Handball

I have been intrigued by team handball ever since I watched it on TV (I think it was during the All Africa Games held in Johannesburg).

More information, and the Wikipedia article.

eBucks password

I have a valid eBucks pin. However the eBucks website requires a password. I've been battling to figure out how to get from my pin to my password. I'm probably missing something obvious, but this is driving me crazy. If anyone knows, please email me, and I'll post the solution here.

Daily Links - 27/08/2004

• Jaw bone grown on man's back
• The evolution of Olympic throwing techniques
• Olympic stadium architecture
• Should South Africa follow Australia's example in restricting the sale of property to foreigners?
• Innocent American man freed after 40 years in prison
[via LRC blog]

Daily Links - 26/08/2004

• Some individuals are apparently outsourcing their jobs [via Mises Economics Blog]
• Sentech vs Telkom
• Innovation Hub takes shape
• RSS starts attracting investors
• Wave energy makes waves
• Install Perl, DBI and Perl MySQL driver on Windows
• Getting Windows to recognize a CD-RW drive that has been misidentified as a CD-ROM drive
  

Daily Links - 25/08/2004

• Choose your poison: Vitamin D deficiency or skin cancer. See also this for a discussion on the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and skin colouration
• Some links that I need to store:
• Wiki Engines
• Websphere and Wikis
• SnipSnap
• JSP Tutorial
• A new wireless internet provider

Pressure question answered

Colin at the corner office, has answered my question about the effects of altitude and air pressure on the transporting of goods:

To answer GP's question: it is a transport issue. My aunt's sister and her hubby did a stint a few years ago as truck drivers in the USA. Transporting packets of potato chips (crisps) from California to elsewhere can be a problem: if trucks take the mountain passes to get inland, the packets explode at high altitude, due to the much lower atmospheric air pressure. If I remember their story correctly, potato chips have to be transported around some of the mountain ranges, so's to keep the chip packets intact.

(more)

Daily Links - 24/08/2004

• Outsourcing game playing
• More comments on dolomite and housing in Gauteng.
  
• When I went to the Kruger National Park, I didn't see a single lion, much less a buffalo kill
• Why Olympic beach volleyball sand doesn't come from a beach
• Reuters has picked up the story of Paul Meintjes, who, after dying seven weeks ago, remains dead
• Are South Africans willing to take risks overseas because they have learned to live with risk at home?

Daily Links - 23/08/2004

• Scalpers find customers in Athens despite low attendance
• South Ossetia - another Caucasus conflict
• Wayne Wides on new development in Buccleuch [pronounced Ber-kloo]
• South Asian nationalisms 57 years after partition

The memory game

Via PZ Myers, a profile of Elizabeth Loftus, a research psychologist who has done much to debunk 'repressed memory syndrome'.

Weekend Links - 21/08/2004

• XP SP2 blues [via Scripting News]
• European reactions to US troop redeployments
• A silly "mercy" rule that tries to protect losing Olympic softball teams from humiliation
• Maine - an American presidential election swing state.
  
• This paper details a paradox in American presidential politics - states that take more money from the federal government than they contribute tend to vote for the Republicans.
• What makes a stock "cheap"?
• "How the Google IPO didn't change Wall Street"

I' m working on a project proposal, so blogging will be light for the next few days.

Rubberneckers

On Wednesday, a petrol tanker crashed into a bridge on the R21 airport road (northbound) near the Olifantsfontein offramp.

I drove past on Friday afternoon, and traffic was slow near the scene of the accident, so that the amateur civil engineers who drove past could inspect the damage to the bridge for themselves. Idiots.

Tshwane and Ekurhuleni

If you are unfamiliar with the names check out the following pages that list the towns that constitute these huge municipalities:

• Tshwane
• Ekurhuleni

Traffic jams [inane ramblings 2]

I noticed that the SAfm traffic report today had information about three big Gauteng municipalities (Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni), Durban and Cape Town.

It got me wondering...are there rush-hour traffic jams in Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, East London and Pietermartizburg?

Daily Link 19/08/2004

South African Inventions [via Way South]

There appears to be some controversy about who actually invented the dolos. See this.

Daily Links - 18/08/2004

• Free stuff from websites making a comeback?
• A brief history of cheese
• Remote dorm room set up services take off in America
• Fairly entertaining examination of some popular diets
• Do welfare states encourage people to learn specialist skills?
• Outsourcing UK medical typing to India

Daily Links - 17/08/2004

• Wired News decides to change Internet to internet
• Why Puerto Rico has its own Olympic team
• A hot sauce addict explains why he adds the stuff to everything he eats. See also part 1.
• Article on high-speed switches
• A file and document management wishlist

Daily Links - 16/08/2004

• A Kentucky Fried Chicken knockoff in New York. I remember a similar case involving McDonald's in South Africa a few years ago. [via Anil Dash]
• Wayne Wides on South Africa's first Olympic gold this year
• Whenever someone brings up the topic of high-rise housing, I think about the housing projects depicted in American TV shows, with crime, drugs and "welfare queens".
• Call-centre outsourcing gathers steam in Europe
• Interesting article on Joburg's Harrison Street

Psychology dropouts

• They think that UML is a programming language.
• They think that "JAVA" is an acronym.
• They think trigonometry is taught as a separate subject at university.

