Quote of the day

"Common sense is soluble in testosterone!"

www.cultcycling.co.za

The Toyota MTN Cycle Park

Ok, I think I'll get the embarassing end result out of the way first. The score, jump 3, roland 0.

Since all my riding partners are away having lazy holidays I thought it would be fun to go and try out "The Toyota MTN Cycle Park" located where Main road goes over the N1 so I put all the kit on and chugged off to see what gives. The entrance fee is R50.00 which is pretty steep but unlike Northern Farm which charges R10.00 the Toyota MTN cycle park really does put a lot of effort into enabling you to have a whole bunch of fun. Fun in this instance means that you have at least a chance of breaking something, most likely your bike but there is a indemnity form you have to sign before you get in to take care of liability in the event that you break yourself instead of your bike.

There is a perimeter jeep track with well marked entrances to to the single track which eventually exit back onto the perimeter track. All single track is one way which is great and hopefully nobody is going to meet someone going the wrong way. The single track is graded into green, blue and black like ski runs and like skiing, black is to be taken with caution. There are tons of arrows but I think it would have been better to have made the arrows the same colour as the grading.

I started off on some greens, then blues and finally some blacks which I found to be pretty challenging. A note on the establishments use of "caution" signs; they really mean it! It would really be best to get off and have a good look at whatever one should be cautious about and going slowly doesn't work as often you need some speed to be safe.

Next to the BMX track there are several drop off's which were great fun but there was one I didn't do because I think I would have been arse over kettle. For the record it was the one with the roots half way down. The first drop off I did was exhilarating but the first jump at the bottom caught me by surprise but no problem, a quick jump and I flew over it and almost landed straight on top of the second jump which would have been a spectacular stop. As it turned out I just used the compression from the landing from the first jump to launch me over the second one; I must have looked like a kangaroo bouncing over the jumps. Great fun!

On to the jump that I couldn't get right pictured below. The problem with this jump is that you need some speed to clear the 1.5m gap but the S curve before the jump means that although you can get the speed it puts you on a path to the bushes. Landing a little short is not an option on this jump unless you don't mind buying a new back wheel each time you visit so speed is vital. Direction is unfortunately also vital. Hmmm, eish and eina!

Note the caution signs, they aren't joking! I think that the line to take would be starting at the left of the path and take off should be just to the left of the black stump. That way you ought to land in the middle of the right curving path after the jump. I think, but not having successfully negotiated this I can't say for sure.

Note the expropriated pavement waiting to buckle some back wheels; I think the bike shops may have had a hand in constructing this jump!

First attempt I wasn't going anywhere near fast enough, being cautious and all that and the back wheel caught the pavement and I took a sideways dive into the bushes on the left. Second time, a bit more speed so I cleared the pavement easily but the aim wasn't so good and I ended up doing a forward roll over the handlebars in the bushes. Third time speed was good, direction better but landed very hard and lost it taking a dive into the bushes on the right. This is going to take a few more visits I can see. Anyway, nothing broken but I think that I'm going to be a bit sore tomorrow morning! I can however confirm that the bushes to the left and rights of the path make for a pleasantly soft landing should one get it wrong!

Christmas 2008 at the Vaal

Caron and I have given up trying to second guess what the other actually wants and solved the annual gift buying conundrum by going shopping together; the one chooses and the other pays. It takes the surprise out of opening one's present but there can be nobody other than yourself to blame if you don't get what you actually wanted and having to wait until christmas to actually open the present made it still feel like a gift.

The morning started with the holmes tribe for early morning coffee and breakfast which was a bit of a quiet affair since there was only one child, sage, at home and there is a limit as to how much noise a single child can generate. Put another child into the equation and all bets are off; it is not a linear equation.

