Police Update...

Today at 14:00 the inspector that is looking at our case gave me a call.
He said about 30 minutes before our burglary another house was burgled close by. He thinks that they are related. I gave him some more information that I got from the neighbor and the landlord and he said that they will look into it more tomorrow. He will give me a call when he has more information.
I really appreciated that he took the time to give me a call on a Sunday afternoon.

We were talking about crime in general last night at a friend's house warming. It was actually sickening to think that here in South Africa we have been conditioned to the crime in such a way that we are just glad that nothing happened to us. We almost take the crime for granted. I am really starting to wonder how this compares to the rest of the world.
We don't see anything about the "petty" crimes in the news local or abroad, so how bad is it really everywhere else?

The really scary thing is that almost everyone you know in South Africa has been affected by crime in some way or another. We have had at least 3 break-ins at our office over the years. We just beef up the security every time.

Got Robbed. Part 2

The Finger print people were here now. They checked the doors and anything where we thought the person might have tried to look for things to steal, but no fingerprints were found.

The neighbor says that he suspects a white guy that may live in one of the houses in the street behind ours, standing empty. There are 2 houses that has been standing empty for couple of months already.

Just got robbed!!!

I woke this morning at 5:55 with someone bumping into a small table. I thought it was my girlfriend going to the bathroom, but then I saw she was still lying next to me. So I kept quiet and watched the person walk slowly past the bed to the bathroom. The person switched the light on, went in and closed the door. I woke my Girlfriend and told her to get out of the house immediately.
As soon as we got out of the house I called 112 the Vodacom emergency service and explained my situation. They said they would send someone. The person was still in the house at that stage.
Nothing happened for 20 minutes. I called the Police directly and explained my situation again. They said that they would send someone. We checked the back of the flat and found my wallet, my girlfriend's bag and a lot of other stuff that was thrown there. So the person had left. Another 15 minutes passed with me standing on the cold. The Police van stopped in the driveway with about 7 officers. It was the van that drops the off-duty officers at home after a shift change. I explained that the person must have left the house. They drove off to see if they could find the person in the area.

Another 20 minutes passed and 2 officers arrived. They looked through the flat, took our details and opened a docket. We could now asses that they took my Work backpack which contained my Digital Camera and as well as my Girlfriends Laptop. The Samsung laptop is useless to them since it doesn't have a working battery and they left the power cord. Then it has a BIOS password set and even then it is German laptop with German Windows. It is basically useless to anyone else, but her research results of 4 years hard work are stored on it. If anyone finds such a laptop or my Konica Minolta A200 with a camera bag and other accessories PLEASE contact us, leave a comment on the blog or contact the police. There will be a generous reward if the laptop/data can be recovered!

Edit: 2006-07-29 08:49
Do you know that they even took my girlfriend's toothbrush. The TOOTHBRUSH. No cash. My wallet was emptied, but I had no cash in it and my girlfriend's wallet was not touched and it had cash in. No cards taken.

What do we do now?

Edit: 2006-07-29 08:49
We found that he didn't take my digital camera battery charger, but he took my cellphone charger.

Why does windows suck so much?

I have found a brilliant little freeware application to add watermarks to my photos. It is called FastStone Photo Resizer.

I have a very nice picture of the moon setting over Tablemountain. Got this the other morning before leaving for work.

But talking about work, one of my colleagues started a list of his reasons he doesn't understand Windows. ( and doesn't like it)

I got his permission to put this online and get some more feedback.
Here is his list:


FTP via Explorer

Copy 13KB of files over a 64kbit link (7KB per second).
Should take 2-3 seconds to copy the files.

Explorer pops up a window saying "Calculating time to transfer files"
This takes 5 seconds.

Then it pops up the copy dialog, with 20 seconds remaining
at the bottom. Copy takes 2 seconds.

Explorer spent more time working out how long it's going to take,
and still gets it wrong.

---------------------
Microsoft Outlook brings up an unknown error. The Operating System,
E-mail client and Mail Server are all written by the same company. There
is no component in the whole configuration which is not by Microsoft. But
the applications still don't know what's going on.

