Landy at it's best1

Landy at it's best2

Landy at it's best3

I love South Africa, and the incredible survival of a Renault 5

One thing I learned in England was that common scense is not that common.

Which brings me to this photo:



I took this photo on my way to Midrand the otherday. If there is one handyman that follows the stingest of safety standards it is the gas repair guy (another thing the Brits ensured I learned). Obvoisly his safety standards are applied to the job and not the transport.

This is why I love South Africa, this guy will probably never make a living with his vehicle in any other country except South Africa.

Deprived IT in South Africa

One thing we South Africans can "pride" ourselves on is the fact we always see the glass as half empty. I've not met many South African who think the FIFA 2010 World Cup is a good thing, which I don't agree with, I think it is the best thing since the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

One thing is for certain; in the IT sector I can see a difference. One late night, many years back in the California while doing database benchmarks for SUN and Oracle, I wanted to order a pizza for delivery to the office, not knowing the places around I started a search with Google that was something like this "local pizza".

Immediately I was take to Google Maps, that not only showed me the local pizza places but also the contact detail, the menus, the directions AND the prices. Google obviously used my IP address to determine my geographical location and then provide search results based on my preference.

Now this kind of Google functionality is available almost anywhere except for South Africa until recently. Another thing I was used to was the lightning fast, super cheap, unlimited ADSL in the UK. Again not something I found when coming back to South Africa in 2007 after 8 years in the UK. Here (South Africa) the bandwidth is very expensive and the quality of service is not great.

NOT ANYMORE!!!
1) Thanks to the new SEACOM cable we now have much more bandwidth, and this is already apparent if you follow all the news on the Bandwidth Wars now in South Africa. We kind of need this as the rest of the world take HD TV for granted.
2) Google heavily invested in their South African operations in preparation for 2010 FIFA World Cup. We now have local version of Google Maps including street view coming. We have translation in and from Afrikaans, and I'm sure some other interesting bits that will be revealed as we get closed to June 2010.

So, to all the FIFA World Cup doom profits, 2010 has helped to reduce (not close it, I admit) the IT gap that South Africa experienced for a very long time.

My first blog using my iPhone

So using only the Blogger Lite application I decided to post an article on taking a screenshot of the iPhone screen. It is easy, just press the Home and Sleep/Wake button together. The iPhone is much better than the blackberry in terms of user interface and browsing. The email on Blackberry is still tops though.

Stumbled across the Google Wonder Wheel today, might not be new but I like it

Seems there is no end when diving into the Google innovation pool. Saw this little button that says "show options" when I did a search for "Oracle DBA" on Google, like everyone does everyday. Then I saw another link that says "Wonder Wheel", so I clicked it.

Google Wonder Wheel for "Oracle DBA"Wow, a "complicated" Google search interface started, one I can just click to search further and further into my topic of choice. Then like anyone would have done, is to Google, Google Wonder Wheel and discovered a site dedicated to Wonder Wheel exists.

It's cool, check it out.