parlez vous victoire?

Thursday, March 30, 2006

v... for me!

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

v for vendetta... there's not much i can say about this movie, except that you should watch it.

On a more personal note, everything about this movie appeals to me... everything about the movie screams... me... except perhaps the violence ;) i loved it, and it's been added to my favourites list.

now that is all i'm going to say for now...

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Forget Chuck... Here's to Riaan Cruywagen

Lest South Africa forget about its own hero, here's a reminder or two about our most famous news anchor! Thanks to the Warthogs cape town-based mtb mailing list...

Riaan Cruywagen never has his back to you.....or does he? His back is in
fact identical to his front courtesy of a large conjoined twin: Tiaan
Cruywagen. (This creepy duo is what Ridley Scott used as a reference for
a character in Mad Max called Master Blaster.)

Riaan Cruywagen is fluent in twenty seven of the eleven official
languages.

Riaan Cruywagen knows the news before it happens.

Riaan Cruywagen knew you would say that.

Riaan Cruywagen is cryogenically frozen every night for EXACTLY eight
hours. His brain impulses are monitored during this and used as
templates for deciphering elaborate ancient manuscripts.

Riaan Cruywagen had a telekinetic showdown with Johan Stemmet. After
draining all of Stemmet's powers and rendering him severely retarded, he
created Noot vir Noot and made Stemmet the host.

Some people believe Riaan Cruywagen wears a toupee - he has, in fact,
one perfect hair. The one that covers his entire head - giving it that,
'not quite real' look. Riaan himself is not quite real.

Riaan Cruywagen was the original model for Michelangelo's statue of
David. Unfortunately, that was in the early years of Michelangelo's
career and he wasn't yet artistically mature enough to capture the
Cruywagen essence. He nearly drove himself mad with frustration until
eventually he decided to settle for his number 2 choice of model in
Chuck Norris who was only 3 years old when he posed for Michelangelo.

One night during an ad break on the 8 o'clock news, Riaan Cruywagen
mentioned to the makeup lady that he was 'tired of this apartheid
nonsense'. Nelson Mandela was released from prison the next day.

Riaan Cruywagen wasn't born, he thought himself into existence.

The only man made object visible (with the unaided eye) from space is
the Great Wall of China. Riaan Cruywagen can see the Muir Space station
with his 'unaided eye'.

Riaan Cruywagen is omnipresent

Riaan Cruywagen never blinks; if he does the entire world would just not
happen for that split second.

When Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest, he was
welcomed by Riaan Cruywagen, who briefly interviewed him, before wiring
the information through to the SAUK.

The SAUK is actually a front for a secret society of Swiss Bankers who
manipulate the world's economy, and is chaired by non other than his
most Worshipful Master, Riaan Cruywagen.

In binary code the word "Riaan Cruywagen" looks like the shroud of
Turin.

When he was three Riaan Cruywagen successfully reinvented the wheel.

For his second birthday party he entertained guests by coming up with
the first highly successful prototype.

Riaan Cruywagen will never die. His soul gets transferred to another
identical body via various arcane rituals and current nano-technology
thrice fortnightly.

Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard is based on the unpublished
autobiography written by Riaan Cruywagen at the age of 15.

Riaan Cruywagen is an accomplished author and poet - though, humble by
nature, he chooses not to write under his own title but prefers to go by
pseudonyms such as W. Whitman, E. Hemingway, Proust, JD Salinger and G
Chaucer - amongst others.

Riaan Cruywagen's first job was tutoring Pythagoras.

After reading the news Riaan Cruywagen built the pyramids. It took
precisely 17 minutes to draw up the plans and then a further six minutes
to think them into existence.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

C R A S H & B U R N

91 days. it's going to be the longest short week i've ever had.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

best before [insert date here]

argh what has happened to me? my creativity has gone for an extended holiday somewhere, and i feel blah constantly. I am being told that I look stressed by people at work (then you know it's really bad). And I nearly completely lost the plot with someone at work yesterday... although i've been told i looked like i was about to burst into tears. well perhaps a bit of both then. right now i am sitting at my desk with a stack of sticky notes balancing on each shoulder. don't ask. if i wiggle my shoulders about a bit the notes wobble about precariously but don't fall off. hmmm... there may be a business idea in there somewhere. it feels kinda liberating to be sitting here doing something wacky for once.



in other news I decided to give the whole work blog thing a go. so I have 1 post down. and nothing else to write about. perhaps with time.

and now it's time to expire...