After breakfast we drove down to the Marina Letata on the Vaal to have lunch with Kirsten, Carl, Bruce, Charmaine, my parents and assorted children which was very noisy and chaotic especially in comparison. After lunch charmaine and I took the children down to have a swim which started out innocently enough but ended up as shown below:

From left to right Liam, Jordynne, Austin, Alistair and Megan

Alistair, Liam and Austin leapard crawling through the mud. Alistair looking a bit confused as to whether this really was fun or not. Megan on the other hand had no such qualms and really got into the swing of things.

The five mud monsters.

This looks like one of those photos to be buried away and resurrected on someone's 21st.


As the children progressed from clean to completely filthy charmaine was worrying what grandma was going to say when she saw the demise of jordynnes brand new red and white costume. Nothing as it turned out and I got the distinct impression that somehow we, as adults, are missing out on a whole bunch of fun because we collectively refuse to be children again. Towards the end of the mud bath Austin and Liam were running down the banks and diving headfirst into the mud and sliding a few metres and right into the water; I would do this as well but I think I might break my back.

After the photo session everyone waded out to relatively deep water to wash the mud off and out of their costumes before the rest of the parents saw them. Megan managed to drop her bikini top so there was this frantic search by everyone to locate it while megan kept her modesty intact by keeping her shoulders well below the water surface. The whole episode was very funny as viewed from the sidelines of course.

That was pretty much christmas for 2008; I think that the mud wallow is going to be remembered for a long time to come.

Boep Club 2008

It's a terrible thing to have to admit but I get together with a few like minded guys while the wives are at book club to drink whisky, smoke cigars and generally chew the fat. After a while this acquired the unfortunate name of "boet" meaning "brother" club which has since been corrupted into "boep" meaning paunch club. I think the book club think that they're very clever! At the end of each year we have taken to going away for a weekend which is proving to be quite a win. This year we buggered off to Sondela for the weekend; five christians and me, the token atheist.

Sondela proved to be an inspired choice of venue because it's actually a game reserve but with no predators so one can walk, run and cycle everywhere so the mornings would start off with a two or three hour cycle followed by loads of nothing, a braai for supper before we settled down to the real reason for coming to Sondela ...


The first cycle ride on the saturday we had but a small taste of the sand that was to come on the sunday; fortunately we were blissfully unaware of our fate at that stage so we thought the deep sand was pretty cool and experiential. The wildlife at sondela is pretty chilled and you can get quite close to them before they move off as you can see from the next photograph.

Although this looks quite far away they weren't more than 20m. We saw nyala, zebra, giraffe, kudu, eland, warthog and wildebeest which made for quite a satisfying morning. Actually one can't lose by cycling in the park, if you see game it makes the ride and if you don't you still get a great ride to enjoy. The afternoons were spent slumming it at the pool which as you can see looks decidedly dodgy ...

Just next to the pool in the picture was a large heated spa pool with jets'n all which we migrated to in order to get out of the sun of course. We were all sitting in the pool when a group of young afrikaans boys (approx 13 years old or so) asked to jump in and when they did so the pool overflowed which led to the usual jokes about fat people and water and in one of the lulls in the conversation we heard a quiet "Ja rynauw" from one of the boys to another which had us all laughing. There is definitely something about afrikaans and humour that english just doesn't have, I can't quite put my finger on it but somehow jokes and banter are just that much funnier in afrikaans.

Back to the lodge for the traditional bush supper of meat suitably singed; oh and a potato and some green stuff as a concession to me. Here we have hennie striking the traditional south african pose as he tends to the fire.

We were there for three nights and each night the menu was identical and did anyone complain? No, did anyone even notice that we'd eaten the same on all three nights? Again no, but if there were the wives with us would there have been complaints? Absolutely and not because the food wasn't good nor balanced but it simply wasn't different; guys just don't get this need to have different food all the time. We're actually quite happy to have the same meal for at least 3 or 4 nights at a time. Two weeks might be pushing it but changing every night definitely isn't necessary as long as the food is good.

