Life, the universe and everything - Technical Ambitions

2012-01-06T05:28:00.000-08:00

Open Source DragonFly II STM32 ARM MCU

Click here to go to http://dragonflymcu.com

Evaluation board.

Click here to view the User Manual for the DragonFly II

With example code compiled on CooCox

Features
• STM32F103RBT6 Arm Cortex MCU @ 72 MHz.
• On Chip RTC With Battery.
• 3 USARTS ( Com Ports ), COM1 can be TTL or RS232.
• Boot Mode selectable.
• Can be programmed through SWD 3 wire interface or via COM1 RS232.
• Many available I/O port bits including ADC Channels, CAN bus etc.
• Power supply can be 3.3V without onboard regulator or with onboard regulator input must
be between 5V to 7V.
• Micro SD Card for data storage.
• 2 row 20 pin connector with standard 2.54mm spacing pins ( 40 pin socket ).
• Supplied with source code examples including working example of FAT FS in C.
• All examples compiled with free CooCox IDE with CodeSourcery.

Introduction
The DragonFly MCU is one of the few small 40 pin DIP socket STM32 MCU modules that has an
onboard micro SD socket.

There is a wealth of information on the internet about the STMicroelectronics www.st.com/stm32/
STM32 MCU.

This powerful yet cheap 32 bit microcontroller can be used in many applications from control to data
acquisition.

The DragonFly MCU is intended to be an easy start for beginners or hobbyist but the module can also
be incorporated into a user end product.

CooCox with Code Sourcery was chosen as it is completely free and easy to use for beginners to get
started using the STM32.

Several complete C code examples are supplied with the module that can be imported and compiled
with CoIDE out of the box and run as is or modified by the user.

2012-01-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

Guest house - Caledon23 - George

I rarely promote a guest house even though I go regularly to them. I love just going out and spoiling myself and my partner every now and then and what better way than to go relax at a guest house where everything gets done for you. After the running around of the week there is a need to just relax and enjoy.

This December I had the good fortune to hit the road and just see where it takes us. It was great. NO planned stays anywhere. SO there was also no reason to rush anywhere. Everyone said we were mad to just go on the whim and yet we found places to stay even though December is a peak season. We ended up being referred to a guest house that had just been started by a lovely couple. Hendrik and Linda Aucamp.

Man what a pleasure. Hendrik is a builder and I think he spared no expense to make the place beautiful. He really went to town and as he says, "Why skimp on the little things since they are the things everyone notices." For the very first time in about 20 years I woke up feeling refreshed and without any stiff or sore back. I now realise the importance of an awesome bed. We tend to spend so much time in our beds yet we skimp on the one thing we really should splurge on.

I am really happy to recommend Caledon23 Guest house in George. Situated in Caledon street number 23 (the place to be apparently in George) it was a stay to remember. Hendrik and Linda are a really friendly and outgoing couple and I know that you will enjoy your stay there.

OH - and the best thing is the price. For a guest house that has all the finery that they have I was expecting to pay a fortune. However the price is almost the most attractive item. At under R800 for a couple bed and breakfast included it was amazing.

If you are ever in the neck of the woods in George, go look up Hendrik and Linda Aucamp at Caledon23 Geust house. You wont be sorry.-

johnkweber

Shark Cage diving - try it for a "rush" second to none

2011-12-06T04:44:00.001-08:00

Try it for the "rush" of a lifetime

Welcome to Africa Shark Dive Safaris:

Great White Shark cage diving in GansbaaiSouth Africa is a total holiday destination, full of exciting and interesting things to do...

Africa Shark Dive Safaris offer you a wide selection of tours and safari experiences in South Africa.

Our selection of tours include white shark cage diving, white shark breaching, whale watching and shark diving throughout South Africa, Big Five wildlife safaris, trips in and around Cape Town and a tour of the Garden Route. We also offer aerial tours between Cape Town and Gansbaai as well as fly-in packages to Mozambique.

Our latest tour additions include Kayak trips, Cave excursions & cruises in and around Gansbaai. Our cruises include sunset cruises, boat cruises, Dyer Island boat cruise and exclusive trips. We also offer fishing trips and quadbiking tours in and around Gansbaai.

Africa Shark Dive Safaris is an Adventure and Accommodation Centre with a professional team that will, as a booking agent, guarantee to make your holiday in South Africa an unforgettable one.

Our main focus is shark cage diving and knowing that it will be difficult for you to choose between 8 different shark cage operators in Gansbaai, we will make your decision easy and book your trip with only the best operators that maintain the highest standards in the handling of sharks and also giving you quality and personalized attention.

Africa Shark Dive Safaris would like to make your holiday trip to South Africa hassle free - Our commitment to you is "An Experience of a Lifetime"

Try it for the "rush" of a lifetime

Kruger National Park - People live there also - Captain John William Joseph Newman

2011-02-21T02:46:00.000-08:00

Purchase this kindle book here

For a hardcopy book you may email : captainnewman@gmail.com (author)

Dr. U “Tol” de Wet Pienaar.
Former; Chief Director, South African National Parks Board.
Many people contribute their efforts towards the running of a successful National Parks Service. This is equally so with Provincial Parks and similar organisations. All those who live and work for the betterment of the environment or the education and the well being of visitors, play a vital and important role towards those ideals.
This book is a light hearted rendition of incidents that occurred during John’s service, for both the National Parks and the Provincial Parks service, for which he was, both contracted frequently or fully employed.
The National Parks employ Scientist, Technicians, Rangers, Engineers, Mechanics, Restaurateurs, Retailers, Administrators and Stores Controllers. People working in the parks service that come from every walk of life, those who are making their contribution tirelessly.
John was with the National Parks Aviation division, serving a multiplicity of roles and his stories expose his specific experiences that happened in his daily activity, of which some I was involved personally.
It is therefore true, besides all the animal species in the National Parks............. People live there also.

Introduction
I met John Newman a few years ago and from the very first meeting, I realised that he has amazing skills and talents. While working and using these diverse skills and talents the stories he has collected are now something we can read and enjoy.

This book is a hilarious look into his amazing past, telling of just one or two of the jobs he has been fortunate to do throughout his life. His dedication to the tasks he tackles shows up in the fact that he piloted aircraft and helicopters in the Kruger National Park. We as the reader now get to read of his extraordinary experiences whilst working as a pilot in the KNP.

After having heard all these stories related to me first hand by John, I just knew that they had to be written down, so that others could end up reading them and enjoy them as much as I did hearing them.

John is the type of person who wakes up virtually every day with a new idea that has never been expanded upon before. It truly is amazing how he is just fortunate in that department. I have come to appreciate him for his unique problem solving skills and I also know that we will be seeing a few more books coming from John’s pen as he has many ideas he must still share with the rest of the world

- John K Weber

James Caan - Get the job you really want - review - ISBN : 0670919403

2011-02-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

I was really most impressed with this book. After having read James Caan's The real deal, I knew that this book would have valuable information in it. The way he tells his story makes for easy reading.

If you are wanting to change your career or whether you have been off work for a long time, this is the book for you. I can imagine that this could easily become a prescribed book for school leavers as well since it contains really great information as to how to go about getting the Job you really want.

From setting up your CV to the interview, he talks about everything. Bear in mind that James Caan made a lot of his money actually placing people in jobs. That's the reason I thought this book would be valuable in the first place. He has perfected the art of the interview and he shows you what you need to do to be prepared and to ensure that you land the job you want.

If I can sum up this book in a few words it would be this. "You are about to change the rest of your life, DON'T leave anything to chance."

Get this book now and read it as this will change the way you approach the next career move. I guarantee it. Its not a feeling, its a fact.

You are not FAT! You are just LAZY!

2010-12-21T05:36:00.000-08:00

I have heard many people say, "If I had a nickle for everytime someone said ...." Well, I am sure that even you could say the same thing about hearing people say "i am fat ....."

Well I was sitting thinking the other day and suddenly it dawned on me. The problem is not that people are fat but that they are just extremely lazy. FAT is a symptom and not a cause. What I mean by that is that you might be fat but that is not the problem, it is just a symptom of the problem. What you need to do is not worry about losing fat and getting thin again, you need to worry about the reasons you are fat and cant lose weight.

Many times, life just gets out of control for no reason at all. This is a fact of life and the sooner you deal with the reality of this life and the way it works, the better for you and all around you. What you need to do is acknowledge that life is not in your control and never will be BUT that certain things are in your control and always will be. Its these things that one needs to look at closely and see why you control them and how you can change if need be.

The fact that you are fat has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you eat so much or don't exercise regularly, it has everything to do with why you eat so much and why you don't exercise regularly. So what is causing you to do this to yourself. That is the question that needs to be answered before you can fix anything. Once you answer that question you can start to fix the issue and you will probably find that you gain control again over certain parts of your life that you never had control over.

Lack of motivation is also another stumbling block on the road to becoming thin. I got a valuable life lesson the other day from a TED speaker about why we should not tell people what we are going to do, we should rather do it and then tell them later or let the results speak for themselves. The reason you should never tell someone you are going to lose weight is that when you tell them they will most likely start to praise you for your effort that you will be putting in to the process of getting thin again.

This praise leads to certain chemicals (endorphins?) getting released in your brain that satisfy you in a certain way. Having had the reward through the chemicals now leaves you with absolutely no motivation to put the effort in to getting thin. Your brain has misled you to believe that you have already been rewarded. SO don't tell anyone what you are going to do, go do it and let the results and the praise for the results be your ultimate reward.

So, back to motivation. Have you ever seen these girls and guys running around on the beach trying to lose weight and start looking trim? Well in many cases except for the sport fanatic who loves the reward of the chemical they get from exercise, a lot of these people running around are trying to look good to impress someone else, if it was just to impress themselves they would not really do the effort or they would have done it earlier don't you think. So... they must be doing it to impress other people, a spouse, boyfriend, prospective new boyfriend, lover etc. This is a great motivator. Jealousy is a bad thing but man is it a great motivator. When a woman finds out that her man might have another lover, suddenly all energy goes into looking good for that person so that they wont lose them. Motivator of note.

So take a long look at why you are fat and not how you can lose the fat but how you can overcome the real reason behind you not being able to motivate yourself into working hard and getting thin again. Look at your motivation and try see if you can fix that rather than trying to lose weight without motivation. Once motivated you can do a lot of great things.

SO, remember now, dont tell people what you are going to do and get the reward from the release of chemicals when they praise you for trying, but rather wait till you have lost weight and the results can be seen. The reward will be far greater then.

