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Zimbabwe has a new president, and yes, you guessed it, good old Bob beat all odds and won his election. In an absolutely fantastic show of African optimization, Bob has successfully tested and perfected a fast, easy cycle of vote to election. Considering the three months it took them the last time to try and determine a winner in an election of two candidates, the new and improved one-candidate vote had results available in less than 24 hours! Even by African standards, an improvement of many 1000% is absolutely impressive. It may even find new takers in other parts of the continent where pesky opposition parties are able to ruin the prestige of a dictator running a country for many years. Why, even Bob‘s buddy Thabo may have a go at this, considering how impressed he seems to be with the whole affair.

President Evil has done it. Let’s trust in the people of Zimbabwe and the few sane nations left in the world (ours excluded) to get this idiot into that asylum room already reserved for him.

Visit Zimbabwe Democracy Now.

The final saw Germany meet Spain in a rather one-sided match. The Germans simply couldn’t get into the match: Spain covered well and exploited weaknesses in the German defence to break away more than once. After 33 minutes, the only goal of the match was scored by Torres. Not a goal worthy of the title, but a goal in any event. Again, goalkeeper Lehmann seemed to be the only German player with an important job to do.

Germany 0 : Spain 1

Spain win the Euro 2008 tournament and are crowned the European champions.

Today, as the population of our neighbouring country, Zimbabwe, goes to the polls to choose from a selection of one in a run-off election that was to provide a better alternative, I urge you to consider the dire situation those innocent civilians are facing.

Mugabe is a dictator, plain and simple. He is the prime example of what African leadership is: a collection of demented half-wits, intent on garnering cash and power no matter what the cost. The fact that the innocent populace suffers, economic damage is done to the country in question and that the region as a whole suffers due to the actions of one man is of little consequence. Democracy in Zimbabwe has been suffering for a while now. Today, it is officially dead.

President Evil will live to oppress and pillage – with no action and assistance coming from anywhere else, the people in Zimbabwe are at his mercy. May he be shown as much mercy as he provides when his time comes…

Visit Zimbabwe Democracy Now.

Always a strong team, Spain triumphed convincingly against the underdog, Russia. The weather was not ideal: heavy rain made play difficult and the scoreline remained at 0:0 for quite some time. Once the Spanish had scored though, their dominance increased.

Russia 0 : Spain 3

The final against Germany will be an interesting one. Spain has an excellent chance in the fight for the title.

Alexander and I have had a great time building and playing with our recently completed Lego Technic F1 and 599 Fiorano models. Now, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the third 1:10 scale model in that series: the Enzo Ferrari.

As with the other two models in the series, the Enzo is a 1:10 scale replica with opening doors and hood. The cylinders in the engine block move when the wheels are turned and the steering, much to my son’s delight, really works.

The detail is astounding and the build a pleasure.

The overall length is around 47cm.

Kit 8653 is very hard to find. Lego has cottoned on to the fact that they produce toys that are eagerly hunted down. A limited production run is an ideal way of making extra cash and elevating plastic bricks to collectibles.

What a rollercoaster! Germany, having played so convincingly against Portugal seemed never to find their form in the first half. In fact, the official match statistics indicating almost equal possession by both teams simply didn’t ring true: the Germans were lucky not to concede at least two goals very early on.

The team from Turkey constantly maintained pressure and Lehmann did some great work in saving all manner of attempts by them to score a goal. His unfortunate fumble that led to the 1:0 for Turkey was hugely disappointing. Then, the equalizer barely four minutes later. When the second half started, the Germans showed more commitment. A blatant foul on the edge of the penalty area was disregarded by the referee. That should have been a penalty, or at the very least a yellow card and a free kick. A lucky break for Turkey! A 2:1 by Germany seemed to make things somewhat safer, but never to be outdone, the second goal by Turkey almost guaranteed extra time.

With great relief, I experienced the goal by Lahm barely 40 seconds before full time. Retribution for his foul earlier that half and the Germans get to play in the final!

