Archive for October, 2008
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
What a day I had on Friday!
We celebrated our organisation’s 30th birthday with a brunch at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology hotel school in Granger Bay. 
The hotel school is situated on Beach Road, Mouille Point – a stone’s throw away from the beach.
We were fortunate to have beautiful, sunny day with just a light breeze cooling things off. The sea was the complete opposite of the past winter’s 7 metre waves!
The day started far from calmly for me. I did a presentation of the past 30 years of work done – 6 of which I am personally aware of.
I was a nervous wreck for most of the morning!
After the 17 minute presentation we toasted with a glass of sparkling wine. Not good for someone who had not eaten anything substantial for at least 24 hours before!
Feeling a bit tipsy at a work function is never a bad thing though!
The rest of the day went by fine with lots of congratulations, good food and socialising.
I love/hate these functions.
We hope to return to the fantastic venue for our boring strategic planning in November.
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Thursday, October 16th, 2008
One of my favourite local websites is
tvsa.
I discovered the site through iafrica.com. – it was still called tashitagg.com at the time- when the first UK Pop Idol hit our screens. It was a place to chat and debate favourite reality tv characters and other tv series.
Before tashitagg, there was no dedicated site to chat about tv shows on a regular basis and we tv addicts needed an outlet.
When tvsa came along in 2006, we were ready to talk tv and proof of the sites growth was seen when e-mails were forwarded around the country, cut and paste from the tvsa website about South Africa’s most popular television show, Generations.
Yesterday tvsa accounced their move to a dedicated server, which has sped up the site even more than usual!
Well done to the tvsa guys for always keeping pace with its readers.
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Thursday, October 16th, 2008
The US elections are almost over and I will miss the instant replays of events and talking points and the internet discussions and at the same time be relieved when it’s over.
My feelings are best described by Stockholm Syndrome – where the victim becomes emotionally attached to the hostage-taker. So it will be with mixed emotions I will say goodbye the US elections in a few weeks.
Not that it’s over yet! But there have been a few memorable barbs and quotes, especially intended to be replayed in the media immediately afterwards.
My favourite made by Sarah Palin to Joe Biden: “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” and of course there’s the “Joe Six-pack” and “hockey mom” rhetoric followed by Wednesday night’s “Joe the Plumber” and “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush,” . Not forgetting Barack Obama’s “like putting lipstick on a pig” remark.
Seriously, our South African politicians have a lot to live up to in the run up to our elections. We are now so used to soundbite speeches that I’m not sure those long winded discussions about the issues and policy stances are going to do the trick.
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
The game is on again!
Google Chrome made its much heralded appearance a few weeks ago and managed to confuse the heck out of me every once in a while with its icon’s similarity to the Windows Media Player icon.
More than a few users like the speed of Chrome, not that I’ve noticed much of difference between the speed of IE7 and Chrome. I did compare it to the Emperors New Clothes once! Then again I am a bit on the rebellious side and going against the grain that goes against the grain is par for the course.
Around the time of the Chrome release, Microsoft always the unpopular popular kid, tried to steal Google’s thunder by releasing a beta version of Internet Explorer 8.
Just when we thought we’ve settled into browser chill mode, Mozilla upped the ante again with the release of (a beta version) of Firefox 3.1 which Adrian Kingsley-Hughes put it to test.
In a few days I might have to check out Firefox’s new clothes for myself. All I care about though is that my browser does what I want it to do – load as much information as possible in as quick a time as possible.
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Some interesting studies have been publiziced recently about the brain and its health.
The first study declared drinking to be harmful to your brain and apparently the amount of alcohol consumed doesn’t matter!
Tell that to your heart!
Apparently people who drink alcohol have a smaller brain capacity than those who don’t drink and its worse for women.
The second study brings better tidings for net surfers.
It appears that surfing the internet is good for your brain. CNN who also reported on the first study above, tells of another study in Google does a brain good. This study done with older people aged 55-78 concluded that using a search engine brought higher brain activity to the critical thinking part of the brain.
Could this mean if you incrementally increased your drinking in direct relation to the amount of time spent surfing the internet, you could even things out?
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The rest of the day went by fine with lots of congratulations, good food and socialising.
