Is good technology bad for us?

So this week we kick of with a new course for the 1st years called, very creatively, Computer Applications. Unlike the courses I teach to 2nd and 3rd year students called ,very creatively, Computer Applications, this one does not focus on a specific specialised application but rather basic computer usage. So why do we have to teach children growing up with computers to use computers I hear you ask. Good question, I do not know exactly the right answer but I will share my observations over the past 3-4 years with you and why I suggested this course.

I have noticed increasingly that the students are doing very stupid things on their PC's and Macs. Ironically while I was typing this another case walked into my office for help. I will use him as an example of what I mean by "stupid". First, these kids are not stupid, they are very bright in fact which makes this more baffling.

This one was downloading files (read - torrent) and received a message that he was running out of disk space. So he decided to makes some space..by moving (thankfully not deleting) his Program Files folder to another disk. Mayhem ensued...

This is not the only case, I have had deleted page files, deleted Windows folders, installations directly onto an external harddrive and one who installed everything directly on C:\ drive..no folders.

So why would these kids who grow up with this technology have no clue? The answer dawned on me while I was reading City of Ember, a book meant for a younger audience than me but still a fun story. In this story people were trapped in a city underground where everything was failing and they had no idea how to fix it.

I then realised that I am in the same boat...or car rather. I can drive, I have made enough small accidents to be a carefull driver. I know what the clutch, the brakes etc does. in theory I know how this works but when that engine stops working I am as clueless as a grasshopper, yet my father was able to fix most issues by himself. I am using technology without understanding how to fix it. The earlier generations also had cars, but like them it is an older technology. It broke, frequently. If you owned a car at some point you had to figure out how stuff works or learn if you did not want to spend most of your time waiting walking to the nearest civilisation to make a call. Over the years the technology improved and not it hardly breaks..in theory. I have had 3 major breakdowns in my whole life. The first time the exhaust broke loose underneath the car and I had to fix it with whatever I could get my hands on. The other two times the AA was at hand to help. In all my years of driving I have therefore learned that some things will not hold an exhaust and that the exhaust is damn hot after 300km's, thus not much.

With computers on the other hand I had my first when it was still relatively new consumer tech. It broke, frequently. I had to learn how to fix it, how to maintain it and how to optimise it just to use it. I learned at a young age that deleting the root was a bad idea, why a hard drive and RAM are two different things (I only had a PC with a hard drive when I was 14) and that renaming the file sequence would cause ladies in my strip poker game to start naked and put on clothes when they win. (necessity breads creativity)

These days the kids coming into my classes have never worked on a PC without a mouse, never worked on a command line and have a built in wizard to fix any issue. Network down? Let Windows fix it for you. The only good thing is they never had to endure the Jar Jar Binks of Microsoft Office..Clippy!

So our problem is that the technology is working so well that very few have learnt what goes on behind the scenes, let alone fix it. This information would not be important if it was not for the fact that growing up with the technology means that they are not afraid of it anymore. The do not believe that deleting the wrong things will cause the screen to blow up anymore so they go ahead and delete..and then blow up the OS.

So we will teach them the basics:

• Why downloads can be bad.
• Why you need t uninstall instead of just deleting.
• Why deleting will not cure the "Insufficient memory" error.
• Why the Windows folder needs to stay where it is.
• Why I accidentally say directory instead of folder
• Why installing that toolbar in IE can be a bad idea.
• Why your 2Gb cellC cap was gone in 10 mins (think bittorrent and gnutella)
• Why backing up is not such a bad idea
• What exactly is that IP thingy..and so on.

and hopefully I will not have a student coming to me again with "My MS Office doing weird stuff so my boyfriend formatted my laptop but now I cant find my projects".

Fingers crossed...

Kowloon - Life in darkness

Kowloon city is onther one of my favourites and incidentally, just like Pripiyat, a location in the COD franchise. It would seem that I share some interests with one of the location scouts from Treyarch.

Here is a model of Kowloon Walled city

So back to Kowloon. A short background...

Back in the 1890's the British, being the British, wrestled the Kowloon Peninsula from the Chinese and signed a 99 year "concession agreement", and promptly turned it into a tourist attraction. WW2 threw a spanner in the works and the Vietnamese turned the place into an airfield as soon as the last Brits left the area. WW2 ended and squatters moved in. There were three attempts to remove them but we know so well in this country squatters are masters at being martyrs and getting the ones not affected by them up in arms over their removal. So to sidestep a diplomatic incident the Brittish left them to their own lot. Now it becomes interesting. The British did not want to have anything to do with these squatters and how they lived, the Chinese were not allowed to do anything since the land officially belonged to the British and therefore it was  not in their jurisdiction. To put it in context for South Africans. It is the equivalent of the V&A Waterfront belonging to another country and..oh wait..

anyyyyywaay.,, pretty soon this squatter camp grew into the densest populated area on earth, 35000 people in an area the size of a few city blocks, drawing the criminals, entrepreneurs and the desperate into a place that had no law.

