Another amazing lighthouse pic

By 6000 | 6000 | May 25, 2013

This (with gracious permission – thanks) from Richard Larssen on flickr:

lighth

This isn’t a blog about lighthouses, but I do like them. Especially when they’re ‘togged this well.

Wikipedia tells us:

Eigerøy Lighthouse (Norwegian: Eigerøy fyr) is a coastal lighthouse located at the small island Midbrød outside Eigerøya in Eigersund, Norway. It was established in 1854, and automated in 1989.

It’s made of metal (cast iron), much like the Slangkop light in Kommetjie (steel) and stands 32.9m high (coincidentally just 10cm shorter than Slangkop).

Richard has captured some other amazing pics of Eigerøy fyr, most notably here and [breathtakingly] here.

Leave a comment | Tagged , , | Posted in flickr

When Flickr goes wrong

By 6000 | 6000 | May 24, 2013

I was looking up a photo on Flickr this morning and something went wrong.

Here’s what I was shown instead:

export_06

Which was almost cooler than the pic I was actually wanting to see.

2 Comments | Tagged , , | Posted in flickr

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Isle Of Man

By 6000 | 6000 | May 23, 2013

via DavidColby on Buzzfeed. And it’s all* true.

(or “Buzzfeed comes up trumps because I have no time to write a blog post today”)

While I was born in Sheffield and I live in Cape Town, I have strong family connections to the Isle of Man and I guess that I consider it my spiritual home. You may recognise the favicon on your current browser tab as being a triskelion - the Three Legs of Man.

Of all the facts presented, only one was new to me:

The Island was named the fifth most likely nation to reach the moon next.
Strange, but true. A number of the competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize (a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon) are based on the Island.

I’ve known forever that it is a great place – the best kept secret of the British Isles. Now David has spilled the beans, maybe more people will discover it. But please don’t ruin it. I like it just the way it is.

So go – click through – I’ll test you on what you’ve learnt tomorrow.

* actually, I dispute the bit about Snaefell being the only place you can see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from – there are plenty of other mountains on the island with the same view. </pendant>

Leave a comment | Tagged , | Posted in learning curve, positive thoughts, uk

Shocking report was shockingly reported – shock.

By 6000 | 6000 | May 22, 2013

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.

UPDATE: From Anton Haber:

I am appalled that a seasoned journalist like BBC world affairs editor John Simpson should produce… such a half-arsed, skewed view of reality.
This is an appalling piece of journalism, not worthy of the BBC.

My thoughts exactly.

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

jif

By 6000 | 6000 | May 22, 2013

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
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