The number of the Madiba

Six Six Six.
The number of the beast.
Across the road from 667.
A number that conjures thoughts of Satan, Evil and Damnation.
When I first saw the 46664 campaign, I thought, thats a bit, weird.
Madibas prison guards must have had a slew of puns around the middle three digits of his prisoner number. But the campaign worked : that number is now synonymous with hope, charity and freedom.
So how did he do it?
Well to figure out how this new number has eschewed the prejudice of the good 'ol 666, I thought, lets remove the offensive bit....
And the answer was clear as daylight -
46664 less 666 is 4...4....
He used the fource!

-Ian

The Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Pun of the Opera is Heeeeerrreeeeee

So now that Odd is back to posting regularly, I've decided that I need to fall back off the wagon too. But today, I don't have a stream of words to amaze and amuse you, but rather a collection of punny pictures I've made over the last little while. Please remember, I'm not saying these are funny, just punny.

 - Ian

Mdrn Spk.

So with the advent of the cell-phone and the sms, a new form of english was born.

Ppl strtd drppng vwls, l8r +ed nmbrs to denote words, and made sms-speak a form of communication unintelligible to many.
Then came the blackberry craze, and with the inclusion of a full qwerty (love typing that) keyboard, it seemed that there might be a return to spelling words properly.
I welcomed it as an opportunity to have capital letters and proper punctuation at my fingertips, taking the slog out of typing proper messages.

But no, it was not to be.
The generation that spawned sms-speak merely moved their missing vowels and punctuationless messages to the new tech.
OMG, I cn type so mch fstr! LOL!!!!

So yesterday Apple launched the new half an iPhone, the 4S, which runs a bit faster and has VOICE RECOGNITION!!!!
Now this will soon become standard across the BB/Andriod/iMarket, and I shudder to think that sms-speak might leap another logical barrier like it did with the qwerty keyboard.
Imagine a room filled with people saying "Lol" into their phones. (Shudder)

Microsoft is upholding the proud American tradition of pillaging and raping the english language.

So I've been an active SharePoint admin for half a year now, and amongst the many things about the product that make me wonder is the capitalisation of SharePoint.
Yes. Capital S, hare Capital P, oint, one word.
MS spellcheck will even bitch at you about bad spelling if you dont capitalise the P.
I put this down as an anomaly until I started investigating PowerPivot today.
And there it is...Capital P, ower Capital P, ivot, one word.

I think that the de-generation of American kids that actually believe that kewl, ossum and skool are real english words have grown up enough to get jobs naming products for Mister Gates.
They dont even have the decency to put a hyphen in.

The Grand Gallery Of Almightily Stupid Ideas, (Number Two)

 ORT, no longer just an airport, the Open Road Tolling system due in Gauteng has been the topic of much debate, to the point where it was put on hold leading up to the elections, to save a few majority party votes.
The Freedom Front (Plus) has been a driving force behind the protests against the proposed high per kilometre tariffs, with almost all other opposition parties joining in in some form or another. Although the gantries are built and installed, they aren’t being used until the tariff issue has been resolved.

I work far enough from home that I see quite a few of these during my commute, and have recently seen, with the coming of earlier sunsets, and laterhours on a buggy project , that they are lighting these non-functioning gantries at night…

The blue lights reflect purple against the support poles, and when passing under them, I cant help think of cheesy porn movie clichés, which in turn reminds me that the Gauteng roads agency will be screwing me a bit more once these start tolling.'

Yesterday, I passed under them around sunset, and found that the blue lights see their fair share of daylight too…



Now we have been told that the project has been put on hold to examine ways to decrease the tariff to a reasonable rate. I would like to ask the question :
What is the electricity bill for lighting up approximately 42 huge gantries from before sundown for the whole night, every night, on a system that is currently not generating any income. Every cent they spend lighting these eyesores up will be included in the rate you pay once they become operational.
Maybe someone should explain to SANRAL how efficiency works…

The Grand Gallery Of Almightily Stupid Ideas, (Number One)

So if you've been out and about in... well, Gauteng lately, you will have seen urban beautification of sidewalks using what seems to be construction rubble.