The next morning hennie, carl and myself went for another ride which would prove to be quite a learning curve about riding in deep sand. There is only one word for it; don't! We struggled up these gently sloping hills sweating like pigs in the hot morning sunshine and sucking in great lungfuls of air, the heart rate monitor going peep, peep, peep or in english "slow down, you're about to die!". Hennie had the narrowest tyres so he was battling the most and fell a little bit behind so carl and I waited halfway up a hill only for him to come cruising past us like he was on tar. Big lesson to learn here, when riding in soft sand let your tyres down to 1 bar and it is impossible to describe how much easier it makes the riding. Amazing! and even more amazing is that we, all three of us, should have known this because we have all looked at people in 4x4 struggling in the sand because they stupidly hadn't let their tyres down. At the top of the hill we climbed up to the trig beacon which had an awesome view over the valley.

After recovering from the ride we read, ate and slept before venturing out to the pool in the middle of the afternoon only to have to endure the sight of two teletubbies cavorting in the pool. Whatever happened to the svelte young damsels in bikini's - very disappointing. Some of the people really did look like they had swallowed a webber braai. Back home we went for the final braai

Packing up the house the next morning carl picked up a plastic bag and was just about to throw it away when something made him look inside only to find a mouse looking very dead. That was until one eye opened, didn't like what it saw and went straight back to playing dead. Very cute indeed.

So that was it; what a great weekend.

Builders

Builder v. 1. The process of turning good quality input materials into poor quality products.

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon

I got a phone call this evening from both my parents and my brother to tell me to rush outside with my camera and capture the moon as this only happens once every 500 years or some other very infrequent period so out I went and this is what I shot.



Pretty cool I think. You can find more information here

So very metrosexual

It's that time of year again when management of companies sit around and scratch their collective pate's and try to decide what to do for the year end (very pc) function. Fortunately I am not generally involved in these deliberations, so it was with some curiosity that everyone arrived at work, swimming costume at the ready, to be whisked away to destinations unknown. Rumour was rife as to why we needed to bring swimming costumes but no hats nor suntan creme; my personal favourite was that we were going to indulge in a spot of mud wrestling.

After all the anticipation we ended up at a day spa; for an end of year party? at a day spa. You could see that everyone was a little uncomfortable to start with since it is not the kind of thing that guys tend to do, even if they are in IT. Manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, sauna, jacuzzi and plunge pools kept everyone entertained and amused the whole day and it was fascinating to watch how everyone, guys especially really got into the swing of things; even the ones that I thought would be reluctant. Before we knew it, the day was done and we had to leave the peace and tranquillity to get back to the hubbub of life.

That evening I drove through to pretoria to meet some people in hatfield which is pretty studenty happening kind of a place and used my tomtom for the first time and I must say that it passed with flying colours. The home stretch was particularly great because I came out of a parking lot in a different direction to that which I went in and was completely disorientated but the GPS had me on the motorway going home in no time at all. Fantastic, what a toy!

Saturday morning broke at 05:00; time to get up and ride and the very last thing I felt like doing was just that but get out I did and carl and I did a 94km ride including krugersdorp hill. We did it at a rather slow 23km/hr but it was still quite a ride, significantly more difficult than the 94.7 and I definitely felt much better for it. When I got back, caron was at work so I had a great lunch at woolies while I read the newspaper and then caron met me at a sports bar, another novel cultural experience, to watch new zealand annihilate england. New zealand are just awesome, how they haven't won every single world cup is beyond me and I am starting to think that winning it requires a substantial amount of luck as well as being a pretty good team.

From the sports bar we went out to movies to see "body of lies" which was reasonable and that brought to a close a very satisfying and enjoyable two days. Sometimes life down here just really sucks; I think that we have to put up with so much crap that when things do actually go right we savour it just that much more.

Do we believe what we read or read what we believe?

This was prompted by a section of Ben Goldacres "Bad Science" book where he refers to the following published paper titled "Importance of the lay press in the transmission of medical knowledge to the scientific community" by DP Phillips, EJ Kanter, B Bednarczyk, and PL Tastad.

