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

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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.

Why do we still get shafted?

I am really getting sick and tired of the companies that, for some reason I am still loyal to, screwing us over every chance they get. Surely with online shopping opening the world to the consumer they would be a bit more cautious?

Why the rant?

Let me tell you...

Yesterday I was killing time in Exclusive Books (computer books section) when I found this book.

After paging through it I glanced at the price and felt a little spasm in my eye. R554.00! This for a book with only 360 pages and very few illustrations... or colour for that matter. I assumed that it was probably one of those special out of print limited edition printed on the paper from the ashes of the author after he died books. Turns out it isn't.

A little online shopping revealed the following:

www.take2.co.za:  R382.00 - shipping included.


Buying the book directly from the publiser(O'reilly)  will cost you $59.73 (Priority Air Mail shipping included). This means that for R455.41 (conversion from XE.com at the time) I can have the book delivered to me  - from experience ussualy within 10 days. But wait, there is more, I can also choose another book free of charge and the shipping cost won't change. If I can get that deal buying one - surely our friendly local distributor receive a bulk discount also? hmmmm....

Let's dig a little deeper.

The sticker on the back of the book reveals the local distrubutor is Intersoft (www.intersoft.co.za).

If I buy the book from them it will cost me R 349.97.

Much less than the price of importing it myself. So they do get a bulk discount....hmmm.


In other words the Exclusive books markup, if we assume they dont get a bulk discount, is R204.03 per book ... hmmmm

I know they have to pay the rent but they might want to keep in mind that it is far more convenient to shop from my PC than to sit through the waste of time called shopping at the mall (traffic, parking, attendants - i could do another rant on this too).

and on that note. If you want to argue that I pay for the conveneince of not having to wait. For an additional $4.00 (R30.00 - still cheaper than buying at store) I can download the ebook version (about 5 mins download time) meaning I can happily read it on my Ipod, PC, laptop or cellphone while I wait for the delivery.


I am turning my back on you EB, our friendship is over...

Special relativity proven

As I understand it the Theory of special relativity states that as something moves faster time slows down around it. I have proven this beyond any doubt.

The faster you run on a treadmill the longer time stretches. At a full jog 5 minutes will stretch to infinity.

Strange things happpen in this temporal anomaly. Vision turns red, your lungs fall out of your body and your legs turn to jelly. In extreme cases you will lose all control of bodily functions...

The days we thought would last forever

First I need to give credit where it is due. My writing of this blog and some of the conventions is inspired by the Ginga Ninja, a dear friend who started a chronicle of her diet and social adventures. Very funny.

In my humble opinion my life is currently extremely tedious and not really anything to write about but today, sitting in traffic thinking about friends that have come and gone (some of them in the process of going) I had one of those moments of reminiscing and realised that while I may not have anything of note to report at the moment (hoping to change that) I do have some great past adventures that I would love to share. Some were those moments that still have you in stitches when you recall it, some you had to be there and some are just dear to me.

 One of the memories most dear to me includes an old friend of mine. I shall refer to him as The lawyer.

It was the last night of 1996. White people were coming out their bunkers after:

A)    They realised the dreaded 1994 uprising was not going to happen.

B)    They ran out of canned food.

Roxette was big again after releasing their Hits CD, everyone was dancing the Macarena, Tom Cruise was screaming “Show me the money” and the Fresh Prince was chasing aliens.

We were on a game farm near Hoedspruit and being teenagers we were not going to go into 1997 sitting in the middle of nowhere. After some deliberation we decided we would go to Swadini (Still Aventura in those days – anyone remember Overvaal Resorts?). We commandeered one of the cars, with permission, and took an ice cold bottle of 5^th Avenue Cold Duck Champagne, without permission. I assume the grown-ups wondered about that one later.

Thinking back the deliberations went on longer than expected because the time was on the later side of 23:00 and we had some distance to go. We arrived at the gates at around 23:30 (there is no traffic in Hoedspruit at midnight) only to be told that the gates closed at 19:00 and that there is no way we would get in unless we had a reservation – which we had not.

So our options were:

·         Go back to camp.

·         Go to Fort Kapiba – a no fly zone for anyone not carrying a gun or who was an easy target for anyone wishing to pick a fight. We qualified on both accounts.

Back to camp then! We tried some low flying to make sure we make it in time but halfway realised we weren’t going to make it. When the countdown started on the radio we slammed on the brakes and with the dust still settling jumped out of the car to open the champagne. We were on a tarred road in the middle of nowhere and by now the 5th avenue Cold Duck had turned into 5th avenue Warm Duck

The corked popped on cue and everyone took swigs and exchanged hugs and kisses. I may need to point out at this stage that there were in fact girls too.

After a while it was getting a bit cold and the girls opted to sit in the car while The Lawyer and I figured out the asphalt was still warm from baking in the sun all day.

We lay down on the road and look up at the most breathtaking sky. Thousands of stars were glittering in a moonless sky as clear as crystal. It felt as if there was no end to it and lying there we felt small and insignificant, yet looking at the vastness of space above us there were moments when it felt like you can almost grasp your place in the big scheme of things.

It might have been fatigue, the magic of the moment or even the 5^th avenue Warm Duck but to this day no starlit night has touched me quite like that one.

