Tim Keller

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!

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

TIMoKELLER dot net has uncovered a rare species of Dinosaur known as Projectoris-Dataoris in Sci-lab Computer Room B on the Ground Floor of the Computer Science building at UCT.

I’ll be posting the story of the awful plane flight, awesome city, boiling and humid temperatures, and awe-inspiring shopping opportunities that was Day 1 a bit later… In the meantime, here are some photos of the day on Facebook Photos

http://uctac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32357&l=0c7b4&id=538980025

…I get to live here Just got this image of the view from the place we’ll be staying!

*Thanks to Martin for finding me this*

Does the above photo look like Disneyland? Well its not, and this is no joke.

It emerged today that the Internet-filtering, democracy-hating government of The People’s Republic of China own a Disneyland-like theme park called The Shijingshan Amusement Park. That would be fine if it was Disney endorsed (which its not) or even if they actually admitted it to be a rip off of the real Disneyland (which they don’t). They have renamed versions of Shrek, MickeyMouse, SnowWhite, and other famous copyrights of The Walt Disney Company.

Extract from The Standard…

With its slogan “Disneyland is too far,” Beijing’s Shijingshan Amusement Park features a replica of Cinderella’s Castle, with staff dressed like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and other Disney characters.

None of this is authorized by Disney – but that has not stopped the state-owned park from creating its own counterfeit version of the Magic Kingdom in a brazen example of the sort of open and widespread copyright piracy that has Washington fuming.

The United States announced Monday it would file a case at the World Trade Organization over rampant copyright piracy in China, a practice which US companies say deprives them of billions of dollars each year.

But 31-year-old housewife Zhang Li betrays a typical Chinese attitude on the issue while chasing her young son around the park.

“I don’t understand why that is such a big problem. Shouldn’t others be able to use those characters besides [Disney]?” she asks.

Sigh… what next China!