Ewan's Corner

Ewan McPhail's blog and soapbox – sporadically blogging since 2003

Archive for category Local

South Africa’s 2nd Satellite – First Images

Feb 23

Posted by ewan in Local, out there, sci-tech | No Comments

Horison-sensor-imageSouth Africa’s second satellite – Sumbandila (“lead the way” in Tshivenda) – has produced its first official images from orbit (see left).

Launched on 17th September 2009 from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket, Sumbandila is a small 81kg low orbit (500 km) solar-powered satellite with a Butane propulsion system successfully fired in January. It carries a 6 spectral band imager (6,25 m × 6,25 m resolution) for ground photography and video (agriculture, mapping of infrastructure and land use, population measurement and the monitoring of dam levels etc), as well as an amateur radio transponder (SA-AMSAT) among other experiments.

See the Sumbandila mission blog for details, as well as the Wikipedia article – there is also a Facebook group.

A video taken of Earth from orbit (13th October 2009, moving over Namibia).

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African Skeptics / Science Blogroll and Carnival

Jan 29

Posted by ewan in Local, Religion, sci-tech | No Comments

Skeptical-Hippo_500x500 From Ionian Enchantment – the latest version of the African science and skepticism blog-roll, or a list of “those dedicated to science and reason on the African continent”. I am proud to be included. Definitely something thought-provoking for everyone – and quite a few reasons to get vocal and involved, no matter what your viewpoint is on science, pseudo-science, skepticism, religion, homeopathy, maths, vaccines, general woo-woo etc.

The latest Carnival of Africans – the Phoenix Edition – is well worth a read.

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Kulula – flying 101. Brilliant.

Jan 22

Posted by ewan in Local | No Comments

Kulula’s paint work for their new Boeing 737-86N (January 2010).

Another image – a great closeup of the detail on the left tail section.

Not your average boring airline.

All images matching a search for Kulula on jetphotos.net.


Posted from Ewan’s posterous

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Annular Solar Eclipse underway – January 15th 2010

Jan 15

Posted by ewan in Local, out there | No Comments

solar-eclipse-jan-15-2010-path-animation The first solar eclipse of the year is happening today. Twitter is buzzing, you can see photos being added to Flickr, Google’s real-time search results are brilliant. Almost makes up for not being able to see it myself – we only saw a tiny 3.5% coverage here in Durban this morning (07h30 SAT) – or would have if it wasn’t cloudy!

Path details and animations for almost every city are available at the excellent UK Eclipses Online site (doubly useful since the NASA eclipse page seems to be down, probably buckling under the extra traffic – google cached version is available though). Wikipedia as usual has excellent info.

Update:

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The Size of Africa

Jan 11

Posted by ewan in Local | No Comments

Africa in perspective
Here’s a little perspective for you, updated for 2009:

Africa has a population of one billion, making up about 14.7% percent of the world’s human population.

Africa covers about 30.2 million km² – about 6% of the Earth’s surface and 20.4% of the total land area.

“(the continent of) Africa is larger than (the countries) China, the USA, Western Europe, India, Argentina, and the British Isles… combined!”

Image source: constantflux (via lots of others)

Upgrading your BlackBerry Operating System

Dec 5

Posted by ewan in Local, misc, sci-tech | No Comments

blackberry
I own a BlackBerry Curve 8310 – one of the nicest phones I have ever used for an extended period, and the best by far when it comes to corporate email / calendar sync.

In the BlackBerry world, your service provider (MTN South Africa in my case) approves the version of OS and default application software available for your phone model – MTN currently only approve package version 4.5.0.52 (Applications: 4.5.0.37, Software Platform: 2.7.0.55) which was released around June 2008 and is quite buggy.

My phone was stable as long as I didn’t install any 3rd party apps (BerryBuzz which is highly recommended, GMail, Google Maps, Garmap for Mobile which is great and *free* for MTN users – go MTN, UberTwitter, Opera Mini…) but as soon as I did, it became horribly unstable – locking up at least once every 2 days and requiring a battery pull. Having to restart / reboot the phone is a real pain since the phone can take over 5 minutes to boot up / get back to a usable state.

Having an otherwise great phone with an unlimited data plan meant I *really* wanted to be able to install 3rd party apps. A little searching found that other network operators (O2 UK in this case) have approved a much more recent OS / apps version (for my 8310 at least) : package version: 4.5.0.174 (Applications: 4.5.0.124, Software Platform: 2.7.0.92).