---------------------
When you synchronize to an NTP server, it brings up a message saying it got
the correct time from the server, but the time displayed as the time of the
message is still the wrong time. If they get the correct time, why not use it?

---------------------
I have a removable drive. When I've finished copying files on to it in the
afternoon, I uninstall it from Windows and take it out. The following morning,
a message window pops up, saying Windows was unable to write to E:\Mft$ (which is
God knows what). Why not write everything when the device is uninstalled? Why
wait hours to figure it out? What is E:\Mft$?

---------------------
.NET Terrarium is a DotNET terrarium simulation. I thought it would be wonderful
to try out, and consequently learn C#. The Dotnet installer blue-screens my Windows
2000 Pro. I tried this twice. After the second time, it worked. Now I have a Firewall
message popping up every once in a while that Terrarium was unable to connect to a
Terrarium server. Why is the client running when I don't want it to. Then I noticed that
I have a new Terrarium screen saver, which I don't want. That's what's trying to phone
home to Microsoft. My screen saver.

---------------------
Microsoft Outlook sometimes spends hours synchronizing. It delays reminders. I've seen
reminders pop up 5 HOURS after the meeting, and I didn't even know there was a problem.

---------------------
Microsoft Outlook Express - You notice that you're low on space, so you select a bunch of
e-mails and press delete. Outlook Express promptly tells that you it didn't have enough space
to delete the items, but maybe I'm expecting too much.

On a similar note, you can run out of space when moving items from one folder to another,
because it first copies the whole lot to the new folder, and then afterwards deletes the
old ones.

---------------------
I go into the RECYCLER directory on a drive, and notice a few folders, which I don't need.
I press delete and it says "Do you want to delete these folders to the recycle bin? Yes/No?".
I'm not sure why there are two options, since I do know those folders won't be deleted no matter
which option I choose.

---------------------
I get a brand-new PC, with Windows XP Professional SP 2 installed from CD, all shiny sparkling new.
Explorer crashes a few hours after I boot. I don't understand how it ever made it out the door.

---------------------
I put my USB flash drive into Windows XP, and browse to a folder. Windows pops up a message saying
"Please insert the second disk in this multi-zip folder" or something similar. It doesn't say
which zip file is multi-disk. I didn't ask it to open any zip files. So now I first have to press
escape before I can go on.

---------------------
Windows allows other applications to pop up Windows over what you're doing now. So I can be in
the middle of typing something and just as I'm about to press enter, a window pops up. I press enter,
the window disappears. I have no idea what it was or what I just said okay to. Yes, you can argue
that this is a poorly written application popping up, but Microsoft can prevent it from just
displaying and do that flashing thing in the taskbar. That only works sometimes obviously.

---------------------
Microsoft Outlook sends these magical winmail.dat attachments which only Microsoft Outlook can open.

I've received e-mail from people, and I use Microsoft Outlook Express, and it doesn't work. I don't
understand how they can break a simple thing like sending an attachment along with an e-mail.

Carnarvon Fly-in 2006 Part 2

With the price of petrol it is these days, it is sometimes cheaper to just push the plane. We had to move it to allow other planes to take-off.

This was the ATC (Air Traffic Controllers). Thanks to them all the aircraft could takeoff and land without any problems.

Birdfield Wines and Oranjerivier Wine Cellars had stalls in the hangar from Saturday. They sold wine, Sherry, Port, Jerepigo, Muscadel, Brandy, Witblits and more. We will still go to the Oranjerivier Wine Cellars just to buy some more of their Jerepigo.

The SA
Red Cross Air Mercy Service(AMS) was there to give their support for the fund raising. The funds raised this year will be used to install the lights on the runway. The AMS can't use the airstrip in Carnarvon at night at the moment because there are no lights. With lights the population in this area will have access to the medical emergency services at any time.
EDIT 29-June-2006: Check the AMS Website for more of my PICS.

Sutherland and the SALT Part 1

This is the Primrose Bed and Breakfast in Sutherland. We spent the last three days here. It is run by Denise and David. We want to thank them again for an absolutely brilliant stay. It really did feel like visiting old friends.














It was so cold during the night, that everything had frost on in the morning.













