Month: January 2008

What did you learn in the last 10 years…

Watching a documentary on education this morning it struck me that I’ve been out of school for 10 years; I matriculated in ’98. Considering that I spent 10 years in “big school” I began to ask myself an interesting question.

Have I learnt more or less in the past 10 years since leaving school than in the 10 years I spent in school.

I guess the answer depends on what your definition of knowledge is. I’m trying to think of things I learnt in school. It’s a pathetic list. Jan Van Riebek in 1652, Dutch British Settlers 1820. Tightly packed molecules make a solid. Obviously there’s more, but it’s all anecdotal, incomplete or just plain incorrect.

I think the most important thing I’ve learnt since I left school is the joy of learning… That inate part of every human being’s soul that yearns for knowledge… that sponge that your school spent 10 years abusing with limited facts, half truths and parrot fashion learning.

I think I spent the better part of 3 years after I left school learning how awesome learning is again. Getting back that feeling of awesomeness that you had when you learnt a new word at 7 years old. The feeling of completeness that you got when you finished your first “big book”.

Perhaps I learnt everything I needed to know in those first 2 years… A to Z and how they make words. Everything else was so badly taught that I’ve spent the following ten years patching all the holes and erasing all the untruths.

I know one thing for sure: I’m going to teach my kids the stuff they’ll never learn in school, starting with the joy of learning. That, and they’ll have a huge map of the world stuck up on their bedroom wall from the day they are born until the day they leave my house. This planet is a incomprehensibly huge place and the biggest mistake you can make in life is to get too caught up in the insular little envelope that is your school and the 100 or so people who have an influence in your life.

j.

Douglas Adams talking about The Internet 9 years ago…

Reading this reminds me how flipping awesome Douglas Adams was and how incredibly tragic it is that he’s not here with us any more, guiding us like a storytelling shaman, through this crazy mixed up world we call home.

This piece first appeared in the News Review section of The Sunday Times on August 29th 1999.

A couple of years or so ago I was a guest on Start The Week, and I was authoritatively informed by a very distinguished journalist that the whole Internet thing was just a silly fad like ham radio in the fifties, and that if I thought any different I was really a bit naïve. It is a very British trait – natural, perhaps, for a country which has lost an empire and found Mr Blobby – to be so suspicious of change.

But the change is real. I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day.

Then there’s the peculiar way in which certain BBC presenters and journalists (yes, Humphrys Snr., I’m looking at you) pronounce internet addresses. It goes ‘www DOT … bbc DOT… co DOT… uk SLASH… today SLASH…’ etc., and carries the implication that they have no idea what any of this new-fangled stuff is about, but that you lot out there will probably know what it means.

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

Read the rest of this article here

2 weeks of search terms

I finally did something that I really should have done a long long time ago. I installed Google Analytics on my personal blog. This is just short of 2 weeks worth of data.

A few things that suprised me.

  1. I didn’t expect to be getting this much search engine traffic
  2. I am suprised how many people search for things Computer Mania, Computicket and Nonna Lina and end up reading my blog. If you take Computer Mania as an example, every day almost 2 people search for “Computer Mania”, no doubt looking for a phone number etc, and end up reading my rant about their crappy service.
  3. I come up for some pretty weird search terms like “what to do when your computer takes a crap“. My answer to that is simple. Install an operating system that doesn’t poo on itself. My suggestion is Linux.
  4. I get some “interesting” traffic ending up at my penis enlargement email spam collection. Most of it has to do with either fetishes or worried men looking for answers to the “does size matter” question. Perhaps I’ll update that page with the search terms… I’ll keep this post clean.
  5. Did Alan Levin break his ankle?

The Results:

Computer Mania Related 26
Computicket Related 18
Alix Linux Related 10
Penis Size Related: 8
Ubuntu Gutsy Related 7
nonna lina 6
arbitrary user 5
cna.co.za related: 4
civil twilight human 2
krugmans grill 2
two faced bitch 2
aslam khan 1
neil garb 1
never had a bad day 1
pascal dornier 1
skye aspden 1
adsl provider for george frogfoot 1
alan levin breaks ankle 1
alcohol promotion girls 1
amphibian 1
animated picture of a boerewors roll 1
arbitrary 1
arbitrary meaning 1
average restaurant mark up 1
bad come in threes 1
bad luck 1
buy computer 1
buying a laptop computer 1
chilli chocolate steak 1
codecaine.co.za 1
cold calling free wine give me home address 1
computer resell 1
disturbing the peace 1
first aid mr muscle 1
food guru 1
funny picture of bush running in special olympics 1
futureshop reginal manager + complaints 1
ideas of setting up a new restaurant 1
mame arcade cabinet +south africa 1
mattress for exercise condense density 1
new ideas to do a restaurant 1
ok,please give me ideas to make money 1
pascal dornier 1
pictures inside the womb 1
pictures of physically retarded children 1
redhill simonstown 1
restaurant it system domain class ideas 1
restaurant review 1
restaurant review jobs 1
restaurant reviews 1
sharpeville massacre 1
shit 1
shit can this computer 1
shit to do on computer 1
user reviews 1
vodashop hout bay close times 1
vpxl 1
what is computing so shit 1
what to do when your computer takes a crap 1
where does luck come from 1
restaurant review costs 0

