Share what you know, Learn what you don’t. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
_ BBC NEWS | UK | Al-Qaeda ‘blames Blair for bombs’
“If you continue the same policy of aggression against Muslims, God willing, you will see the horror that will make you forget what you had seen in Vietnam.”
Doesn’t look good…
Tags: london; london bombs
_ MediaWiki packages available
since i need mediawiki packages for edubuntu real soon and neither debian nor ubuntu have them yet, i packaged medaiwiki myself.
I’ve installed MediaWIKI as a wiki for myself, and found the install pretty easy. Learning how to use it has been more of a leanring curve.
This little package would probably make it even easier on an Ubuntu box…
There are a bunch of new designs for the South African London taxis, which can be seen on the South African Diaspora site.
These ones are my favourites:
Not sure about the Bus one, nor the Jaguar one - think that may send the wrong messages to people in London… 
Tags: london, south africa
Got your sense of humour hat on?
_ Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.
All I can do is
Tag: ubuntulinux
_ Joi Ito installs Ubuntu on a ThinkPad:
I bought a discounted IBM T42 ThinkPad and installed Ubuntu on it. I decided that I would try to get switched over to Linux (for now) before I headed off to OSCON later this week. It was amazingly easy to install and wifi, suspend and various hardware goodies seem to work. I still haven’t gotten my printer set up or my DVDs to play… Anyway, we’ll see if I’ll be able to make this trip without bringing my PowerBook.
_ Mathew Thomas talks about the design flaws in Ubuntu:
I recognize that Ubuntu is perhaps the most usable Linux-based operating system yet. I recognize also that it has improved rapidly over the past year. And it is reassuring for me to be running Free Software, where — if all else fails — I can hire a local geek to fix a bug for me instead of being reliant on the whim of Canonical. But Ubuntu still has a long way to go.
I am grateful to my boss for lending me the laptop on which I have been using Ubuntu, and for giving me the go-ahead to post this entry, but I don’t speak for my employer and they don’t speak for me. My boss, by the way, is Mark Shuttleworth. I’m working for his company, Canonical, as an interface designer.
_ Stellenbosch University in South Africa, has relseased an Ubuntu Wiki
_ You can grab the UbunuLinux RSS 2 blog feed from here
Tags: ubuntulinux; open source
_ Wired 13.03: The Book Stops Here
Van Doren warned not that encyclopedias of his day lacked credibility, but that they lacked vitality. “The tone of American encyclopedias is often fiercely inhuman,” he wrote. “It appears to be the wish of some contributors to write about living institutions as if they were pickled frogs, outstretched upon a dissecting board.” An encyclopedia ought to be a “revolutionary document,” he argued. And while Van Doren didn’t call for a new production model, he did say that “the ideal encyclopedia should be radical. It should stop being safe.”
What stood in the way of this new approach was precisely what encyclopedias prided themselves on. “Respectability seems safe,” he wrote. “But what will be respectable in 30 years seems avant-garde now. If an encyclopedia hopes to be respectable in 2000, it must appear daring in the year 1963.”
Great article on Wikipedia, if you’re not sure what it is or what it does.
Thanks to Lifehacker, I came accross this post about how to maximise News reading, while processing News coincidentally.
My situation is different in that I’m using an Outlook/Newsgator/Firefox combo. I’ve been using GTD for just over a year now, and think I’ve managed to settle on a system which makes sense for me, and which makes my life sane enough not to feel that continual feeling of information overwhelm, so I thought I’d share it here as it may help some people get on top of their news.
I’m assuming you have the basics set up:
So here goes:
This has made me do a few things:
1. Constantly re-evaluate the value of the feeds I read, and the information I want to take in.
2. Read my feeds regularly so I don’t end up with a massive backlog that makes me feel like I’m climbing an information mountain.
3. Make sure that I’m sorting the information I read so that I read that stuff that’s important to me now, and archive the stuff I want to read later.
4. Read News at times that make sense and work within my work day - I find that doing it once a day (either first thing, or last thing) works best for me.
Some additional notes that may be helpful:
1. I also create Outlook Notes in my Inbox, where I make notes for myself, copy and paste links I want to follow later, or keep feed post ideas that I want to process later.
2. From anywhere in Outlook do a CTRL-SHIFT-K for a new task, CTRL-SHIFT-A for a new appointment, CTRL-SHIFT-C for a new contact.
