This morning’s offering from Dilbert:
Of course, as Ivo Vegter pointed out, fracking doesn’t really cause earthquakes and as New Scientist recently told us, any water pollution is generally due to poor management of waste water – a hazard in many other industrial processes. So his evil plan wouldn’t really work.
Still, nice to see Dilbert’s company president using Christine’s Brilliant Idea. Fine work, Christine.
This is seventy-four different sorts of impressive.
Sonic Notify is a flexible technology solution that presents a unique opportunity for content strategists focusing on proximity and live experience solutions. Their clients purchase a speaker, or a “beacon” (which come in multiple shapes and sizes) that send out high pitched audio signals inaudible to the human ear within music and other soundtracks that trigger compatible apps to launch websites, videos, texts, maps…etc.to pop up on people’s smartphones that are within range of the device. The technology can be installed anywhere from a super market, to a football stadium, to a personal wallet.
So you hear nothing, but your cellphone reacts to the inaudible signal and pops up with some content relevant to your current location. Here’s the video, in which the presenter (or rather the presenter’s smartphone) meets Jim and buys some cheap nappies:
[vimeo clip_id=”33556728″ width=”678″ height=”452″]
Outstanding. And yes, while this technology has the potential to be rather invasive, it also has the potential to be hugely useful and beneficial to the smartphone user. I love it.
CAPE TOWN: People partied in the streets of the Mother City until the early hours of this morning as news broke that DJ Anele Mdoda was to move from 5FM back to Highveld Stereo, following the ever-popular Sasha Martinengo out of the national broadcaster. Anele will be joining other hilarious celebrity presenters at Highveld such as the hilarious Darren “Whackhead” Simpson, best known for his hilarious phonecall pranks from the 1980’s.
Mdoda, three-quarters of the depressingly poor Grant and Anele afternoon show, acknowledged the announcement made by Highveld on twitter yesterday evening, prompting spontaneous celebrations as the news spread across the Western Cape.
Residents of Gauteng and surrounds were less happy as they moved from frying pan to fire: Anele’s new show will see her being more accessible to Johannesburg residents, but that was something that apparently left Capetonian reveller Tyrone Athlone unmoved:
I don’t care about them. Four years we’ve suffered. Four! But now, she’s out of our hair and off our airwaves. With the Gauteng e-toll reductions announced yesterday, we will be subsidising their roads. Well let me tell you, it’s already payback time. Revenge is a dish best served right now, Joburg.
See what you’ll have to listen to now as you pay your poxy 30 cents a kilometre. Karma is a bitch, hey?
Another drunken roisterer commented:
I haven’t partied this hard since we won the World Cup in 2007. Everything seemed to start going wrong in 2008 when Grant and Anele started on 5FM. You only have to look at how Bafana have been so poor and how the Boks didn’t win again in 2011. All that can change now. This is fantastic news for South Africa. Bring on April!
As 5FM announced that there would be a big announcement, probably announcing the announcement of an announcement, on March 1st, speculation was already rife as to the potential fate of Anele’s partner, Grant Nash.
There’s no way he can carry that show on his own. Have you seen him? I don’t think he could carry anything. He still has a Nokia 8210 because it’s the lightest phone he can find. He’s the perfect advertisement for a vegan lifestyle.
remarked another delighted radio listener, while tucking into a Heart Stopper™ Triple Stack Burger with Double Macon and Fried Egg at Mo’s Fast Food Caravan just off Long Street, his comments almost drowned out by the celebratory pealing of bells from surrounding churches.
A completely ficticious source at 5FM said:
Yes, we’ve lost Anele to Highveld – and that’s a bit of a coup for Primedia. Of course, we’re already looking into replacements. We don’t want to change things too much and it’s too early to say anything just yet, but the current forerunners to take over the afternoon show are a brick and a chunk of braaiwood. We just have to be careful not to lose the afternoon audience with a sudden hike in intellectual content.
We’re disappointed, obviously. If Anele had come to us and said that she wanted more time for lunch, we could have shifted our schedules accordingly. But they’re a privately-funded radio station and apparently they have a really great buffet there for the drivetime crew. We simply can’t compete with that at the SABC.