Antonio Forcione - the most versatile guitar player I have ever seen

2010-11-30T03:27:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to be able to see Antonio Forcione (guitar player of note) in Kalkbay this month. The concert was held in the Olympia bakery and it was quite a show. The setting lent itself quite nicely to a rather intimate show and the other two guitarists, Tony Cox and Saudiq Kahn were ofcourse exceptional as usual. Tony is an excellent story teller and makes everything an interesting experience, Saudiq plays extremely nicely and the guitar he had sounded so phenomenal BUT then, enter Antonio Forcione.

If you ever get a chance to see Antonio Forcione live and in concert, beg, borrow or steal the money for the entrance fee and you will see the show of your life. Apart from being a bit eccentric, I have never seen a more impressive display and guitar mastery in my entire life. I never even knew people who had such talent existed. My styles I have always admired are Merle Travis, Tom Bresch, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Buster B, Marcel Dadi and most recently a gentlemen called
Bruce Keener. However these gentlemen all have a style that sounds pretty impressive and even have some speedy fingering which will blow your mind. Take for example Jerry's Breakdown. Man awesome stuff and difficult as hell. However, enter Antonio Forcione....

I caught myself on numerous occasions counting his fingers to see whether he really only has 10 fingers. Man he utilizes every inch of his guitar and his fingers, hands, palms, back of his fingers in the bass slides (finger under the bass string) and playing like a double bass while all the time keeping rythm by playing the front, back and sides of his guitar and still playing the melody by using harmonics, slides, hammer ons, pullofs and literally any trick you have ever seen in the books or on the net. It is all there. Fingerpicking, blues, rock, flamenco and he seems to have mastered them all.

He will think nothing of stopping a tune because his guitar is slightly out of tune, fix the tuning and then restart. The crowd was so mesmerized that they did not even notice these slight little things. They sat at the edge of their seats and they were listening intently to every little note or sound in some cases that was coming out of that guitar. I have never seen a guitar take such abuse and yet produce such sweet sounds.

I can truly say that it changed forever the way I will look at or think about a guitar.

Do yourself a favor and try to experience first hand the experience that is Antonio Forcione. If you like guitar music in any form you will not be sorry.

Common Sense Rules: What You Really Need to Know About Business by Deborah Meaden

2010-11-23T23:46:00.000-08:00

Deborah Meaden, known from the Dragons Den imparts some practical advice for setting up and running your own business. From whether you should buy a franchise to setting up a business plan for your own start up she gives great solid advice that will help you through the process.

She also tells a lot of her own experience and tells it how it is. She is a straight shooter and takes no nonsense.

All in all a great read and wonderful advice.

johnkweber

James Caan - The Real Deal: My Story from Brick Lane to the "Dragons' Den" - ISBN-10: 1905264453

2010-11-17T02:31:00.000-08:00

This must have been the most enjoyable book I have ever read. I think in part it might be due to the fact that the way James seems to handle life resonates with some sort of chord that resonates in my life as well.

This must be the book that has touched me the most and in some way I think it is due to some of the raw emotions that James puts forward when dealing with his country of origin. The woes of the poor people in that country make me look at my own country and I am busy trying to figure out how it is that I can make a difference in my world.

I can truly recommend James Caan - The Real deal.

I could not put this book down and read it in one evening. It is captivating and the knowledge that James has regarding staffing and recruitment means that his next book on how to find the best job coming out in Jan 2011 shoud be just as excellent a read.

Finger picking - Mannetjies Roux

2010-11-16T00:45:00.000-08:00

Finger picking - Freight Train

2010-11-16T00:29:00.001-08:00

Finger picking - "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" ("God Bless Africa" in Xhosa)

2010-11-15T23:13:00.000-08:00

QR Codes and advertising

2010-07-14T04:08:00.000-07:00

According to a very interesting bit of research that I read a few days ago, it seems that advertisements that feature a QR Code or almost 60% more likely to be clicked than normal ads that have text or just a picture.

It seems that the newness of this QR Code technology is a reason that most people are scanning these QR Codes in ads etc.

Apparently the group (cant remember who they were, sorry) created ads that incorporated QR Codes in their pictures banner ads and they had a hit counter attached to the QR Code so that they could measure how many people viewed the ad compared to other ads on the page.

Affordable housing - DEEP Technology - Diverse Energy Efficient Projects

2010-06-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

http://deeptechnology.co.za

Once again I have sunk my teeth into something, this time something so awesome that it gives me sleepless nights due to the excitement and thinking about the whole business every waking moment.

SO what is it that excites me so much? This time around it is affordable housing. My partner John Newman from Deep Technology, (Diverse Energy Efficient Projects) has for a number of years held a number of patents, one of them being a design patent on a modular house that is set to change the way people build homes in the future. Once we have some decent pictures I will place them online for your viewing pleasure.

SO whats so exciting about this project? Firstly the house is cast out of a number of pieces and put together in a short six to 8 hours. The cast sections are transported to the site where using some ingenious designed tools the pieces are put together and voila you have a house up in no time at all.

Take note that we are not talking low-cost housing here, we are talking affordable housing meaning normal average guys such as myself will be able to afford a home at last.

The average house nowadays requires that the family (husband and wife) earn around R59 000 combined income to qualify for a bond. This then affords the couple a modest size house (example in Victoria park 49 square meters Costing R790 000) What on earth can one do with 49 square meters?

The houses we are making will give you a minimum of 75 meters squared and allowing the owner to build on 1.8 meters x 5 meters sections at a time. This effectively offers you the ability to resize your home in next to no time at all.

So YES, I am all excited and will keep you up to date as to how the whole story pans out.

Take just one little consideration here. An average house costs you R1 200 000 currently and you can rent that house out for around R5000 maximum, of course depending on the area where the house is situated, now for a fraction of that cost you can purchase a house and still get the same amount of rent out than you normally would on the expensive houses.

The nicest part of all is that everybody needs this commodity. Even you do! Think about it, soon you too might be staying in one of these homes.

Too exciting for words.

Look for more information - coming soon at http://deeptechnology.co.za

Export all your contacts from HTC Desire to Google for when you next reset your phone

2010-05-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

The one problem with the HTC Desire so far for me is that every now and then one installs an application that does somethig weird to the magnetometer or even more weird to the nice pinch to resize in the browsers etc.
I have over 1000 plus contacts which were easily transferrable to my HTC Desire from the Nokia E90 I had before. (Select all and send business card via bluetooth. It takes a while but they all go across in a few minutes.)

However, I have had to reset the HTC Desire a few times now in order to get certain functionality back such as pinch resize or the HTC Desire magnetometer that goes awry.

SO this is my process now. I exported all my contacts to my gmail account contacts list. Its quite easy actually:
You go to the "people" widget on the HTC and then you "Export" / Export to SD Card / Choose the Phone choice and it will create a VCF card with all your contacts in it.

Connect the HTC Desire to your PC via the USB cable, so that you can get to the .VCF card that was just created.

Log into your gmail account and click on the contacts menu choice on the left side. Choose the "Import" menu choice at the top right of the contacts list now and select the .VCF and press Import. This will load all those contacts into your Contact list in Gmail and the next time you reset your phone and you resync with Google all your contacts will be then available again on your HTC Desire.

Have fun. It is the most awesome phone I have ever had and I will not go back to Nokia, iphone or anything else I dont think. I find it hard to believe that something better is still going to come out one of these years. I am extremely excited to see what is going to happen in the mobile arena in the next few years. If the HTC Desire is anything to go by, then we will have wonderful phones in the future.

Poem I wrote about my life 6 years ago

2010-04-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

Around 6 years ago I was in the Netherlands still and had lived and worked there for 5 years or so. I had a great time but there were things that got to me as I wrote about in the book which is also on this blog at Living in Europe sucks.

As I was laying on my bed one night it was in the
sweltering heat so I opened up the window and was just
looking out into the dark thinking about the future
when this came to mind. It must have been weighing
heavily on my mind that night because since then I have
thought about anything again with such intensity. (well
enough intensity to write a poem about it)

I am sitting at my window,
looking out into the night.
My heart is filled with fear,
as I contemplate my plight.

My future is the trouble,
the present is a blast,
my major problem now is,
I am longing for my past.

A fantastic paying job,
I am living in a bubble,
the only problem that I feel,
my past is still my trouble.

There are three in this equation,
my small child and my wife,
and of course there's me,
as I contemplate my life.

After long deliberation,
I come to some conclusions,
I realise that my future,
must be my past without illusions.

So now I have decided,
just what I will do next,
forget the past, embrace the future
and start by finishing off this text.

Forgive others their transgressions against you and HEAL yourself

2010-02-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Forgiving somebody some transgression against you is the best medicine you can ever give yourself.

Having an unforgiving nature will make you sick. In the long term it can cause serious illness.

God is willing to forgive you if you ask Him to forgive you for anything, this means that you have to be able to forgive or He will not forgive you.

This is evident from the parable that Jesus told.

Matt 18 verses 23 to 35 Therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king, who wanted to reconcile accounts with his servants. When he had begun to reconcile, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But because he couldn’t pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and kneeled before him, saying, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will repay you all!’ The lord of that servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. “But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who owed him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ “So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you!’ He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were exceedingly sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him in, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?’ His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don’t each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds.”

So forgive others or God might deliver you to the tormentors and this is where you can get seriously ill and many bad things could happen to you. FORGIVE, it is for your own health and benefit. Most of the times people who you feel have transgressed against you, are not even aware that they have done so. Dont hold anything against anyone else as it is a waste of time. Dont forget, lest you make the same mistake twice but most definitely you should forgive.

Personal branding - johnkweber

2010-01-26T05:09:00.000-08:00

I never thought that personal branding had any place in the little mans world. However it seems I have been purely mistaken. When starting out with my internet endeavours I thought about it for around 5 seconds and decided to sign everything I do with johnkweber. This I did mostly because I was not really sure of any other cool name to use.

So I started this branding image type thingy and soon found out that if you use a name often enough people will start reffering to you by that specific name (in this case BRAND) so even at work to most of my colleagues I am now johnkweber (spelt more like john kweeber) I dont really mind since I started it all but there are exceptions when branding can do damage as shown below. Specifically mistakes made by others.

In hindsight I guess it turned out ok because the is only really one johnkweber that uses it the way I do. The flipside ofcourse is the problem that I have currently with Google syndicating news articles. Around 1989 there was an article in a newspaper in USA somewhere regarding a certain John R Weber that allegedly raped and murdered his wife Emily Weber. Google seems to have done a scan of the page and the OCR was performed incorrectly and suddenly John R Weber now becomes John K Weber.

