Month: August 2009

Mark Shuttleworth nominated to the new SABC Board

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

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: , , ,

Day too late for me: Burglaries

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

In today’s Cape Argus and on IOL:

Durbanville and Bellville police are warning
residents to be on high alert and to ensure that they set their house alarms at night – even when they’re inside the house.

Police say a number of burglary gangs are targeting houses in those areas.

New research has shown that during the past year, house robberies increased by 13,5 percent and a staggering 97 percent of all robbers are armed.

This is the latest in crime intelligence research done by Dr Rudolph Zinn, senior lecturer in the School of Criminal Justice at Unisa, in an intensive study on house robberies and robbers.

Zinn, a professor in the department of forensic and crime investigation, said almost 15 000 residential robberies were committed last year.

Read about my experience yesterday here.

Technorati Tags: , ,

What is this world coming too .. as mad as hell – break in while sleeping.

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

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: , ,

Bye Bye Nokia N97 — I want this ..

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

This my friends is a Nokia RX-51 or otherwise known as a Nokia N900.  This is what the N97 should have been.

Firstly it does not run Symbian or S60 but Linux … no not Andriod but Maemo.  I quote from Mobile-review.com

Nokia decided to put aside its favorite S60 platform and switch to Maemo, which is all another way of saying that they ditched S60 for Linux OS.

From this thorough review on Mobile-review.com, I like the look of the interface …

Notable features are 32GB of storage, 5PM Carl Zeiss camera with dual LED flash and a ARM Cortex-A8 CPU.

Head over to Mobile-review.com where you will see a ton of picture of the device and what the specs are. 

Technorati Tags: , , ,

District 9 — is the hype warranted?

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

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: , ,