Cape Town 2015 Loadshedding Schedule

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The City of Cape Town has released its new “improved”, fairer loadshedding schedule, which is applicable from 1st February 2015.
Rather than running on 7 day ‘days of the week’ timetables, we’re now looking at 16 day ‘date of the month’ schedules. Routine be damned!

Here’s your handy download of map and schedule, courtesy of 6000 miles… (or you can read on).

How to use the schedule:

  1. Find out which area you’re on, using the handy & colourful map.
  2. Check the red box here or here to see what stage loadshedding is happening.
    (Or check the City twitter account).
  3. Look at the calendar, check the date and look below to see when you’re going to be loadshod.

(Click images to enlarge)
loadshed1

loadshed2

PLEASE NOTE

  • Based on the national power grid, Eskom may change or suspend the loadshedding stage at any time.
  • If loadshedding does not occur in your area as indicated on the current schedule, it does not mean you will be excluded next time.
  • If you are in areas 17 – 23 or an unshaded area, then view your schedule at this web address: www.loadshedding.eskom.co.za
  • If power is not restored at the allocated time, please report this on SMS 31220
  • Electricity is needed to power certain city functions e.g. water reservoir pumps, sewage and drainage. Please use water sparingly during loadshedding periods.
  • During loadshedding treat all electricity appliances carefully as electricity might turn on at anytime.

Have fun, save power, do stuff.

Fibonacci Zoetrope Sculptures are trippy

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This is a bit complicated – so much so that I don’t really understand exactly what’s going on (although we’ve done zoetropes and Finonacci sprials on the blog before). All I know is that it’s all to do with the spinning, the lighting and your eyes and mind playing tricks on you.

[vimeo clip_id=”116582567″ width=”678″ height =”381″]

Here we go:

These are 3D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotation speed is synchronized to the strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º – the golden angle. If you count the number of spirals on any of these sculptures you will find that they are always Fibonacci numbers.

Hmm. It’s not that much clearer, is it? Still, the great thing about complicated stuff is that you don’t always have to understand exactly what’s going on to enjoy what you’re seeing.

What a difference a year makes…

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…52 little weeks.

On 20th January last year, South Africa woke up to read what our Sports Minister had said about the national football team’s defeat the previous evening:

“The mediocrity we saw yesterday is disgraceful. Last night, we saw a bunch of losers who conceded two useless goals. We must never wake up to this situation ever again,” said Mbalula.

But then guess what happened last night?
Oops.

On 20th January this year, South Africa woke up to the words of a somewhat different Fikile Mbalula:

But that’s politics for you isn’t it? A short-term, shiny surface popularity contest (see yesterday’s post) with no real substance behind it. I’d love to think that Mbalula felt differently about the South African football team, but deep down, I think he’s just trying to look good in front of his legion of twitter fans after the kicking his reputation took for those 2014 comments.

So, while I’m all for this “new approach”, while we’re a whole 365 days on from Fikile’s extraordinary outburst, while he tells us how we must react to last night’s rubbish with dignity and while we’re all not calling Bafana Bafana names, let’s not allow ourselves to conveniently forget exactly who was the most famous name caller of all.

James Blunt to Chris Bryant

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It’s open letter time again…

2015 is election year in the UK and it’s going to be awfully tight. The politicians, lawd bless ’em, will stop at nothing to get an extra few votes in the bag. However, with retrospect, perhaps shadow Culture minister Chris Bryant should have stopped some way short of including musician (careful now) James Blunt in a list of “performers from a ‘privileged background’ dominating the arts”.
James’ reply, which begins:

Dear Chris Bryant MP,

You classist gimp.

and is laced with facts, hard truths and some wonderful vitriol:

And then you come along, looking for votes, telling working class people that posh people like me don’t deserve it, and that we must redress the balance. But it is your populist, envy-based, vote-hunting ideas which make our country crap, far more than me and my shit songs, and my plummy accent.

has been shared by the Guardian. It’s certainly worth a read.

Oh, and he’s been on twitter as well, of course:

Lol.

I downloaded this

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New music (new to me, anyway). It’s Swedish “dream pop” band Postiljonen. (We really are just adding adjectives to musical genres to create ever more sub-genres now, aren’t we?)

Much lazy 80’s sax there, much comparison with M83 and the like.
This is going to go down very nicely on the beach this morning.

I downloaded the album Skyer, and I’m happy to tell you that there’s plenty more where this came from.
Go play.