photography | mac | lego | open source | sap | gadgets
Archive for December, 2007
Legalized piracy
4 years ago
I’ve had my gripes with the insurance industry in the past. Overall, this is an industry that leverages fear to make a huge amount of cash. When crunch time comes, there are a thousand excuses and reasons for not paying up. I’ve not claimed on my car insurance for years. Then, it was for a cracked windscreen which carries a small excess and certainly doesn’t reflect poorly on future premiums.
A letter from my car insurer recently showed up in the snail mailbox, and I quote the relevant section that has me ranting and raving:
Let’s start at the beginning: the premium increase is effective January 2007. Some moron can’t even proofread the standard annual increase letter and ensure they have the date right. The increase is ZAR 281.41. From an already inflated amount of ZAR 730 to ZAR 1011.41. Obviously some amazing calculation has gone into this increase considering the non-rounded amount. The increase is roughly 38%. In one year. I haven’t claimed on this, nor a previous insurance for many years. The car overnights in a secure property and locked garage. It has a tracking device fitted.
Certainly such increases are frowned upon. If I had anything to do with it, I’d tell you to take a hike. But the fascinating fact is that all other equivalent insurance policies for this type of insurance are priced more or less equivalently. These guys have been taking notes in economy class when OPEC was discussed, no doubt.
More cars on the roads = more accidents. Possibly true. My take: more money per month = even bigger profits. The increase in premium doesn’t provide more benefits to me. In fact, there are even more exclusions and riders in the attachment to the letter. Successful in limiting the increase! At 38%, you’ve outdone yourself! Congratulations!
My insurer is Tuffstuff, underwritten by the giant Hollard. In it for the cash and profit. Screw the consumer. The best part of the personalized letter is the signature of the director. His initials: R V. For a company specializing in insuring 4×4 vehicles, that’s just too good a tag line to pass up.
Beta 2 of Firefox 3.0
Firefox 3.0 is almost here. The beta release has been deployed on nx8220 for a while and has performed reasonably. There are certain issues I’ve experienced, particularly some crashes when multimedia content was loaded. The inability of the beta to move and copy bookmarks by drag and drop didn’t impress me. Thankfully, Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 fixes those issues and provides some of features that will be available in the final release.
The robots and aliens banner displayed once the browser starts is cool:
Immediately noticeable is the extended functionality of the location bar. Typing any part of a previously visited site provides autocompletion – different colours indicate web sites and web page titles. This makes finding entries much easier.
Though I haven’t installed the beta on Fedora yet, a feature that would be interesting to see is the native GTK theme for Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles. That makes the browser look like a native Gnome application. The same should be true in the final release for all operating systems the browser is provided for. The download manager has really improved, providing pause and restart functions and display file locations on mouse-over.
Once again, you need to be brave to try out beta software. Download the Firefox Beta 2 here if you dare 
Dark Knight trailer
There’s a new high-definition trailer for the 2008 movie Dark Knight available for download here.
The Joker looks suitably crazy:
Plenty of new gizmos for the guy in the bat suit. The bike is heavily featured:
Windows XP SP3 release candidate
Though expected to be released only early on in 2008, Microsoft is providing those weary of Vista a chance to try out Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. Certainly not recommended for installation on your production system, the SP3 candidate is a hefty 335MB download. That’s almost seven times the size of some operating systems
From the whitepaper (PDF link), it seems as though the primary functionality included in the service pack is the ability to leverage some new Windows 2008 Server features. Internet Explorer 7 is not included, though the service pack will update either IE6 or IE7, depending on which is installed on your system. Policy enforcement by NAP (Network Access Protection) is one of the major additions to XP, mainly to comply with the Vista platform and access to features in Server 2008.
I trust that the 335MB includes some fixes for existing issues Some reports have indicated that there are certain performance gains that may be expected once the service pack has been installed. Claims of a 10% speed improvement have been made. I’ll wait and see.
If you’re interested in trying this one out, get it here.
Circus time
4 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
While the ANC was holding its own special circusevent, Alexander got to see a real circus. The Boswell name is well-known to most in ZA and is the only touring circus in the country.