Working around MTN’s silly restriction and updating my phone turned out to be easy – these steps are for my reference, and worked for me, but use them at your own risk. This procedure isn’t officially supported by BlackBerry or MTN, caveat emptor. I found the initial guide at blackberryrocks.com, an invaluable resource for all BB owners – and added a few steps and warnings of my own:

  1. Download and install BlackBerry Desktop Manager if you don’t already have it (I recommend version 5 or later, especially for Windows 7)
  2. Save a complete backup of your phone and data using Desktop Manager
  3. Remove any media cards from your phone – failure to do so could mean the upgrade hanging (getting a solid red LED on “connecting to device firmware”).
  4. Download the installable version of the OS/applications update.
    Warning: Make sure you download the correct update *for your phone model*, e.g. don’t download an update for the 8350 if you have an 8310. In my case, I downloaded filename “8310M_PBr4.5.0_rel174_PL2.7.0.92_A4.5.0.124_O2_UK.exe” (89.92MB) from the BlackBerry O2 download page.
  5. Warning: If you sync with your office via BES, then you need to do the upgrade while connected to the BES via desktop manager – i.e. at work. If you don’t, auto-activation after the upgrade will likely not work, and your phone won’t sync until you manually activate it
  6. Run / install the downloaded update
  7. If you are installing an update from a different service provider (MTN vs O2 in my case), you need to delete “vendor.xml” in Program Files –> Common Files –> Research in Motion –> AppLoader
  8. Run “Loader.exe” in the same AppLoader folder
  9. Follow the prompts, set things as you choose, and I recommend allowing the Loader app to do its own backup before the upgrade.

Just be aware this is not a quick process… the upgrade and subsequent re-activation took several hours for me.
Worked for me. I now have a rock-solid crackberry.

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SA Rocks and ZA Sucks on 702: The podcast

Nov 11

Posted by ewan in Local | 1 Comment

(5717 KB)
Listen on posterous

From SARocks:
http://sarocks.co.za/2009/11/11/sa-rocks-and-zasucks-on-702-the-podcast/
Almost unbelievable, fascinating stuff. There are some seriously twisted minds out there – if ever there was a reason to *not* be proudly South African, they must be it. I’m also happy they are a minority,
Thanks for posting this Nic.
I’m all for free speech, but the ZASucks site crosses several nasty lines – I’m glad it is finally closing down. The (current, final?) entry pretty much says it all.

Posted via email from Ewan’s posterous

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Cathedral Peak Webcam

Feb 20

Posted by ewan in Local | 1 Comment

cathedral peak hotel weathercam
The Cathedral Peak Hotel (Google Earth KML) recently put a live weathercam online – featuring breathtakingly beautiful real-time views of the Drakensberg mountains, weather permitting (and occasionally hotel guests / visitors). *handshake* to whoever set up the camera (it updates between 7am and 6pm SAT).

I’ve visited the hotel many, many times but never actually stayed there overnight. It was a perfect starting point for many great hikes in my scouting days, and more recently a great day spot on holidays / visiting friends and family in the nearby campsite. I love those mountains and have spent many days up on the escarpment on multi-day hikes, including plenty of adventures and lifelong memories of stunning natural beauty, storms and dramatic weather and even snow on two occasions. 

International Black Swan Month?

Feb 17

Posted by ewan in Local, misc | No Comments

This seems to be the time for unlikely occurrences:

  1. A Russian and US satellite collide 800km over Siberia (with around 17k manmade pieces of junk in orbit, not *that* unlikely – but still).
  2. British and French nuclear subs collide in the Atlantic. Subs apparently have common “nesting grounds” so again not *that* unlikely, but still – a scary scenario.
  3. 18 South Africans won the same lottery jackpot (and the poor sods had to share the R20 million).

The chances of winning the lotto (choosing the six main numbers correctly in any order, from 49 balls) are one in 13,983,816 (6/49 * 5/48 * 4/47 * 3/46 * 2/45 * 1/44). People choose numbers significant to them, so there will be biases and this is not pure chance, but still! 

Nonviolence in Parenting

Feb 10

Posted by ewan in Local, misc | 5 Comments

Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of nonviolence in parenting:
“I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies. One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance.
Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, ‘I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.’
After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theater. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
He anxiously asked me, ‘Why are you late?’ I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, ‘The car wasn’t ready, so I had to wait,’ not realizing that he had already called the garage.
When he caught me in the lie, he said: ‘There’s something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn’t give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I’m going to walk the walk home 18 miles and think about it.’
So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn’t leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.
I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don’t think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single nonviolent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday. That is the power of nonviolence.”
(found here)

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