Thursday, March 09, 2006

the rules of blogging

My company has started getting into the blogging thing... my boss is the pioneer with a blog of his own. Interesting concept. I still view it with suspicion. For me blogs are personal things. Plus you have the whole thing of people posting really irrelevant matter about their companies and it turning into something dreadful, like a lawsuit for instance.

Along with the invitation to the company to start their own blogs, a rough guideline or "blog policy" was appended. I was wondering what the general blogging community thought of it?

the policy is based almost entirely on sun's blog policy, which can be found at http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/policy.html

==

copied and slightly modified from sun

Advice By speaking directly to fellow members*, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards. We don't want to micro-manage, but here is some advice.

It's a Two-Way Street The real goal isn't to get everyone blogging, it's to become part of the industry conversation. So, whether or not you're going to write, and especially if you are, look around and do some reading, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying.

If you start writing, remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you'll be doing your readers a service, and you'll also generate links back to you; a win-win.

Don't Tell Secrets Common sense at work here; it's perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it's not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces. Protect proprietary and confidential information, but there are still going to be judgment calls.

If the judgment call is tough-on secrets or one of the other issues discussed here-it's never a bad idea to get management sign-off before you publish.

Be Interesting Writing is hard work. There's no point doing it if people don't read it. Fortunately, if you're writing about a product that a lot of people are using, or are waiting for, and you know what you're talking about, you're probably going to be interesting. And because of the magic of hyperlinking and the Web, if you're interesting, you're going to be popular, at least among the people who understand your specialty.

Another way to be interesting is to expose your personality; almost all of the successful bloggers write about themselves, about families or movies or books or games; or they post pictures. People like to know what kind of a person is writing what they're reading. Once again, balance is called for; a blog is a public place and you should try to avoid embarrassing your readers or the company.

Write What You Know The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know. If you have a deep understanding of some chunk of technology, it's hard to get into too much trouble, or be boring, talking about the issues and challenges around that.

On the other hand, a architect who publishes rants on marketing strategy, or whether something should be open-sourced, has a good chance of being embarrassed by a real expert, or of being boring.

Financial Rules There are all sorts of laws about what we can and can't say, business-wise. Talking about revenue, future product ship dates, roadmaps, or our share price is apt to get you, or the company, or both, into legal trouble.

Quality Matters Use a spell-checker. If you're not design-oriented, ask someone who is whether your blog looks decent, and take their advice on how to improve it.

You don't have to be a great or even a good writer to succeed at this, but you do have to make an effort to be clear, complete, and concise. Of course, "complete" and "concise" are to some degree in conflict; that's just the way life is. There are very few first drafts that can't be shortened, and usually improved in the process.

Think About Consequences The worst thing that can happen is that you're in a meeting somewhere and someone pulls out a print-out of your blog and gets us all into trouble

In general, "XXX sucks" is not only risky but unprofessional and unsubtle. Once again, it's all about judgment: using your weblog to trash or embarrass yourself, the company, our customers, or your co-workers, is not only dangerous but stupid.

Disclaimers Many bloggers put a disclaimer on their front page saying who they work for, but that they're not speaking officially. This is good practice, but don't count it to avoid trouble; it may not have much legal effect.

Tools We're starting to develop tools to make it easy for anyone to start publishing, but if you feel the urge, don't wait for us; there are lots of decent blogging tools and hosts out there.

Profressional : Obviously if content is deemed in-appropriate, with the above policy, but also with social norms (e.g. racism, sexism, profanities, etc,etc) then your content would obviously be removed, and access to blogging facilities denied.


==

* name of the working community changed to conceal the name of the company concerned

So to blog about work at work or not, that is the question... I hardly have time for my own blog over here, let alone to make some more time to keep up with it elsewhere... but maybe I'll change my mind and become a happy and entirely work-engrossed individual... but I doubt it.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

juicy jo-burger

Yes, I have finally moved... and suddenly life is upside down. I love the place, love the furniture we have bought, love that I am closer to work... everything is great... except for the fact that my life does not fit into the box I call home. Ok it's not that bad... I just need to make time for unpacking, and get imaginative and creative about packing space... I cannot wait till I am well & truly settled in... or have some sort of feeling of stability.

Then there are other things... my bike! I miss my mtb! It's still in pta because I haven't found a place for it yet at the new place. I miss riding. I miss mtb races... they were fun. I miss me... weird as that sounds. I wish I were a mind reader some times and that I were more patient and tolerant others. While I'm at it I wish for world peace... and 1 me to rule them all ;)

in the dark

Cape Town was riddled with power cuts recently... and as always there's a funny side... not to *lighten* the seriousness of the situation, but rather to add a little light humour to your day, here's something that I received via email last week...