"BACKGROUND. Efficient, undistorted communication of the results of medical research is important to physicians, the scientific community, and the public. Information that first appears in the scientific literature is frequently retransmitted in the popular press. Does popular coverage of medical research in turn amplify the effects of that research on the scientific community? METHODS. To test the hypothesis that researchers are more likely to cite papers that have been publicized in the popular press, we compared the number of references in the Science Citation Index to articles in the New England Journal of Medicine that were covered by The New York Times with the number of references to similar articles that were not covered by the Times. We also performed the comparison during a three-month period when the Times was on strike but continued to prepare an "edition of record" that was not distributed; doing so enabled us to address the possibility that coverage in the Times was simply a marker of the most important articles, which would therefore be cited more frequently, even without coverage in the popular press. RESULTS. Articles in the Journal that were covered by the Times received a disproportionate number of scientific citations in each of the 10 years after the Journal articles appeared. The effect was strongest in the first year after publication, when Journal articles publicized by the Times received 72.8 percent more scientific citations than control articles. This effect was not present for articles published during the strike; articles covered by the Times during this period were no more likely to be cited than those not covered. CONCLUSIONS. Coverage of medical research in the popular press amplifies the transmission of medical information from the scientific literature to the research community."

Ben Goldacre's conclusion is that, with reference to newspapers, "Despite everything we think we know, their contents seep in, we believe them to be true, and we act up them, which makes it all the more tragic that their contents are so routinely flawed".

I think it fair to say that it is an easy extension to make from newspapers to books and everything written on the web. What we read seems to influence us whether we like it or not.

No wonder religious folks find it so difficult to read opposing views and, at least to a certain extent, vice-versa.

Do you believe what you read or read what you believe? It would seem that we do indeed tend to believe what we read. Going further I think that we also tend to read what we believe because reading what we don't believe creates dissonance (nice new word this!) and that is uncomfortable.

Open Source Economics

I was talking to jason a few weeks ago, actually it must be more like 6 or 8 weeks ago, about open source software and he was questioning how it actually works from a business point of view and I didn't have a very coherent answer to give to him. I've never really thought much about it and I am sure that someone somewhere has probably delved into it in great detail. My answer may still not be that coherent but for what it is worth; here it is.

Restating the question so I can keep in mind what I am trying to answer; the question is "How can I make money if I open source my creative work, thus enabling my potential or real competitors to compete with me on a level playing field?"

I think that this should be split up for the sake of discussion into several statements;

1. "The objective of the person making the statement is to make money; not indulge in an altruistic venture."
Although some people are altruistic in parts of or in some rare cases all of their lives; most people are not and I would find it pretty hard to believe that all open source developers are entirely altruistic. Since open source software doesn't seem to be going away something must be driving it and I think that to answer this, one should consider the net benefit of open source to the creators of the creative works rather than the benefit of the created work in isolation. If one were to give away a small value, being the time invested in creating the creative work, but in return receive a much larger value being the time invested by other people in their creative works which one uses; although no money has changed hands, value certainly has and one would be a net beneficiary.


2. "Releasing a creative work under an open source license really is "giving it away" for other people to use pretty much as they please within the limits of the open source license."
Software, like knowledge, has an unusual property in that it may be shared as in "given away" with both the giver and receiver maintaining full use of or access to it. I think one of the basic problems with understanding open source is the very human resistance to "giving it all away" which is in essence what one is doing as the author of an application or work released under an open source license. Again, one really needs to look at net benefit rather than the isolated return from the creative work in question because although you are indeed "giving it all away" the "all" only describes what is being given away and not what is being received. As long as what is received is of more value than that given away, there is a positive reason to participate.

3. "Competitors really would have access to your creative work and therefore be able to compete against you on a level playing field."
True, competitors really would have access to your creative work but that does not necessarily mean that they are competing against you on a level playing field. There are many aspects that together contribute to the succcess of an enterprise and only some of them relate to the actual product being sold. Alternatively, if what one is giving away isn't in the same playing field that one competes in, the whole question goes away altogether because it may not be possible for a competitor to really use it against you.

