June 3, 2007

Mzoli's Meat

Guguletu has a gem of a restaurant tucked away off Klipfontein Rd. Directions can be a little tricky inthe townships, so here is a Google Maps URL

And for those of you with a GPS that translates to**-33.976415 S 18.569694 E**.

Mzoli’s Meat

Directions

Mzoli’s Meat is a butchery just off the main Klipfontein Rd. If you take the Modderdam Rd exit off the N2 out of Cape Town, turn left when you get to Klipfontein Rd, Cross the railway line, pass a petrol station on your left, and look for a cellphone tower disguised as a tree on the right. The cellphone tower is too far, but not by much (you can see it in the pictures below). Turn left, and you will see Mzoli’s meat immediately on your left.

May 14, 2007

African Institute for Mathematical Sciences

I have been working at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences since December 2006. It is a pleasant work environment, the work I do has direct applicability to the work I do withWizzy, and I get to listen to some really great lecturers from universities around the world. I have taken an interest in Cosmology and Quantum mechanics, a field that has changed so drastically in the last 10 years that I can happily forget most of what I knew before ..

May 9, 2007

One Laptop per Child

The One Laptop per Child project has got a lot of attention, has prototype hardware, and a lot of open source software. What are its prospects in Africa ?

Antoine managed to get one of these to show off as he is writing code behind the ‘view source’ button, and Morgan and Jonathan of our local Linux uses group have all blogged about it.

There are a lot of things to be said about the OLPC project. The first thing to note is that it is not a new initiative - there have been others, under different names, for a long time. Seymour Papert invented Logo, a programming language targeted at children, and Alan Kay was the conceiver of the Dynabook concept which defined the basics of the laptop computer.

April 24, 2007

Nigerian Elections

Recent elections in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa have been declared flawed by the country’s own monitoring committee.

I travelled to Nigeria in 1992. For all its faults, I recognised it then as a powerful country, with a strong role to play in sub-saharan Africa.

It suffers a geographical and religious division between the northern muslims and the southern christians. I saw desperate poverty, particularly in the north, with people living in the semi-desert as I imagine they lived centuries before the white man arrived in africa - with none of the benefits supposed to accrue from the nation’s oil wealth.

March 20, 2007

Leadership in Africa

The continent still has a way to go to transition from Kings to Leaders, and South Africa’s president will change before the 2010 Soccer World Cup. On Human Rights Day, some thoughts on the process.

Zululand

Zululand has a King. He is much respected, the people love him, and nobody will talk of his successor until his funeral rites are over.

There has always been a scrap over the succession of Zulu kings. The first two Zulu kings had no offspring, and it is only courtesy of Ndlela kaSompisi that there is a blood line at all.

March 8, 2007

Communication latency

Communication has come a long way in a century - not always at the customers convenience.

Andy has started a blog. Why blog, when my website is so out of date ?

To answer this, I have to do a review of communication technology of the last century, starting with the letter. I guess I could go back further, but the letter was the first convenient communication at a distance.

The letter

Greatly enabled by RowlandHill and his sender-pays postage stamp, it enabled convenient communication at a distance. Sender’s convenience - Receiver’s convenience. Latency - days to a week. Cost - one penny.

April 18, 2000

Zimbabwe slides towards anarchy

Folks,

The current situation in Zimbabwe is deplorable.

Zanu-PF, the ruling party, with all but 3 seats in parliament, including about 30 guaranteed to them, has seen the spectre of MDC, the Movement for Democratic Change, an opposition party rise up in less than a year to become a credible contender for elections scheduled for next month.

Zanu-PF, and its leader and president Robert Mugabe especially, have been unable to respond in any credible fashion, choosing instead to use intimidation, violence and assassination to fight back.

February 10, 2000

The America's Cup, Auckland, NZ

The America’s Cup

The America’s Cup is happening now. It is the 30th challenge for the Auld Mug in it’s unique history. New Zealand are the current holders, and are therefore the hosts this year. They also have the luxury of not having to race until the final, thus they can observe other team’s tactics without having to reveal their own. There is a Challengers playoff, where everybody else competes for the privilege of sailing against New Zealand in the Cup itself.

February 10, 2000

New Zealand

Folks,

I am consulting for iTouch, who are expanding overseas now with their new owners, the media company that owns many of South Africa’s newspapers, the Independent Newspaper Group.

I anticipate it taking around a month.

I am duplicating our South Africa operation in New Zealand, including the computer setup that handles our SMS and IVR, and hiring a technical team to maintain it. The mobile operator in New Zealand is Vodaphone, now the largest network operator worldwide, while Independent Newspapers owns the newspapers here - an identical setup to South Africa. The plan is also to roll out in Australia, however the network agreement has yet to be worked out.

December 16, 1999

Dali Lama in Cape Town

Folks,

The Dalai Lama was in Cape Town last week, for the World Paliament of Churches. The papers reported that he was gently critical of the parliament, for not doing enough with their position.

He also opened the Festival of Sacred Music, at Kistenbosch Botanical Gardens, which I attended with some theatre friends of mine. The setting was stunning - a backdrop of Table Mountain, green sloping lawns, chattering birds. We were asked to “have compassion” by sitting down to allow people at the back to see. The South African wicker hamper brigade were much in evidence, blankets and cloths spread about and wine and champagne corks popping.