I think there were several causes for this happening.

Firstly, most of the rcks look freshly... rubbleised (?) in my opinion, likely from Gautrain blasting.

So someone in the Gautrain project had tons (literally) of rubble and decided to sell it rather than dump it.

 

They went to the owners and managers of buildings, properties, shopping centres with sidewalk that would look better and prettier with this rubble strewn alongside it. They probably had a great sales pitch.. Low cost (how much do you sell rubbish for), no maintenance, unlike if they had done a planted beautification, requiring water, fertilizer, and a human or ten to tend it.

Rubble, pay once, gaze at forever.

 

The person who seems not to have been at the meeting would be a representative of the common sense brigade, local trends branch, how fucking stupid can you get division.

This person might have pointed out that South Africa is a country with a long tradition of toyi-toyi'ng, marches and protests.

They might mention that these gatherings of people can turn into mobs at the drop of a hat.

Theymight have pointed out that if such a gathering is meandearing by your permises, and turns even a few members to the dark side of eaceful protest, and those individuals/mob decide to make you a target of their frustrations, you may have inadvertantly provided them with heavy, throwable rock-based projectiles with which to pelt your windows and patrons.

 

Unfortunately, all members of the common sense brigade are allocated to the julius malema youth league election committee, the DA's we can take gauteng meeting (I love the enthusiasm, but really...) and at the people who believe/advertise that the world is ending this weekend. (with limited success, so far).

 

[caption id="attachment_413" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="One mans rubble is another mans decoration is another mans weapon"][/caption]

eConfusion - A new disease (Originally posted Monday, January 10, 2011)

I saw a video clip last night, apparently of the Joburg mayor giving an address that would make Al Pacino in Rain Man seem lucid. He stumbles of difficult words like 'our', almost bursting into song, and eyeing the left of his position like his wife and mistress are glaring at him from that spot. Very funny, totally indicative of the doublespeak method of saying nothing beloved by our politicians, but not quite accurate. When I saw the video, of the 'mayor of joburg', the name Amos Masondo popped into my mind. This morning I googled his face, and surprise surprise, is not him in the video. Equally, a few months ago, I got a mail of a house with fishtanks in the wall that was apparently Julius Malema's one house. Now I live in the same road as that house, and its not Julius'. Not close. I discovered it belongs to the 'Da Silvas' So what am I trying to say here. We've all got mails saying 'Bill Gates will buy you a mansion if you forward this' or 'Mars will be as big in the sky as the moon' and there's much more reason for a thinking e-mail user to question the truth of these claims, and even websites like http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ that provide the truth about such things. And usually they're a marketing scam farming email addresses, or someone out to screw with the recipient. But in the case of the Amos and Julius mails, this angle is missing. So why did the idiot who put that information into the mail in the first place do it? Why say this is the mayor of Joburg speaking, when if the author has spent 20 seconds on google they would have found out otherwise. Is it laziness? Is it a case of someone thinking they know more than they do? Is it a wishful thinking, or based on what that oke at the bar said? Regardless of the source, its a lie. And now a growing number of people in email-land think that Julius Malema has fishtanks in his walls, and that Amos Masonde doesnt have glasses or a chubby face.

[gallery]

Will the real Mayor of Joburg please stand up...

So please, dont take everything for granted, in email or life. Being informed is one of the most powerful tools of this age, and one of the most abused. And google is just a click away... use it.

A traffic complaint

So most of us who drive have passed a driving test, and one of the things they take you through is the rules of the road.

So what is the first rule of the road (in South Africa at least)?

Its not sticking to the speed limit, its no about how Beemers get right of way.

Nope, it's :

KEEP LEFT, PASS RIGHT!