We went to go see the SALT. It is amazing to see the technology at work here. The tour is worth it, if you are willing to participate. ;) I don't want to give to much information about the SALT, but as you can see this building is huge.




















There are quite a few other telescopes on the plateau. From Korea, Germany, UK and of course South Africa.

Carnarvon Fly-in 2006 Part 1

On the way to Carnarvon, early in the morning before the sun came up.

This is the "Three Sisters" that the town "Three Sisters" is named after.

This is the road from Victoria West via Loxton to Carnarvon.

When we got to Carnarvon, there were still some Trike's in the hanger.

Cape Town in the dark again.

Well the power cuts are back. It seems there was a problem with some equipment so they did an emergency shutdown since they could not monitor the exact problem.

The picture I added today, was taken earlier this week from "Lovers Lane" on Tygerberg hill. I drive past there from work everyday and try to stop when ever there is a beautiful sunset like this.

Some South African music in the cold

This past weekend I discovered the DSTV Channel MK89 that specializes in South African music. They play a wide range of music, from slow ballads to fast paced beaty music.

The one song that particularly caught my attention was "Loslap" from a band called "Snotkop". It was a mixture of Afrikaans rapping and hardcore guitars. A REALLY catchy tune.

We are now getting ready for some power outages again, since Koeberg is in the process of maintaining the one nuclear reactor and we are experiencing one of the coldest winters in a couple of years.

Today's picture shows a nice sunset with a thin layer of clouds just hovering over the mountain.

Kaptein's frosty all bran bloggings

I found a couple of my Friend's Blogs and thought I would link to them.
I hope you visit them and enjoy there sites...
Kaptein's frosty all bran bloggings
and
Stean's General Rambles

I can't make a posting without a new picture now can I. ;P

The mist over Cape Town:










A spectacular sun set here in the Cape.

Oblivion in South Africa

Well, the main reason I haven't been updating my page here is because of a game called Oblivion. One of the best role playing games that I have seen to date. Also there wasn't much to say.
I have found 2 pictures that I could place here. The one is from a golden sunset during the first rains that he have had in months.
The other is of a Strelitzia. We went on a Sunday afternoon walk through the neighborhood, I saw the Strelitzia in someone's garden and took the picture.

During the news tonight they announced that the petrol price is going up again, 39c. This will take our petrol price to the highest it has ever been. Not looking to good for us.

Climbing the mountain (cont'd.)

If you are following the site, you might remember that we went to Tablemountain to climb it. I am posting some of the pictures from that day now, since I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Hope you like ;)

Fire in the sky over Cape Town (Part 1)

After returning from Johannesburg last night, we prepared to go to Blouberg beach to enjoy the fireworks show at the Cape Town Waterfront. I setup my camera and prepared to take some long exposed pictures. I am posting 2 of the better ones. I found that we were just to far away to make it worth it. The next time the show is on we are planning to go to Cape Town it self and take some pictures there. I see that the gallery on their website has much better pictures then mine. I guess I have a lot of work to do next time. Since I will be missing this Saturday's show I will go next Wednesday.


There was a very nice sun set again last night and I took this picture...

Metallica Rocked Cape Town Last Night

Last night we went to the Coke-Cola Colab concert. This was possibly the best concert ever hosted in Cape Town. We left home at 10:00 in the morning. It was an absolutely perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky, not much wind and a Metallica concert to go to. We spent the morning sitting on the grass in the stadium, listening to some of the South African bands that played. It was a great start to the day. By late afternoon, the heavier bands started to play. The big surprise for me was Seether ( previously known as Saron Gas). They are heavy, but they got the crowd jumping and singing along. They are also previously from Cape Town. So it was a great homecoming for them and us.

When the Metallica actually started later that evening (just after 21:00) the crowd was already in a frenzy. We had been waiting for years for them to come to our country and our city. Their set was supposed to last 2 hours, but after 2 and a half hours of mind-blowing masterpieces, they were called out to do another encore. They came out and did a couple of songs more to make a total of 3 hours that they had spent on the stage for us. My voice was practically gone, my back was killing me and my knees were basically useless, but I felt GREAT. The adrenaline was still pumping when I got to bed at 3 this morning. I got one really bad picture with my cell, but I hope that they will post more on the Metallica site. I will link to it if I find any.