Civil Twilight releases Human as a free download (or you can pay)

human.jpgMany many years ago I used to organise gigs for a few kids from Hout Bay… (Ok, I was a kid at the time too, but it makes this story sound more awesome)

Anyway, a few years ago they went to Los Angeles and recorded an album. The album (which is awesome) has been out for a while now but they’ve finally decided to do the right thing and release it as a free download or a $5 download or a $10 CD. You can download it for free or buy it here.

This shouldn’t surprise you unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months. Radiohead launched their new album as a potentially free download a few months ago (Well, you could pay whatever you felt was fair)… critics said nobody would buy something they could get for free and the eventual sales numbers would reflect it. Well, the sales numbers reflected it… just not the way the critics had expected. Number 1 in the US and the UK.

Tom Yorke even said they’d made more money from the digital (paid for) downloads of In Rainbows than all their other digital downloads to date. To understand what that means you need to know how many albums Radiohead has and how many million songs they’ve probably sold on places like iTunes… The difference is that unlike previous albums where the proceeds were divided up between Apple (iTunes), various record labels, publishers and distributors, oh, and that band called Radiohead — this time it was all theirs.

The bottom line here is really the question:

What’s worth more: Having a million people listening to your music or money in the bank?

Luckily if you’re Radiohead you already have both… Let’s see if Civil Twilight can do a bit of both.

Oh, they have an awesome video here

The positive power of a brand and a strong community

About 5 days ago we officially announced the upcoming GeekDinner… We’d left things a bit last minute because of everyone getting back to work late in Jan etc.

Anyways, cut to the chase, its been 5 days and we already have our quota of 70+ people on the wiki. As usual we had our original stalwarts; the addicts who added themselves 2 months ago when the new dinner’s page was created (before we had a date or venue), but we’ve picked up about 40 people in 4 days. (Not counting the maybes)

Capetonians are crap at arriving at things they say they’ll go to so we have quite a high last minute drop out rate; sometimes as high as 20% against the number on the wiki. It’s fine because that allows us to go over the venues allotted 70 seats. We’re currently on 72 “confirmed” with 13 “maybes”. I think we can safely let the “confirmed” number get to about 90 before we create a “waiting list”. ie. If you haven’t already done so, go sign up now.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that we have a brand and a community that’s growing and making it easier and easier for us to put these things together. We’re always looking for people to lurk/participate on the planning mailing list, so if you feel like lurking, and perhaps maybe helping with some stuff, join the list.

Long weekend

Mo FireEggs Haust Ed… Long weekend. Totally Awesome though.

  • Drinks with Tania and Co
  • Sushi (and Beer) with Jonathan H. and Graham.
  • Drinks with Kira, TRACY PAYNE, Helene and Ex G2Aers.
  • Free beer, food and fire dancing at a winefarm in Franshoek.
  • Breakfast at Arnolds.
  • Canal Walk for too many hours.
  • Braai at Lourens’.
  • Interspersed with lots of Flight Of the Concorde “Rhymenocerous”

Totally Ossum.

Check out the pics. 

Frugal Fennel

GeekDinner Time.

Ok, so if you’ve never been to a GeekDinner, why not make 2008 the year when you start going. It’s hugely fun and can possibly maybe be a little bit educational… Did I mention that at the last GeekDinner we discussed what to do if the Queen of England happens to start flirting with you on Facebook?

31 January 2008, Sloppy Sams, 51a Somerset Road, Greenpoint. 19:00ish

It’s open to everyone, all ages, all genders and all levels of technical innefficiency.

As usual, sign up on the wiki.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Below is the opening chapter from the Cathedral and the Bazaar, an excellent book written by Eric S. Raymond in 1996. It attempts to explain how it is that thousands of people from all over the world can work on something as incredibly complex as an operating system kernel and end up with an excellent result. I read it many years ago and ran across it again today. Rereading the opening chapter encouraged me to read the entire book again. Note to those non-technical people reading this: CatB is not a technical book and is an incredibly interesting read for anyone interested in human psychology.

Linux is subversive. Who would have thought even five years ago (1991) that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?
Continue reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” →