Scary how little employment agencies that "specialize in IT" really know.

Random observations

The Simpsons episode where Homer got a chat show and spoke about inane stuff inspired this post.

1. I have noticed that when I go down to the coast, my half-used shampoo bottle (I use Johnson's Baby Shampoo) is crushed. When I open the lid, it pops back into shape. Presumably, this has something to do with altitude and air pressure differences between the coast and Gauteng. It could also have to do with my poor packing technique, but I doubt it. Do manufacturers have to take this into account when transporting goods? I shall do research and post feedback to this blog.
2. There are few things more annoying than having car hooters or emergency sirens in radio commercials. There was also the Wheatus song, Teenage Dirtbag, that included the sound of a car accident - very distracting when driving. Another annoyance is doorbells on television.

Daily Links - 13/08/2004

• The A-Team finally cleared [via belle waring]
• VoIP - "one of those rare new technologies where the reality was far outstripping the hype."
• MKULTRA - a defunct CIA mind control research program
• Article that proposes the abolition of the American Electoral College
  

Commentary

Commentary.co.za has lots of new content, which I am catching up with now.

Darfur

Col Lounsbury has a detailed analysis of the situation in Darfur.

Daily Links - 10/08/2004

• 1/3 of 2003 UK graduates out of work
• Top 10 software programs [via Anil Dash]
• Morons watch DVDs while driving
• Gauteng's "land shortage". Check this post out for links to more information about the dolomite problem.
• I am pretty sure that Durbanites were thrilled about the public holiday, with all the Gauteng money being spent there.
  
• Good riddance to the Nats
• I'm going to get the whole XP SP2, since it's difficult to download patches when reinstalling Windows
  
• DataDots defeat Australian chop shops
• 60-70 % of online news readers are male
• Lightning as art
• Doom 3 review
• 702 interviewed the police chief in the Pakistani town of Gujarat who denied speaking to the media about an alleged "Al-Qaida plot".

Back

The traffic back from Durban was hectic.

Away

Back next week.

Daily Links - 05/08/2004

• Earning big money as a translator in Japan
• New weapons freeze and microwave enemies
• Why one New York building may have been on an alleged al-qaeda hitlist
• A polling technique examined
• Word of the day: autodidact
• The SA blog world has been speaking about an al-qaeda threat to Gauteng. Check out the corner office for a roundup. Also check out Fodder.
  

Daily Links - 03/08/2004

• POLITICS.ZA now has an RSS feed
• Sniffer dog dies of suspected overdose
• Renewing a driver's licence.
• Niger uranium forgery details emerge. [via mostly AFRICA] See also this analysis by Juan Cole
  
• Q&A on Cape Town informal settlements
• Rhodes University weblogs [via Commentary]
• Should car prices come down? [via the corner office]
• Employee error costs Canadian bank millions [via the corner office]
  

Daily Link - 02/08/2004

• Interview with Bart Simpson's voice

Daily Links - 01/08/2004

• Is Nancy Reagan opposed to Bush's re-election ? [via UnFairWitness]
• DA's American analogue - Democrats or Republicans?
• US Department of Energy analysis of Sudan [via LRC]
• 30 billion Windows crashes a year
• New classified documents implicate U.S. forces in rape and sodomy of Iraqi prisoners [via antiwar.com]
• Secular Iraqi Shiite politicians snub Iran, ally themselves with Sunnis
  

Daily Links - 31/07/2004

• What John Kerry did in Vietnam
  [via antiwar.com]
• Australia's aborigines
• "How the 18-34 male is reinventing advertising"
• Cars running on cooking grease
• Nick at NjaloNjalo appears to be an expert on Cape Town's informal settlements. Richard at way South has some queries.
• Tsvangirai trial update from MOSTLY Africa.
  

Daily Links - 29/07/2004 & 30/07/2004

• The Darfur crisis in the Arab media.
  
• British teenager spoofs emergency-preparedness website, gets into trouble
• Will airships move soldiers in future?
  
• Helping troops to stay awake
• Movie advertising moves online
  
• The Evil Eye in Greece, and the rest of the World
  [via Wikipedia]
• Nanotech hype
• Egypt and Sudan make nice
• Fidel Castro quotes Slate column on Bush
  
• Secret Service agent forces journalists covering the Democratic convention to stand as a mark of respect for god flag
• Robot scientists

Daily Links - 29/07/2004

• A Wikipedia article that explains what the "SAT" is.
  
• Brain scans used to investigate crime [via The Corner Office]
• French book that explains how to be lazy at work lands author in hot water

Sudan

Laurence Caromba has a post about the situation in western Sudan. Interesting stuff, but the "black" versus "Arab" take may be problematic. Check out this article [via MOSTLY Africa], and this post by Col Lounsbury [previously linked to here], on that issue.