This proves to be quite a nightmare to fix since ater having searched in Goolge for johnkweber as I usually do once a week at least (to thank people that have mentioned me in their blogs etc) I saw this article that goes "John K Weber rapes and murders his wife Emily Weber"

In my endeavour to get this fauxpas fixed up I chatted to Google a number of times and it moved the article to the very first page on the google search for johnkweber. This due to the fact that the answers and arguments are open for everyone to see on google answers. DAMN.

Be that as it may I went to JHB to talk to a number of guys about a security product I was punting and when they did a MEMEX search on my name (checking if I was who I say I was) it turned out the Memex took the Google article as its main tagline since it scored so high in Google Ranking that it must be me and nobody else. Try explaining this whole scenario to non internet type people. Man what a time I had. Anyway they all seemed to end up seeing the light and now at least I have documented in one more place (this blog entry) what the real story is.

So when thinking up brand names be careful what you wish for as weird things crawl out of the woodwork when you start owning something, even a name.

SCRUM and AGILE and how to NOT do it.

2010-01-18T04:28:00.000-08:00

Scrum and Agile are two buzzwords that currently rank high on the list of technical jargon. Awesome ideas and methodologies which can seriously enhance the way your staff delivers products, which when implemented wrong could be the biggest mistake you have ever made within your company.

The thought behind Agile is that staff members self manage and self motivate themselves to get products off the shelf. An Agile team basically sets itself up with the mandate to get work out the door. The fact that the project is self managed within the team means that you have an awesome bunch of people that are highly skilled but even more important, highly motivated which are now engaged with what they are doing and therefore churn out amazing results and therefore excellent products.

Scrum masters on the other hand are not managers at all but motivators and their only goal in life should be to assist the team to ensure that there is nothing impeding them to do the best work that they can achieve. So when Scrum masters start saying which work will be done and how long it wil take, then you start facing the problem that once again the team member actually doing the work is not in charge of his own life or surroundings, we all know how detrimental that could be to the IT developer type guy. Don't tell me what to do, then tell me how to do it and then to top it all tell me by when I must do it.

These thoughts have come to mind whilst reading another good book called "Why work sucks and how to fix it - Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson" The book website and Purchase from Amazon

The book describes a way to work called a ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) where every person is captain of his or her own ship. This means that your time is your own, your way of working is your own. You decide how, when and where you wil work. You still work (maybe harder now than ever) because suddenly just being at the office for 40 hours is not what you are being measured on, you now need to produce results that are directly measurable. Meaning this : No results, no job.

I suggest it as an excellent way to start working. Managers, change the way you measure your staff input. Make them excited to go to work for a change. Allow the staff to give you the best hours that they can. Not everyone works well from 8 to 5. Rather let the guy or girl who works best from 22h00 till 04h00 give you excellent results than let them just be in the office from 08h00 till 17h00 and not produce quality. It seems like a no brainer to me.

I am excited about this new year as it promises great things. Enjoy 2010

Inspirational lecture - second to none

2009-11-19T02:37:00.000-08:00

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

I have just heard one of the most amazing lectures ever. It was delivered by Randy Pausch and is available for you to hear on the interent. When Randy realised that he had pancreatic cancer he realised that he could do nothing with the cards he was dealt, it was how he played the hand that has made his lectre so popular. Millions of people the world over have heard his inspiring lecture. It is all about living life and what is needed to ensure you get something out of life.

The one big lesson I have taken from it is that when you dream, you must not dream small little dreams. DREAM BIG. It is only when you dream big that your life takes on a more significant meaning. You have to fulfil those dreams ad it is too easy to fulfil small little dreams. These are also needed to allow you to focus on the smaller little more achievable goals.

A man without a dream is a lost man. Wandering around without purpose or passion. So go ahead now and start dreaming big. The dreams are your minds way of telling you that you can achieve them. Your mind will never set you up for a fall. So dream big and trust in your dreams. It is probably the most important thing you can do for yourself.

Thank you to Randy Pausch for teaching me so much in so little time. Even though the lecture was meant for your kids, it has inspired me in my life and I feel great that I was able to listen this life changing lecture and hope that you (the reader) also take the time out of your life to listen to it. It might just be the first act in your changed life.

The lecture, even though Randy does not talk about his impending death is charged with sadness and life. Randy shows little or no sadness throughout but you as the listener is charged with the knowing that he will die soon and that the positive attitude that he is exuding is about to change a lot of peoples lives.

ENJOY.

Google Adsense - Now showing in your own currency!

2009-11-05T04:25:00.000-08:00

It is extremely frustrating now that Google shows the revenue that one earns in the currency for the country you reside in. Due to the exchange rate for the Rand for instance the amount changes per day. It is never stable and one really never knows the exact stats for the month since the figures change so drastically from day to day.

I rather preferred the fact that it showed in US Dollars and not ZA Rands.

The other thing that I have noticed that was changed for the worse on Google Adsense program was the fact that you could view the revenue you have made since the last payment. This feature is no longer visible and it really is a crying shame since it was actually quite a nifty feature.

A short while ago, Google held an opinion poll regarding the service they were delivering via Adsense and I am guessing that the rework they did was based on that research. It just goes to show that research is also just one way of measuring satisfaction of service. There should be many more ways used to judge satisfaction of a service or site.

Priceisright.co.za

2009-08-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Priceisright.co.za is a free service aimed at stretching the South African Rand for Joe Public. All too often I hear "There is just too much month left after my salary" and it is getting to be more true every month. Costs of groceries increasing every month.

This is the perception out there and I have decided to do a test and to measure this exact growth per month on my grocery bill. The site currently just shows a few lists of prices that have been taken from various sources online. However the idea is actually that the visitors to the site actually grow the list of prices and shops organically. We do have people out there checking prices and getting shopping lists but it will take a bit of time to get the site to have a good list of prices throughout the range of suburbs and shops in South Africa.

The future development of the site will allow the visitot to the site to create his or her own shoppinbg list and then get a feeling of how much the groceries would cost if purchased from Store A compared to Store B maybe.

This comparison can actually take a considerable amount of money off your end grocery bill and if the prices are updated by the visitors to the site when they purchase their own list of groceries, very soon it will be a very useful service.

The site has been created by the owners of TAGGA - Proactive Searchable Stolen Goods Serial Database and is a FREE service as is TAGGA.

Please let us know what you think about this great idea. Lend a hand to make it a successful service please.

Here is a link to an interview held by HandyTechTipper regarding Priceisright.co.za

Edgar Cruz - Classical Guitar virtuoso

2009-06-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

This is probably the best classical guitar piece I have ever heard. Edgar Cruz plays it to perfection. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

If you ever wished you could play guitar, this piece will either deter you for life or it will encourage you to do just that. Practice over and over till you get it right.

I have renewed enthusiasm to practice after seeing this piece of music played so flawlessly. Stunning.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Edgar Cruz website with many tunes

Gadget Freaks - online shop

2009-05-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

So here is an awesome way to start generating some bucks on the internet with no initial outlay. You set up a shop and choose a few of the millions of products that will get shipped without any hassle to the buyers. All you do is set up the shop and market it online. The rest as they say should be history.

So here I have set up a shop with a number of exciting books on electronics and a few little gadgets. Lets see what sort of money one can make with this idea.

http://gadgetfreaks.zliogifts.com

To set up your own shop go to
http://www.zlio.com/

Hootsuite - One of the better Twitter help tools I have found

2009-05-15T01:28:00.001-07:00

http://hootsuite.com/

This is one of the most awesome Twitter help tools I have found to date. I have seen many but none allow you to do so much for so little (free in fact).

Once you have set up your account you can automate your twitter account to start doing things on your behalf. One of my favourites is the fact that it will automatically feed you new blog entries such as this entry to your twitter account. This allows you to not have to concentrate on too many places when adding a new blog entry, the work gets done for you automatically.

The adsense plugin that allows your google ads to show when you shorten a link using their Ow.ly link shortening is also allowing me to earn more google income.

It is amazing that Twitter seemed to be such a useless tool and now it seems to be one of the bigger internet phenomenons. Go figure.....

Zig Ziglar - What an amazing personality

2009-03-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

I love reading books about successful people and I love to hear stories of people who aspire to amazing things in life. It is so awesome to be able to spend a few minutes listening to someone who really knows a thing or two about life. It is a moment in time that I grant myself in order to learn something which took others maybe many years to learn. It is a gift unto myself when I do this.

I play guitar, I have spent thousands of hours learning guitar and it is so interesting to note that the people I have taught and that were willing to put in hours and hours just doing what I had showed them, pass me by in a ridiculously short time. I have taught them within hours something that took me years to perfect. Somehow I manage to switch something on in them that may have been lying dormant or may just have needed a bit of a push to get them started. But it is really surprising everytime I see how fast people can learn when they are being shown what has taken others many years to learn. It allows them to go forward in leaps and bounds.

What I have noticed though is that they have an ability which I do not possess. They have a feeling for music which I do not possess. I have a technical ability and a love for music but they hear things which I dont. This allows them to take what I have learnt and make it their own and make it much better.

Anyway, I have just had the opportunity of listening to an audio file that was given to me when I registered for the newsletter on Zig Ziglar's site at http://www.zigziglar.com/newsletter.php

It is called Biscuits_Fleas_and_Pump_Handles and has a size of 31.8 MB (it is worth every bit of your bandwidth to download this file after registering)

Do yourself a favour and listen to the message of inspiration on this audio file. I have for number of months now been quoting Zig Ziglar on my facebook daily status update as I enjoy positive messages. I am actually surprised at myself for taking this long to google Zig Ziglar and find out why he is so popular for his sayings. One of his most popular sayings is the following: You can have anything you want in life just as long as you help enough other people get what they want in life.

This is so true and I have lived by it without realising it. It is a way of life for me. I first build bridges with people and then they inevitably build bridges beyond my normal reach. That I think is the secret to success.

This 60 minute recording of one of Zig Ziglar's messages will remain with me as it is a truly motivational message which gives me great hope and I trust that it will be of great meaning in your life as well.

Anonymous flaming - Bunch of cowards!

2009-03-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

I have been browsing through many blogs and sites where comments on articles are allowed. It is extremely sad to see how many anonymous cowards there are out there. good articles seems to draw them like moths to a candle. It is the lowest form of scum that flames someone anonymously. Have the guts to stand up for what you really feel then. If you feel it was a totally %^&%^& article then at least have the guts to say so in public and attach your name to it, otherwise it is a total waste and just ends up making people negative to reporting and telling things the way they are. If the person that wrote the article took the trouble to investigate certain issues or report on certain issues then surely you SHOULD feel free to comment on it. But do it with your name and then we might see less inflammatory remarks than what we currently see.

