Author: 6000

Do nowt, get fit

Posted on

Back to a bit of a run today, after a minor disaster a couple of weeks ago involving a slippy shoe which left me with an ugly bruised foot and a swollen knee.

And things went quite well, thanks for asking.

In fact, upon reviewing the stats on my watch/phone, it seems that I have progressed a level in my fitness, not be getting fitter per se, but by getting older. Yep, as you add a year to your age, the thresholds and targets that you are measured against become lower. So simply because you are actually only a few days older than you used to be before (and despite what the number of years might suggest), your level of fitness – at least as measured by stats and apps – improves.

Of course, the tough thing to do now is to improve it even more, given that the thresholds and targets drop for a good reason. It’s definitely harder to get fit and keep fit as you get older.
Harder still when you’re quite lazy and you like stuff like beer and burgers.

But I’ll keep going for the moment. Maybe just slightly slower than I used to.

When you know…

Posted on

We’re not all experts at everything. If we were, not only would it be extremely taxing to keep up to date with all our areas of expertise (that being all of them), but also, it would rather diminish the use of the word “expert” in any sort of comparative sense. And so we should probably stick to our own lane, and get on with our own expert stuff, rather than trying to be a master of all trades, and a jack of none.

Or something.

I’ve mentioned on here more than once about the eye-opening experience of finding out just how many people considered themselves experts on microbiology when Covid came around. And just how misguided and plainly incorrect much of that “expertise” actually was. Because it’s reasonable to think that someone sharing their apparently learned opinion on something you don’t know about, should probably be talking sense until they start talking about something you know a lot about, and then you realise just how little they actually understand.

I’m not alone in feeling this way. This has been doing the rounds again today:

This, as the Loud Mouth Space Wanker drags what’s left of the rotting corpse of Twitter uphill in the driving rain, through the acidic, rocky mud towards the inevitability of the waiting teeth of the scrap grinder.
And while this is just an opinion piece, it’s an opinion piece by a real expert: one with over 18 years experience in covering media and technology stories:

Put it all together, and X isn’t just worth less than Musk paid for it, but likely less than its debt. Assume that the company’s revenue last year was $4.7 billion, based on results before it was taken private. If advertising has dropped by half, then this year’s sales should be a bit over $2.5 billion. Put that on the same enterprise-value-to-sales multiple as Snap, which is down to a mere 3 times, and X is worth around $8 billion.

Just because he has a lot of money (less now, of course) and a big mouth, doesn’t mean that he’s an expert at everything. Or perhaps, anything.

By all means stay away from his cars and rockets. It’s easily done.
There’s every chance that his software might not be around much longer for you to stay away from.

The terrifying size of the upcoming apocalypse

Posted on

Sometimes, it’s tough to get across just how big something is. Measurements are accurate, of course, but sometimes people use the wrong units to describe things:

And even when we use the right ones, it’s sometimes difficult for the average layperson to mentally comprehend what 50m or 5km is. That’s why we often choose to rely on common everyday things to describe the size of an object. In the UK, that common everyday thing would be a double-decker bus. Fairly standard, nationally ubiquitous: a good choice to let us know how big a fatberg in the local sewer is:

But that’s the UK. So maybe we need to look at something else for places that don’t have double decker buses. Like an animal. The elephant seems a fairly good choice, even though they do vary a bit in size:

But in Israel, they don’t have double decker buses or elephants. So those wouldn’t work as examples. They do… they do seem to have an intimate knowledge of the scale of… er… capybaras, though:

That’s a big asteroid, and those are some chunky 1.2m capybaras. Equivalent to 1,700 Nine-banded armadillos or 6,200 carrots. The same size as 112 Fatbergs. Huge.

Thankfully, as the blurb points out, the KiloCapybara lump of rock isn’t going hit us. This time. But we must always be on the lookout for multi-rodent sized bits of space debris about to crash into our planet, and describe their size accurately: whatever it takes

And so I find myself…

Posted on

…overlooking some local vineyards while waiting for my daughter and her friends to enjoy a last-day-of-the-school-holidays lunch. I’ve done a couple of jobs and a bit of shopping, and now I’m back where I dropped them off and I’m enjoying a sandwich while I wait and don’t cramp anyone’s style.

As regular readers will know, I’m well used to waiting in car parks while my kids do stuff, and this one really isn’t much of a chore, given the weather and the view.

At times like this, I’m reminded of a recent conversation about emigration. As a topic, it’s always lurking awkwardly somewhere in the background at parties and braais, ready to pop into the chat in any quiet moment. Honestly, I’d rather talk about other things. Probably with other people. People who want to talk about emigration are usually the ones who want to talk about other stuff I don’t.
I came for the beer and the meat and the happy times. An opportunity for some time off from real life.
Not to wallow in politics and economics and crime stats. (And remember: I’m not just talking about SA here.)

But there was no escape in this case. And this was the “we’re staying” version of the emigration chat.
And the line that has remained with me from the mountain walk that morning is:

If we were in the UK right now, what would the highlight of our weekend be? Probably visiting a garden centre.

I sometimes think that in justifying (or trying to justify?) these sorts of decisions, it’s easy to be biased towards whichever side you’ve chosen, sometimes by over exaggerating the positives of your choice, sometimes by denigrating the other option.

And I do definitely think that this is a bit of the latter.

But as I’ve said before (and fully recognising how lucky I am to be able to say this), for us, the lifestyle here far outweighs the problems of the place.

And without wanting to do the UK down, I can’t help but think that if I were there, I’d more likely be waiting in a shopping centre multi-storey car park and not overlooking the Constantia Valley and False Bay. (Well, obviously. But you know what I mean.) And it’s not like I don’t have the choice of a shopping centre multi-storey car park if that were my (or my daughter’s) scene.

But on a sunny, breezy Monday lunchtime under the oaks in Constantia, the biggest concerns are baboons and tourists. And why they didn’t bring a straw with her milkshake.

And this car park is really good.