Extract from this site:

"But even as the buildings practically merge into one monolithic labyrinth, people manage to build a life in the Walled City. The communities work out basic rules to prevent fires, sink over 70 wells or tap into city supplies to get water (Hong Kong ends up providing it), set height limits on the buildings to prevent trouble with the nearby airport and establish volunteer groups to keep some basic order.

But this is still a lawless place. Driven from mainland China, the Triads set up shop and start living like kings, while Hong Kong’s upper crust comes in for the sex, drugs and gambling. The gangsters end up lording it over the inhabitants until 3,000 raids by the Hong Kong police in the 1970s clear most of them out (though it leaves the city ungoverned as ever)."

After the 99 years elapsed 20 odd years ago the Chinese moved in and demolished the whole place.

Anarchists all over the world were upset as this was, to them anyway, a living example of how people could live together without laws piled on, conveniently forgetting that it was only because of intervention of the law. I am not going to go into the semantics of self governed and enclosed societies, this author does a very good job being noble and obnoxious, but, having said that, there are some very interesting angles in this type of living that does warrant exploration. Kevin McCloud does a very good job doing just that in his documentary Slumming it. Really worth watching.

Because of the secretive nature and distrust of outsider there are very few good pictures available.
I did try to get my hands on the book City of Darkness - Life in Kowloon city but found it ridiculously expensive so if anyone wants to make a note.. my birthday is coming up.


A great article can be found here


Here are the pics:

and to top it off...

here is the Muscles from Brussels himself in Kowloon  - a scene from Bloodsport.

Edit(23/03/2011): Found a very good article with video footage here.cross sections of the structure showing how it organically grew into a monolith, blurring the lines between separate structures.

Here are some 

Click on the image for a large version.

Beautiful Desolation

I have always been captivated by the image of ruins. There is something hauntingly beautiful in the image of a human construction standing empty when it should be bursting with life and activity.

Many a evening have been whiled away staring at my PC screen when I accidentally find a link to images of abandoned buildings, ship skeletons or ancient ruined cities and the fascination is so strong, the pull so compelling that I have often wondered about this.

I pondered, analysed and debated. You have to think about something when driving..and I have a long daily commute.

To my  amazement and somewhat humiliation I had to admit that the fascination was very similar to that felt when seeing erotic advertising.

I think for me it is a similar kick most men find from seeing a suggestion of the female form. Not porn. Porn is crass and to the point. Erotic photography on the other hand, now there is something that can keep the male mind busy for hours. It is mental flirtation, an intellectual fantasy.

It is the suggestion that is also the fascination, show me a subtly lit shoulder  and the mind will fill in the blanks, tracing all the curves and constructing the face . In many cases the fantasy is so much more alluring than the reality and this is what grips the mind and pushes the imagination into overdrive.  No wonder the ads work.

So back to the ruins. When I see these empty images my imagination tries to reconstruct the lives that should have been in the image, children that should be playing and people moving and working. I think it is the potential of life that is lacking that makes these images so captivating,  the undercurrent of disturbing emotions at seeing the decay glossed over by the imagination with what could have been.

I will be posting some of my favourites starting with a very famous one: Prypyat.

Everyone knows the Chernobyl story, well Pripyat was the town that was affected.

The reactor

one of my favourites - the swimming pool

The following images can be found in their original location here:

http://villageofjoy.com/chernobyl-today-a-creepy-story-told-in-pictures/

The community centre - yes COD players - that one:

These images are barely a drop in the bucket as you can see here and if you want to explore via Google maps

you can go here

My Vice

A while ago someone was discussing all his vices with me and I thought to myself  "I am so glad I don't have vices like that, I am so awesome".

And then on my way home it hit me... I do have one..and it is expensive.

I have...

• An iPod touch
• an mp3 player
• iPod nano..touch (well, bought it for my wife but still)
• A Samsung galaxy S
• An xperia x1 flashed and reloaded
• nokias and sonys in a box in the cupboard

• A monster PC with two screens
• A home server with enough juice to actually run games
• 4 laptops because one operating system just isn't enough. One with Win 7, one with Ubuntu, one with centos and one loaded as a clearOS server

• a menagerie of PC peripherals that totals an obscene amount (pen tablets, game controllers etc)
• a GPS

I could go on...

and I still want the Galaxy tab and an iPad, just as soon as I can find a reason to justify it.

In short, I am a gadget geek

Venus of Willendorf and the voluptuous female shape

A quick background:
In my first year Art history class I was introduced to the Venus of Willendorf figurine by Prof Duffy (bow tie and all - the type of character you find only in Charles Dickens novels).

I was completely fascinated by this little statue. Not by the exquisite detail or the skill, but by the fact that someone took the time to carve that shape out of stone. To spend that much time means you are either unemployed or it must be something so important or close to your heart that you would take the time to do it.

What I could not fathom is how someone could be so fascinated by that shape.