People tend to easily become clowns when wearing clown masks, so if you are wearing an idiot mask then it seems to be abundantly clear that you will end up writing idiotic inflammatory remarks.

What a load of cowards. Extremely irritating, yet so extremely useless.

Twitter? Whats the buzz?

2009-03-20T02:17:00.000-07:00

So after having checked out the Twitter scene for a while I have finally managed that it is a very cool way of staying in touch.
Being aware of everything happening with your friends and family is a tiresome task to say the least. Now with Twitter you can stay in touch with what is happening in their lives without having to even call them. Remember personal communication is still the best and only effectiove communication, however Twitter and its tweets are really great for informative purposes.

Go to http://twitter.com to register.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/johnkweber

Have fun and let me know where you are.

Regards johnkweber

TAGGA - Proactive Searchable Stolen Goods Database - Linking to sites such as Crimex amongst others

2009-01-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about listing your stolen items on http://tagga.co.za is that the item becomes searchable under google search engine. Due to the way that the TAGGA site has been created the stolen goods become searchable under google.com

SO if you for instance entered your serial number such as I have done on some of my stolen items such as the IMEI of my phone, 353659014407270 If you use this IMEI number to search in google you will see that it points back to the TAGGA site. This way you have a much better chance of people finding your stolen goods.

The other nice feature is that your item is becoming searchable in a host of other programs and websites that we link to. We provide a daily dump of all the stolen goods in our system which other programs or websites can include in their sites or maybe imnport the list of stolen goods into their programs. Programs such as Pawnboss, http://www.crimex.co.za and others as we start forming links and associations with them. This way your items have a better chance of being found than if it were on TAGGA alone.

So now Second hand goods dealers really dont have an excuse as they can now even search google for the serial numbers of the items that they are buying in as stock from the street. They have really got no way that they can now say that they were unaware that the items were stolen. Maybe now we can start seeing a difference in the way crime is being dealt with on the street.

No buyers means no market, means less theft.

Link to TAGGA

The 4 hour work week - Tim Ferris

2009-01-05T05:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com

I read a lot, I love reading and I enjoy reading about real people doing real things. I have this buddy at work who has for the last few months been dropping a name of a book that he has read which is changing his lifestyle. Ok, how many times have I heard that before? Too many to count. In all honesty, every other book that gets read from cover to cover can change your life if you decide it has bearing on your current way of doing things and there is a new way to live your life.

After looking around at a number of bookstores only to hear that the book has been sold out again and again, I decided to get it on order. Must be interesting... So I finally get the book and read it from cover to cover. Very interesting ...

The most interesting thing that I notice is that Tim goes out and does things. He does not talk about doing things. If he talks about it, then he has done them already. Every person I know talks about wanting to do things. Tomorrow, next week, next year even. How about going to do it right now. Figure out what it is you want to do and go do it now!

Life is way to short to live it in the the hope of a better tomorrow. Now is the best time you have. It will always be the best time you have. Every moment you get a chance to make something happen and to do something new. Man it is really quite exciting when you think about it all. Most people think out all the possible scenarios that can go wrong if they try certain things. Half the fun is actually doing it and figuring out that it was never really that hard or never really that easy. That is half the fun. The rest of the fun is the experiences you gain whilst doing these new things.

I have always lived my life by this maxim "I am entirely responsible for what happens in my life." I have a christian upbringing and therefore I do acknowledge a higher power, but ultimately I am responsible for what happens and I am accountable for my actions. Therefore, dont let other people live your life for you. Also dont live your life to satisfy other people. (dont mess other peoples lives up) but live your life with the full conviction that you are ultimately responsible for it and the end results.

The book - the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris is one of those books that makes you realise that life is about doing things. I loved it and give it a 10 out of 10 for the way it is written and the content matter.

So what it my next exciting event in my life? That is exactly the point I am trying to make, the next few moments in my life may just be the moments that define how I live the rest of my life. It better be something great and not mediocre otherwise I will live a boring and unfulfilled life.

So think about what you are doing and how you are doing it. As the cover of Tim's book says, "Dont read this book if you dont want to quit your job"

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com

Why is it so hard to listen?

2008-02-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

When God speaks it seems not many people hear Him anymore. I am astounded at the fact that even I don't listen as I used to before. People around us are in need all the time and yet we don't seem to hear or see them in any way. It is easy to ignore people and circumstances that are a thousand miles away. How is it though that it is so easy to ignore our neighbours when they are in need.

Today I learned that while I was having a lovely weekend, my neighbour below me, Andre had died in his couch sometime early in the weekend already. I was blissfully unaware of anything that had transpired. It turns out the Andre had cancer.

I had noticed him becoming thinner and thinner and every time I saw him I meant to ask him how it was going with him and whether I could be of any assistance. However I never got around to it and even though I had that nagging feeling tugging at me all the time I managed to suppress it and forget about it. How is it possible that after having had the religious upbringing that I have had, that I have no compassion left for my fellow human being? I feel terrible about the fact that Andre has left this world a lonely person and that I have done nothing to console him or make his life better in any way.

I keep wondering what my purpose is in life and I seem to be getting no answers. Or maybe this is an answer of sorts. Maybe I am placed here to help out my neighbours. Maybe just maybe my calling is to be more neighbourly.

I fell terrible that I did not heed the nagging feeling at my consience that I could help in a small way maybe. I could have been there for him in his last hour and maybe seen that he did not have to leave this world alone. No, in my selfish routine I have missed this opportunity to maybe have done some good for someone.

I guess I am not alone in this world when it comes to wondering what my our purpose is in this lifetime. Even though it is brief I feel that it must have some meaning and I wish I knew what it was that I was called to do.

Some people have a calling in life. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it is that they are meant to be doing on this planet. I don't. I try and fathom it out.

I am getting older by the day and not wiser. I seem to be making mistakes but not learning from them. When does one become wiser. Age does not seem to be doing it for me. The experiences I have had in life should have changed my way of thinking and maybe shown me the way but even that seems to be failing me. What is it then that will make me change my ways?

I really need to know what it is I am supposed to be doing on this planet. I also need to know in no uncertain terms as I seem to have become deaf and blunt to God's whispering. How am I supposed to know what it is I am meant to be doing????

You can't shoot 'em

2008-01-29T04:38:00.000-08:00

TAGGA website

You wake up to find you have some uninvited visitors ransacking
your home. They know you are not permitted to shoot them, because
they’re not putting your life in danger, therefore you cannot claim,
the need for ‘use’ of deadly force.

The government insists, you retreat without engaging the robbers
and leave them to remove all your possessions, without hindrance.

You call the Police and they pitch up hours later…long gone are
the robbers with your valuable equipment.

Did you expect the Police to take fingerprints, put out an APB
(All Points Bulletin) for the villains capture? ….. “Sorry,
time to wake up and smell the coffee”!

You hope the Insurance will pay out their estimated value of your
losses, since you have already claimed a number of times before…..
Sounds familiar? Your only respite is to think that the moment
those thugs connect to the power supply, they get electrocuted.

The worst feeling is just how vulnerable you are, even though
you have electric fencing, razor wire and big dogs, the robbers
still manage to invade your privacy. You may wish you could trace
them down and find them with your goods…….Dreaming right? ….No!..
Not anymore. ‘Registering’ with “TAGGA” is going to make it
possible for you to recover your valuables and get even……. and
get back.

Get ‘registered’ now for a small once off fee let’s put a stop
to being victims of these villains, in the future.

How TAGGA works

Its simple really, all you need to do is register with TAGGA.
Place all your details on the form, which only you can access
with your password. Please take note that none of these details
are mandatory and will ONLY be used to contact you if we
recover any of your stolen items. If you prefer, you only need
to add your address details once you actually have reported goods
as stolen.

You list all your valuable items, with their respective serial
numbers and descriptions.

If some of your TAGGA registered valuables are stolen, it becomes
more difficult for the thief to find a buyer for valuables.
Commercial dealers or private buyer are now able to search TAGGA
site and confirm whether the items they are trying to purchase
are listed as stolen.

If the items show up as stolen on our system, they know they can't
purchase the items either for themselves or resale as the items are
stolen. It is illegal to purchase stolen goods, and in doing so we
perpetuate the cycle and create a market for stolen goods.

Once the market for stolen goods is removed, then less and less
items will be of value to the thieves, reducing the benefit of an
easy income.

Facebook - The bain or the inspiration of our lives

2007-11-05T13:05:00.001-08:00

For the last few weeks now I have come across a multitude of people saying that they have had enough of Facebook. Well my sentiment so far is that they have probably just spent half their year on it and that is why they feel that way. There is a million things to do on Facebook. That does not mean that you have to do them all.

As soons as you have raced away all the races allowable in an app like petrolheads then maybe it is going a little too far. Specially if you should happen to do this as part of your ritual every night or day. These apps will keep you busy and drive you insane.

Now for what I actually wrote this article for.

When you have an application such as Facebook in front of you, the only thing I as a programmer can think, is why the hell did I not think of it. It is certainly one of the most exciting advents of the century so far. Imagine having millions of eyes on your cyber estate every day. It must be the fastest money spinner ever.

If it is the last thing I do, it will be to write an app on Facebook. My thoughts are whether the app could attract so many people that it could make a difference to my bank balance. I guess if I come up with the right concept then just maybe it could.

I think Facebook has enourmous potential and therefore I am all for it still. I reserve my judgement but so far I love it.

WiFi Monitor for Vista

2007-11-02T01:56:00.000-07:00

I have tried unsuccesfully a number of wireless monitoring software packages. After a search on the internet for suitable packages that would work with Vista, I came across a fantastic blog by Martin Sauter (Wireless Solutions Consultant). Martin wrote and article about layer 1 tracing on wireless networks at Martin Sauter Blog.

Then I stumbled across Wireless Mon from Passmark.com and this works well on Vista. Click here to download Wireless Mon

I am currently using the trial version and i like the way it is set up. The software package is really great and well thought out. Thanks guys.

Making money with a blog

2007-10-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

As many of you that will be reading this article have noticed, it is not an easy thing to do. All the bloggers out there promise you that if you read their site and read how they have done it, you to will be able to make a fortune with blogging.

Well, I am usually an extremely positive guy. Making money with blogging however takes time. Once your blog is well known then maybe you have a million readers a month with a percenttage of the readers clicking on your ads. This will bring in the money. It will take time though.