I have a roughly 50 km commute to work every day (luckily its opposite the bad jams), and every day is see this rule flaunted and ignored dozens of times.

At the moment, there are very few cars on the road due to the easter break, but still, its like most people have no regard for it.

My pet peeve is when travelling along at the speed limit (lets say 120 km/h) in the right lane, and you approach a driver, also in the right lane, doing 100.

They dont have a car in front of them for over half a km, and the person "in front" of them is probably pulling away, rather than being reeled in.

Theres no significant traffic to their left, often a huge gap.

This person is, in my opinion, partially responsible for rush hour traffic (well, that and trucks - http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/tel-aviv-to-ban-trucks-in-morning-rush-hour-1.317607 )

But people think that this doesnt apply to them, everyone drives well enough in their own mind, if they thought otherwise, they'd be like Sheldon from Big Bang and not drive at all.

So I have a handy hint on how to spot if you are the asshole.

If people are overtaking you on the left, you are the asshole.

Going back to the first rule of the road, keep left, pass right.

If you have people coming up behind you and you are in the right hand lane, you have broken the rule, you arent keeping left.

Thus, they have 2 options.. slow down to your middle lane speed, or overtake you on the left.

So now they are breaking the rule.

I try to teach people doing this on the road, but dont always have the time.

So please join me in this excercise...

When coming up behind an asshole dawdling along in the fast lane, with acres of space in front and beside them, do what you were going to do anyway, overtake on the right, then get back into the fast lane as quickly as possible, then slow down to 15 km/h or so slower that the asshole.

This usually results in them moving a lane to the left.

At that stage, move back to your normal speed and get on with your day.

If enough people do this, it might teach these assholes that as much as Beemers dont own the road, Mazda 323's with a top speed of 87 dont either.

ps. I wonder how Vodacom are going to tie their red re-branding with sponsoring the BLUE Bulls.

They're already talking on the radio how the bulls can "see red" and calling them the Vodacom Bulls, or just the bulls.

There might be a whole lot of discarded blue bumper testicles in Pretoria soon!!!

Its The End Of The Numberplate Game (As We Know It)

Do you play the numberplate game?
Do you know what it is?

I read about it in an obscure "Travel Game" book when I was younger.
Basically, you take the 3 letters on the numberplate in front of you, and try to make a word with those 3 letters.
So HDL 363 GP could be HuDdLe, HurDLe, HanDLe or others.
There are variations, where no 2 letters in the numberplate must touch in the word, ie: SLT coudl be SLoT, but the S and L are touching, so a better word would be SiLenT.
Also, some numberplates lend themselves to a 3 word soundbyte, ie: DRC could be DiReCt, or Democratic Republic of Congo.

If you didnt know about the game, and it piques your interest, I have bad news.
Gauteng has now run out of unassigned numberplates in the classic format, so they are now moving to a 2 letter, 2 number, 2 letter format... XX ## XX GP.
But 2 letters is a bit too easy, and all 4 letters seems quite hard. I suppose 4 letters will be easier than the recent V,W,X,Y and z combinations closing off the classic format, but I cant help feel that this simple game will never hold the same fascination it used to.

I guess time will tell.

Here I am, but in case you were wondering why.

Hi

I'm Ian.

A lot of crap runs though my head, some of it ramblings, some of it genius, most of it somewhere in between.

What I dont have is the (drive, motivation, manageable workload, time) to Blog every week. Which I'm told is suicide for a blog.

So simple solution, ask my buddy Odd for a spot on his highly efficient weekly updates geeks and greatness blog.

I reserve the right to blog weekly, if I find the time or inspiration, but expect an occasional contribution.

The benefit of this to you is that while some bloggers write drivel to make sure theres a post this week, the drivel I write will be driven by a need to express something. or tell a cool joke I heard, or to rant.'

So as and when, I'll be posting the posts for my old neglected blog, so as to keep you all in full and proper fear of the rollercoaster of my phyche.  But for now, here's my intro, and watch this space...