The Extremist

The midnight oil

The Extremist — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 22:33:00 +0000

I hate working late, through the night.

But I can't work in the heat of the day and I prefer not working around people. Which means I do best once everyone's gone to bed. If I were inclined to lawering I would call this a conflict of interests.

Today (yes, its today already, a few minutes ago it was still yesterday) I'm doing my big demo. Then its all over. I'll either have my engineering degree or I won't. I'll still have to hand in a CD with a whole bunch of technical documentation on it but I doubt it will be graded. And then my study leader wants me to do a research paper with him.

So the work doesn't end but it feels over, so I don't want to continue working. Another one of those conflicty-thingies.

Well, I'm going to grab some more oil to grease this midnight up with.

The best little sci-fi series that was

The Extremist — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:38:00 +0000

I actually wrote this this morning (around 0033) but figured I'd publish it when I got to campus. The Internet is faster there. Dial-up sucks. I was waiting for my simulation to finish and felt like writing. Haven't felt like writing in quite some time. The sudden urge could have something to do with my new diNovo notebook-style keyboard.

Inbetween trying to work yesterday I finished the last episode of Firefly, a sci-fi television series on DVD. Probably the best sci-fi I've ever watched or read. I'm not a great connoiseur but I have read Asimov and a little Orson Scott Card. I've watched Stargate (pretty much all of it).

Before watching the last episode I went on Wikipedia to discover why the series was cancelled. I suppose I could understand people's reservation to watch it. A space western? With horses and hats and six-shooter style guns? LAME. But then you watch it and realise that Joss Whedon and his team of writers were amazing. They stayed true to their characters and the show was always about the characters and not the plot.

Another of Google's little toys, (Google) Web Comments pointed me towards the strangest blog which, in turn, pointed me to this strange little piece of fanfiction. I can't quite fathom whether it was intended to be a joke or if the author just wrote it because s/he could. I've only read the first 8 chapters (of 30+, a daunting electronic read by any standard) and it promises to be... odd... Not badly written but just as critics called the science fiction premise Firefly was based on a bastardisation for the sake of being different, I'm wondering if this story doesn't take it one too far.

I'm going to read it until it gets bad or becomes boring. Join me.

Eventually, Big Brother sees all

The Extremist — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:34:00 +0000

So I upgraded to Blogger Beta this morning (not without much objection from my lightning quick dial-up connection). In the conversion procedure there is mention of an updated Google Terms of Service. For the first time in a long while I actually decided to read one of these and found this:

You agree that Google may access or disclose your personal information, including the content of your communications, if Google is required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process or governmental request (such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order), or as otherwise provided in these Terms of Service and the general Google Privacy Policy. Personal information collected by Google may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Google Inc. or its agents maintain facilities. By using the Service, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country.

I'm not really a great fan of conspiracy theories, but any statement like this one is enough to get any thinking person worried. From my (presumably naive) perception of the world I'd say that this clause isn't that big a deal. It just releases Google to give the proper authoroties the information they may need to prosecute criminals or prevent crimes. But what if those proper authorities have agendas other than the great ideals of justice and righteousness.

Those authorities can then use a warrant or subpoena to force Google to give up information about someone for their own purposes.

And the way things are going, Google will eventually know everything about you. They'll have your mail (and chats), your personal thoughts, your schedule (besides your personal particulars if you were actually truthful when you first acquired your Google account). They might even have some of your financial information (though Big Brother could presumably get that from a proper institution like the revenue service) if you used Google Spreadsheets for your budget.

Then they might also have your notebook and some web pages you may have made (though that's not so bad since web pages are intended to be published anyway).

Oh well, I'll just use Googles stuff while the good times roll :-)

Nostalgia

The Extremist — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:18:00 +0000

I had promised myself that my blog would never come to this. It's not that I have nothing to write about, there's more than enough happening in the world and in my life, this just happens to be the most powerful. (I saw Crash for the first time last night, that was pretty powerful as well)

I went through the book I got all the guests at my 21st birthday to sign. You know the type. I'm not really one for such frilly stuff, but for my 21st I pulled out all stops: Posed for photos, sent around a guest book, everything ;-)

Anyway, it just got me wondering about the people that were once so important to me. People I would take the time to SMS, to call. It's not that I didn't have other things to do, I *made* time. It just seems as if things have changed, somehow. The amount of people that are now important to me have grown fewer. Not that the people who are at this party aren't still important to me, but they're obviously not important enough for me to make the effort to contact them anymore and I'm obviously not important enough to be contacted (so I don't feel too guilty about it -- I'm not the only one who's priorities have changed :-D).