I would like to divide businesses up into two categories for the sake of this discussion; those that develop and sell software (open or closed source) and those that don't actually sell software but use software in the production of something else that people pay for be it a services or physical goods. I think that the first category of software creators is in for a rough ride and may even be doomed mostly because the second category of businesses are constantly looking for ways to decrease costs in the production of their services or physical goods. If one way for them to do this is to create applications that are open sourced and in return they gain access to a much higher value by being able to use other peoples open sourced applications; they will do so. Moreover, since they are not trying to derive income from the sale of the actual software produced as it is a almost a by-product of whatever they are actually producing, it is going to be very difficult for the first category of software developers to match. In other words, it is in the interests of those businesses whose products are not software to support open source initiatives since for relatively small amount invested, they can derive substantially more value than invested. Of course there are always going to be free-loaders, those who use but do not contribute anything in return but aside from the unfairness of this, as long as there is a net benefit to those that do contribute; they will continue to do so.

For those that produce software products that they sell and in turn pay for the software products used in the production of their own products there is no moral dilema between closed and open source but they had better hope that their product isn't or doesn't become someone else's by-product. By "someone else" I am not meaning the monolithic business typically thought about but could be universities, businesses or just groups of interested individuals whose interest in the product isn't monetary.

For those that produce services or physical goods, it is in their interests to support open source software since by doing so they are able to derive disproportionate value for the value invested and if they don't have a moral backbone, this ratio tends towards infinity since they don't pay for anything but simply decrease costs.

So, the simple answer is "You can't" but that is not to say that open source does not have a valuable part to play in business in the future.

I feel sure that I will revise this at some later stage but these are my thoughts to date.

94.7km, the 2008 edition

The weekend for the annual Johannesburg festival of cycling has come and gone and what a great weekend it turned out to be. On saturday I rode in the 40km mountain bike race which I completed in 2:28 which was a bit slow so I'm not very happy with the time. I do however have some mitigating circumstances because the course was very muddy, in fact by the end one couldn't see a patch of skin on my legs they were so caked in mud.
I didn't see the altercation but I did see the explosion of one rather rotund cyclist that was being overtaken by pretty much everyone; apparently a faster cyclist told him to "keep his line" which is a pretty normal thing to do and all you have to do is just ride straight until the overtaking cyclist is gone but this moron took it as a personal affront and tried to kick the other cyclist off his bicycle while hurling expletives like a machine gun. The overtaking cyclist looked absolutely dumbfounded as to exactly what he had done to generate this amount of vitriol; methinks fatty hasn't been laid for far too long!
Not too long afterwards we had a herd of cows crossing the path so we spent a few minutes waiting for them to clear and finally I had a novice, not sure how he got ahead of me, stop and cut across my path through a particularly deep and large mud puddle; that was me, wallowing around in about 6" of mud. So, as races go, it was pretty eventful.
Sunday was the main road race which the leaders finished in 2:03 for 95km and although the course doesn't have real hills, it isn't exactly flat either. I don't know how they do it, the 13 leaders finished on the same second so it must have been a terrific bunch sprint at the end. I had a great race and I think I have finally started taking in food early enough that I don't run out of energy before the end. I finished in a time of 3:03 which means that I was 50% slower than the leaders; pretty humbling! Nonetheless I had a great race watching the various charity raisers like the herd of "cows" cycling to raise money for choc or the guys doing 95km on a hand powered bicycle. As a girl I was riding with at that time said as we went past shouting encouragement, "I can barely do the 95km using my legs, I can't imagine trying to do it with my arms!"
When I wasn't riding I spent most of my time eating and sleeping and in recovery mode.

