Author Archives: Marius

About Marius

Owner of Henriska Technology and Project Manager by profession.

I hate this .. walking and living in fear – South Africa and crime.

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Yesterday after attending an IBM Rational Software developers conference (more on this later), I went back to my office and did some work.  I left the office around 6:30 and walked to my car which is parked in a building just across the street.

I normally cross at the robot crossing but on the one corner 3 young guys were standing and watching people.  As I started crossing the street they started moving in my direction. I started moving up the street and so did they.  I just thought that today is the day that I get mugged — had my laptop over my shoulder and cellphone in my hand.  A colleague of mine was already mugged like this 3 times.

Luckily for me a car came up the road and I had to wait for the car.  Another 2 people joined me in crossing the street and the 3 guys must have seen this and suddenly turned around and walked away.

I have just read what happened to Louisa’s brother in Jhb yesterday.  I was not mugged yet but thinking about the fear and mistrust I experienced yesterday, I can fully understand your feelings.  What is happening to this lovely country of hours when we cannot walk freely on our streets and we mistrust every second person?

I love this country and Cape Town in particular, so all you misfits, I will stay and not run like so many people before.

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IBM: Can one patent offshoring of work?

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Well, IBM in the US think so. Via Slashdot I found this article.  As far as I know to patent something it need to be original work and no prior art should exist.  Surely IBM was not the first to come up with this concept, whether it be offshoring the work to India and any other country for that matter.

I quote from the patent application:

A method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization. The method is provided on a computer readable medium and includes the steps of identifying at least one task being performed by an organization; associating each identified task with a functional group within a plurality of functional groups related to the organization; determining information about individual human resources spent on each task; determining task information about human resources spent on the plurality of tasks, the task information based on the determined information about individual human resources spent on each task; using the determined task information to determine a value of each task; and outsourcing tasks having a value lower than a predefined limit to at least one of offshore and to a low cost supplier.

 

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We will win the Rugby World Cup & RSS feed update – 7 October 2007

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Next Sunday evening it is us vs Argentina in the second semi-final of the world cup.  By that time we should know already who we going to play in the final.  Yes, I believe we going to win the semi and with the 4 teams left in the RWC, I just cannot see how we cannot win this one.  I just hope that I am not talking too soon but I cannot see either one of Argentina, France or England beating us.  I would love to see us playing France in the final, just for the atmosphere, but that would be the most difficult one in front of the fanatic French supporters.

Onto my RSS feedreader – I am down to below 4000 unread items:

Saguaro Moon:

Credit & Copyright: Stefan Seip (Astro Meeting)

Rugby World Cup – can there be more upsets?

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Surely we cannot have a third upset in the Quarter Finals of World Cup?  Here I am talking about Fiji beating us this afternoon.  Both my heart and my head said this is impossible.  Strangely I thought the same yesterday morning about yesterday’s games and we all know what happened.  England send the Aussies packing and France said goodbye to the All Blacks.

At least in my books, the result of the forth game would not be a real upset.  It is already an upset that Argentina play’s in the quarters.  The real upset would come when SA and Argentina meet next week in the Semis and Argentina beat us to reach the finals to play England.  Wow, that would be one for the bookies. Wonder what odds I would get of this happening?

Swellendam Mountains
Image:  Swellendam Mountains by Marius Bock taken with Nokia N80

RSS Feed update – 4 October 2007

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Just returned from a business trip to Johannesburg and I have to wade through more than 4700 RSS items in my feedreader.  As you can imagine, I am just going to mark a lot as read and skip over them.

Here is some that I did not skip over.

Today’s photo is an amazing eruption of a volcano:

Credit & Copyright: Patrick Taschler

Ratatouille – my impressions

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Yesterday evening I went and watched Ratatouille at Tygervalley.  Made an evening of it and had some dinner at The Dros in Willowbridge, although one of the biggest restaurants around, I like to go there.

Back to Ratatouille – I love going to watch animation movies, must be the inner child in me.  When comparing to other animated movies like Happy Feet, Nemo, Ice Age 1 & 2 and The Incredible’s then Ratatouille is close to the bottom of the list.  Yes it was very entertaining, very well made but it did not grip me.  I just knew what was going to come next, no real surprises in the story line. Ok once or twice there was a scene that made one jump. I can remember that somewhere in the movie I was actually a bit bored. 

Overall I would give it somewhere between a 6.5/7 out of 10. 

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Geekdinner – Cape Town – 27 September & Wikimania

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Tonight is the  Cape Town Geekdinner which I cannot attend for a second time in a row due to other commitments.  It is a pity that I will be missing this one since it is also Neil’s birthday — congrats Neil.

Also, Cape Town has put in a bit for hosting the 2008 Wikimania Conference.  It is now down to 4 cities and the decision date is 6 October.  There is still a lot to do before then so if you can help at all then please contact Ian (wikimania2008@greenman.co.za).

IOL Technology has an article on it to give you some more background.

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Traffic Jam and RSS feed update – 26 September 2007

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Sir Lowry Traffic

The photo on the left was a traffic jam we ran into coming down Sir Lowrypass just before Somerset West.  Luckily I was not in a hurry and I must say that I was impressed with the behavior of the other drivers.  Actually thinking about it, all the way from Plett, all the drivers were courteous and most sticked to the speed limit.

 

Image: Marius Bock taken with Nokia N80

Onto tidbit from my RSS Feed reader:

Sunrise over the Hottentot Mountains:
Sunrise from home
Image:  Marius Bock taken with Nokia N80 

I did it !!! weekend without TV and laptop.

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I went away for the longweekend to Plett and had a very relaxing weekend.  Will post some photos later.

What I found rather amazing is that I went the whole weekend without ever switching on the TV and opening my laptop.  Yes I missed the rugby between SA and Tonga (believe it was not a good game) and the semi’s and final off the Twenty20 cricket.  I do now know that India won, congrats to India.

The bad thing of a weekend like this is that email build up (although most of that is SPAM) and have an RSS reader with almost 2300 entries.

It was good just to break away with good company and just have a great weekend.  Thanks to those that spend the weekend with me, you know who you are :).

Today is back to the grindstone and trying to do 5 days work in 4 days.

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