Ewan's Corner

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

Posts Tagged southafrica

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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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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Why I Love My Country

Sep 18

Posted by ewan in Local | 2 Comments

Joining in the meme inspired by EXMI and tracked by Spacebook - 10 reasons I love being South African, and I love this country:

  1. Our high interest rate – look what a too low rate did to the US world markets
  2. Our constitution. We’re not the most tolerant people at times, but we seem to be more open-minded and tolerant than most
  3. We are willing to stand up for what is right technically
  4. Durban weather (an average of 320 days of sunshine a year *), our beaches and the Drakensberg
  5. Summer in Capetown (February in particular)
  6. We never lose our sense of humour :-)
  7. There are always positive people out there, willing to share their viewpoints to try and dispel some of the unnecessary doom and gloom
  8. Braai time – 24th September (next Wednesday) is braaiday, Like we need an excuse.
  9. We have an industrious web2.0 group, and we have a habit of rapidly adopting new technology appropriately, despite our 3rd world limitations often getting in the way.
  10. If there ever is a global nuclear war, we’re in an excellent global position to survive – or at least be the last to go

References: SA Rocks

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Remaining Positive

Jan 30

Posted by ewan in Local, haha | No Comments

eskom-future.jpg

Unlike most South Africans (or at least that’s how it seems sometimes) I am trying to remain positive about the electricity crisis facing this country.

I’ve learnt a ton about batteries, chargers, invertors, generators and solar panels – and learnt to better appreciate cheaply available electricity when we have it.

I have been accused of being naive overly optimistic in the past, but there is no point in gloom and doom – the damage is done, and this is a problem individual South Africans actually can influence and do something about (unlike a few other issues we face). Sometimes you need a greater perspective – this is not a problem unique to this country.

I use the unplanned downtime to have candle-lit dinners with my family, family bath times take on a whole new dimension, and ditching the PC / TV for awhile is surprisingly refreshing :-)

Links:

  1. Plenty of local bloggers talking about Eskom
  2. Google Trends shows the huge recent Eskom search spike (and shows how Zuma isn’t nearly as topical as Eskom right now when you compare trend searches – at least locally).

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South Africa to vote NO to Open XML

Sep 1

Posted by ewan in Local | 1 Comment

“SA will join countries such as India and China by voting against a Microsoft proposal to have Ecma Open XML (often referred to as Office Open XML or OOXML) fast-tracked to adoption as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The document format is used in Microsoft Office 2007.”

Source: FMTech

Another Proudly South African moment.

Links: The ‘Open XML formats’ seminar (Ramblings of an African Geek), Slashdot articles, Wikipedia OOXML entry.

linus.rms.icaza.ooxml

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Bullet-riddled Corolla

May 12

Posted by ewan in Local | No Comments

A colleague was hijacked last week in Durban – quick thinking saw him leaving the car to the hijackers and happily escaping without harm. He called the Flying Squad who spotted the car in under an hour – a “fierce shoot-out” ensued in Umlazi, and the car was shot up badly from the rear (three hijackers – one died in the car, one died in nearby bushes and the third is still in hospital).
This is the result – his car is being repaired, and insurance want to give it back to him. If it was mine, I’d insist they pay me out – I wouldn’t want the car back, people died inside it!

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South African Parliament Approves Same-Sex Marriages

Nov 15

Posted by ewan in Local, misc | 2 Comments

Another proudly South African moment – SA is now the first African and only the 5th nation in the world to legalise same-sex marriages. Not just civil unions, but full marriage as it should be imho.

“This has been a litmus test of our constitutional values. It forced us to consider: What does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale.” – Melanie Judge, the program manager for OUT

As usual, the ACDP has something insightful (1) to add:

“We are out of step with the rest of Africa and with rest of world. The international norm is civil unions, as opposed to same-sex marriages. What happened today conflicts with the views of the majority of South Africans.” – Steve Swart, a legislator with the African Christian Democratic Party

NTY article (free subscription required)
Related previous blog entry: South Africa court rules in favour of gay marriage
(1) not!

Update It seems I was wrong, the original marriage legislation is still unchanged (heterosexuals only) while this new legislation creates a “civil union” (available to both heterosexual and gay couples) which is equal in the eyes of the law to a traditional marriage, but obviously not the same thing. So it’s a huge step in the right direction, but not true equality just yet.
Update Kevin has a good-read post on the subject (he has more time to post than I do, apparently :-) including a link to the Deo Gloria Family Church website (which as he says is a great source of information especially if you are a Christian and believe – incorrectly – that the bible condemns homosexuality).

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Dying Violently in SA – Negative News

Aug 28

Posted by ewan in Local | No Comments

South Africans murders hit scary rate – Yahoo! News. This is more than a little over the top – it makes SA seem like a veritable war zone! There are major problems, but progress is being made – I do not live in a war zone (and I don’t own a gun) despite what nutters like Charles Nqakula and Peter Gastrow seem to imply.

“The reasons seem to be unbelievably complex. There is no explanation that makes sense. The million dollar question is, ‘Why?’ If we could understand that we could start to fix it. But we can’t. All we can do now is ask religious people to pray for us.” —Peter Gastrow

As always sensationalism sells, and bad news is good news for the media. For a positive spin, and some meaningful reporting, have a look at SA : The Good News.

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