Category Archives: geeky

Do Stuff in Cape Town – my new project

If things have been a little slow on this blog lately it’s because I have been working on something new. It’s a site called Do Stuff in Cape Town and I have described it as an encyclopedia of activities in and around Cape Town.

The cool thing about it is that it works like a Wiki so anyone can contribute to it. I have developed it so that anyone visiting the site can easily:

Create new activities – there is a simple form for adding new activities
Update existing activities – say there is some detail or tip that you would like to add to an existing activity
Rate activities – it’s as simple as clicking on the star rating you want
Browse/search activities – I have put quite a lot of thought into making this as simple as possible
Subscribe to new activities – Get updates when new activities are added to the site

I have tried to make everything as simple as possible, but please give it a try and let me know what you think. Add an activity, or browse through those that are already there. I think that the site is almost ready, but I would really appreciate feedback!

Some of the activities that have already been loaded:

We have been using incorrect URLs all this time

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I learned a couple of days ago that I was typing in web addresses (URLs) incorrectly. It turns out that there should be a slash (/) at the end of the URL that you enter. When you omit this slash your browser and the server work out the problem – but it takes some time.

This is explained in detail in this article. Here is an example of what is happening:

You ask the server for: http://alistairpott.com
The server says that page doesn’t exist – you mean (note the slash): http://alistairpott.com/
Your browsers says OK and then asks for http://alistairpott.com/
The server sends back the page

It’s not quite this simple (this only applies when you are not referencing a file directly), but the principle is there. You can often see this is happening – go to a site and you will see that once the page is loaded there is a trailing slash in the URL.

Entering the correct address (with a slash) prevents the first 2 steps and can speed things up. How much of a speed up? Probably not much.

New project – Do Stuff in Cape Town

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I have been working on a new little project which I would like you all to take a look at. A couple of weeks ago I had the idea to set up a Wikipedia-like site for things to do in Cape Town. A site where anyone can easily add and edit information about activities in Cape Town.

I have set up a framework that I am pretty happy with – the geek in me has really been enjoying this. I also populated it with some sample activities.

It’s still very early days (Jules can’t stand the logo) and things are still changing and improving, but take a look and let me know what you think. If you feel up to it you can add/edit activities pretty easily and even anonymously.

Here is the link.

The relationship between chocolate consumption and frequency of sex

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The Economist had this special Valentine’s graph (a bit late I know) showing the relationship between chocolate consumption and frequency of sex.

I like their introduction: “On Valentine’s Day the relationship between chocolate and sex becomes, at least for gentlemen considering the ideal gift, less a matter of theoretical musing and one of stark practicality.”

However, it seems that there isn’t much of a relationship. Just be glad you don’t live in Japan where chocolate consumption and frequency of sex are pretty low…

Google Earth spoofs of scenes from the Bible

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Here is a link to a few spoofed images of biblical events as if they were in Google Earth – what the artists call a God’s eye view. They are very well done so it makes for an interesting effect.

Here is the Crucifixion – I would have thought there would be more people around.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – look carefully, they’re in there.

Moses and company escaping through the Red Sea.

Evernote – great note taking application

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This is another great tool that I make heavy use of. Extremely useful if you spend more than a little time on your computer.

They call it “a single place for all your notes”. I think of Evernote as a kind of mind dumping area. Every time I find something that I would like to remember later I create a quick note in Evernote. At a later stage Evernote makes searching for these notes VERY easy to do.

Some examples:

I looked up the phone number for a restaurant I wanted to eat at. I made a quick note so that I wouldn’t have to look it up again
Every time I see an interesting link that I don’t necessarily want to bookmark I just bomb a note into Evernote
I frequently save little snippets of code that I think I am going to re-use in future

Check out the Evernote site for more details. Evernote has plenty of extra features which I dont make use of, but may be interesting to you.

Quick calendar app

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I often need to take a quick look at a calendar. Normally that leads to a double click on the time in the Windows task bar. But even that only gives me a view of one month. It sucks.

I banged together a quick app which will show me the an easy view of the current, previous, and next 7 months – just look at the screenshot.

I purposefully wanted to keep it very simple, so that’s all it does. (I actually added a little text file to bold the South African public holidays. You can easily add any dates you like to that file.)

Now when I want to quickly check out dates I just use Launchy to open this app. Very quick and very easy. Escape closes it and I’m done in seconds.

Download (Note that .Net runtimes are required – should already be there)

Source

You are probably a simulation

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In a previous post I discussed the idea that the only thing you can ever really know is that there are thoughts. You might not even exist. Your existance might be an illusion… Deal with it.

In fact your whole life might be a simulation – like the Matrix, except without the Zion part.

I’ve always liked that thought – even though it makes no difference to my daily life. It’s just interesting. I used to think about the possibility that my whole life is a computer game that the ‘real’ me is playing in another reality.

This post from Boing Boing takes the whole idea even further. Basically some ‘reasonable’ assumptions are made, leading to a surprising conclusion.

We can never truly know that what we perceive is real (agreed)
One day truly realistic simulations will exist which will seem 100% realistic to participants (reasonable)
Many such simulations will be run, probably concurrently (given 2 then I agree)

If these assumptions are accepted then it is actually more likely that you are a simulation than ‘real’. The more simulations that are run, the lower the probably that this is the ‘real’ reality!

This of course makes no difference to my daily life – I’m stuck in this simulation and I rather like it. It is strange to think about though.

Maybe I should reject the second assumption to make myself feel better!

Cool tools – Launchy

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I’m banging away on my computer all day long, so anything that increases my productivity is welcome. Launchy is one of the best programs in that category and I probably use it hundreds of times a day.

Basically, Launchy is a quick program launcher. For instance, if I wanted to open up a new Excel window quickly I would:

Hit control-space to open up the Launchy window
Start typing what I am after and Launchy would guess what it is. In my case ‘ex’ is enough (Launchy learns your favorites)
Hit enter and up comes Excel

That’s 4 keys to open Excel!

Launchy indexes all of the shortcuts in your start menu and on the Desktop. No more scratching through the start menu looking for a shortcut.

You can do all sorts of other clever things with Launchy. Get it to index text files or commonly used Excel files. Index your bookmarks folder for each access to your favorite sites. Make a shortcut to shut down your computer.

It’s one of those programs that just works. It does what you want, it’s quick, it looks good – you will never look back.

Orwell on being shot in the throat

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Boing Boing linked to an interesting account by George Orwell on what it was like being shot in the throat. He was involved in the Spanish civil when he got nailed by a sniper.

The whole essay makes for interesting reading.

He describes the feeling of being hit:

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock – no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

Orwell was conscious through the whole thing and at one point he was convinced that he was dying:

There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed I was killed. And that too was interesting — I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it!