Famous last words of Marius

This picture, table say it all …

Courtesy – Off the Hoox

Technorati Tags: rugby, springboks, world cup, tri-nations

As mentioned in a previous post, a Pigeon raced against Telkom today to transfer 4GB of data over a distance of about 70km.

To no-one’s (well maybe the management of Telkom ) surprise, Winston, the pigeon won by a lot of bandwidth to spare.  It took Winston only 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds to transfer the data from Howick to Hillcrest.

Congrats to Winston, hope he got a nice bowl of yummy seeds to munch on.  The question now remains – will carrying data between Howick and Hillcrest become Winston’s full-time job. 

 Technorati Tags: winston, pigeon, bandwidth, race, telkom

I found this via Watkykjy and it is classic.  I am quoting the whole letter verbatim:

Hi Guys/Gals

We are having a bit of fun at the expense of our favourite telecoms provider Helkom. Let me explain. We have satellite call centres which are connected via business ADSL’s to our main data centre. As usual these connections where very unstable and extremely slow. This caused a huge amount of frustration for us as we need to move voice logs(100’s of megabytes) a day up to our main databases for QA and legal purposes. Our company runs on sales and without voice logs we have no binding contract between us and the customer. So they are pretty essential.

Anyway I read a Aprils fools white paper about Avian carrier networks a couple of years ago. Basically it is a protocol that uses racing pigeons as a network layer. This got me thinking about how fast we can transfer the data by racing pigeon. I discussed this idea with my CIO one night having a couple of drinks. When we did the math we found out that we can transfer the data faster by pigeon for certain sites. So we made a project of it. Next week Wednesday is Pigeon VS ADSL day here at the unlimited world. We have the media involved so check the Sunday times for a article on this event.

Basically we will be flying a pigeon with a 4GB micro SD card from Howick to our central site in Hillcrest. We did a dry run yesterday. Here is the stats: Pigeon took 48 minutes to deliver the data. ADSL is still downloading. Telkom got hold of this via the media and is currently in a flat spin. We got a call from Telkom asking us for our circuit numbers so they can make sure we have good service.

Here is the best part. We spend +/- R 45000 a month just on rental for these lines. If we moved to the Avian Carrier Network we will be saving a whopping R 35 000 a month.

Check out the facebook group, do a search for Winston the pigeon on facebook. Also watch the local press for some tongue in cheek articles about our great Helkom.

Regards
Neil

PS: The Original White Paper is located here: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html

Also check this link for more info: http://pigeonrace2009.co.za

Technorati Tags: telkom, adsl, pigeon

I just read that Mark has been nominated to the SABC board.  Although I think that the SABC needs somebody like Mark on their board and that he would do a stirling job, I doubt whether Mark would accept a nomination like this with all the things he is involved in.  Being on the SABC board is probably almost a full time job these days with the mess that the SABC is in and I cannot see Mark leaving some of his duties at Canonical and Ubuntu to join the SABC board.

I might be totally wrong here and who knows, maybe Mark has allready agreed to this.  Would love to hear his comments about it.

Other notable names is Max du Preez, Mimi Coertze, Cliff Saunders and World Cup CEO Danny Jordaan.

Technorati Tags: mark shuttleworth, ubuntu, canonical, sabc

I should probably not be writing this at this moment because of the way I feel.  I am as mad as hell.

While we, my daughter and myself, were sleeping, somebody (probably more than one person) came into my house and took some of my stuff.  I know it is just stuff and everybody tells me that we should be glad we did not wake up.  But still, having one’s privacy invaded like this is not nice at all .. in fact it sucks big time.

How they got into the house, we not exactly sure.  All doors were locked and only one window in the kitchen was open.  They got away with my cellphone, 2 old laptops, my new laptop bag with couple of things in the bag and the most valuable thing was probably my new Canon camera.  In the laptop bag was my passport, and you all know what a slept it will be do get that replaced.
Also there was 2 credit cards in the bag that I hardly use but still had to get it cancelled and a couple of loyalty cards.

Except for the camera, that was in the kitchen, everything else was in my study.  They took the money out of my wallet but luckily left all my bank cards alone.

It is things like this, where they do not even care anymore whether somebody is in the house or not, that will make me pack my bags and leave this country.  Yes, there is crime in other parts of the world, but I am sure that it is not as bad as this and as blatant as what is happening here.

Technorati Tags: crime, steal, breakin

District 9 opened this weekend in the States and it is of interest to South Africa .. if I have read correctly it takes place on our shores. From what I have read, it was a real low budget movie in terms of what movies cost.  It costed around $30million to make and took around $36million during the first weekend … not bad going.

I quote from Slashdot:

“Slashdot covered “District 9″ back in July. I was originally excited to see this movie for its exhibition of exoskeleton robot “mechs” (see images and video at Hizook.com ). After watching the film this opening weekend, I can honestly say that it was an amazing science fiction movie! Everything was spot-on: the plot, the human elements, the alien elements, the technology, and the seamless blend of special effects with real camera capture. This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame). This is certainly a must-see movie — easily the best movie of the year.”

That is saying a lot and if it true then it is sure one movie not to be missed.  Cannot wait for the 28th to go and watch it.

Technorati Tags: district 9, south africa, sci-fi

National Geographic put together a list of what they reckon is drives one should take. Quoting from them:

 Sometimes it’s the journey, sometimes it’s the destination—and sometimes, it’s both. National Geographic Traveler has scoured the globe for the world’s most beautiful, interesting, and off-beat road trips. Dive in to get drive directions, quizzes, photos, and more.

They included drives in Italy, Canada, Hawai, America and much more.  However I could not find any from South Africa.  Here I immediately think of paces like the Sani Pass.  Are there any that you think should be on this list?

Technorati Tags: drives, south africa, travel

I got the mark to prove

Went voting at Kido Kids in Van Riebeeckshof at around 9:15 and was done in about 20 minutes.  Everything went as smooth as clock work, even for voters from other districts and provinces (they could only vote national). The only party I saw at the station I voted at was the DA as shown in this picture.

For those that has not voted yet, use your constitutional right and go and vote.  Remember by not voting you also loose the right to criticise and/or comment about anything South African. 

More photos here:  My Photo Gallery

Technorati Tags: vote, elections, south africa, democracy

It is National Cleavage Day today in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. And you ladies can really show of those beautiful boobies at Showus.co.za for all the guys to drool over.

Another great South African tradition.

Technorati Tags: cleavage, breast, cancer

This is the mist and clouds that came rolling over the hill this morning.  Are this the end of Cape Summer and start of Winter.

These photos were taken with my new Canon PowerShot SX10 IS with no editing at all. All that I did was to re-size the images.

Technorati Tags: winter, canon, sx10, powershot