So my question is this. What can I do right now to bring more traffic to my site right now? Anyone have the answer to that yet?

Adsense is making me dollars right now as I am writing this article, however it is a slow revenue and one that will only increase with the amount of people reading my blog. It will also only really increase when the number of readers expand exponentially.

So the bottom line is this. It seems that only time itself will get you the readership you require in order to monetize your blog or site. The only other thing that might speed up the process is if you discover something so phenomenal that other people just have to see at all costs what you have done.

My quest is for that unique finding that will make everybody flock to my blog. Until then I will post these mundane little messages in the hope that it will attract enough readers so that when a percentage click on my goodle ads, it actually amounts to something.

Rowan Anderson - Our hero

2007-10-22T06:07:00.001-07:00

Here is the video I took of the large snake that we caught at our work, being released back into the wild in Helderberg.

Free my phone - Walt Mossberg

2007-10-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

Walt Mossberg -- arguably consumer electronics' single most feared and influential tech pundit -- just unleashed poetic fury on the carrier/government cartel which has made the US "the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world." In a glorious rant dubbed "Free My Phone,"

Read the article here.

This is an article I wish I had written. It is well written and he most certainly has a valid argument. It is a pity as he says that one of the best designed cellphones Apple iPhone are being crippled due to lack of foresight by government.

When a government makes decisions while being leaned on by large corporations, nothing good can ever come of it.

I Pledge allegiance to South Africa

2007-10-15T01:11:00.000-07:00

After having read the Pledge by Guy Lundy on his website I would like to echo the words as they are exactly what I feel.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Republic of South Africa and to the interesting people, places and idiosyncrasies for which it stands, one nation under several religions, languages and cultures, yet indivisible, with freedom, basic needs and progress for all."

If only all of us can be able to truly say these words. We could change the negative attitudes that so many of us have here.

The Secret - by Rhonda Byrne

2007-10-09T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is probably the singular most exciting book that I have ever read in my entire life. Rhonda has put into writing, the exact essence of what I practise everyday. To me it feels as though my thoughts and ideas on life have been tested and tried by literally hundreds and thousands of people by now.

Rhonda has managed to put everything into context for me. Now I know why I do what I do and why I get the results I get.

The greatest thing though that I have learned out of the book is that it is the negative things that we think about others that can harm us more seriously than we could ever imagine.

Do yourself a favour and read The Secret

Sydney Weber - Living by God Inspired Faith

One of the strongest resemblances to The Secret that I have ever read in a book, were written by my Father - S K Weber
In this book he explains exactly what Rhonda explains about manifestations and positive thought. The only difference is that he shows it as it should be seen from a christian perspective. Sydney is a man that practises what he is preaching in the book. The books name is "Living by God Inspired Faith" and I had the priviledge of publishing his book.
I had to read it literally hundreds of times to make sure all typos were out and that the syntax was good. However during all of the reading, I remembered the miracles that he was describing in the book. It all came back to me and I realised at that moment why I have such faith even in times of adversity and even when I am at my deepest and loneliest moments.

My father has given me an amazing example as to how faith can make things happen. If you ever read the book you will see that the similarities between Rhonda Byrne's - The Secret and S K Weber's - Living by God Inspired Faith are what makes her faith so strong, or I suppose one could aslo say why my father's faith can produce such miracles.

It all boils down to one simple rule in both books. Ask for it, Accept it and say thank you.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you Rhonda and thank you Sydney

Dipetane - One solution for the looming oil crisis

2007-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

If you have read David Strahan's book called the last oil shock, you will be amazed at what is happening under our noses. This involves governments, oil companies and a whole shebang of other corrupt or uninformed institutions. When the oil finally runs out, and it will, what part will you have played in the grand scheme of things. Dipetane gives you a solution which will allow you to at least answer the question posed above with some degree of satisfaction, knowing that you played a small but important part in making sure that our oil reserves are preserved that much longer.

Here is what dipetane is all about.

Quick Reference of Dipetane Benefits

Increases fuel economy by 10-15%.
Meets or exceeds all fuel specifications.
Dipetane is a 100% hydrocarbon product.
Cleans the fuel injectors and keeps them clean.
Lubricates fuel injection pump.
Extends engine life.
Burns away carbon deposits from the combustion chamber.
Cleans tanks and supply lines of sludge and heavy deposits.
Dipetane mixes readily with fuel requiring no further circulation.
Dipetane treated fuels actually burn cooler, significantly reducing nitrous oxide.
Dipetane has a longer stability life than diesel fuel or gasoline.

Burn Your Way to More Miles

At the heart of Dipetane's ability to increase fuel economy 10% to 15% is its more efficient and complete fuel burn. The result is increased energy release and a longer, more powerful expansion in the combustion chamber.

In the combustion process, most of the fuel is burned. Any unburned residual needs to be exhausted or “washed out”, which is presently accomplished with detergents, or in the case of severe clogging, through the use of injector cleaners. However, these solutions are miles behind the effectiveness of Dipetane.
Dipetane's Unique Approach : Simply Better

Dipetane takes a unique approach. When mixed into gasoline, diesels and heavier fuel oils, Dipetane actually causes much more of the fuel to be burned. By burning more fuel, more energy is released therefore reducing the amount of fuel required to perform the same amount of work. In addition, fewer emissions are left un-combusted and fewer contaminants work their way into the oil.

Dipetane burns so much of the fuel that instead of adding carbon deposits (primarily unburned asphaltine molecules) to the surfaces of the combustion chamber, deposits are radically reduced. The combustion process is comprised of severe changes in heat and pressure. These changes actually buffet the existing carbon deposits and as they lose adhesion, they are gradually eroded away. Absent of the deposits, more oxygen is freed up for the combustion process and heat is reduced. At this stage, not only is your engine is cleaner, you're traveling farther and extending the life of your vehicle. The removal of Combustion Chamber Deposits (CCD's) makes Dipetane different from many other products.

After the combustion chamber is cleaned up, increased power and more efficient use of fuel reduces the amount of fuel required to perform the same amount of work. The incredible result is better fuel economy!

If you are interested in purchasing dipetane in South Africa and becoming part of the solution to this looming oil crisis, then please feel free to contact John k Weber

John K Weber is currently affiliated to Captain John Newman, the licensed distributor of Dipetane in Southern Africa.

Living in Europe sucks - A book by John Weber

2007-07-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

Dedication
To Claude William Weber, my 4 and a half year
old Dutch son. He suggested that I write books to
help other people understand various subjects.
Without his suggestion I most likely would
not have started writing any books.

To my wife Thea who supports me fully
through every mission I choose to embark on.
On this particular mission she was less
receptive as she enjoyed most of her
stay there.

To those individuals in Europe who made
our stay there less painful. To those
who became family to us in order to
lighten our load. Laurence, Patricia, Floor,
Aram, Pauline, our neighbours,Jeroen,
Marnix Jan, Peter, Richard and the
hundreds of other South Africans who we
could go to when things got too much for us.
These people really pulled us through
our European experience.

To God who allowed us to go to Europe to
see what it was really all about. Without it
we would still be the same people we were six
years ago when we left SA. Through this all we
saw good as well. So although this book
has a really negative title, we as a family
did grow. We are blessed with a lovely young
son now, which we would not have had
were it not for this experience.

Living in Europe sucks!

Cover design by
John K Weber

First published 2003
Viable Solution Books – VSB

Copyright, John K Weber, 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information retrieval systems – without prior permission in writing from Viable Solution Books.

Introduction
Why would any person in their right mind, write a book with such a negative title?

Well there are a few reasons and one of them is the fact that I have seen so many people in South Africa, now that I am back from Europe that will give their eye teeth to go and live in Europe, Australia, USA and any other country other than South Africa.

This troubles me deeply as I have been there, done that, got the matching cap and T-shirt as well as all the emotional scars that go with it. I think that people don’t fully realise the implications and ramifications of leaving their home town or country where they were born in.
I hope that it will not deter you in doing what you feel you have to do in life however, I do hope that you will think a bit further than what the day is long before making a rash decision and going to live elsewhere in the world.

I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

John K Weber

About the author
John K Weber has been a programmer for around 20 years and has learned the easy way, through reading countless books on various subjects, mostly in his spare time. Due to his intense passion learning so many things in life, he got to a stage where what he knew, was able to take him places.

Also due to his intense desire to learn new things, get to know new people, he thought it would be bliss to go to a new country and learn the ways and customs of others not of his culture. This proved correct to a certain degree however, nothing is ever as easy in practice as it is in theory.

Now he has come back from Europe a changed person after living there for only 5 years. What does one attribute these changes to? In this book he will tell you what he thinks contributed to his changed life.

He is two meters tall and felt quite at home in the Netherlands. This was unfortunately the only aspect which left him feeling comfortable. The rest, as described in this book is his intense journey through an uneasy world where everything that he knows is not enough. His whole character is put to the test and in the end starts changing due to outside influences which he can’t control.

Prologue
In writing this book, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. The first draft of the book contained the title, EUROPE SUCKS! The only problem with the title as it was is that apart from being really negative, there were times whilst we were living in Europe when we had immense fun.

So along with the criticism I got from all the people, friends and family that have actually been to Europe for a holiday and enjoyed it immensely and the notion that it would be really unfair to say that Europe sucks entirely, I decided to change the title to what it is now. Living in Europe sucks!

Now being a realist I am sure there are a gazillion other citizens out there who differ with my point of view however I have decided that this title stays. Period. So although I have had good as well as bad periods whilst living overseas, due to the majority of the experiences being of such a nature that I had to take them with my pride in my pocket, the title still means a lot to me.

My wife hated the idea of moving back to South Africa due to everything running so smoothly and being so certain over there versus everything in South Africa being so uncertain. Well unfortunately she was forced in the end to come home with me as she was not allowed to stay without me there, as our conditions for staying in Holland, were of such a nature that she would not be allowed to stay there on her own.
That being said, I also mentioned in my dedication in the beginning of this book that she supports me and my whimsical decisions fully. Even though she does not always approve of what I do, she has supported me so far. So she supported my decision and moved back home, with me. For this I am truly thankful as she adds a something meaningful to my life which I have learnt to value and respect.

Moving onto another subject, I know that the Dutch people hate it when ignorant people refer to their country as Holland. It is not Holland. It is the Netherlands and it consists out of North and South Holland with Hollanders and not Netherlanders inhabiting the country. As far as my small mind remembers, when I was at school, I learnt about Holland, not the Netherlands, Holland. Anyway this did not deter me from going there and finding out for myself. I can promise you that what I learnt at school could never ever have prepared me for what I was about to experience.

