Tim Keller

Matrics across the Western Cape will rewrite Paper 2 of the English Exam on November 23 said a spokesperson for the WCED this morning. This story courtesy of www.iol.co.za [direct link to article]

Western Cape matric students are to rewrite an English paper after it emerged that it was handed out in error in an earlier exam.

The province’s education department said the English first language higher grade paper two would be rewritten on November 23.

It said the paper was mistakenly handed to some candidates at the South African College High School (SACS) on October 10, the day before the exam, and details of it had spread to other schools.

The department had terminated the contract of the chief invigilator at SACS and had issued a verbal warning to the head of the English department at the school. – Sapa

I’d like to state categorically that I think this is a pathetic waste of time. If 5% of the Western Cape students were even aware of the leak it would be a lot, an even smaller percentage of those would be aware of the paper’s content. The “termination” of the chief invigilator’s contract is without a doubt a desperate reaction by the WCED to save face. Surely the invigilator in question made an honest mistake? And a verbal warning to the Head of English at SACS? Hello?! What is this world coming to?

The interface on my gmail account is clearly new and revised. Its not earth shattering, or even earth-trembling… but its something.

New features found:
- Ability to Attach an Event Invitation
- Revised Gtalk Gadget
- Prefetching of messages so there is no waiting when you click to open an email.
- AMAZING new contacts manager
- “Old Version” button
- “Loading box” is now yellow and centered
- Initial Loading screen now features an Arial “Loading…” rather than Times New Roman

DIGG ME

-Tim

Greetings kind readers,

I’m on study leave this week as I prepare to write what I predict will be the final Mathematics (Calculus) exam of my life, the next Computer Science exam of my life, and the similarly next Psychology exam I must write in order to inch closer to my eventual Bachelor of Science.

I can’t recall the last time I typed ‘www.cnet.com’ into my browser’s (Firefox 3-Alpha9-Nightly, by the way) address bar – and yet I seem to be finding my way over there increasingly often via Digg, Reddit and other links. Anyway, my point is there is a blog called The Digital Home by a freelance tech journalist named Don Reisinger whom you may recognise as a (now fairly regular) TWiT.tv panelist which keeps appearing in the most popular section on the website – and it most certainly worth your subscribing to his RSS feed.

Don’s just published a piece on why Leopard will open the Mac OS X floodgates (and embarrass Microsoft) which is not only well written, but very insightful.

Word on the street is that Apple will be releasing a new range of MacBook laptops soon (like really soon). If such an event comes to pass I will be deeply, deeply tempted to make a purchase.

Kinda important or cool things on the web at the moment

• Google’s Facebook killer?
• Make your linux look like Mac OSX
• The Prism Project from Mozilla
• Aptana IDE
• Myst Online: Try the free demo!

Later. [TK]

Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster

This morning we woke up to a new world. A world strangely similar to late 1995 when the Springboks beat New Zealand to win the William Webb Ellis cup for the first time.

Last night we watched as Thabo Mbeki and captain John Smit held the cup up high in victory against the clearly inferior English side.

Go bokke!

My girlfriend, Amy, has restarted her Amyblog.net site after over a year of inactivity! So toddle over there and read what she has to say whenever you get the chance – should make interesting reading! She’s busy studying for her Bachelors Degree in Education at the moment and will be teaching a class of Fourth Graders from January 2008 – which is fantastic because she can earn money while I finish my Bachelor of Science!
It seems I have inspired some level of geekage in her: she’s running the latest Wordpress 2.3 whereas I’m more than a few builds behind still!

Nice to have you back online Amy!

I think New Year’s resolutions are stupid. In fact, I dislike New Year’s Eve in it’s entirety. Why? Well.

First of all no one ever keeps New Year’s resolutions, be it as a result of too much Orange Juice (read Champagne) or just because no one really wants to change the way they do things. Maybe it’s because the beginning of a New Year is always so fraught with *sigh* feelings. It’s almost the end of your holiday, Christmas has come and gone, and you somehow have to summon the energy to face yet another year of work. For these reasons above I move to introduce a new concept: Spring Resolutions!

