Charl van Niekerk » Blog: May 2006

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Google Hosted

I am very happy to announce that, this morning, I became a beta tester for Google Hosted.

I am testing this out currently on my domain, charlvn.za.net. If you would like to say hi, feel free to contact me (or spam me) at charlvn@charlvn.za.net.

Yes, there is only one thing better than Gmail: having Gmail on your very own domain. :P

We are planning on holding another open source meeting in George, South Africa. Anyway, if you find yourself in the area and would like to attend, please see the blog post and the wiki page for more info. It's also been added to the GROSSUG Calendar (using hCalendar, naturally).

Memory Sticks on Windows

When I plug my memory stick into a box running Windows, it can take anything from a minute to a couple of minutes (on a slow box) for it to mount. However, when I plug it into a box running Linux, it mounts almost immediately.

Can anyone explain this? Is it just my memory stick, or do others have a similar problem?

Update: The problem indeed seems to be the first time a particular stick gets used on a particular machine. The next time the mount goes much faster. I just use a lot of different machines, I guess. It seems like Windows tries to "install" the memory stick in some way that causes the inefficiency. Use Linux. :)

Photoblog

I have so many photos lying around on my system that I decided to start a photoblog to post them on. Template is just one of Blogger's defaults for now (first thing on my list to improve). But I've got many projects going at the moment that demand higher priority so this will be at the very bottom of my list for now.

Watch or Die

Once the Red Power Alert (as shown) is reached there is an imminent risk of a power failure in the Cape.

Residential consumers are requested to switch off all appliances – including heaters and the stove - except their TV and the lights of the room they are in.

- How does Power Alert work?

Don't cook food or water; you don't really need to eat or drink anything, do you? Don't listen to the radio; that's only for noobs. Who needs to be warm? Hypothermia is not so bad. Don't sleep when you feel like it; again an unnecessary luxury. Just watch TV. Your life will depend on it.

Inspired by twobombs.

Potmail does it again!

Oh my goodness, this is hilarious. Microsoft is in the spirit of giving (unusual, sure) so they decided to give South African Hotmail users 25 MB (yes, you read correctly, 25 big ones) of storage space! Unbelievable!

Microsoft has been in the news a lot lately, and it isn't looking good. It is going up to the level that I am suspecting they are trying to close themselves down.

Seriously, how do they think they are going to compete with Gmail's 2,7 GB (and in addition increase the already prevalent anti-American sediment in South Africa by discriminating against South African users like this)? As Obelix would have said, "these Americans are crazy!"

Anyway, take a look at the following (if you feel like really wasting your time today):

Power Alert

The latest in the South African electricity saga: Power Alert.

The purpose of Power Alert is to inform residential households and the general public on the status of the Cape Region and National electricity demand. Power Alert informs the general public of the risk of power interruptions and ask residential households to switch certain appliances off to avoid power interruptions.

- Power Alert: What is Power Alert?

Where can I find Power Alerts?

Power Alerts are generated and broadcasted on SABC 1, SABC 2 and SABC 3 at 30-minute intervals between 18h00 and 21h00 on weekdays.

Power Alerts are also available for 24 hours of each day on this website (www.poweralert.co.za).

- Power Alert: How does Power Alert work?

Red light! Turn your applications off! Green light! Continue to waste power again! Ah, that's the life. :)

SSH Socks Proxy

I don't know how many people know this, but you can use SSH as a VPN.

For example, let's say I've got an account on example.com. I can do the following from the unix command line:

ssh -D 8080 charlvn@example.com

Now I open up a normal SSH session to example.com, authenticate with the server using my account charlvn and password as usual, etc. However, there is now a SOCKS proxy running on my localhost on port 8080. Yes, you can change this to any available port.

If you're on Windows, you can also set up Putty to do this.

For more info, see:

Free SMS Gateways

Vodacom runs Vodacom4Me which allows customers to send up to 20 free SMSs every day. Cell C allows 5 free SMSs. MTN also apparently has a similar service.

Services like Clickatell and their South African partner VodaZone (run by Vodacom, obviously) provides various interfaces to make it fairly simple to write applications to make use of them. They have some funny HTTP Post and custom XML interfaces, but no XML/RPC or SOAP it seems.

Vodacom4Me wants you to access it via the web interface. It provides no other obvious interfaces. However, the people from defza (boy do I love that site) are cracking it. There is already a WAP interface for Vodacom4Me and Cell C; now we're just waiting for MTN.

And yes, on request you can also lay your hands on some code. :)

TYFYC

Here is a handy new acronym I can see catching on: TYFYC

(Being a markup expert, this has been done properly using both the abbr and dfn elements.)

This is exactly the kind of acronym that arises thanks to the Age of Blogging. And, for the first time in my life, I'll use a Technorati tag. Yes, it will be tyfyc.

Webcam

Recently I found an old Dexxa webcam of mine in the cupboard. I thought I would breathe some new life back into the thing.

Last time I used it on Windows 2000. This time I used it on Ubuntu Breezy.

Firstly, I needed to get the software. I settled with the qc-usb drivers and with the Camorama (GUI) application. There are also many command-line utilities you can use if you like.