As I mentioned there were a few places and people which I distinctly recall did not suck. I would like to make mention of these people, as I would hate them to think that this book was written because of them. It is a fact though, that, were it not for these good people, this book would not have been written by myself. It was these people that made me survive the tough and lonely times which I am about to describe to you. Without them, we as a family would never have been able to survive. So in a way this book is dedicated to the people of Europe that did not suck!
Who is John?
I am a two meter tall male. Not one day goes by without someone making an extremely funny comment about my length which really lifts me out of the doldrums and lightens up my life. Yeah right. This is maybe the only redeeming factor which Holland had going for it (and ADSL). Not once did anyone make a remark or comment on it. In actual fact for the first time in my life I thought nobody really cared.

This was not the reason I chose to accept the unreal offer that came our way but in hindsight, maybe the only factor that gave me the feeling that I had moved on to a better place and not sacrificed my entire lifestyle for nothing.

The reason I am elaborating a bit on the uneasy subject of being tall, is that this built in defect as others seem to see it, is probably the reason I am who I am today. Since high school I have always been the tallest person in the group. My one brother now is taller than myself and I am sure he has the same or maybe even stronger reactions when people see him as he is quite a bit taller than me.

I read a letter the other day about some really tall girl that had just got tired of being the brunt of every ones jokes that she wrote a letter to all the short people out there. It may have been a joke as it was emailed to me along with the other hundred or so jokes I receive from all my well doing friends and colleagues. They know me as someone who can appreciate a joke. In actual fact, in most of the cases it will be me who will provide them with a good laugh when the conversation gets stiff.

Anyway, I digress. This person had her character owing to the fact that she was so tall. So therefore I know that were I a shorter version of myself, I would have been an entirely different person. In many ways I am glad that I am who I am as it has given me the opportunity to rise up above the rest and actually stand out.

I am always ready with some witty comment just in case some one actually manages to make a remark about my length which I have not heard before. This seldom happens as around the world the same remarks actually keep resurfacing as though they have been so carefully selected and have stood the test of time. I always welcome a new comment as it shows that the person actually can think for themselves and not just regurgitate what others regurgitate.

Anyway, it may sound as though I am bitter about my disposition. I am not. Since school days I have actually become quite happy with the way I am built. School is really a very bad place for most kids. Only the really average kids manage to get through it without some sort of emotional scars. Dare to stand out or be different in any way and you run the risk of being thrown to the wolves and being eaten alive. This is what it seemed like at the time anyway.

I wonder why it is that people won’t accept someone at face value and not judge them by their outer appearances before actually getting to know them. Even I tend to judge people on their outer appearances even though I know what emotional damage you can cause to someone by doing this. I do try however to be cordial and not too judgmental to anybody I meet even though most of them are about half my size. At least I have learned to conceal my surprise at the shortness of some people.

Due to the fact that I hated school with such a passion I decided to teach myself what ever I could without having to actually interface with people. I managed quite well actually but there were still some parts of my life in which I had to interact with individuals or groups. This was unavoidable and I dreaded each situation anew.

Having always had an affinity to electronic devices which did not argue, talk back or belittle me in any way, I got quite fond of the humble computer. As a kid I pottered away like a mad man and virtually destroyed any mechanical device in my search of knowledge. I had to know how everything worked and this left a wake of destruction behind and of course many unsatisfied owners of broken electronic or mechanical goods.

It was only on my sixteenth birthday that I finally realised that I could put things back together and that I could do it in such a way that they actually worked again. This led me to believe that I could achieve anything. I had stumbled on to a power which also contributed to the type of person I am today. I feel that there is nothing I can’t do as long as I am willing to try. So far I have not been wrong in this belief.
In a way the past actually dictates what your future is going to be unless something happens which drastically alters your way of thinking or you decide to make a conscious effort to change the way you are living your life.

Together with this idea that I could do anything I set about teaching myself how to program and work with computers and even went as far as building my own computers. This was all in a days work for me and I took everything in my stride.

If I did not know something I would get a good book and sit down and finish it in a few hours time and take the knowledge imparted to me by the author, I would feel and actually become a stronger person with new found knowledge and it is extremely difficult to stop someone from doing anything if they totally are convinced that they can do it. So my attitude took me places.

This attitude of being able to do it all must not be confused with the attitude of thinking that you know it all and that you are invincible. This could lead to trouble. Just know that you can do things and you will find that they are actually quite easy to do, a step at a time.

If man could make it I could also make it as I am of the same species. It would of course take some time getting hold of the same information than the man who first made it had. It is all very easy with books, provided that you can read of course. Apparently as a kid I struggled to read, I finally managed to get it right and my life started.

Having studied on my own for a long time, I found it extremely difficult to land a job in the IT world. Without diplomas or certificates it was almost impossible to get a job. When you are young, people do not comprehend that even though you are young you may have experience. They assume that it only comes with age. Of course I will not dare to differ in total with them but it is possible that a young person can do a job without having papers and degrees.

So after having many jobs ranging from builder, air conditioning technician, handy man, foreman and a host of other jobs, I finally managed to land the big one. Actually at that stage I was quite cocky as well and I actually felt quite assured that the company hiring me had caught the big one.

It was a fantastic time in my life. For the first time I was being treated as an equal in a group of people who actually had the necessary papers and degrees but did not ram it down my throat and make me feel bad for not having papers of my own? They accepted me as I was and watched as I made a difference with mainly my attitude and my willingness to learn.

Having had the disadvantages as pointed out in the last few paragraphs, one could imagine that I was not always the easiest of people to work with or put up with. I was constantly on my guard and extremely sensitive to any discussions about degrees etc. I immediately felt that it was a direct referral to me not having any. However we managed to get along really nicely, even for a number of years before the unthinkable happened.

So, now that you have a bit more information about me and my life, it is probably a good time to start the real story.

How it all started
A friend of mine was offered a job in the Netherlands and he was actually considering taking the job. I wondered what it would be like to actually work in another country and just left it at that. As it turns out he did not take up the offer immediately and handed the chance to me. I took it with my usual reservations and decided to try it out.

I went for the interviews and thought that due to my lack of sufficient documentation as to my career choice that I would never get the job. Was I in for a major surprise though? It was only a matter of a day or two and the company that was hiring, let me know that I had the position if I wanted it.

How on earth could this happen to a guy in my position I wondered? It sounds too good to be true. Where is the catch? As in most cases when something seems too good to be true, be careful because it probably is. Not heeding my own good advice though and seeing it as a wonderful adventure and chance to go see the world.

I took my wife for an interview with them as you know how sober woman are when making decisions. She wanted to know everything, and after they had managed to convince her that everything from the bed linen to crockery was arranged and waiting for us, we both snapped at the opportunity to go see the new world.

We started packing up our lives and settling everything that needed to be settled. It was actually amazing how easy it all went. It all had a lot to do with the fact that we were extremely excited about our new life that had been thrown our way. Upon reflection it was not that easy but it had to be done and we were not taking no for an answer. This sort of eases the way a lot when two people have made one decision to do something.

Well in a jiffy we had our lives neatly wrapped up here in SA and we were about to head towards uncharted territory. This really felt like the case as we could not even find any decent books that could tell you about life in Holland. The only books we could find were the wonderful brochures and literature which tells you how to be a good tourist in a foreign environment. This did not help us in any way and our adventure therefore was all the more fulfilling as we were not even forewarned of anything.

The big task of saying goodbye to the family members started. They of course in their turn really excited that we were able to get this deal of a lifetime. Imagine going to have a major holiday and somebody else was going to pay for it. My wife and I had of course also thought that this would be the case.

Having never been outside of South African borders before of course also did not help us in any way. We did not know what to expect as neither of us had traveled much before and if we had it had been within our own country and never to another country let alone another continent.

Each and every person that was recruited by this firm to go live and work in Holland had the same misgivings about why they of all people had been lucky enough to be chosen for this fantastic working sort of holiday. It was more than apparent once we were there that there was not much effort put into the selection criteria of the foreign staff.

The South Africans were known by all as people who could do virtually anything if they set their minds to it. On the other hand the fact that each person was wondering why they should have been selected was also due to a certain sort of humbleness or maybe even modesty. This was also one of our major problems within the Dutch communities, modesty does not seem to appear in their vocabulary.

Within the year a few hundred people were recruited to go the flat side of Europe and to work for the Dutchies, each one in their turn not knowing what to expect but having their fears allayed by the more than enthusiastic recruitment staff. It was done so professionally in my mind that no one really bothered to question it all. Also there was the fact of it being seen as your one big opportunity to see the world at some company’s expense.

We were told that everything would be prepared for us when we arrived in the Netherlands and that we would have this magnificent house in Hoevelaken. Well it turns out that nearly all the other people had been told the same story and it actually ended up in a number of people sharing this one house in Hoevelaken.

In retrospect I still feel a bit of an idiot that I actually fell for the whole deal. I should have been more sober in my thoughts and actions and maybe challenged it all a bit more thoroughly. I know that I would do it all over now. I know for a fact though that my experience in Holland has much to do with the fact that I would do things differently now.

After having neatly sorted out our lives in SA, it was time to go and start our new lives. We said our goodbyes and set out on our adventure which would turn out to be half a nightmare but one full adventure.

I remember sitting at the airport in Cape Town and having a last round of drinks with all our friends. They all insanely jealous and we convinced of the fact that we had hit the jackpot. As my wife and I set out to the plane I remember looking back and thinking that it may be the last time we ever saw SA. I had never been anywhere far on an airplane and I was still not entirely convinced that they could really fly that far without a hitch.

Once on the plane my wife and I sat looking at each other grinning from ear to ear. We were finally starting our much anticipated adventure. It had been exactly two months since our recruitment and it was at last time to leave SA. What a relief that everything had worked out so grandly for us. The only item we had kept was our apartment. This was the one thing we had hoped to keep and it had also worked out that way. We would pay it off from Holland with my massive salary. The rest of the goods had found homes so fast that it looked as though we had been robbed by a team of thieves in one foul swoop. It is amazing how much junk one also tends to gather in a short space of time.

The engines started and so did our journey into the unknown. It was less than one hour before we were rudely broken into the Dutch way of doing things. We had been placed on an airline that had Dutch staff and they were obviously quite practised in the art of being Dutch. It was not long before I had been reprimanded by one such flight attendant for some silly question. I do not recall what it was but I remember being rather put out by it all. Us South Africans are such a friendly bunch of people and we at least try and make other people feel welcome and at ease in our presence.