Spring has sprung in Cape Town, South Africa (I’m told we’re a bit behind the Vernal Equinox due to our longitude and/or latitude) and what better time to set new goals for the year ahead! Psychologists studying Seasonal Affective Disorder (with the ironic acronym SAD) have found that depression and happiness cycles can be triggered by the different seasons of the year. It was first proposed by Norman E. Rosenthal, MD in 1984. He moved from sunny South Africa to New York City and found that he become lethargic and depressed during the cold Winter months. The treatment of this disorder is fairly simple: Dawn simulations (that is, programming one’s bedroom lights to simulate sunrise by slowly getting brighter over a period of 1 or 2 hours prior to waking) have been highly successful… and the usual plethora of Anti-depressant SSRI drugs have also been shown to be an effective remedy.

This means is that Spring – a time when everything is pure, crisp, and new – is the perfect time to start thinking about one’s future plans. Think about how you’ve felt this week, and compare that to how you felt 2 months ago, in the middle of winter. I bet you’ve had a better week this week. That’s because Spring has a major influence on our emotional well-being.

Consider Matthew C. Keller’s research (I’m afraid there is no direct relation between the two of us, to my knowledge anyway)

Happiness is a beach, sometimes.

Matthew C. Keller, a postdoctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, decided that researchers weren’t asking the right questions. His study, published in Psychological Science, has found that moods do generally rise with temperature—with or without the beach—but only in the spring. That’s probably because people savor the sun after months of deprivation, Keller says.

Even during the spring thaw, only people who spend time outside in the sunshine are likely to find themselves measurably happier. The optimal daily dose: one half hour.

So, here’s what I’m going to do this Spring and hopefully maintain for the next 365 days. These are my Spring Resolutions:

• Spend 30 minutes a day in the Sun. No, the computer screen does not count as the Sun.
• Try to get less frustrated by the annoyances of daily life.
• Understand that Renault are just a terrible car manufacturer and accept that things are going to go wrong with my Modus. No use fighting with them.
• Say Sorry and Thank You more often.
• Only write websites in CSS and XHTML. No more tables.
• Limit Coffee intake.
• Limit SouperSandwhich (the greatest UCT Food place ever) intake.
• Limit Facebooking, Flickr.com’ing, Forum-reading, and Computer Gaming while I’m meant to be working.
• Read the parts of the Bible I’ve never read before.

Hope you’ll take my Spring message to heart and do the same. It’s a great time of the year to set new goals. Apologies to those Northern Hemisphere guys who are in Autumn. I suggest you start programming your lights for Dawn Simulation

-Tim

I listen rather addictively to the TWiT Netcast (read Podcast) Network run by ex-TechTV host Leo Laporte and features regular panelists John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang, Robert Heron, Patrick Norton, David Prager, Kevin Rose, Alex Lindsay, Wil Harris, and Merlin Mann. TWiT (This Week in Technology) was started when the group got together at MacWorld 2005 and recorded a show called Revenge of the Screen Savers (Leo’s TechTV show was called The Screen Savers). This developed into something much bigger and before long TWiT was born.

They now put out a plethora of completely free shows every week. If you haven’t ever listened to these informative, educational, and just plain hysterical podcasts then toddle along to www.TWiT.tv and download the latest show.

I’d suggest you start your TWiT experience with these shows:

• This Week in Technology
• Windows Weekly
• MacBreak Weekly
• FLOSS Weekly

So I’d like to announce that I’ve just watched the best Sitcom/Dramedy (that’s, er, a Dramatic Comedy) ever! It’s a show that doesn’t seem to have made it onto South African television (M-net nor the usually rubbish SABC channels) but was suggested to me by friend Alain… and it’s LEGENDARY! If you’ve watched it please comment, if you haven’t then you have gotta purchase the DVDs of Season 1 and Season 2 from Amazon.com.

It’s essentially a love story, told in reverse. A father is telling his two kids How, well, He Met [their] Mother in 2005 and all the up’s and down’s that went with that. Granted he actually hasn’t yet met this elusive mother… but the story-telling is better than Sitcom-giants like Friends and Scrubs and the acting is fantastic. It is literally the only series I have ever watched whose use of flash-backs and time-shifting hasn’t annoyed me beyond belief. It is so very, very clever.

I’m off to watch yet another episode. See it!