Shocking report was shockingly reported – shock.

When that BBC report came out, someone remarked on Facebook:

Kan dit nie glo nie. (I can’t believe it.)

I commented:

You’d do well not to believe it. Or indeed anything else that uses Ernst Roets as a credible source.

But how was I to know just how right I was?

Do 400,000 whites live in squatter camps in South Africa, as claimed in a recent BBC report. Are there really 80 “white squatter camps” dotted around Pretoria? The answer to both is no.

Africacheck.org has looked at the 2011 census and found out that those figures are (as both the ANC and the DA suggested) inaccurate, exaggerated nonsense:

The claim that 400,000 whites are living in squatter camps is grossly inaccurate. If that were the case, it would mean that roughly ten percent of South Africa’s 4.59-million whites were living in abject poverty.

Census figures suggest that only a tiny fraction of the white population – as little as 7,754 households – are affected.

The claim that there are 80 or more “white squatter camps” in the Pretoria area would also appear to be grossly overstated. Many of the places referred to are not camps at all.

AfriForum’s Roets gave the BBC inaccurate figures and the BBC took them without apparently checking, producing a skewed piece of journalism that failed to accurately reflect reality.

And this on a story that veteran journalist John Simpson put his name to. Very sad.

In no way am I suggesting that the fact that there are 7,754 white households (or the 1,868,325 “black African” households in the same situation) living – existing – in those sort of conditions is acceptable.

I am, however, suggesting that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Even from the BBC and especially from Ernst Roets.

Leave a comment | Tagged , , , | Posted in annoying people, in the news, this is south africa

jif

Ever since I found out that Nutella, the delicious chocolate hazelNUT spread is actually pronounced NEWtella, I’ve been waiting for the pronunciation rug to be pulled from under me again. And it seems that me patience has paid off, because now it has happened.

It came in a short interview with a man called Steve Wilhite in the New York Times. Steve’s claim to fame is that he devised a compressed image format back in 1987 that is still widely used today.

After a bit of history:

Mr. Wilhite, then working at CompuServe (the nation’s first major online service) knew the company wanted to display things like color weather maps. Because he had an interest in compression technologies, Mr. Wilhite thought he could help.

And some present day stuff:

Since retiring in 2001, Mr. Wilhite has led a quieter existence than his creation. He goes on RV trips. He built a house in the country with a lot of lawn to mow. He dabbles in color photography and Java programming. He uses e-mail and Facebook to keep up with family.

They casually drop this bombshell:

He is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format.

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

I’m sorry? You what what?

26 years on from devising an image format, you decide to let that little gem slip? I’ve been using gifs… jifs… bah, whatever… since 1992 and now you want me to suddenly change the way I say it. How on earth am I supposed to do that?

And why “jif”?
I’m well aware that Giraffes have set a precedent for the use of a soft ‘G’, but the term ‘gif’ is – as any fule kno – an acronym for ‘Graphics Interchange Format’. That’s “Graphics”, not “Jraffics”. So while you’re confusing the geanpant off us (not literally, I hasten to add), why not change the way we say the other two-thirds as well?

May I respectfully suggest: “j-ee-ef”?
Actually, may I respectfully suggest that shove your idea where the sun don’t shine and stop trying to alter history just because you came up with a novel, much loved and much used way of sharing pictures?

To borrow your explanation from above:

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is “gif”, pronounced ‘gif’.”

End of story.

Leave a comment | Tagged , , | Posted in annoying people, in the news, learning curve

Pointless Pointing

HELLO POINTER POINTER! GOODBYE PRODUCTIVITY!

Bad news if you wanted to get anything worthwhile done this morning – here’s Pointer Pointer.

No real… er… point to this, but putting it in a nutshell, plonk your cursor somewhere on the screen and within a couple of seconds, a photo of an (often drunk) individual or individuals will appear, pointing at your pointer.

Give it a go. Top left is my particular favourite so far.

point

…but I’m sure there are literally hundreds of others to discover, so I’m going to get back to discovering them right now.

Go play.

Leave a comment | Tagged , | Posted in recommended site, that's a bit mad

If you can’t read this…

If you’re having trouble getting through to 6000 miles… it’s because (and here I quote):

There is high load on the server, causing requests to be slow (and timeout) even though the server is up.

This was also the case last Wednesday, last Thursday and last Friday. And again this morning.

Afrihost, who were previously the shining example of service and stability have really disappointed me since I moved my hosting over there. And yes, I would move everything somewhere else, but

  1. It’s an absolute schlep to organise another move. I don’t have time, ability or patience, and
  2. Is anywhere really better? For every good report on a hosting solution, there is someone warning against using it.

Afrihost have told me that they are “in the process” of upgrading their servers, which should stop this timeout problem from occurring. In the meantime, if you see that “6000.co.za took too long to respond”, please keep trying. I’m still here, even if you can’t see me.

2 Comments | Tagged , , | Posted in admin, annoying people, this is south africa
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