The cost for a ticket is ZAR 70 per person for a seat close to the ring. There is no discount for little people. All in all, it’s good value for a fun-filled show of two hours. I’m not big into horses and poodles, so those acts left me a bit bored. Seeing elephants up close is a highlight for the little ones. The balancing acts of the Chinese and Mongolian artistes are quite astonishing, as are their contortions. Juggling 7 rings whilst balancing a unicycle on a drum is no mean feat…
For once, the clowns were quite funny too. The show offers good variety and is well worth a visit, but we would have liked to have seen someone shot out of a cannon…
Lamborghini Reventón
Only 20 instances of the Lamborghini Reventón will exist. If you have the spare EUR 1,000,000, you’re probably out of luck: all 20 have already been sold.
Inspired by the design of the F-22 Raptor jet fighter and named for a fighting bull that killed the famed bullfighter Felix Guzman in 1943, this chariot accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.4 seconds. Maximum speed? Just over 340 km/h. Wings are optional…
Paper weapon
4 years ago
by manfred
in Papercraft
As residents of ZA, the AK47 is not exactly something we like to see. Fortunately, this one is just a replica. But not just any replica: it’s a complete papercraft model any hobbyist can lovingly assemble using ordinary glue and safety scissors.
In the words of the designer: at the end of the construction process each person can decide if they would like to hang their own AK-47 on the wall, paint it, customize it with stickers or simply burn it. Maybe for EUR 20, you’d rather adorn a wall with it than burn it. Depends on how strong the anti-gun lobby is in your home, I guess…
Come to think of it, EUR 20 is just about the price of a real AK47 in parts of the country. Get it here (the paper gun, of course).
VIA ARTiGO
The VIA Mini ITX mainboard is pretty small and has been serving me well as a media PC and lately as the basis for Alexander’s first PC. The Pico ITX board is even smaller, and is now available in a kit that includes a minute chassis to house a 2.5″ hard disk drive below the tiny motherboard. The VIA ARTiGO chassis measures 15cm x 11cm x 4cm, making it small enough to carry around and use wherever a keyboard, mouse and monitor is available.
The mainboard has a 1GHz VIA C7 processor and supports up to 1GB of DDR2 RAM. With everything integrated onboard, there is only one chip to provide processing and multimedia acceleration. Windows Vista is not yet supported – the present OS choice is Linux and Windows XP or Windows CE for embedded solutions.
This is a neat gadget to put together – the kit includes all necessary components, except the hard drive and memory modules.
It should function rather well as a basic media PC or as a carry-around PC that connects to a monitor, keyboard and mouse in the office and home. The price is around USD 300 and it is available for order from the UK. I’m off to find out whether there’s a local distributor…
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman is my second Audible choice. Normally, I would never choose an abridged title. But then, you’d never know what you’re missing or what has been omitted. In the case of The Secret Life of Houdini, this is certainly the case and the audio book is absolutely riveting. The 6 hour narration by Adam Grupper is top-notch: his 1930′s newsreel voice certainly adds to the feel of the story.
The life of the fabulous entertainer is presented from his birth as Ehrich Weisz in 1874 to his death as Harry Houdini in 1926. In that time, he struggled through poverty, moved to America with his family as a young boy and started working to provide an income for his family at an early age. A fascination of locks and handcuffs coupled with his awe after seeing a tightrope walker’s performance made his vaudevillian lifestyle a certainty. He named himself Harry Houdini – Harry from his nickname Ehrie and Houdini as a means of making him like Robert-Houdin, a famed French magician and performer.
Houdini‘s absolute dedication and perseverance is astonishing, considering the difficulties he faced trying to make a living and gaining acceptance for his shows. Eventually, he become known through a series of fortunate circumstances, escape performances in police stations and jail cells and clever marketing. His expert preparation and careful choreography ensured success, though he had a number of narrow escapes. Houdini became one of the first performers to provide audiences with performances almost certain to guarantee his death, should he fail.
Over the course of his life, Houdini became the 25th person to fly an aeroplane, the first pilot to fly a plane in Australia, a movie producer, secret agent, author and debunker of spiritualists (most notably, the case involving Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife). His death, caused by a blow to the stomach that ruptured his inflamed appendix, was widely believed to have been foretold by those spiritualists intent on making Houdini pay for his exposure of their scams.
This title is a great advertisement for audio books. The delivery and narration is excellent. The book is well-written, well-paced and never boring. Overall, this is a fascinating insight into one of the most remarkable performers ever to have graced the world’s stage. Highly recommended!
Benvenuto
4 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
Fabio (or Fabiyoyo according to Alexander) is the latest addition to the family.
Recent Comments