Category: Tech

Oh and another thing…

3G aint so cool. I’ve been looking at the numbers and basically, if you don’t use up all the MB you paid for in your data bundle, after 31 days they are forfeited… And if you use more than the MB in your data bundle you get molested with stupidly high “out-of-bundle” per MB fees, some (most) as high at R2 per megabyte. (A megabyte should be costing anything from 10 cents to 40 cents)

Why do companies take advantage of their customers like that? It’s just pure greed. It’s like walking into Pick and Pay and buying 100 tins of tuna and instead of them saying “wow, cool, here’s a discount” they say “Oh, 100 tins… you must have money, that’ll be 2000% more per tin, kthx”

Does anyone know what I get charged for 3G use on my vodacom phone? I “enabled data” a few years back and now that my new phone supports 3G I’ve been using that a bit. I never bought a data bundle or anything. I asked in a vodashop and they were amazingly unable to answer the question, but gave me a phone number to call.

I should go to bed, I’m starting to get moody.

j.

Email feature…

How about this for an easy to implement feature that will save hoards of people from looking like fools.

If you are composing an email that has the phrase “I’ve attached” or “Attached you’ll find” or anything that seems to imply that the composer of the email intends to attach something to the email, when they click send check whether there is indeed something attached and if not ask them if they’re sure they want to send.

Is that too MS Paperclip’ish?

Just a thought.

I love my Camera

I own a Canon 20D. When I bought it it was state of the art and cost a small fortune. Now, a couple of years later it has been replaced by a few generations of better cameras; and I must admit that I do have camera envy when I look at the new stuff on the market.

But then I take a picture like this and I’m all happy again. I love you 20D.

Dark Sunset

Shameless link to my flickr stream

I should blog more… GeekDinner 5 – Eccentric Eggplant

GeekDinner 5 - Eccentric EggplantNo really, I should. I have a really good blog post chomping at the proverbial bit… Even Adrian would approve. (probably not, but a man can have hope)

Anyway, it’s GeekDinner time again, and this one, “Eccentric Eggplant” promises to be a good’un for two reasons… Firstly, I might finally be able to get Derek the marketing guru to do his now – way – too – over – hyped – and – yet – not – delivered – on speil – about – the – old – world – vs – new – world – advertising, and secondly, but most certainly not leastly, my friend Jennie will be talking about her experiences in the world of game development. Yes, she’s a real girl, and yes, she’s a real game developer currently working on something to do with Maya and the Wii. (I like how that rhymes with Maya The Bee).

Sign up here http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Cape_Town_November_2007

Later, Aligator!

j.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Release Party

<copy-paste>

Hi All

The “Ubuntu 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon” Cape Town Release Party has been finalised.

The venue has been set as Cantina Tequila in the Waterfront. We’ll be
outside in the sun on the benches (which are undercover and heated in
case the weather gets crap).

Be there at 2pm for 2:30pm this Sunday (21 October).

Cantina Tequila is “under” the big flagpole in the waterfront facing the water.
http://www.cantinatequila.co.za/images/map.gif

If you *still* can’t find it you can give me (Jonathan E) a call on
082 xxx xxxx.

PLEASE RSVP SO WE CAN RESERVE A TABLE!

kthxbai


j. </copy-paste>

ps. Mail me arbitraryuser at gmail dot com to rsvp.

Another schoolyard war story – Telkom: 0, Khayelitsha: 1

I have a friend called Steve who got called something horrible by an older, meaner, guy in school. It was something that had happened time and time again and Steve was reaching the end of his tether.

So one day, milliseconds after being called the horrible name, Steve grabbed Ian, the bad guy, by the neck and shoved him up against the wall and said something like “DON’T EVER CALL ME A FSCKING @#$@! AGAIN!”

When I heard this story I was like “Wow, dude, that’s awesome! What happened?”.

Steve’s reply was priceless “Oh, he totally fscked me up at break time”.

But the message was clear. It didn’t matter how many times he got knocked down… He had stood up for himself and he was going to do it again.

From what I understand, short of a beating at break, Ian never messed with Steve again.

The parallels here are interesting, albeit a bit far fetched, but I love telling that story.

Telkom has been walking around calling everybody names for ages. They rip us off, hurt us, drive us to levels of emotional stress that should really only ever be reserved for ex-girlfriends and they just don’t seem to care. (I broke up with Telkom a while ago and don’t let that bitch into my life anymore)

Well, the industry is starting to stand up in the hallways.

Sure, individuals in the industry are probably going to get beaten up a few times on the field at break, but maybe only once or twice… When a bully realizes that every time they cause a fight they will walk away a little ingured too, that’s when they start thinking twice.

ath.

j.

ps. The adsl line that Joe’s story refers to has actually not been set up yet. Even though they had telkom in the building. I wonder if they just sent some techies there as a delaying tactic in hope that they would call off their toyi toyi.

Arcade Controllers, Coffee with Pascal Dornier and my ALIX.

I just uploaded pictures from some of my recent escapades to flickr. Check my stream out here.

Controller ButtonsOf particular interest to general geeks are the pics of Lourens’ prototype arcade controller that we put together to test the hack-job we did on an old keyboard controller circuit. The wiring is messy as hell but it worked perfectly (once we’d got all the wires soldered in the right place). He’s planning on building a full cabinet soon, and soon we’ll be rocking teenage mutant ninja turtles… just like I did when I was 13! In case you’re wondering, he’s running this on MAME on Ubuntu and with a 1.8Ghz CPU. It runs flawlessly and he thinks he might even be able to get away with a 1Ghz cpu.

PascalNext up is breakfast with Pascal Dornier, the designer of the WRAP board and now more recently the ALIX. For those of you reading this who have no idea what a WRAP board is, it’s one of the best embedded computers on the market and it’s tiny. The ALIX is slightly larger but has everything, including vga and usb. Pascal is based in Switzerland and offered to fly to South Africa and deliver my ALIX personally. He also brought me Swiss Chocolate which was almost as sweet as the ALIX.

Mini AlixI haven’t had a chance to get the Alix up and running yet, but this weekend will be fun!

(ok ok, he didn’t fly here just to deliver my ALIX, there was some synchronicity involved too)

You can find out more about ALIX and her friends here.

ath.