3. I think tha number one tip, is to set Outlook to “Work Offline” once you’ve done your processing. Process, work. Process, work. Process, work.
Does that help anyone? Does anyone have anything to add that may help?
Tags: GTD, productivity, outlook, RSS
I got this in an email just now, and don’t quite know what to make of it.
Forwarded message from Nicole van Rooyen <>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:24:04 +0200
From: Nicole van Rooyen <>
Reply-To: Nicole van Rooyen <>
Subject: Fwd: FW: Zimbabwe
A letter from Zimbabwe Sent in by John Winter:
I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF. The darkest hour is always before dawn.
We are all terrified of what they are going to destroy next……..I mean they are actually plowing down brick and mortar houses and one white family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything when 100 riot police came in with AK’s and bulldozers and demolished their beautiful house - 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings - because it was “too close to the airport”. So we are feeling extremely insecure right now. You know - I am aware that this does not help you sleep at night, but if you do not know - how can you help? I feel so cut off from you all knowing I cannot tell you what’s going on here simply because you will feel uncomfortable. There is no ways we can leave so that is not an option. I just ask that you all pray for us in the way that you know how, and let me know that you are thinking of us and sending out positive vibes… that’s all. You can’t just be in denial and pretend it’s not going on. To be frank with you, its genocide in the making and if you do not believe me, read the Genocide Report by Amnesty International which says we are IN LEVEL SEVEN (level 8 is after its happened and everyone is in denial). If you don’t want me to tell you these things then it means you have not dealt with your own fear, but it does not help me to think you are turning your back on our situation.
We need you to get the news OUT that we are all in a fearfully dangerous situation here. Too many people turn their backs and say - oh well, that’s what happens in Africa. This government has GONE MAD and you need to publicize our plight or how can we be rescued? You can’t just say “oh you attract your own reality”. The petrol queues are a reality, the pall of smoke all around our city is a reality, and the thousands of homeless people sleeping outside in 0 degrees Celsius with no food, water, shelter and bedding are a reality. Today a family approached me, brother of our gardener’s wife with two small children. Their home was trashed and they will have to sleep outside. We already support 8 people and a child on this property and electricity is going up next month by 250% as is water. How can I take another family of 4 - and yet how can I turn them away to sleep out in the open? I am not asking you for money or a ticket out of here - I am asking you to FACE the fact that we are in deep and terrible danger and I want you to pass on our news and pictures and don’t just press the delete button. Help in the way that you know how. Face the reality of what is going on here and SEND OUT THE WORD. The more people that know about it, the more chance we have of United Nations coming to our aid. Please stop ignoring and denying what’s happening. Would you like to be protected from the truth and then if we are eliminated how would you feel? Surely you would say “if only we knew how bad it really was we could have helped in some way”. I know we chose to stay here and so we “deserve” what’s coming to us.
For now we have food, shelter, a little fuel and a bit of money for the next meal - but what is going to happen next? Will they start on our houses? All property is going to belong to the State now. We no longer have SW radio which told us everything that was happening because the government jammed it out of existence - we don’t have any reporters, and no one is allowed to photograph. If we had reporters here they would have an absolute field day. Even the pro-government Herald has written that people are shocked, stunned, bewildered and blown mindless by the wanton destruction of everyone’s homes which are supposed to be “illegal”, but which a huge percentage of them actually do have licenses for.
Please - have some compassion and HELP by sending out this report so that something can be DONE. Please pray for us.
“For what is a man profited if he gains all the world, and is himself destroyed or lost?” - Jesus Christ
Has anyone else heard anything more?
Tags: africa, Zimbabwe, southern africa
I took Sarah out to dinner for her birthday last night, and had a wonderful time.
By far the best part of the night was going to Chez Lindsay, a French restaurant in Richmond, just past the Richmond bridge.
Food was awesome (crab, goats cheese salad, duck and lamb), as was the wine and cider (you have to try the cider!!).
Service was great.
Atmosphere was cool (half full, but it was relatively early on a Monday night).
_ NASA - New Planet Discovered
Verushka just IM’d me about this - may be old news to you, but was a big surprise to me!
Welcome to the personal blog of Gareth Knight. On web 2.0, technology, living in London, business, software, the web, Africa and sustainability. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
