“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” Tim O’Reilly

In short

I would rather be pirated and out there, than obscure and not pirated. It is almost impossible to control how and when my photos are used, so go ahead and use them. But it takes a lot of time and money to take and post the pictures, and while comments and traffic are great, they don’t pay the bills.

So please pay me if you like my photos or are making money from them. Just use the Paypal button on the sidebar.

The more you donate, the more I can shoot. The more I shoot, the more photos you get to see. And of course you get to feel great by doing a good thing!

While this bill is a US bill, it will have a profound effect on ALL Internet users, and you can lodge your protest as a US or non-US person.

You can find out more information here: http://sopastrike.com/ or here http://americancensorship.org.

This year is no exception. On Saturday the mountain just above Boyes Drive was on fire, and the fire-crews were using two helicopters to dump water onto the fire. Because it was so close to my house and I live right next to the vlei, I watched the choppers collecting the water out of the lake before dumping it onto the fire.

It was pretty amazing watching the choppers, incredible skill in dropping down to grab the water, and then dumping it right on the hot-spots. This is in the cross-winds and flying through all the smoke. These are amazing pilots.

Thankfully, they managed to put this one out quite quickly, and there didn’t seem to be any major damage. We have had some pretty major fires in the past.

Here are the rest of the pics.

(image by wolfgang.wedenig)

It was in the early 80’s when I was not even a teen that my father came home with an Apple ][ +, and that is when my life changed. In those days, computers arrived with technical manuals, circuit board schematics, and most importantly, programming guides. I spent hours poring over these manuals.

I quickly realized that if I could tame the computer, I could do anything, and that is when my love of programming began, in Apple Basic on the Apple 2+.

Shooting forward some 30 years or so, I work as a web and IT consultant, I have programmed in more languages than I can remember (off the top of my head, C, C++, Pascal, Java, Delphi, assembler, HTML, ASP/ASP.NET, and of course BASIC).

But it was the Apple 2 that gave me that first insight, and my love of working with computers. It was visionaries like Steve Jobs,  Steve Wozniak, Paul Allan and Bill Gates that make this possible. It is not an under-estimation to say that the Apple 2 profoundly changed my life.

Yesterday we lost Steve Jobs, a man who changed the computing world. The man who helped bring us the Apple, mac, iPod, iPhone and of course the iPad. More recently he has been a role model in my work with Toastmasters. He was one of the most inspirational speakers  I have ever heads, and his use of slides and visual aids is legendary.

The world is going to be a little different without Steve, I am going to miss him.

I bought my first ebook reader – a Sony PRS505 about 4 years ago, and it cost me about $500. Then about two years ago, I bought an Amazon Kindle for about $300. It recently broke and Amazon replaced it for a nominal fee (even though it was out of warranty), with a Kindle worth over $250 (4 months later you can get the same unit for $139).

As of today, for less than $200 you can get a full-colour Kindle, and if that is too much, an entry-level Kindle is just $79, which is the cost of about 5 paperback novels. Here is some quick maths (and I am going to switch to Rands).

• The entry level Kindle is about R640.
• A paper-back book in South Africa is about R150.
• The equivalent ebook on the Kindle is about R80, so for each book you buy and read on the Kindle, you are spending R70 less.
• So, if you read 10 books on the Kindle you have “saved” R700, which covers the cost of the unit. You have broken even.
• Anything above 10 books makes it cheaper to read on a Kindle.
• That is less than a single book per month.

Of course I am ignoring bargin books and book sales etc, but I think the point is quite clear..

Borders books are already closed, who is next? If I was running a regular book store, I would be very very afraid, and I would be finding ways to drastically change my business model. Because this type of price point is going to change everything.

For the record, I probably read about 80% of my books on my Kindle.

Remembering innocent people who died 10 years ago today and the day the world became a less safe place.

I was on an aeroplane at the time (the last flight into Cape Town before South African airports were closed), and I landed having had no idea what had just happened. When I turned my phone on, I had about 10 voicemails from family checking that I was ok. Thankfully nothing happened on our shores, but not so in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

It still shocks me that there are people that will willingly cause so many innocent people to die, for no other reason than to spread fear and terror.

Please spare a thought for our friends in USA commerating the day the world changed.

You can downoad the song here: Geek Speak Theme

Both last year and the year before had absolutely shocking weather, with the wind hitting over 120km/h at some places. Well, bad luck did not come in threes. The weather was warm with a gentle cooling breeze just managing to  take the edge off the heat. Absolutely perfect weather for cycling.

To the person that stopped and chatted to me on the side of the road. No, Boyes Drive is not the second worst hill on the race, in fact it hardly counts as a hill. Smits, Chapman’s Peak and Suikerbossie are far, far worse.  But I couldn’t tell you only 25km out that the worst hills were still to come.

Speeding Union Jack

Pausing on the hill

A cyclist speeding along Boyes Drive

Cyclists at the top of one of the many hills on Boyes Drive

Remember that every vote is important, even if you feel that your vote is not.

Every single vote has a small impact on the future of your municipality, and of South Africa. Please be sure to register, and please vote. For more information, please visit the IEC website.

Signboard outside Forries

On the 1 Jan 2011, Cape Town moved a little closer to being in a “nanny state”. The new  drinking laws have put even tighter restrictions on when restaurants and pubs can serve alcohol.

If the local government really think that it is going to make any difference to alcohols consumption, they clearly have been consuming too much alcohol themselves. This is just 5 years after the UK have relaxed drinking laws.

I wonder how much binge drinking will happen just before 11pm?