Rudolf Henning

In my next life time when I'm stinking rich I want to own a PC like this:


Now imagine playing with a machine like that? *sob*
Some guy got lucky and was allowed to play on this machine. Its a 8 times Opteron with Dual cores! 128 GB of RAM!
Now my work pc really feels like .... *can't say that out load*

The meeting is over and I think it was a success! Although the snacks didn't materialized as planned we even had some social time afterwards.

I tried a slightly new approach for the 'presentation' in which I allowed the audience to give some instructions about what we do next inside the IDE. I even managed to learn a few new things myself.

Go SAdev CPT!

I just need to say this: I hate politics!
It always manage to lead to bad feelings...

Reading the Mail & Guardian there is an article about President Mbeki wanting more power for the presidency. I quote"

"More power to the centre
President Thabo Mbeki is pushing for a substantial increase in the powers and resources of the Presidency as a key element of radical plans to revamp the government. Quoting the Constitution, Mbeki reminded MPs during his budget vote this week that "the president is head of state and head of the national executive ... The executive authority of the republic is vested in the president."

Coming freshly from Star Wars movie where the whole plot is about power and the misuse thereof I could not help wondering if this is a bad thing. As stated in the movie "Those with power don't let go so easily. The more power you have the more you want."

Now I've not been too unhappy with our current president (considering the obstacles he faced). He did quite well in some areas and we're still a reasonably peaceful country (generally) because of his leadership. He made a couple of big boo boo's (most leaders do) so far but if this quest for power continues it could lead him to the 'Dark side'- pun intended.
Lets just hope we don't end up another Zimbabwe...

I heard this years ago (at the time of Episode I) but it is still very funny.

Yoda song

There are some other sound clips on that site too.

<rant>
IOL has an article about the whole Pretoria name change debacle. As I started reading the first few lines of their article that goes like this ...
"For South Africa's black majority, the proposal to rename the capital from Pretoria to Tshwane means the end of a name associated with oppression..." my blood presure went up
What de hell do they mean associate with oppression?? The name Pretoria existed decades, perhaps a hundred years before 'Apartheid' even started. If this was truely the reason for the name change I would have readily said , ok, go ahead and change it for the better good but... This is obviously just plain bull-shit. 'They' (not naming specifics) are just looking for excuses to change the name. If they (authors) said something like 'lets change it so it reflects a more African name to please the majority of people in the country' I would kindof accept the reason.
Change for the sake of change itself is not a good thing. It just cost money and upset a lot of people.
Lets be honest for a moment. The only reason they (current leaders) want to change the name is to put their 'mark' on everything (like a dog marking every pole). They don't really care about equality or democracy or anything that would make us all better people. Its all about power - and they are not the first ones to be quilty of it. Heck look at the US...
Perhaps the only solution would be to exterminate all leaders so the rest of us could live in peace. Where is that chapter in Douglas Adams books about people being the problem.
</rant>

[Update: this is a rant and purely an opinion. Your welcome to dissagree but please keep pure insults to yourself. If you want to state your point of view do it tastefully]

Ok, so I saw the movie yesterday evening....

So what did I think of it?

I loved it! It was very good all in all but I do have some comments about things I did'nt like or I thought it could be done differently.

My biggest complaint would simply be that at times the story moves too quickly. There are too much that 'just' happen for the sake that it must happen. They could quite easily made another movie in between just covering the last part of the movie. For someone who has followed the 'bigger' story through some other resources like games, animated series'es etc. it was really interesting how some things came to be or was used. I would have liked to see more about the fighting on the wookie planet and how Obi wan fighted that general's forces.

I still wonder about a few things like why was the name 'Vader' used for Anakin? Why was the two babies called Luke and Leia? Did 'Natalie' just pull them out of a hat (or because the director said so...)?

In closing I just need to say that I really enjoyed the movie. It should satisfy the hunger of any (real) Star Wars fan.

Some interesting reading I came across that might interest others:

The .Net developer journal had an interview with Anders Hejlsberg in which he talks about C# and future developments. Its one of those articles where you can see a master is talking.

The first session of .Net juniors went very well... Considdering I was late due some massive accident on the N1 that delayed me for almost an hour.
Once started we could almost not stop. We had lots of fun and learned alot just by talking. Next time we'll organise a laptop to show demos and sample code as well.
What was intersting to me was that there are still so many people (and their companies) that still have not moved or seriously considdered .Net. I guess not everyone likes being at the leading edge like some developers would. Reminds me about the whole Bleeding, leading and eventually trailing edge chats we had before....

Anyway, the session was a success and I'll start organizing another session for 'in two weeks'.

A big thank you again for Hilton and Ilo for helping. Its people like you that makes this community rocks!

For those of us lucky enough to own an AMD 64 (for short) there is an online guide how to 'properly' configure and overclock if you wish your machine

AMD Athlon 64 General Overclocking Guide

Except for the overclocking tips it provides some good information about the AMD64 architecture. It is well worth the read just for that.

I recently downloaded the cool & quiet drivers from AMD and it makes a huge difference in how much heat the CPU outputs - not that mine was running hot anyway since it is a 3200+ Winchester core. I even tried a little bit of overclocking (fsb speed of 210MHz which equates to 2100MHz CPU speed) without any problems and also no special cooling. I most probably could easily go for 2200MHz without heating problems.

AMD sure got a winner is this CPU!

Ok, while we're on the topic of Star Wars....eh Store Wars... whatever...

store wars

Wonder when George is gona sue them ?
hehe

On this coming tuesday evening a cousin and I are going to watch the the movie. Although like most people we know (kinda) what is going to happen from what I've heard it is going to be a pretty good story. Even George Lucas himself stated that this will be the best of the 'new' three movies.

Now, Monday and Tuesday day must just passed quickly ;-)

May the force be... well with the good guys (even though we know they are gona get their buts kicked! Darth Vader will 'rule' till episode IV comes...hey wait - that has already happed!)

For those that missed the posting on sadev (http://www.sadeveloper.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=58559) the first session for what I have dubbed .Net juniors will begin tomorow evening at the Waterfront (Ilo's work offices).

The plan is to have this as a introduction session so those interested in learning .Net and its basics can see and contribute what they will be getting from these sessions. Yes that is right the participants will have some influence on what direction we'll be taking because I cannot upfront know what exactly each person is expecting to gain from these sessions. I'll take a lead (being a lead...) and intruduce them to the basics of what .Net is and also what it is not. At a later stage this group might as well merge with the MCSD.Net group once they are up to speed with the basics.

See the link provided above for details like directions and so on. Please tell others about it that might be interested. We usually discover people afterwards that said they wanted to attend but did'nt know how, when, who to ask

Again, thanks to Hilton and Ilo for the support and assitance. This community (SAdeveloper.net) rocks!

Hope to see many of you there (and excuse the flu I've got...definitely no kissing gona happen) :p

No, this has got nothing to do with motor mechanics...

Ever wanted to to customize web content on the 'client side' or 'fix' a bad web site's content or even just reformat a web page at 'run -time'?

In what some may think is a kind of 'hot-rodding' of the browser (Firefox only for now) Simon Willison, a computer science student in England developed a system of 'scripting' how content on 'his' side must be changed to fix or modify how html is rendered. Since then many more people have contributed and now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of sample scripts out there.

Wired.com had an article on it and you can go to greasemonkey itself to download and play with it.

The web browser is'nt dead... Its alive!!

The Time magazine has a picture of the new Xbox 360 with Bill on the front page. We just could not help thinking the following when we saw this...


If he positioned the device just slightly to the right (his left) he would have looked like a borg - ok for those that have ever visited Slashdot you'll appreciate this more.