The Duck that won the Lottery

I couldn't recommend this book enough to people that like to think that they think; in other words all us armchair philosophers. What the book deals with are short examples of phrases and arguments that sound good when they roll of the tongue but on reflection are either poorly thought out or completely misleading and although there is a small amount of moralising in some of the sections basically the book sticks to the topic at hand. Highly recommended but not exactly light reading.

Eish, Quiet Mountain is well ... Quiet!

Caron and I have survived 10 years of married life and given the amount of hours that Caron has been working we wanted some real peace and quiet and that is exactly what we got. Quiet Mountain is aptly named and at only an hours drive out of johannesburg is pleasantly close but it was like coming to a stop after a 6 hour journey; it feels a little surreal to 'do nothing'. We didn't actually do nothing because we read and slept and ate and had one walk which by normal weekend standards is pretty sloth like. Actually I wouldn't mind being a sloth at the moment!

Arriving, the first wierd thing that took some getting used to was that there isn't any reception at all. Instead there are speaker phones and bells located at strategic locations which actually works really well. One never sees the staff except when one actually wants something and with only 7 rooms, one doesn't see to much of the fellow borders either.

Above is the view from our front door which, although one of the more modest rooms, was quite comfortable. The tree on the left is a knobwood and viewed a bit closer looks like below. Not the ideal climbing tree I would say.

Being a sort of a semi-retired farm there were about a dozen cats around and one jack russel who thought it his duty to chase the cats. The cats, for their part would follow the jack russel around as he would chase the nearest cat. It was very strange seeming a dog with a moving entourage of cats slowly navigating its way around the garden. There were a couple of swans around as well which would've been quite the menace if they had been able to get out of their ponds pictured below.

There were actually two beautiful white swans but they shared more than their colour, they shared an inordinate love of biting anything they could get their beaks onto. I let them have a chew of my shoe which they found a bit distateful but not before I had a clear indication as to how hard they could actually bite. No wonder they used them as watchdogs during the second world war.

On sunday we went for a bit of a walk because I was tired of lazing around waiting for the gout to clear; not the brightest thing that I've ever done. Foot was really quite eina by the time we got back.

The food is fantastically good, I couldn't recommend it enough and John, the proprietor, is quite the queen of the castle and very entertaining indeed.

Overall it was a great break from the rush and hubbub of johannesburg.

Politics gets interesting

It really looks like there is going to be a significant new opposition party to the ANC and unlike all other parties, it will have the same struggle credentials and racial credentials as the ANC. This means that several of the traditional weapons used against the "all white" DP (which isn't) which wasn't part of the struggle are going to be ineffective against the new party. Hopefully this will lead to a new era when the actual policies and performance of the government and opposition get to compete on the public stage and the morons within all parties get recognised for the liabilities they are and get quietly sidelined.

There is a saying that "When things sound too good to be true; they usually are" and I hope that this is not the case with the new party.

Rwanda

I have been taken to task for the lack of communication on my blog and I cannot really say that I have not had enough time; I just seem to be permanently tired and totally uninspired to do anything at all.

So what have I/we been up to in the last month? Besides the ever present work we have started the construction of the patio and most recently, I arrived back from a business trip to Kigali in Rwanda.

This turned out to be a rather fascinating trip and very pleasant indeed. Maybe my expectations were so low that anything pleasant would have been fantastic but I don't think that this was the case. Kigali is an interesting place, it is clearly very poor and third world but unlike anywhere else, it is spotlessly clean. Apparently the third saturday morning of each month is clean the country day and everyone is allotted their piece of ground to clean. Nobody is allowed to drive anywhere and there are monitors around to ensure this; one doesn't want to argue with someone who has recently been in or through a genocide!
Although Kigali is a city, it is on quite hilly terrain and there are big gaps everywhere that are still farmland so you seem to be looking out over fields to shacks or over shacks onto fields all the time.

Not only are farmlands interspersed between the buildings but well to do houses and poor shacks are nestled cheek by jowel, not at all like the expensive squatter camps ala dainfern that we have in south africa.