This was rule number one for us in a list of things that the Dutch do a lot differently to us. Especially the Capetonians are renowned for their laid back manner of doing business and virtually anything else as well. The Dutch have an extremely organised way of doing things and if it were not for this I think they would fall apart at the seams. They are also extremely forward in the way that they communicate with other people. It is actually almost rude at times.

A Dutch person will also walk all over you with their bombastic nature if you are not wary or do not at least fight them off with an equally forthright manner. This was another extremely bad situation waiting to happen as the average South African citizen is polite and well mannered. We are not used to being told in no uncertain terms what people think of us or how stupid we are because we do not think exactly as another person wants us to think.

We are a lot more tactful and would probably moan and groan about someone behind their back than to their face, also not an extremely nice way of doing things but you do manage to avoid confrontation that way. I think we excel at avoiding confrontations. The Dutch people will invite confrontation but will back down when there is aggression involved.

The Dutch are also a passive nation. More about this later though, as it actually is a major problem now due to certain outside influences which are not passive, such as the average South African. We tend to have a lot of aggression in our dealings. It is not intentional or even malicious aggression but an underlying tension which is quite visible to me now that I know what to look for.

So it not surprising then that the little tiff with the air hostess put me totally out of joint. For the rest of the nearly eleven hour’s flight I sat and brooded about the rudeness of certain characters. Little did I know that this was to become the bain of my existence whilst in Holland?

The rest of the flight went down without a hitch and although it was extremely long, we even managed to sleep a little. Not much though as we were still very excited at the opportunity of making acquintance with this new culture.

After having tossed and turned in the rather small and unaccomodating seats we finally started our decent into the tiny country of Holland. It had just started to get light and as we came lower and lower to the ground we saw vast expanses of water and canals all over the place. All over the place there was greenery and water. The canals are so beautiful from the air.

If I may be allowed to take your attention away from all this beauty I would like to mention that you should never watch a film like Deep Impact where the country gets hit by a meteor and floods the whole place due to its impact. Holland is for a large part built under the sea level and this was the most frightening thought to me. What if we were flooded like in the movie? The thought of drowning is one of the scariest thoughts I have ever had.

So here we were descending into this glorious country with the greenest pastures I have ever seen and the water all around. We even saw a windmill or two from the air but they were very tiny and actually looked different to the ones we had been shown at school. This would be one of the other interesting features of Holland.

Although the world has been sold a picture of windmills, cheese and tulips, one rarely ever sees any of the above in large portions. You really have to go out and look for any of the above mentioned trademarks to find them. Mainly in the smaller villages these things are to be found in abundance.

Here we are, ready or not
Having finally landed and having fetched our bags we started hearing a most peculiar hum. It was not the sort of hum that we were used to but an uncomfortable sound which I later figured out to be a mixture of a number of different languages being spoken around us. It was German, French, English, Turkish, Afrikaans and more Afrikaans but with an extremely different sound to it.

The one reason I though we would survive in Holland was that we could both speak and understand Afrikaans very well. My wife is Afrikaans so we expected to fit in nicely. My mother and her family are Dutch and I had been hearin git since I was a child at various occasions when we went to visit my grandparents. Little did I know that they had already had so many changes to their language that what they spoke was an extremely impure Dutch. There was now a vast difference between the Dutch I was hearing and that I had been hearing as a child.

My wife and I just looked around us in amazement and realised that we were totally unequipped for this adventure. We could not even make head or tails out of what the officer at the passport control was trying to tell us, lucky for us though he switched over into English with a rather thick accent. It was understandable though and we managed to find our way through to the rest of the crowd that we knew had also come on the same flight and whom were all congregating outside of the arrival hall with a woman that had come to pick us up and take us to our new homes.

Next lesson came as even a bigger shock to us. A South African living too long in Holland can be extremely rude, probably even ruder than the average Dutch person. I guess the fact that she had woken up at 5h30 to come and fetch us probably made her cranky. Man she was a real scary character. Shouting and screaming at everyone to please hurry up as we were now in a first world civilisation and not in the backwoods of SA anymore. What a wake up call.

One of the guys was an avid sportsman and he had brought some ammo with him for spear fishing and he was having an incredible time trying to get the few handgun shells out of security as there is a strict no weapons policy in Holland. After having tried a number of tactics he finally gave up trying.

I know he actually did get his ammunition, but it was a number of days later after he had slept in a decent bed and not in the small uncomfortable chair in the plane. He was obviously in a much better mood and more receptive to the abuse dished out to him by the security in charge.

So here we were in a strange country with a real welcoming committee which I feel they could have left out. You have to remember that some of the people had come with children and they had not slept a wink the previous night, the kids or the parents. I know because we had some kid shouting all night in our ears, extremely irritating.

We made our way to the cars and crammed ourselves and our luggage into the lovely vehicles. I had never seen a car like it before. It had a few rows and each row had at least three seats. It was a really snazzy vehicle.

Oh yes, there is one other thing that you do not know about me yet. I can not ride with other people as I do not trust anyone but myself behind the wheel. Well it was as though the whole world was laughing at me on this trip. I was placed in the front seat with the driver. Obviously, it was due to my length. (As I said before I never win.) She was most definitely the worst driver I have ever driven with. I was not the only one to comment on this fact though either, because at some stage she heard us moaning and told us to get used to it as this was the way they all drove in Holland.

She weaved in and out of the traffic. With me pressing brakes on my side but to no avail. The harder I pressed my feet into the floorboard in front, the more she seemed to weave and cut in front of the other vehicles on the road. Here I was trying to get a glimpse of my new homeland and I was too scared to take a peep out of the corner of my eye. It was truly a ride from hell.

She pulled over at a gas station, got out and started pumping the gas herself. Typical I thought. She has finally gone over the edge and topped all rudeness by not even giving the poor pump attendant time to get to us. Well it turns out that you pump your own gas in Holland, throughout the most of Europe in actual fact. Even after living there for some time I still would go to the gas station and wait for an attendant, all in vain of course.

So here we were sitting in a car with a lady that drove like the proverbial bat out of hell, and to crown it all she did this all on the wrong side of the road, the right side to be exact. Through the whole of Europe the cars drive on the right side of the road.

Apparently the reason for this was due to Napoleon. In the old days knights and their steeds would ride on the left side of the road in order to pass each other with their swords on the right hand side of them. Of course you could never know before actually getting alongside some other knight whether he was friendly or not. So to be on your guard it was safer to have your sword at the ready as it were.

Napoleon had set up new laws and one of them was that in order to create some sort of truce or peace, the riders would now ride on the other side of the road so as to have their sword out of the way so as not to cause conflict. Of course the average South African would probably just have learned to swing the sword with their other arm. The law stuck and it is now only in Great Britain where they still ride on the same side of the road as we do.

We were taken by our captor, I mean welcoming committee to our new homes. Now as I mentioned before we were all told of this magnificent house in Hoevelaken. Well this is where the pawpaw hit the fan. It turned out that at least two people were already living there and that another two of our crowd would join them. The others were there for a month or two already and as luck would have it, the new people moving in were a relatively newly wed couple. They were not charmed to say the least. Later on we heard that the poor girl ended up doing most of the washing and cooking for the other guys, typical South African of course. She was not too pleased with the arrangements.

My wife and I were sitting watching this all and we thought this was not going too well. If we had to end up with another couple in a small house as most of the houses in Holland are, it would have put us in a really bad spot as we were too new in the country to make waves and tell the new employers that we did not approve of their accomodation they had arranged for us.

It was actually sad really because this was just one of the first in a row of really bad situations which we found ourselves in during our stay there. Our employers knew that they had us over a barrel and that we could not really go to far out of line as we were sort of at their mercy. They really abused this power over us and it made the group we were working with really miserable.

Our welcoming committee dropped my wife and I off in a small town called Bussum. This was a few kilometers from Hoevelaken and the rest of the group obviously had to come up and see what we were getting. I guess it was maybe a way of preparing themselves for what they would have to live in.

We were extremely lucky, as they had placed my wife and me alone in a fully furnished apartment and we left the rest of the group feeling quite satisfied that they would probably get similar places. It was not to be. Our apartment was definitely the best of the lot.

Then she and the rest of the group left us. It was the first silence after a long night in the plane and the trip over to the apartment and it was a real eerie sort of silence. It was so out of place. We felt glad to be placed in such a nice home and we had all the conveniences immediately at our disposal. That was it. We were totally on our own.

I think it was at this stage that we finally realised that we were in a new country on our own with absolutely no one to go to if we ran into trouble. We did not understand the language and they certainly did not understand us. It was at this moment that my wife and I became totally useless. We were so unsure of ourselves about everything.

It is amazing that when you get out of the familiar territory and into some new situation one becomes either totally efficient or you become a moron without the foggiest notion as to how to even catch the trains, we became the latter. We were totally useless. The very thought of catching a bus or train sent shivers down my spine. It sounds funny but I can assure you that it was not.

Another very important lesson was learned that day. We were pretty sure that we could have landed up in hospital with the lesson we learned. When in Holland, please remember that the most exquisitely paved red roads are for the bicycles and scooters only. Not for pedestrians as we had assumed. The scooters and bicycles ride on the roads as fast as they can and if you are in the way they will just ring their bells and hit you if you happen to get a fright and jump in their way.

It does not seem to happen too often but I can assure you that once you have been shouted at by a rude Dutchman on his or her bicycle, you will never again walk on the red paved roads. You will stick to the road where the cars drive or the walkway if there is one. The cars at least have to watch out for pedestrians and cyclists as if they should happen to hit on they would be prosecuted whether in the right or the wrong. That is the way the cookie crumbles over there.

One other thing that our welcoming banshee had failed to mention to us was that it was some sort of public holiday. So we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around and got totally lost while looking for some shop to buy something to eat. Back in SA you could basically walk a kilometer or two in virtually any direction and you would find a seven eleven supermarket or a corner store of some sort. Holland does not have this. They only have large chain stores and the gas station would double up as their sort of café.

Thanks for telling us though. By the time we got home we were bushed. We settled in for a light nap and awoke to a still very much sunny day. It was about the middle of summer when we got to Holland and the same people who failed to mention the absence of the café situation also failed to mention to us that the sun only sets at about 22h30.

So there was John sitting watching the weird television programmes waiting for a certain programme that had been advertised earlier that same day. I waited till the sun set and then thought I had probably missed it while sleeping. As I was flipping through the channels I was also quite amazed to see the some of the channels showed 04h30 in the marning and others showed 03h30 in the morning. How on earth had that happened?