Primedia Broadcasting’s share price fell sharply this morning, though analysts were unable to tie this directly to the Mdoda announcement as many of them were still nursing hangovers from the last night’s celebrations.
Warning! This Post Contains Some Bad Language.
For years now, those South Africans who can, have taken their money and invested it in often hideous second homes by the sea. Freed from the constraints of day-to-day urban dwelling, they let themselves go in every way, shape and form, resulting in the architectural ruination of towns and villages which have the misfortune to be near a beach. One can see this phenomenon at work in Yzerfontein, in Pringle Bay, in Betty’s Bay, Rooiels, Onrus and Hermanus. When you see the abominations which have sprung up in these places, you are instantly thankful for the draconian planning regulations which are robustly enforced in our cities.
There’s a lot to be said for letting yourself go in a second home. It’s a chance to relax, to unwind, to escape. But rather leave that until after your second home is built. Put in that vulgar bar that your wife won’t let you have at home, drink too much and eat unhealthily every time you go there, but at least wait until the external building work as been completed before “expressing yourself”. Please.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some beautiful second homes out there as well. But you’re going to be hard-pressed to find them amongst the ugly escapism of what apparently passes as good taste for the average South African second home owner. Each to their own, of course, but damn, your own is ugly. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to get some snaps together and show you what I mean.
But in the meantime, here’s one that was made earlier.
This is a recently completed holiday home in Suiderstrand, Western Cape. It’s not my taste, but it’s certainly not as bad as some. However, what the building lacks in character and downright horrendous appearance, it makes up for in the name.
Remember in that first paragraph, where I said that people seemingly found the need to let themselves go rather too much? Well, in my humble opinion, this guy has let himself go way too far.
Because yes, the owner of this particular property has chosen to name it “Sir Fukalot”:
(Sorry Mum)
When I saw the sign, words failed me and in documenting it here today, words are again failing me.
What do I know? Maybe it’s a big sex advert or something. It can’t be a house name though, can it? Because there are a number of stages that one needs to go through to get a house name plate onto a wall. You have to firstly come up with the name. It’s at this point that I have already failed when it comes to “Sir Fukalot”. I’ve named a website, two kids and a cottage and I think I’ve done ok. And one of the reasons I think I’ve done ok is that none of those four things is called “Sir Fukalot”. Not one.
It’s not something that even crossed my mind when I was considering suitable nomenclature for any of those things. Or anything else, for that matter.
But hey, that’s just the first step. Then you’ve got to get your idea past anyone else who has a stake in the property. And if I had come up with the name “Sir Fukalot” for our holiday home, which I wouldn’t have done anyway, I would then have to tell my wife that I thought that naming our holiday home “Sir Fukalot” was a good idea. I wouldn’t do that, either.
Wife (amazingly) placated and agreeable, you then take your idea to the signmaker. “Hello, Mr Signmaker,” you say. “I’d like you to attach the words “Sir” and “Fukalot” in chromadek to a distressed piece of scaffolding board which I will then have mounted on the outside wall of my holiday home, so that everyone passing will know that the building is henceforth to be known as “Sir Fukalot”?”
To be fair, the signmaker just wants to make some money from the crazy Afrikaner.
And then you have to have the balls to put it up. And to use it in everyday conversation:
“Yes, please deliver the sofa to Sir Fukalot in Suiderstrand.” or
“I’m hoping to leave a bit early on Friday as we’re going to Sir Fukalot for the weekend.”
Although I presume that having gone through the previous steps, these last two won’t present much of an obstacle.
I shall, as promised, document some unfortunate examples of how not to design and name a second home by the seaside in the near future. There may already be a tumblr account set aside for exactly that purpose.
And as I mentioned, there will be plenty of places which are architecturally worse than this one. But I will struggle to beat “Sir Fukalot” for sheer brass neck when naming one’s seaside design disaster.
Bit short of time today, so here’s a photo of the front cover of a calendar from KPMG.
60% of world cocoa production, 20% of global gold production and shedloads of shale gas.
What’s not to like?
(apart perhaps for that 3% of global GDP figure…)