I was just wondering out loud (or in 12pt monospace text in this case), as I was hoping that writing this down (and yes, I could have done it in a private text file, or in a journal, I don't know what brought me to blog it) would help me remember what I felt tonight.

A phone call once a week or once a month is maybe not what's required, but perhaps a call every time a wave of nostalgia hits me would be good. Maybe it'll remind us all about how good the good times were and how awesome it was to be as close as we were. And maybe some of my old friends will like knowing that we can still be friends even if we don't see one another or speak to one another nearly as often as we used to.

And maybe I'm just clinging to the past... Only after a few phone calls will I know if all this was worth it.

A time to kill...

The Extremist — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 20:05:00 +0000

A local newspaper, Beeld, ran an article today about the rape of a Belgian exchange student at a street party in Soweto on 13 August 2005. The article is available in English and Afrikaans.

Besides wondering what the hell a FOREIGN (hence exotic) beautiful white, blonde girl was doing at a street party in a township where many locals dare not tread, the article evoked a number of angry responses in me.

Two of the rapists (or more legally-correct 'defendants') pretend to be all helpful, showing her to a bathroom. Once she's finished, they grab her as she comes out and drag her to a house, where she begs and pleads with them to just take her valuables. And when she tries to discourage them from forcing themselves on her by explaining that she's a virgin, they only seemed to get more excited.

For those who don't know, I'm Christian, and the desire to see these four men dead (nay -- to execute them myself) is a powerful one. I can hear some of the more 'rational' of you out there right now: How can I be so brazen when these men have not been found guilty yet? The media often paint things to look a certain way -- we all know that.

Quite simply, I find it highly unlikely that a foreign exchange student will have consensual sex with a man she meets at a township street party. I find it even more unlikely that she'll do so with at least four other men in the room. And lastly, the police walked in during the third rape, quite literally, catching one of the men with his pants down (with the other 4 watching). And when the cops arrived, two of the men ran away. Not guilty? Try another one.

Then, just to ice the cake (pardon the clichés), this happened on 13 August 2005 and the trial continues TOMORROW (2 June 2006).

What could POSSIBLY be taking so long? They have police eye-witnesses, all the suspects in custody... Put these punks away so that THEY can get gang-raped in a nice, cozy, overfull prison cell.

Perhaps one day, God'll bring me to a place where I have the mercy in me to pray for these men's souls and for his peace and Love on the victim, but right now, I'd like for nothing more than to torture these men publicly...

Confused Juice

The Extremist — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:32:00 +0000

I could almost not stand from laughter when I saw this in the store, so I naturally had to buy a box. It's thoroughly terrible juice, but it was a great story to tell everyone.

Sorry... Not my problem.

The Extremist — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:30:00 +0000

Last week I listened to a lecture on moral responsibility in my ethics class (yes, I know it would seem that my last few entries have been about university, but this one just uses the lecture as a springboard. Promise...)

You see, they're trying to teach us all kinds of useful skills in ethics that we'll need when we become real-life engineers: when to say what to whom that you might escape blame (or that you may even be hailed as a hero), what's the least you can do and still get away with...

We were told of a case where a farmer built himself a dam, but unbeknownst to him, an old mine connected his dam to another man's land. When he filled his dam, the other man's land flooded, destroying whatever he had growing there. The courts (yes, they involved the bloody courts!) ruled that the man who built the dam was responsible for the damage, even though he had no way of knowing that there was an ancient connection between his land and the other man's.

I know I'm not the only human being on the planet who feels this way, but lately I've been wondering what's happened to people's sense of honour.

What did they need the courts for?

Whatever happened to: “Listen, I'm sorry man, I had no idea that the water could get to your land.”

“I understand, but listen: The crops I had planted there are ruined. Could you help me drain the land, plant new crops and maybe help me out with food til I can get back on my feet?”

“Yeah, sure.”

It's that bloody simple! But instead, it would seem, the modern translation to the last sentence is: “It's not my problem.”

Why is it that so many people nowadays need to be told what they are and are not responsible for? I can understand that the world will always have their one or two people that don't feel obligated to fix their own mistakes, but from where I'm sitting, the great majority of people need codes, documents, standards and authorities to tell them when they need to fix what they broke and when they're allowed to get away with it.

Mailing List spam

The Extremist — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:42:00 +0000

At first I marvelled at the naivete of some of my fellow students. Then I thought of giving them the benefit of the doubt – surely one can't expect that everyone knows or is familiar with the concept of a mailing list. But if you have the minimum requirements to gain entry to study an engineering degree, surely you can read?