After they finished their show they made a promise that got the crowd to roar. “Johannesburg, Durban...Looks like we saved the best for last” and then ”...we love and and we will see you again very, very soon”. I thought that my lungs were going to jump out of my throat we were screaming so loud. If they made this an annual event and they get big bands like this to come every time, this will be a total success every time.

We were lucky here in Cape Town, that the beer didn't run out. Apparently the event in Johannesburg ran out of beer very early and there was huge problems around this. We didn't have any of this. Just one great day that I will not forget soon.

I will post the Table mountain pictures soon.

Going to take on the mountain.

Tomorrow we are going to climb this mountain. We are going through Kirstenbosch early in the morning. We are taking the Skeleton Gorge and Nursery Ravine path. We will try and take as many nice pictures and post some of them here.

Tomorrow is Human Rights Day here in South Africa. It is a public holiday that is celebrated in remembrance of Human Rights.

I hope to have more to write about tomorrow.

Pic that I could not upload through firefox.

I hope that this comes through now... ;) 

No moon.

Ok, so I didn't stay up all the time to get the pictures of the moon. Kinda fell asleep and my alarm didn't wake me. So I searched google for some images to add to the site here. In my search I found a nice schedule of all the eclipses this year in South Africa. They explain in this page that it was a penumbral lunar eclipse, which doesn't actually change the "shape" of the moon.
So no pics to add.

This is the second day that I have Internet back, so far so good. I also heard that there might be a reduction in the cost of ADSL soon. I just hope that this materializes.

I took a pic over the weekend as a cold front moved in over Cape Town. I hope you like. :)

MMM, there seems to be a problem uploading pictures ... :(

The moon eclipse

Well after a week of struggling to get my Internet Up and running again, Telkom has finally sorted my Line. I can now connect and the noise is gone.
A friend informed me this weekend that there is a Lunar eclipse tonight. I will try and add some pictures of the event, if I can get up ;)
I took one picture so far.

The state of the Internet in South Africa

In South Africa Internet is a privilege, not a right. Here you pay lots of money for a telephone call or ADSL line and then you are still not guaranteed a decent connection. After the power failures got a bit better, the Internet got worse. I still use a normal dialup to get access to the Internet and have been unable to get access the net for the last 4 days, since I got disconnected. Since we still have to pay for EVERY call we make, I can't afford retrying to connect all night. Then we still have to pay for the Internet Account as well.

Then there is the ADSL limits that has been imposed by Telkom ( currently the only telecommunications provider in the country). They limit the speed at which you can download, the total amount that you can download and you don't have a static IP address. They limit you to a total of 3 gig PER MONTH. If you want to download more, you have to buy another account or get a larger one. I hope that the second National Provider ( the official competition for Telkom, that we have been waiting for about 5 years) will do something about decent prices and Internet access.

On a different note, there is a "Fly-in" in Carnavon in the Northern Cape every year. Light aircraft, Microlights and Gyro-copters get together for the weekend. There is some showing-off of skills and aircraft. Lots of partying, braaing and of course drinks. We are going through again this year and I will be posting some pics when we get back.

This weekend we took a breathtaking trip around Chapmans Peak. I have added some pictures that I took there. Over the last couple of years the road was closed because of all the rock falls. Special metal nets were installed to catch the rocks. Now it has been made a toll road and reopened.

Got the car...

We drove out to Stellenbosch early this morning to go pick up the new wheels (VW polo Classic 1.6 Comfortline). With all the power failures the whole week, it was almost impossible to organize insurance, finance and delivery, but finally everything came together this morning.

While driving home today I realized again that there are really BAD drivers here in Cape Town. I know that I have said this before, but hell you should just not be weaving through traffic chasing after someone. This one BMW almost drove into me while racing with another car.
I coincidently got a comment from someone of the K53 Blog today. There blog's title is: Help with obtaining and passing your K53 learner's license test, driver'’s license & becoming a driving school instructor. I think that I should maybe stop some of these people and give them the K53 blog URL :)

I took a nice picture from a friends house of the sunset today.