Astalavista Wordpress!

Okay so my timing sucks with Wordcamp being on this Saturday. Like that’s news! I’m temporarily suspending my blogging on this domain and wordpress blog, while I’m going to be doing so on my .co.za domain. Sorry to do this to you all, but I simply don’t have the time or energy to migrate this database over to my newly created Django powered blog. I’ll rather keep this one dormant over here while I blog and continuously developing the other.

Please update your bookmarks and feed readers:
Domain: http://stii.co.za
Feed: http://stii.co.za/feed/

Saianora!

Filed in: General and sometimes Rants by: Stii

4 comments

Lifestreaming and Twitter is making us lazy

Actually, I should not say Twitter as they’ve been giving themselves enough shit lately with their scalability issues. I should say “micro-blogging”, but you know what I mean.

ReadWriteWeb wrote an article on the future of blogging revealed. Truth be told, they might be right, but God forbid they are. Lifestreaming is awesome and so is micro-blogging. The problem is this:

It is making us lazy. Eric, by no means am I saying you’re lazy. All evidence to the contrary, but you’re lazy to blog as much as you’ve done in the past, as am I and a lot of others. Its just easier to say things in a 140 characters. Its easier to monitor and list what I read, rather than to write about it. Our attention span is all fucked up.

A while back, daily del.icio.us link posts was all the rage and everyone was doing it. It almost seemed like an easy way out to not have to sit down and write something, carefully thinking about it beforehand. Some still persists to do it. After a while it became irritating to readers. My prediction is that by mixing your online activity with your main writings/blog would dilute your content and you’d end up pissing people off, rather than entertaining/educating them. It might seem weird and strange, but people want to read what others say, not what they read.

I do admit, there is a use for lifestreams. Yes, its not a bad thing having them somewhere on your site. It would be terrible to have it dilute your original content and IMHO should be kept separate. Then again, with our sacred little blogosphere turning into a Paris Hilton tabloid, it might be a good thing

Filed in: Blogging by: Stii

11 comments

Days with my father

Powerful and moving. www.dayswithmyfather.com is a moving annotated photo essay by Phillip Toledano. The photos are moving and beautiful and the stories sad at times. Being a dad myself, it grips me around the heart. Its an incredible thing Phillip did for his dad… pity his dad probably don’t even realise it. Do yourself the favor and go check it out.

Thanks to Nic for the link!

Filed in: Business, General and sometimes Rants by: Stii

2 comments

Friday morning fail by a stripper

Found this stripper who failed over at failblog.org which is just epic! Enjoy

Filed in: Funnies by: Stii

3 comments

Got Springleap!

I’m a huge tshirt fan. I love ‘em and live in ‘em. If I would be forced to wear a suit and tie in a corporate world, it would be a tshirt with a tie printed on it. Needless to say that Springleap is a fascinating concept to me and I simply love it!

Needless to say that I’ve invested in one of these uniquely designed t’s! I went for the Cthulu Watercity Invasion since I’m a bit of an HP Lovecraft fan, but it was a very tough choice between this one and the Garden Route Geeks one by my friend Willie. In fact, I’m bound to buy another, so it is on my shopping list!

I love the site. I love the checkout procedure and the way it is designed. Quick, painless and funky! Eric’s found gold in his brilliant developer, Robert Stuttaford. I don’t know who the designers are, but they’re doing a stirling job. Delivery was quick, so kudos there! The shirt quality is awesome. The printing is of the highest quality! All-in-all, I love the entire experience!

I’m just wondering what happened to the blogger warz? When will the next one be? Personally, I’d love to see a showdown between Vincent Maher and Bolton Deventer. Now THAT is something I’d pay for…

Oh, and this was also quite cool. Instead of a pesky label that scratches your tender neck after it was flogged by the African sun in summertime, there is a cool little message instead! Great stuff!

Filed in: Tshirts by: Stii

2 comments

Afrigator vs Regator

So, by the looks of things we’ve (Afrigator) been somewhat, sort of “copied“. Honestly, I don’t mind it as much. In fact, I feel quite flattered! That’s to say if the Regator crew even knew of our existence. Lets be honest, a gator is what a gator does. Not sure, but it would be somewhat stupid to put a fail whale as a mascot when the word gator appears in the domain name.

The color scheme, well, gators live in swamps and swamps aren’t blue! Unless I’m completely color blind, that green looks nothing like our green. Just to prove the point here are our greens in good ol’ hex: #CDE855 #A7C520 and here are Regator’s: #95C564 #336324 The numbers are way off if you ask me!