The hotel was very pleasant, well maintained and pretty much everything worked including the wireless internet in the room so I was able to keep up with email and generally in touch with work and the world.
What was truly a surprise was the quality of the restaurants; two that we went to were really fantastic and the food available at the hotel was very good as well. For some reason the fruit was just that much juicier and tastier than what I am used to - maybe it has something to do with the total lack of fertiliser used. The restaurants would have been entirely at home in upmarket Johannesburg and sitting outdoors in the warm evenings overlooking the lights of Kigali was a little magical.

Below is the "First Class" lounge at Nairobi airport which, after the luxury of Kigali, was a bit depressing.

The most depressing moment of the trip however was the welcome we received from the incompetent immigration official at ORT. Because the flight lands late they only have one official on duty for the entire plane and I think that he gets the late duty as punishment for some indiscretion. Very annoying welcome back to South Africa; lots of queue jumping and frayed tempers but I'm home.

Gotta get one's hands dirty!

Without conducting experiments, building prototypes, having failures, and engaging in reality, an intelligence can have thoughts but not results. It cannot think its way to solving the world's problems.

- Kevin Kelly

Ai maar dis mooi by die see, ne!

We've just had an absolutely fantastic weekend with kirsten and carl down by the riverside; okay it's actually a dam. We left after work on friday a little worse for wear after a hard week at the grindstone and it was quite difficult to rustle up the energy to load the canoe and the bikes onto the car and go driving all the way down to the vaal even though it is only an hour and a bit away.

We haven't been down for a while so we took an accidental detour through vereeniging, of which the less said the better. We were relying on the GPS that is part of caron's new Nokia E71 but the maps are somewhat outdated so the closest we could get to vaal marina was vaal dam which only has 400km around it's perimeter so it was lucky that caron recognised the road as we approached and that we could find our way from there. I can see that navigating with the GPS is going to be a bit of a learning experience.

Saturday, carl and I started with a 90km ride at an average of 26km per hour which meant that I was pretty tired before we started the boating and canoeing and finished the day up with a braai and lots of whisky, cigars and wine. The ride was great and I managed to finish it quite strongly. There was only one real hill on the ride and it is quite a hill, fortunately it is quite short but it nevertheless managed to push my heart rate up to 107%; I think I need to adjust my max heart rate to 190bpm so that I only just get to 100%.

Sunday was a bit more relaxed and we all rode to the local cafe to have breakfast and then rode back, me pushing caron up the minor hills along the way. Caron really needs to get out and exercise some more. This was followed by more paddling around the vaal marina section of the dam with the kids which was quite hard work since they don't really paddle much leaving me to paddle into the teeth of the gale that was blowing. Alistair and I found the perfect canoe mooring between two jetski moorings, it couldn't get any more snug. When caron got in the back of the canoe it felt like we were on turbocharge but unfortunately we ran out of time to get a real workout for caron in.

Back to the house, pack up and leave; get home, unpack; pack a picnic basket and head off to the RMB starlight classical concert with kim and maureen. The concert was engagingly conducted by richard cock; what were his parents thinking when the named him "dick cock" on purpose, I mean really!

The concert was a little chilly and one could see one's breath as we watched the performers, several of which were truly excellent. Dick the conductor wasn't joking when he noted that there was a excess of talent when they had to choose the 20 tenors to make up the "20 tenors" (Duh!) group. What a fantastic group, they're already great and they've only just been formed. There was also a saxophonist called shannon something or other who was great but the soprano singing verdi or something or other left me totally cold. I'm not old enough to appreciate opera and I like it that way!

A fantastic if a trifle busy weekend. The moral of the story is not to let a little tiredness get in the way of going places and enjoying your time with the people around you.

US Communist Flag

The US Flag post Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ...



As unlikely as it seems, the Communists win!