Since I was on Ubuntu (lucky me) I just installed these via apt:

sudo apt-get install qc-usb-source qc-usb-util camorama

Camorama is actually quite nice. It's a little Gnome application that allows you to view in real-time what your webcam is seeing and also allows you to set up that traditional webcam favourite (which moved out of fashion, thank goodness) to automatically upload pictures via FTP to some server every couple of minutes (depending on your settings).

On Windows, I used to have to install crappy software separately from a CD. Every day I'm getting more thankful I moved to Linux. In Linux, things just work. And apparently the upcoming version of Ubuntu is going to have out-of-the-box support for webcams so you don't even have to use apt anymore.

Talking Yourself to Death

They were supposed to broadcast this last week but replaced it with that interview with Zuma. Let's hope it broadcasts this week.

Do Cell Masts Fry Your Brain? That is the question they will be asking on Special Assignment this week. The episode should broadcasting on SABC 3 on 21:30 SAST (UTC +02:00) on Tuesday 2006-05-16.

Zuma

There can't be many South Africans (other than extremely rural ones) that don't follow the Zuma saga day by day.

I watched the interview on Special Assignment this past Tuesday and don't really know what to think. Zuma, just like about any other politician in the world, uses many words but doesn't say much.

At one point in time during the interview, he was asked about the statements he made in court regarding his Zulu culture (that it's wrong to leave a woman that shows sexual interest in a man unsatisfied, etc) to which he replied that he only needed to say that in court. I believe that one should stick to your statements and explain later where necessary.

Otherwise I'm pretty-much indifferent towards the man (unlike most other South Africans). Computers are more interesting.

The public has been too quick to judge him anyway. "He did it! He raped that poor woman!" How do you know for sure? Let the courts decide it, I say. I agree with the court's decision anyway. But why doesn't he have an antitrust case launched against him? He admitted to cheating on his wife after all. Then again, the pending corruption case is more important right now.

Anyway, I am sick of all this political shit so I'll just go back to coding now... In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the myriad of jokes online. :)

del.icio.us tags

I am getting a little fed up with del.icio.us. A list of all my tags are being displayed on my public bookmarks page and frankly it is getting quite large and slow to load. Also, when I add a new bookmark, all my tags are pre-loaded on the page that captures the bookmark details to make the tag autocomplete work.

This sucks. If you're going to be using JavaScript anyway, use XmlHttpRequest.

Pwning Noobs in South Africa

Aryan showed me this picture from the Pure Pwnage Fan Pics gallery this morning. It made my day! I am very glad to see there are more fans of Pure Pwnage in South Africa.

It's a real pity they don't give you more metadata about the photo on the pic. If you are the man in the photo and you're reading this, please mail me! You really pwn, man!

Security Guards or Barbarians?

In South Africa, security guards have been striking for more than a month now. The strikes are still said to be far from over and it's really getting out of hand.

The frightening story of what happened thus far:

Mayhem broke out in the Johannesburg CBD on Friday when a vigil by striking security guards turned violent, a Sapa reporter on the scene said.

- Guards go on rampage in Jhb

Striking security guards have damaged commuter trains and blocked railway lines in the Western Cape, causing train services to be suspended, Metrorail said on Thursday.

- Striking guards stop trains

The strike by security guards was "getting out of hand", Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said on Wednesday.

- Strike 'getting out of hand'

A man was serious injured when he was assaulted by a group of striking security guards in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

- Strikers attack guard

Membathisi Mdladlana, the labour minister, has strongly condemned the ongoing violence by striking security guards. In the latest incident, about 500 striking security guards were arrested in Durban today after they had ransacked the department of labour offices in Durban.

- Mdladlana condemns violence in guards strike

Oh my goodness! To think these guys are the ones that are supposed to be protecting us! Now we have to protect ourselves against them!

Google Summer of Code

Attention all students! Applications are now being accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2006! Remember to submit your application in time!

CSS Reboot 1 May 2006

Time is up! The 1st of May 2006 CSS Beetroot, I mean Reboot, has now come to an end. Sadly I could not make it, but congrats to all those who did. (Sorry for that extremely old and boring joke; I just thought I would shock you all today.)

Apparently they are having some real problems with Dreamhost. That is quite a pity; until now I have been under the impression that they are quite good.

But yeah, there is nothing like having your own collocated server. Until the collocation centre itself burns down or floods (yes, I can actually recall that this happened to mozdev a while ago...)

Age of Darkness

Achtung all South Africans affected by Escum screwing around with our power! Don't forget to watch "Power Crash" on Special Assignment tomorrow evening, Tuesday 2006-05-02 21:30 SAST (UTC +02:00).

Workers' Day

Gather, comrades! Our day is yet again upon us. No longer shall we allow the evils of prosperity and freedom to plague our society. We shall take control and make sure nobody sees the light of a bright future again!

Why should only some people be allowed to enjoy the goodness of life while others cannot? Rather make everybody suffer so that they can all suffer together! And in the process, make the poor even poorer so that nobody will challenge the government's supreme power to take away all freedoms, live in riches and do whatever they like!

Yes, we also have Workers' Day in South Africa. So much for being a capitalist country...