Good for them that they’ve drummed up all three of the holy tech trinity to review them! (ReadWriteWeb, Techcrunch and Mashable) In all honesty, I’m a tad jealous of that… Then again, you have to keep in mind that they’re launching into the wild while we’re an African service. We all know that Africa is seen as the “Dark Continent” and often get overlooked by our bigger counterparts on a regular basis. Kudo’s to RRW / Marshall Kirkpatrick who not only did a piece on us, but also (if you can remember) acted as a judge at this year’s SA Blog Awards! We love ya RRW!!! (I’m an XL, should you feel like sending me a tshirt…)

As far as concept goes, I see it as totally different. Regator is more of a 9rules Network style service while Afrigator is a kind of Technorati like service, only more location based with a couple more bells and whistles. Vast difference there.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT unappreciative of the support in the comments section of the holy trinity and on some blog posts**. Gosh, I’m actually quite dumbstruck by the passionate support. Thank you guys, I do appreciate it! I’m just trying to be realistic about it. I should probably be a bit more upset and protective about this issue, but then I’d lie. If we have been deliberately copied it just goes to show that Africa had a good idea someone else wanted. Not a bad thing at all! (Although, I do share Rafiq’s sentiments a little there…)

**Here is some more on this issue:
Regator Looks Mighty Familiar - Mike Stopforth
Regator.com steals our brand - coincidence? - Justin Hartman
Shocking: Regator rip off Afrigator - Nic Haralambous
Regator - Perfect example of how Africa gets used - Rafiq Phillips
Regator steals Afrigator’s brand - Mark Forrester

Filed in: Afrigator by: Stii

18 comments

Don’t pirate music/movies! You might be forced to use Windows if you do…

I read this article today where it is said that the administrators of EliteTorrents have lost the battle against the MPAA. The guy got a 10 year sentence as he did not plead guilty and decided to fight. Now a jury decided he’s gotta go away for a while… Shame!

Two of his colleagues did plead guilty and both were given a fine of $3000 and a five month prison sentence. Heavy, but not as heavy as this:

“I had a meeting with my probation officer today and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence,” he wrote on his Lost and Alone blog. “However, their software doesn’t support GNU/Linux (which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on.” The monitoring software in question is only available for Microsoft Windows. Neither Linux nor a Macintosh running OS X would be an acceptable platform.

SHIT!!! That’s just plain cruel and inhumane punishment! That is more like a death sentence to a Linux user. Heavy… Don’t pirate software or you’ll be FORCED to use Windows. How much does THAT suck?!

Here is the full story.

Filed in: Linux by: Stii

4 comments

Pike > Python?

I’ve started reading the Pike tutorial tonight out of pure curiosity and something that struck me was their comparison to Python. Now in all fairness, I don’t think they’re trying to say that Pike is actually greater than Python (sorry, the title is a bit misleading), but they are making some bold statements! Keep in mind that I’m a bit of a Python fanboy.

Programs written in Python look very different from Pike programs, but Python and Pike are similar when it comes to ideas and use. Python is more widely used and has more libraries available. Pike on the other hand is faster, has a more advanced type system, and has better support for object-oriented programming. Pike’s more C++-like syntax makes it easier to get started with for programmers who know C++, C or Java.

Now, I’m in no position to say this is true or not. I’ve only started reading about Pike tonight. Here is an example of Pike’s syntax.

int main()
{
  write("Hi there! What's your name?\n");
  string name = Stdio.stdin->gets();
  write("Nice to meet you, " + name + "!\n");
  return 0;
}

Not sure I really like it, but wth, PHP looks much worse at times!

If there are anyone out there that has worked with Pike before, it would be quite interesting to hear your opinion! It does seem Pike is not as well supported as Python / PHP / Ruby…

Filed in: Programming by: Stii

4 comments

Using Twhirl for FriendFeed

With Twitter forcing us all to use everything but IM, it is a good idea to look into Twhirl. Not only does Twhirl update Twitter, but you can set it so that it updates Pownce and Jaiku at the same time (See : Impressive Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce application). Now, you can get FriendFeed updates as well. The UI is just so sleek! It is simple to leave a comment. Simple to post something to FriendFeed. I’m loving it.

I’m not sure if this was available in Twhirl version 0.8.1. I first saw this in version 0.8.2, so it might be a good idea to upgrade to the latest version. I was going to make a screencast to demonstrate how to enable and use it, but fortunately Maria Reyes-McDavis did me the favour of doing so already! It is still very awkward for me to do screen casts :). Check out the video if you’d like to see it in action.

Filed in: General and sometimes Rants by: Stii

2 comments

Being anti-social SUCKS!

A lot of my friends have said lately that they’re all burnt out on Social Networking. How tired they are of every new service, blah blah blah. These past couple of weeks I’ve been down and out with the obligatory winter bug that corrupts our systems every so often when this dreary season start and it was exceptionally tough to debug this round.

Nevertheless, I seem to have swatted the buggers, but in the process I was feeling pretty much anti-social in the online sense of the word. I abandoned plurk, avoided Facebook and did not have much to write about other than how shit I feel, so I didn’t blog here, nor on Tech Leader. Twitter still isn’t much of a problem as they’re doing an outstanding job themselves in limiting my Twitter consumption.

It sucks. Although I had more than regular contact with my flesh and blood buddies, I missed all the geek-speak and babbling we normally do online. You’d think that with all those other things not distracting you, you’d be 10 times as productive. Sorry, WRONG! I’ve grown very used to be distracted by all the other things so I’m constantly searching for something… Its like “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” all the time. Okay, to be fair, it could have been the bugs that had me down… Seriously though, why would I want to work without all the distractions? Its not that much fun anyway!

Over the past couple of years, my attention span has become, uhm, flexible. I get tired after reading the first 140 characters of a book. Therefore, I read 3 or more books at once, 140 characters at a time. Works like a charm!

Anyways, guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m debugged and stable and have a backlog to catch up with!

Filed in: General and sometimes Rants by: Stii

3 comments