Just trying my hand at a little bit of desktop activism. Someone needs to pie-face this moron.

Right-click on the image and choose Save-Link-As to save the full resolution version to your computer.

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Well, I’m not really a man of too many words. (Okay, I can hear all my friends scoffing at that. But really…) I am however a man of many pictures, and right now I have a picture on my mind, a picture of the end of Democracy in South Africa.

Thanks to the ruling party who, in the name of protecting their own criminal interests, are looking to gag the press. (Just like the National Party did during Apartheid.)

To add further insult, they are trying to push for legislation to censor our internet. Like a friend of mine recently commented:

“Has anyone seem the new Internet laws proposed? Under the guise of blocking child porn – but if you read the fine print government will be able to block any website it considers harmful. Sounds a lot like we are going China’s route of Internet freedom.”

This satirical parody, which I hope won’t end up with some ANC asshole confiscating my server or sending security thugs to my front door, is dedicated to Jacob Zuma, who, in a blinding flash of stupidity declined to stay above the fray, and clearly stated his support for this fascist-like censorship.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Enter the Fascists), where I will appreciate it so much more.

So, it seems, at least for now, that I’m the keeper of this cool work of art by the award winning fine artist Retha Ferguson. It’s about 150cm wide, 80 cm high, on a stand that makes the total work about 1.8m high. Right now it’s serving time as a room divider until its creator comes and saves it from such a dreary fate.

The work is made of wood, perspex, rope and… well… black stuff, and is translucent, so I decided to photograph it with a back light. After lots of experimentation with various light modifiers, I decided a shoot-through white umbrella gave the best looking shadows for the strings in the top image.

Here is a full view of the work.

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“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (14/08/2010 5:32pm), where I will appreciate it so much more.

Go to your favourite facebook group or page. Click on the Invite people to join link. Once the invitation screen has opened up, simply paste the following line of code into your browser address bar, then press enter.

javascript:fs.select_all();

Alternative method:

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

All your friends will be selected. Now all that’s left to do is to click the Send Invitation button at the bottom of the screen.

Disclaimer: Doing this will piss people off.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (Facebook invite bomb!), where I will appreciate it so much more.

I finished listening to the Special 20th Anniversary Edition of Ender’s Game, for the second time, and man do I love this book.

“The enemy’s gate is down” is a reminder not to get stuck in a single way of thinking. Reorient yourself. Be creative.

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The saga of greedy copyright-protectionistas making whoopie with your rights just got a little more interesting. More and more voices are joining the chorus in favour of fair use in South Africa with some recent media attention being given to the fact that ripping your own CDs to MP3 so you can play them on your MP3 player is illegal in South Africa.

What does RiSA want you to do? You guessed it, buy a second, digital copy. (Of course, when you then copy that second digital copy from your computer to your MP3 player you are again breaking the same law, so we suggest that you buy two copies instead, just to be on the safe side.)

The parody above was made by the mighty Sharpe Attack, because we all know that converting your CDs to MP3 is killing music. I reckon he won’t mind if you stick it all over the place.

Here are some more similar parodies:

Home Taping is Killing Music. (Actually, this one isn’t a parody at all, but it should have been.)

Home sewing is killing fashion. (as if)

File sharing is killing music. Yeah, sharing is evil. Luckily I can still lend my CD’s to my friends so they can figure out if they like a band or not.

If you intend to comment, please consider doing so at the original location (More home taping…), where I will appreciate it so much more.

I got some shots of the WITS students from the Coalition for a Free Palestine who are currently holding a vigil outside the Department of International Relations and Cooperation on Soutpansberg Road, Pretoria.

(My apologies for the wonky white balance. I wanted to get the shots on the site as fast as possible.)

Taking these photos was nerve wrecking. It’s a busy street, and just about every car was hooting. (Which is really scary if you have to stand in the road to compose a shot.)

I quite like this play with words.

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This last Friday, after a business meeting on the campus of the University of Pretoria, I decided to hook up with a friend of mine who works in the Computer Science department. So, I gave him a call and asked if he was available for a coffee. He said sure, if I was willing to wait a while, as he was busy checking out an ARG that was being run on campus by some multimedia students, if the rumors are correct..

Interested, I joined them to catch the tail end of the day’s activities. An excited crowd had formed outside the campus chapel where, after some shoving and neck-stretching, we managed to read a note that had been stuck up on the wall some time earlier. The note was accompanied by some cans of black spray paint, and implored the crowd to go to another location on campus and graffiti a url on to the wall.

The excited crowd, which now included a pretty excited me, moved halfway across campus to the dedicated graffiti wall, where we egged each other on to do the deed, which was shortly done. Some DVD’s with the url on were discovered nearby, and some handy geeks with laptops were roped in so the crowd could watch them. The DVD contained instructions for the next move, one that would, unfortunately for me, have to wait until the next week.

As an ex-avid gamer, who’s been bored to death for a few years now by the lack of real innovation in the computer gaming scene, I have to say this latest development has me very excited. Combined with the budding field of augmented reality, especially on modern mobile devices, this is probably the gaming arena of the future.

There’s a new way of interacting, of playing games, that’s on the rise, and this time it’s going to be a lot more real and much more exciting.

Count me in, and bring it on.

Update: There’s now also a Number 13 Wiki. Rad.

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Put away that 17-blade gold-plated, diamond encrusted, bling-o-shaver of yours and take a moment to admire some middle-of-last century craftsmanship. This Gilette “Aristocrat” razor shaves like a dream. I purchased it a few years back at a dusty old antique store, and generally forgot about it until now.

It uses old-style double-edged razor blades, the sort emo kids would love to use to slit their wrists, if they knew how. The shave is super smooth, and the blade chews through my ultra hard beard a lot easier than so-called modern razors. The blades are also a lot cheaper.

Old school for the win!

Okay, I’ll make no secret of it, I love strange cameras. FxCamera, a free app for Android, is about as strange as they come. This photo was taken with the toy camera option and looks surprisingly good.

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