Dozens of message variants reading similar to “who R u?” and “what's this about?” were answered by this message:

You received an email with the subject "Welcome to list MailingList" . In this email there is a notification about joining the mailing list and your login info.

Everyone on the list will receive an email from anyone sending a mail to the mailing list.

If you wish to unsubscribe go here ...

Messages similar to this one were posted on no less than 3 occasions by other users to the new (badly managed) list. There was even a case were someone posted an explanation to the above message for some users, and yet the ignorant remained ignorant. One guy even posted

e fotshek i dont know u and i have never send u any messages, u dont wanna fuck with, im gonna kill u.kgothatso deman

after 60 messages have already been sent to the list. One whose subject is “This is what's going on.” I hope he can put his money where his mouth is, because he signed his name to a death threat visible to the whole engineering group at the university.

The ignorance of the students, however, is less troubling than the idiocy of the moderators. Who creates a list for 2000+ students and gives them all permission to post to it?

I suppose I could thank them... It was a highly entertaining start to the week.

3 Strikes

The Extremist — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:08:00 +0000

I'm not one for politics...
I'm also one that realises that closing your eyes is as likely to make the problem go away as sticking your head in the sand will hide you.

Last year, disgruntled workers brought SAA (South African Airlines) to its knees by striking for a week -- depriving the company of R100 - R150 million worth of revenue. I don't know if the airline came close to shutting its doors for good, but I know there was a stage where we speculated that it may never recover from the loss.

I wondered if the brainless mass realised that if their 'demonstration of power' forced their employer to close its doors, that they would be jobless, never mind the increase that SAA refused to give its workers (initially). While striking may be a good way to make your point, did anyone at the unions tell the workers that it may be self-defeating: If SAA doesn't have the money to increase the salaries of all its employees, it doesn't have the money. Simple. It hardly runs at a loss, but to keep investors happy, a reasonable margin of profit must be maintained. While I'm sure SAA doesn't want to go bust due to a strike, it might also not want to increase the salaries of all its employees as it just might have the same outcome.

I also wonder if the masses are incited by the unions to serve the agendas of the union leaders...

Now South Africa's parastatal transport provider, Transnet, is restructuring (they call it 'transformation'), and in order to prove that they have the larger penises, the unions have called for a strike to (and I quote)

"...bring commuter transport, freight export lines, business units and subsidiaries, including SAA, to a complete standstill for 24 hours."

I understand that people are worried about their jobs, yet it would seem the greater part of the South African workforce have not grasped the concept of short-term loss for long-term gain. All people care about is the here and now: How they are going to feed themselves, put fuel in their car or provide for their families. I also don't advocate change (or progress) for the sake of change (or progress), but the restructuring plan Transnet's proposed can really help this country. The public transportation infrastructure is in a shocking state and something needs to be done about it...

The irony of it all is that no news broadcaster in this country reported the massive loss of revenue due to untransported goods or planes that could not leave the ground. Today, all I saw where the working class black men and women stuck without rail transport. School children without a way to school. The mob that follows their unions so blindly are hurting their own more than they're making their point right now.

I should never be allowed to rule: Some idiot must threaten to destabilise my country. I'll dare him to, and remind him that if he succeeds in knocking the economy out of whack, he and his cronies will be the first to feel the financial squeeze when corrective measures need to be taken.

The price of Justice

The Extremist — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:58:00 +0000

This is a very long story, which could get very boring, so I'm going to tell it in its abridge form as much as I can.

On the evening of 15 December 2005, a young man reversed a delivery truck into my car. We exchanged details, but I allowed the young man's mother to give me her details rather than insisting on having the driver's details. I was informed that they had insurance, but didn't have the presence of mind to ask for their residential address.

The trouble started the very next day. It became evident that the accident had caused much greater damage than first anticipated: My car was overheating, and only when I took it to a mechanic the following day was it confirmed that my radiator had been damaged in the accident. After my girlfriend finally got hold of the driver's mother in order to obtain her son's particulars to fill in an accident report and not receiving the details as promised, the mother said that she would rather leave insurance out of it.

Many telephone conversations later (and even a trip to the mechanic's shop on the part of the driver's mother), and I have still received no money to repair my car. I paid the account for my radiator out of my own pocket eventually, and the damage to my bumper and grill has not been repaired.

