resident close to the road, it doesn't see more traffic than about 20 cars a day.

Which is good, because there are more and more motorists who are fed up with the state of the roads and file suit against the Department of Transport for damages suffered. In response to this, Road Department head Chris Hlabisa stated that "people must stop ripping off the government by suing the Transport Department for injuries and damage caused by potholes, and instead should be grateful that they have roads on which to travel". I shit you not - that's what he said.

I think my next car will be a caterpillar tractor...

Current Mood: good

04:23 pm - A refreshing bit of sensibility

It's the second decade of the 21st century. Music and video publishers are still insisting that we all should buy products in boxes out of factories run exclusively by music and video publishers, and the likes of RIAA are still trying to put the genie of digital media back into its bottle (in a manner not unlike trying to put smoke back into the cigarette)

Fortunately others have a better grasp of progress.

Last  week, Brian Eno (he of Roxy Music fame, not to mention his involvement with David Bowie, The Talking Heads and U2) likened traditional recorded media to whale blubber:

"The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along."

"The minute [Jim Baen] made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And - hey, whaddaya know? - over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper! And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.

Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode and checking out Mother of Demons, they either had or intended to buy the book. In one or two cases, this was a "gesture of solidarity. "But in most instances, it was because people preferred to read something they liked in a print version and weren't worried about the small cost — once they saw, through sampling it online, that it was a novel they enjoyed."

Current Mood: happy