Quiet weekend

What a fantastic weekend! Caron and I did about as close to nothing as we, or more specifically, I could without being in a coma. Saturday morning I rode with Hennie on a 70km training ride which was quite tough, hennie obviously enjoys the pain because we averaged about 25km/hr over the fairly hilly course. Carl couldn't join us because he decided that, since he was making use of the corporate entry, maybe he should have a ride with the guys and girls before just meeting them on the start line. It sounds like it wasn't the best of choices. From the finish of the ride to the end of sunday evening I didn't do a stitch more exercise, we read, drank wine, went to dinner with kim and generally were as lazy as possible. It was great because it was a change but I don't think I could do this every weekend.

It has been a very pleasant experience not having a TV and DSTV to gobble up huge amounts of time. All the things we normally complain about just not getting time to do - we find we have time for. I'm actually thinking of making a TV less life the norm although I don't think I am going to get that past Caron.

On the political front in south africa, it is VERY interesting at the moment as we don't have a president. Mbeki resigned which is a diplomatic way of saying he was pushed and rather hard too. Zuma can't be the president as he is not a member of parliament at the moment so nobody knows who it is going to be. I guess it will be announced soon. I find it quite ironic that zuma was evicted from the deputy president position due to a court case in which he wasn't present and in which he never had the opportunity to defend himself from accusations. Mbeki, likewise, is being forced from office due to court case in which he never had the opportunity to defend himself from accusations. Methinks this is going to come back and bite the zumaites at a later stage when it is pointed out that the injustice meted out to zuma that they are complaining about so vociferously is exactly what they in turn are meteing out on Mbeki.

All this excitement and this is on top of the meltdown in the US which is keeping everyone glued to the internet. Personally, I wonder when the hypocrisy of US is going to be realised by everyone that it's ok for the US to nationalise private institutions like fannie mae and freddie mac but it isn't ok for venezuela to nationalise their oil assets. I think I'm going to do some doctoring of the US flag seeing as they seem to have come over all communist now. Fidel must have tears rolling down his cheeks with laughter!

The day of the dog

The sunday mountain bike rides are turning out to be quite eventful these days. Although there weren't any dead bodies blocking the path this week it was just as interesting. The day started at 04:45 and it is amazing how much having the first digit on the clock being a 4 makes it feel so much earlier than if it was a 5. Met up with Jason at his place and watched the sun rise over the horizon as we cycled down to meet Vaughn before heading over to Nothern Farm where we met Vaughns brother Scott and a couple of his mates.

While we were milling around waiting for scott to get his kit together there was this dog wandering around not taking too much notice of us but when we set off he followed us. After a kilometer it was clear that he was keen on a real run; keeping up with the bicycles quite easily, especially on the uphills. At the tops of hills he would wait for us, maybe have a lie down in a pool of water as if to say "... so what took you so long?" By the 15km mark jason was starting to work out how he could entice the dog to follow us all the way home. He was clearly very experienced with bicycles because when he was going downhill and he could hear you coming up behind him he would jump off the track and wait for you to pass before getting back on the track. By the 25km mark Jason was in awe and the dog was in danger of being muttnapped! I'm not sure exactly how far we rode with the dog loping alonside but it must have been quite close to 30km although you could see that he was getting at bit tired right at the end; one can easily understand being tired after a 30km run.

Jason's rear brakes have been binding a little which makes it very difficult to pedal; this I know from experience! While I enjoyed getting to the top of the hills ahead of everyone else, I think I may be in for a tough time when jason gets his brakes sorted out.

On our way home we were cycling next to each other about a metre apart and a snake crossed our path slithering in front of jason and behind me; clearly terrified and moving as fast as he/she or it possibly could. That would have been an experience getting a snake wrapped up in one's wheel.

Cathy and her sister Robyn, Vaughn's wife plus attendant children met us at northern farm for coffee so that the husbands could take the children for a bit of a ride. This seems to really work out well for everyone and if it wasn't for church I'm sure Carl and Kirsten would enjoy it was well.

Fractally wrong!

"The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person's opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.

If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person on the Internet--in mailing lists, newsgroups, or website forums--your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time."

Unknown.