Finally, after one last phone call things got ugly, I managed to track down the owner of the vehicle instrumental in the accident, got some information from him and went to enquire about legal aid at the university I attend. There I seemed to be getting somewhere, until a senior advocate informed the law students that were working with me that because my father technically owns the car (even though I maintain and drive it and my mom insures it), he has to institute the claim, which means that the university legal aid probably won't consider my case. But its all up in the air for the moment... Again.

You see, no-one is able to tell you anything about what it costs to take someone to small claims court. What does a summons cost? What does it cost to track down the woman and her son (because they're currently busy moving)? The amount of money they owe me is trivial in comparison to the typical costs of a court case.

I'm disillusioned. The law is there to protect the upright, provided the upright can foot the bill, or have a sufficiently lucrative case that those involved in aiding the upright may be compensated.

I'm not against lawyers making money. I too, am a professional in training. I too would like to make silly money after my 4 years of study (for decent work, of course). I understand that they can't work for free, but there just seems to be no system in place for people in South Africa to take on people that owe them less than R10 000.

The fact is, without the money I'm owed, I can't fix the cosmetic damage to my car (for awhile at least). But in this system, is it worth the effort, the emotional energy and worst of all, the money, to seek justice?

Two places at the same time

The Extremist — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 08:50:00 +0000

I have recently returned to using Opera as my browser of choice (thanks to the wiles of Nerosis: he is yet to post in the linked blog) and in so doing discovered my.opera.co.za. Opera also offers a blogging service, but what makes it unique is that it allows you to import your existing Blogger blog.

I attempted posting to this blog via the Opera front end, but alas, it didn't propagate to my blog at Blogger. So I'm posting this entry via Blogger, have turned off commenting on the Opera site and will add a link on my Opera blog to here.

Still, promising, yet a little disconcering how completely Google is taking over the world (or web, at least).

Templates

The Extremist — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:38:00 +0000

I selected the theme of my blog for the same reason I chose the template for Chaos: I despise fixed-width templates. I want something that uses as much of my screen real-estate as possible.

Anyway, I was going home...

Flooded

The Extremist — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:18:00 +0000

I'm doing vacation work for credit towards my degree (as well as the bucks, of course). Since I want to try and maintain some form of anonymity (hence the obscure picture of myself in my profile), I'm not going to disclose where I work.

I've been wondering for awhile now how personal I could be in my writing if I refused to give information about my age, race, exact location or place of study. So I reckon I'm going to try it, and see how far I get:

Back to my story. In short, the parking garage flooded, forcing most of us to run down to save our cars before they were swept away. It's amazing how surprised you are, even when you've prepared yourself for action, when water comes streaming into the lift when the doors open. Wading through shin-high, muck-like water to your vehicle certainly adds a different dimension to ones day if you expected to be parked in front of a computer for 8 or 9 hours.

That said, its home-time :-)

The first post: A Musical

The Extremist — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 22:48:00 +0000

I had the pleasure of seeing a local band, SciCoustic, in action on Wednesday. I also had the misfortune to see some band (who are obviously famous -- I just haven't heard of them) performing via the broadcast of the Nelson Mandela 46664 Arctic Concert held in Norway. They looked older than the guys from SciCoustic, so arguably, they did the funky electric guitar whining effects and bongo percussion long before SciCoustic had conceived it.

What struck me, is that SciCoustic consisted of better musicians, yet they weren't playing at 46664, they weren't famous enough. I may sound like some fanboy, but this particular band at 46664 Arctic had nothing on SciCoustic. I've seen SciCoustic perform a few time in various locations (ranging from grungy basement clubs to rasta restaurants) and they've consistently delivered brilliant performances (so the one I saw on Wednesday wasn't anomalous).

The percussionist/didge player is a monster! Not only does he play that didge constantly for 10-15 minutes at a time, he could often be found playing the bongos while playing the didge. The drummer is amazing, the lead guitarist capable of playing solos in the styles of Hendrix or Santana as well as simply supplementing the acoustic guitar with a few choice effects. Most people wouldn't notice the bassist until his solo... When you realise that he's as skilled and talented as the other musicians. The singer/rhythm guitarist (the acoustic guitar) can pick a mean riff while pitching complex melodies.

The most depressing thing: They make it look easy. These guys have so much fun on stage its contagious.

It's just not right that these guys haven't made it internationally yet. It's not right that some international band that can't hold a match, let alone a candle, to SciCoustic should get to play 46664 because they're a name. As my brother so articulately said: Albert doesn't even have to sing... One could just stand there and watch their musicianship all night.