In the words of Allan Comittee "She was the Britney Spears of her time, literally the first rock star".
Quite a statement and it would explain the fascination and obsession required to carve the figure yet, if we have a look you might notice she is not exactly the body type we worship these days:

A body shape like that will never be on the cover of anything else than "Archaeology Monthly" or "Artifact Digest" yet in her time she would have been the equivalent of Charlise Theron. Huisgenoot would do a sob story on her horrible life and subsequent discovery, FHM would have her posing on a horse, PC format would have her holding a RAM chip and Time magazine would put her on the backpage wearing a diamond encrusted Raymond Weil watch - although in her time the diamond would still be a lump of coal.

So exactly how much did things change?

A few years ago my wife was lying on the couch and as I walked by I commented that she reminds me of Manet's Olympia. It was suppose to be a compliment but oh my, did that backfire!

I received a very angry message the next day after she researched it asking me if I really thought she was so overweight. 

Here is Olympia: (My wife was clothed if you were wondering)

I still think she is beautiful and yes I know she was most probably a prostitute, but why spoil a good compliment with the facts.

Little things like these stuck in my head and all the while I wondered in fascination how anyone could love the voluptous shape of the venus figurine.

Now I am going to  slowly wade into very murky and dangerous waters. 

Disclaimer:

"To Yvette, my lover, friend and all round awesome wife, if you read this understand that it is in no way a comment on weight. I urge you to read, and keep all opinions, in context. 

I understand and acknowledge that the following might result in a ban from the bedroom and I will move my sleeping bag to the couch in the event of such ban."

January this year I found out I am going to be a daddy. We are entering the 2nd trimester now and the baby bump is starting to show. The pregnant female form has never been very appealing to me and yet, when I noticed the bump for the first time something must have switched in my brain because I don't think she's ever been more beautiful and appealing than now... and the further she grows the better it gets.

For the first time I understood the love for the voluptuous figurine and suddenly Prof Duffy's explanation of fertility symbols made sense. It wasn't the figure per se, but what it represented that was so lovingly captured by that artist. In my head he was also a daddy, watching his little one grow and his wife become more radiant everday.

I now understand and feel a kinship with that artist stretching back to 22,000 BCE.

For the first time Venus of Willendorf looks, well... damn hot.

On PC's and Mac's - still dont get it

This is an old post from a previous blog so I decided to move it here since it became relevant again after a conversation with a colleague

"
After spending a whole weekend installing software on the ibooks I must admit I was impressed with the operating system and overall aesthetic of the iBook so when the opportunity presented itself I went into the Apple store to ask someone tell me more and explain to me why I should pay R16 000.00 when I can buy the same spec PC for R11 000.00.

I spotted a person, looking suspiciously like the "PC Guy" from the Apple ads wearing a black shirt with the wording "Switch'er - someone who just woke up from a dark PC coma" or some similar nonsense. Thinking that obviously this would be the person to convince me I approached him and listened to the whole sales pitch. I mentioned I'm a PC user and of course he wanted to know why. I explained that the software I use is only available for PC and I would therefore probably never switch.

At this point I could see sinister lights flaring in his eyes and realised I just gave him the hook and bait with which to catch me.

In a smug voice he proclaimed "But Windows runs on Mac!” "But surely it's a special version of windows - I need DirectX etc so it must be the true PC version of Windows" I countered with.

He was like a gunslinger. Without hesitation he hit me with his reply, "It runs on Intel - it is the exact same hardware and therefore the same software - you have no excuses left"

I stood in dazed confusion waiting for the dust to settle. I slowly patted the dust of my clothes and looked up at him.

"Let me get this straight - you want me to buy the same PC with the same hardware as the above mentioned one, all neatly camouflaged in an Apple shell for an additional R4000.00.?"

"Yes, but this one is smaller and thinner" he retorted.

I was dumbfounded, "you mean you actually give me a smaller screen, take about 10mm from the height and then charge R4000.00 more?

His answer? "Sorry Sir, I'm actually one of the technicians and not a sales person - let me call one for you".

Mac users - it seems you will fall for any sales pitch as long as it sounds cool. Don’t you think it should be concerning when a company selling a product invented to increase productivity concentrates its marketing on the aesthetics and "coolness" of their product?

Seriously - I don’t get it..."

Getting a license in the Eastern Cape must be a breeze

I have always maintained that the worst drivers in our country are the ones with an EC number plate. They seem to just have that special mix of ignorance and incompetence.

Next time you are out on the highway have a look. 

The car driving in the middle of two lanes - EC.

The car changing  4 lanes in Bacchleugh peak traffic without using the indicator once - EC

The little hatch taking up two parking spots - EC

The car coming straight at you up the one way -EC

The car going 55kmh in the fast lane through Midrand listening to David Kramer - EC

I could go on...

 When you see an EC plate - keep a very safe following distance.

I decided however to start recording evidence as to justify my claims.

Here is the first one:

The one person who made it next to impossible for everyone to use the entrance at the Open Day(while there was ample parking inside)

 

Check the number plate.