Germany 3 : Turkey 2

Not a convincing performance, but in the end, Germany won. Germany always technically superior forced the Turkish players to resort to rough, chaotic play when the chips where down. Turkey has proven it has the mettle for international competition. Now, they need to clean up their act.

My team goes forward to the final on Sunday, to meet either Spain or Russia.

Vodacom is allowing eager customers to pre-order an iPhone.

The registration page can be found here and is not limited to existing Vodacom customers. I’m pleased to see that there is a pre-paid option…

Any bets on what the release date will be? Apple is indicating 11 July for a variety of countries, but ZA is listed as ‘soon’.

In a bid to counter the expected flurry of Linux-based smartphones and the Android platform, not to mention Windows Mobile and the iPhone, Nokia is purchasing the remaining 52% of Symbian Ltd. to effectvely own the entire company. The idea is to create the Symbian Foundation early in 2009 which will make a new, unified development environment and mobile operating system available for free to developers and handset manufacturers.

The unified operating system is to combine Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) into a single software plaform. With a variety of partners already onboard, Nokia itself is to be the owner of Symbian and is to contribute its own S60 and the Symbian OS to the foundation. Membership costs USD 1500 per year, but hobbyists, developers and tinkerers should be able to download and utilize the development tools without charge.

This is an interesting move by Nokia - they are obviously worried by the impending launch of the 3G iPhone. Android may be delayed, which plays into their hand if they can come up with a compelling device to pair with the new platform.

Mobile gadgets are becoming quite interesting again and their future is bright!

Not Vista I must confess that I quite like Microsoft‘s latest OS and do think some of the criticism it has received is perhaps unfair. Of course there are a number of things about Vista that get on my nerves, but overall it does the job. Late last week I was about to order a MacBook (something I’m still considering) after Vista on G2S started misbehaving.

Constant crashes in the Explorer, hanging and many blue screens had me on the verge of tearing out my hair. The first thing to criticize: Vista, of course. Though it had been rather stable throughout and I’ve had very few issues. I run avast! and keep the virus database updated and am generally careful about what I run and where I click. Obviously, something had slipped through the cracks. The first clue was a small Internet Explorer window launching every now and then. The most irritating was an absolute inability to reach websites when using a proxy.

Suddenly, avast! found a trace of something unwanted, but all tries at deleting or quarantining the file failed. I booted into safe mode and opened a command prompt, then deleted the DLL identified by avast! Of course that didn’t change things – after the next reboot into normal mode, the virus scanner identified a differently named DLL. Time for some manual intervention! Open a command prompt and launch MSCONFIG. Select the Startup tab and have a look at the entries…

Even a non-geek should see an entry that simply doesn’t look right. In this case, the program named BM63df8f5e.

Unselect the box for this bug to run at system startup, then open the registry editor. In the MSCONFIG entry for BM63df8f5e, some parameters are provided for RUNDLL32.EXE. One of them is another oddly-named DLL. Open the registry editor and search for that DLL. True enough, my problems with network access through proxies was confirmed by the registry entry I found:

Delete that key without thought and reboot. Suddenly, things work so much better!

If you enjoy animated movies you should check out Big Buck Bunny.

Running for just less than 10 minutes this is no Monsters’ Inc. It’s a fun short with a difference and has a big rabbit take revenge on a couple of rodents who have caused him all manner of irritation. Probably not ideal for youngsters as there is a bit of violence in it, Big Buck Bunny is interesting merely for the fact that it was produced in its entirety using the open source tool Blender. Blender is a fantastic 3D modeling application that is completely open source and free to download. Think of it as the free version of Maya or 3D Studio Max. It’s the kind of application the artistically inept like myself marvel at and wish they could use. The interface alone makes my eyes water – I wouldn’t have a clue where to start!

Big Buck Bunny serves as an excellent example of what this application is able to produce given the right kind of talent and idea as the primary input.

Enjoying nature…

..with a bunch of rodents causing mayhem…

…and the rabbit has his revenge

Not necessarily for young viewers.

You may stream or download the movie here. Then, get a copy of Blender and make your own!