The Gadaffi angle is also interesting:

characterising the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality. Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim - just like Darfur's non-Arabs, who hail from the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and a dozen smaller tribes.

Until recently, Darfurians used the term 'Arab' in its ancient sense of 'bedouin'. These Arabic-speaking nomads are distinct from the inheritors of the Arab culture of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent.

'Arabism' in Darfur is a political ideology, recently imported, after Colonel Gadaffi nurtured dreams of an 'Arab belt' across Africa, and recruited Chadian Arabs, Darfurians and west African Tuaregs to spearhead his invasion of Chad in the 1980s. He failed, but the legacy of arms, militia organisation and Arab supremacist ideology lives on.

Daily Links - 27/07/2004

• Tomato Paste
• Coffee science website [via Gene Expression]
• New R5 coin
  
• Content matters - Anil Dash on winning search engine spamming competition
• Is the universe a simulation?
• Baby killer locked away for life
• Americans abandon land lines [via Anil Dash]
• Miners in developing countries rely on primitive technology to detect gases
• I'm hesitant to become an academic because I don't want to end up like this guy. [via Anil Dash]
  

Daily Links - 26/07/2004

• Admiring article on Leon Trotsky [via antiwar.com blog]
• The N1 and N2 as representations of Cape Town
• "How Microsoft Lost the API War"
• Microsoft and weblogs
  
  

Weekend Links - 24/07/2004

• Holocausts of Communism Test - [via LRC]
• Transolar Games, the creators of the classic Quest For Glory adventure games
• Interesting Guardian article on dealing with troublemakers. Part 2.
• An article that defends rote learning.[via Seeker's Digest].
  
  Fortunately, when I was in school, memorization was being phased out. I did, however, have to memorize Afrikaans poems in standard two (which made me loathe the subject, because we'd get beaten by the teacher if we slipped up).

Daily Links - 23/07/2004

• Someone else agrees that pigeons are vermin
  
• Open source news
• The state (no pun intended) of American federalism.
• The diamond cartel isn't for ever [via Anil Dash]
• Why Microsoft is unexciting
• Is South Africa arrogant when dealing with the rest of Africa?
• America's "indebted spendthrifts"
• Residential property - a good investment?
  

The Leigh Matthews case

The kidnap and murder of Leigh Matthews is big news around here. Very sad, and I hope the scum who carried out the crime are caught.

The kidnap-murder has received lots of media attention. If Leigh Matthews had been, say, a middle-aged Chinese refugee, instead of a nubile rich white girl, her killing would probably not have received the attention that it has.

• A Google News Search for "De Hua Lin" returns 1 result
• A Google News Search for "leigh-matthews OR leigh-mathews kidnap OR kidnapped OR kidnapping OR murder OR johannesburg" returns 179 results.

An article in the Mail and Guardian online speculates about why this particular case has grabbed the media (and the public's) attention.

Update:Check out The Fishbowl for a post on the ANC's reaction to the crime.

Daily Links - 21/07/2004

• Pretty-looking site about spicy foods around the world [via Anil Dash]
• Unix's Founding Fathers [via Scripting News]
• Instant paperbacks [via LRC]
• Crowds producing art
  
• Microsoft gives part of cash pile to shareholders
• The benefits of a strong Rand
• The infamous Stander gang is in the news again
• Someone decided to draw cartoons based on spam subject lines. Check it out if you are bored. [via Anil Dash]
• "Salary Talk Made Easy"
• This story by an excitable airline passenger has drawn some sharp words. The Pilot comments.
• Warmongers eye Iran, urge support of terrorists in proxy war. See also Fodder on this topic.
  

One more link -
Andrew Black at Southern Cross comments on the dearth of South African public intellectuals.

Daily Links - 20/07/2004

I mistakenly used Internet Explorer to write yesterday's Daily Links post, and it crashed just as I was about to publish. So today's post (written with Mozilla Firefox) will have a few extra items:

• Dutch Tulip Bubble information
  
• What makes a sport, a sport?
• A foreskin restoration expert, who is called Piehl ...hahaha
• Cook Sister on braais
• France outsources to Senegal
• Bracing for XP SP2
• Volunteers who redesign bad websites
• An interesting article on an American organic grocery chain called Whole Foods [via Anil Dash]
• Getting around website registration
• The MMR vaccine scare - do doctors understand how to do science? [via Crooked Timber]
• Apparent IQ and brain structure link [via Sailer]
• Speaking of IQ...I know some ostensibly bright people who have been taken for rides by Work from Home scams, or been duped into paying for rubbish newsletters (OK I only know one, but the point is that suckers do exist). I therefore have no doubt that some will fall for this new variation on the Nigerian 419 scam (assuming that the email is genuine, of course) [via commentary]
• Anil Dash on leaving New York. I can't imagine getting so attached to a place.