Category: Metal (Technical)

At the recent iCommons party (which was partly an after-party for the Digital Freedom Expo), held at the Independent Armchair Theatre (normally a venue for bands and other creatives) Jimmy Wales and Lawrence Lessig proved their rock star status by actually standing up on stage and managing to hold the audience with a talk about… Continue reading Of rock stars and Wikipedia translation

I feel like I’ve run the Comrades Marathon. I recently installed Kubuntu Edgy on a friend’s machine. It’s an identical machine to mine – almost. Mine’s a Toshiba Satellite L10-101, her’s is a Toshiba Pro L10. I’ve already blogged about what I needed to do to get wireless working on my machine. Thankfully Feisty (which… Continue reading Getting wireless working on a Toshiba Satellite Pro L10 in Linux

Day 2 of the DFX wasn’t quite as exciting as the previous day. Attendance was down after the big first day splash (Lawrence Lessig and Jimmy Wales weren’t there), and my exhaustion after a few late nights probably had something to do with it too. Rishab Ayer Ghosh gave a taste of some extensive research… Continue reading Digital Freedom Expo: Day 2

I attended the Digital Freedom Expo, hosted by UWC, which started Thursday. What a fantastic day! Of the speakers, first up was the rector of UWC, Brian O’Connell, introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (by video, released of course under a Creative Commons license). O’Connell framed the conference in terms of a continuation of the struggle… Continue reading Digital Freedom Expo: Day 1

I didn’t actually read any newspapers on Sunday, so perhaps my sample size is a little limited, but my favourite April fools joke, and one that almost got me, was the one about the PostgreSQL plugin for MySQL. It was convincing because Brian “Krow” Aker actually built the skeleton, and it’s a feature that would… Continue reading Favourite April Fools joke – MySQL/PostgreSQL

A lot has already been written about the Cape Town March 2007 Geek Dinner held on Wednesday, so I’m not going to add that much. You can read most of the comments on Planet Geekdinner. My favourite talk was Neil’s on OpenID. Sadly none of the major South Africa sites yet implement it, but let’s… Continue reading March Geek Dinner

Vincent Maher has beaten me to it, blogging about FNB’s new site in a post aptly titled Why FNB’s new banking website sucks. Right now he’s understandably furious having been unable to make urgent payments. Luckily I’m not the Ethical Co-op bookkeeper anymore, so I don’t use it that regularly, but I still use FNB… Continue reading FNB’s great new site

I picked up a YOU magazine to read today. No, it wasn’t Posh: My Lonely Life in LA, nor Glam in India but is groom a fake? that drew me in. Rather, it was Win a R270 000 Toyota Prius – with one SMS. Knowing that many of these SMS competitions make a profit for… Continue reading YOU magazine online, the Prius and the missing winners

Captured this screenshot while surfing on itweb today. Look at the date on my desktop in the bottom right. Then look at the closing date for the Telkom competition ad… Perhaps if we hurry… Technorati tags: telkom itweb

A while ago I got addicted to the Africa Geography Game, a silly addictive Flash game that tests one’s knowledge of African geography. At the back of my mind I’ve been considering writing a proper application that does something similar, but is much more flexible, testing capitals, flags, etc. Luckily anyone interested in the idea… Continue reading KGeography