Lying on the warm tar in the middle of nowhere turned out to be one of the best New Years evenings ever.. apart from the one when I kissed my wife the first time.. but that is another story.

Windows Shortcuts - some usefull keyboard shortcuts

Original Blog where I found it here

 Use the Windows  Key

The Windows key is the one with the Windows logo located  between the     and keys on the left side of the keyboard.

Windows Key	Start Menu
Windows Key + E	Windows Explorer
Windows  Key + F	Find
Windows Key + D	Minimize  all windows
Windows Key + D	Expand windows
Windows Key + R	Run
Windows Key + L	Lock  Computer
Windows Key + M	Minimize all windows  (but it will not maximize them)
Windows Key + Pause	System  properties
Windows Key + Tab	Cycle through  the buttons on the taskbar
Windows Key + U	Launch  the Utility Manager
Windows Key + Ctrl + F	Launch  Search for Computers
Windows Key + F1	Launch  the Help and Support Center

Keyboard  Shortcuts

These shortcuts work in almost any Windows  application.
 

Ctrl+C	Copy to  clipboard
Ctrl+N	New
Ctrl+O	Open
Ctrl+P	Print
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+V	Paste
Ctrl+X	Cut to  clipboard
Ctrl+Y	Redo
Ctrl+Z	Undo  ( this is a single undo)

Other Ctrl and  Alt Combinations

 

Alt + Tab	Toggle  between open applications (see below)
Ctrl + Tab	Toggle  between open documents (not all applications support this)
Alt  + F4	Close current application
Ctrl + F4	Close  current document

The fantastic Pagoda

I watched an extremely interesting lecture on Autodesk University Online regarding the use of Revit in the film industry. One of the things shown in the lecture was a beautiful pagoda designed for the Fantastic 4 sequel.

Surprised by the incredible amount of detail I decided to try one myself. So – of to Google for research. 

The screenshots I took from the video were extremely low quality so I decided to become familiar with the construction techniques to help me extraploate the design from the screenshots. There is surprisingly little info on this but I  found a few interesting views of the roof construction of pagodas:

So to start of I built the main structure as a family.

and refine it a little...

The idea at this stage was to array this inside a new project and the model additional features as families before importing them. The problem with this is it left me with no reference when I created a new family.

I decided to build a wedge piece as a family as this would give me easier control and access to the inner workings of the model.

By arraying two structure pieces I now had a wedge that I could use as a reference to build the other pieces. Once a piece was build I saved the file, deleted everything except that peice and then saved it as a new family. This meant I ended up with all the pieces as seperate families that were at correct positions and heights that I could import into the main project.

getting interesting...

Added roofs

and doors 

 

and when you put them together you get...

This is a cutaway of the model after I arrayed the fasmily insode a new project.

And the final model:

There are still a few things I would like to change like the roofs. The first time round it gave me endless headaches so I was just too glad when it finally looked like something presentable. Now that I understand how to do it I will try again and this round put more time into refining it. So far I am happy with the results.

Deskpins - when you need to be on top!

I found another great little app. At first you can't really see why you might need it but once you used it you can't imagine life without it.

If you actually use all those processors in your PC every now and then for multitasking you might have run into the situation where you wish one window would stay on top of the others. Maybe doing research and you have to minimise and maximise between your browser and word processor... or maybe you would just like to watch that bootleg movie in the corner while crunching data in your spreadsheets.

Well - you need Deskpins  a free application for windows.

Once installed you can run it and it will sit in taskbar.

To pin a window you just click on the icon and on any open window and it will be pinned to be always on top.

So simple you would think Microsoft would build that function into their windows...

Gather your friends together (software)

If like me you make extensive use of IM (instant messaging) you will know that it can became quite a daunting  task to stay connected to everyone and keep track of all the apps running in your taskbar.  Well, we all have our preferences. I love Skype, some prefer Gmail, for some reason some use yahoo (like friends in Dubai where Skype is blocked) and then there are a) the fringe nerds who use apps like Miranda and b) the cultists that still use IRC messaging  (I’m one of them so I can sling the mud). 

After searching around for some way to consolidate this into one I found this wonderful app:

Pidgin  

With Pidgin you can connect to all of these accounts in one application – even twitter and facebook messaging – all in one convenient window. You can even have pidgin update your availability on all your accounts with one click.

As far as I know Pidgin does not yet fully support Skype (still my no 1 choice) but having two apps run in the taskbar instead of five is still a + in my book. 

Here is a list of networks supported by Pidgin:

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC
• MSN
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

 and additional ones with plugins:

MXit
Xfire
Skype IM
Facebook IM
Microblog
msn-pecan
SIPE
Netsoul
Rediffbol
CyanChat
Twitter Protocol
WinMX Peer Network
NateOn
Tlen.pl
Mail.ru Agent

IPAD

hehehehe

seems I am a blogger now

From tuesday this blog will be the sister...or...uhm...brother blog to the Ginger Ninja blog while we report on the Design Indaba. I will report my thoughts on the speakers and she will probably check out the men while chewing on the garnishes because everything else contains meat.

Hopefully somewhere along the line we will both have similar opinions...on the speakers..not the men...