I was utterly shocked and it was only the next night when I realised how late the sun set that I figured out what had happened. The different TV channels were Dutch and British. The British are an hour behind the Dutch. (The Dutch think the British are about a century behind but that is typical of the Dutch, they think everyone is way behind them.)

It was only a few days later that we also realised that the first day that we had arrived there was not a holiday but that the Dutch only opened their shops at 12h00 or later on a Monday afternoon due to the fact that they stay open all of Saturday and for Friday night till 21h00 for “Koop Avond” This meant that everyone that had been too busy during the week could shop at their own pace on Friday nights. This works well I may add. But it also meant that Monday was a total write off for the rest of the business world.

This pretty much sets the standard for how the Dutch do things. Everything is different. It would also only work in Holland where everybody expects the government to do everything for them. The rest of the world at least realises that the government is only capable of doing so much damage. The Dutch let them go the whole nine yards.

This is visible throughout their whole society. One may only go to the doctors in your area. If the doctor does not want to take you on as a patient then you may find another doctor. Everything has a structure to it and the culture is one major shock to the average foreigner.

Trust me when I say that it is a culture shock for a South African, gentle or macho, pleasant or not to suddenly be surrounded by hundreds of people doing things that we were told as kids are not socially acceptable. The kinds of situations I found myself in daily were terribly daunting and in the whole time that I lived there I could never get used to some of the mannerisms.

It was quite strange to be living in an apartment building and not having ever met our neighbors. Only after six months, we actually had a small chat with our direct neighbor. She was an extremely friendly old lady and we actually really enjoyed chatting to her. The fact that we were actually moving out of our flat in the next few days seemed to really disturb her and she said we should try keep in touch somehow.

Life sucks
Bussum was a grand old snobbish place, where many of the rich actors from around the world buy houses to live in during certain periods of the year. I can imagine that being a world celebrity would be great if you lived in Holland. You could be anonymous whilst living there. Nobody would really care that you played in one of the best movies of the century or something as spectacular. You could go on doing just what you want to do and never bother about all the “nuchter” sober people who never really care about anything that could make you excited or over enthusiastic in anyway.

Strange though that when soccer matches are being played throughout Europe for some important title or other, the Dutch go entirely MAD. They paint everything orange, from their bicycles till their cars. If they win the match then they celebrate till dawn and even a few days later if they really won big. If they lose then heaven help you if you get on the wrong side of them then. They will make life miserable for you.

By the way, never go shopping for any large items like fridges, stoves, motorcycles, cars or anything that needs the sales person’s full attention. It is impossible to pry their eyes away from the television set when the soccer is on. It is most irritating that the whole world comes to a standstill during soccer season. Don’t moan about the service either as you are being extremely unpatriotic to not support the soccer in every way possible.
Well as I was saying Bussum was great but after one week we were paid a visit by the welcoming banshee and this time a small dog accompanied her. The beer which I had mistakenly purchased was crap and did not live up to their expectations. How was I to know that only Heineken was the beer to drink now that we were in Holland? Later on we realised that Grolsch and one or two other beers were also allowed. It is quite rude by the way to go into a pub where they do not serve Heineken or Grolsch and ask for the beer not being served. Some sort of feud I would think as most places served one or the other plus a few of the others.

So after the little dog had done a number in our house, in the passage (what a relief), we were asked whether we had found another apartment yet. I was extremely angry to say the least. Nothing had been communicated to us during the previous week, in actual fact we had wondered when they would contact us to tell us what we would be doing for the rest of our stay in Holland. So I politely told them to please convey our heartfelt apology for what I was about to do to them and that we would not be vacating the apartment for anybody, director or not.

The message was duly passed on after we were told not to make waves as we were in a foreign country now and that things were done differently than where we came from. This set the pattern for the relationship between me and the company that I worked for in the next year. They would tell us one thing and we would communicate a deep disgust for their total disregard for us foreigners and we would then be told to shut up or buzz off. The fact that we had temporary residency permits in Holland meant that every year we would have to renew them and that if we made waves we would be sent back home.

I of course already hated any form of dictatorship and this was the worst that I could imagine. I felt as though they held us at ransom. It was one of the times in my life in which I felt as though I did not control my destiny anymore and that some arrogant person on the other side of the phone played the grand puppet master and I just danced to his tune. It really was demoralising.

The end of the matter was that we were grudgingly allowed to stay in the apartment as I threatened to make a big scene if they did not let us stay there. I was in touch with most of the South Africans that the company had brought over and I promised to make the rest of the people more agitated than what they already were if we were not allowed to stay in the apartment. Of course this was a really bad way to start off a relationship with any new employer and it proved later to be a major disadvantage to me.

Now that we had established that we would be staying in Bussum, I decided to go out and get myself set up with the necessary hardware to work from home if the contract allowed it. I bought a computer and went to the hardware store to buy a desk. This proved to be quite a mission. Firstly, due to there being so little space in Holland, the shops are rather small and they tend to keep the minimum in the shops to keep them from being over crowded. So it was quite a mission to find the desk that I needed. We walked from place to place to find as well that the prices differed so much from one store to the next that you had to check them all out or you felt really done in after you had purchased something from the one store only to find it cheaper next door. We managed to finally find one and we told the shop attendant that we wanted that specific one and we were told that we could pay at the front counter.

After having paid cash for the desk we waited around for someone to bring it to us and we were asked at quite a later stage what we were waiting for. We were extremely disgusted to find out that there would be a three week wait for the desk. After having tried everything in my power to get the one on the floor, I gave up and said that I would wait after all.

A few weeks later we got a buzz downstairs at the apartment and we were told that our desk had arrived. Well that is what we managed to understand through the whole conversation that took place over the speaker phone. I was told to come down and help with the desk and chair that had been ordered. I went down and buzzed open the door, and the driver asked me to please help him with the goods. He had opened the delivery van and when I looked inside I nearly had a cadenza. The desk and chair were nowhere in sight and I felt really upset with the driver. I started moaning with him and he started laughing, telling me that it was a DIY kit. I took the two flat boxes with the help of the driver up to the apartment. Of course I had no tools so it meant me going for a long walk to the nearest hardware store to buy some tools to help me with the assembly of the desk and chair, which I still could not believe was in the flat box in the apartment.

The whole of that day saw me building the fantastic desk which I had waited so patiently for. This was not the last piece of furniture I had to assemble either whilst living in the Netherlands. It was quite amazing to see some of the kits that one could get. They really knew how to make them. They would be so precise that it was really easy to build once you had the right tools and a lot of patience. I was surprised that my first car was not a DIY kit.

It seems that due to the small apartments and all the stairs in Holland it was virtually impossible to get anything that was already assembled up the stairs. So you had to cart the kit upstairs and built it on site. You would also then be discouraged from moving it around too much as it would creak and moan if you tried to move it. We did make the fatal mistake of moving a cupboard for a friend of ours; against my better judgment may I add. We spent the whole night trying to salvage the cupboard and make something of all the broken pieces. It was worth the beer though, Heineken to be exact.

I am sure I drank more beer in six months in Holland, than in my entire life in SA. Beers were served at all events. You knew the company you were in, by the liquor that was being served. If it was beer then it could be Dutch or SA, if it was hard liquor such as Brandy and Coke then it would be only South Africans. I have never really seen a Dutch person drinking a brandy, I am sure they do but I have just never seen it. They do drink Jenever though which is made from grain. This stuff is vile and only the Dutch could drink it and still stand up afterwards. Two beers was also the limit for any driver and it was really adhered to by nearly every Dutch person I knew, not all of them but most.

This two beer limit was also the reason I stopped going to work functions. After two beers, I would be virtually the only one left at the function. The others would have left already and I would be standing there with no one to talk to. If there were others we would only talk about the weather and lease cars, so it was pretty boring stuff anyway. The weather sucks most of the time and the lease cars were a bone of contention anyway as only the Dutch employees were allowed to get them. When I changed to the next company though, it was different. I also had leased cars then. I then also understood the value of talking about them as well.

Apparently if you get caught driving while under the influence of alcohol then there is a certain percentage above which the police will immediately suspend your license. This is a real bad thing in Holland as it happens time and again. I had one or two colleagues that had their licenses suspended. It is quite tragic actually because then you are at the mercy of the public transport.

The public transport used to be good a few years ago when we first got to Holland. You could set you watch as the trains arrived as they were on time without a doubt. As the years went by the services got worse. Maybe we just started noticing it but my general feeling was that the public were also beginning to notice it. They started various campaigns in order to better the service and the more they tried the worse it seemed to get. At some stage I remember them wanting to implement an arrangement whereby your money would be reimbursed if the train was over a certain number of minutes late. I never heard much of that one though.

The train taxi could be caught at the station and the driver would take you anywhere within that specific town for seven guilders. This was great if you new where you knew where you wanted to be. It was also great if you took the taxi to the far end of the town you wanted to see as a tourist and then made your way back to the station to catch the train back home again. It was also possible to call get a train taxi to pick you up at your house and drop you off at the station for the same price.

Nearly all of the taxis were BMW or Mercedes Benz. The real smart makes. It was quite sad though as one of my dreams was to have a nice Mercedes and this went out the window when I saw that every taxi was a Mercedes. Oh well I soon got over that and still got my first BMW 520 I in my life. Wow that was a ride I really loved. The car was really cheap. The only problem was that the road tax was very high for the car. It weighed a few tons and as the road tax was worked out on the weight of the car, every three months saw me taking out a substantial amount of money for road taxes.

The petrol price was also extremely high at that stage. It has not gotten any better mind you, but I felt it was too high. Half the price per liter consisted out of taxes. Each cabinet when they came into power seemed to up the price of petrol in order to get more funds. Even stranger though was the fact that the Dutch government wanted the average Joe out of his car and onto the train. They did not think however of lowering the price of the train fare in order to make everyone stream onto the trains.

The car is what the Dutch term “De heilige koe” which means their sacred cow. Every Dutch man and woman wanted one or two of them. It was nothing strange to see every adult member of the family living together each with their own car. Now this sounds normal, but consider it this way, the roads were already packed and the number of cars was increasing rapidly. The government wanted the people in the same areas to drive together and they spent millions advertising this fact.

They set up parking spaces on nearly every main intersection in order to accommodate the people. The funniest thing about the adverts though was the fact that they actually were trying to train the people to be cordial about it all. Basically saying, you have made the arrangement, now stick to it. I mean phone if you are not going to make it please phone the other members and tell them. Imagine having to show people over TV how to be civil.

There were a number of radical schemes proposed in order to get the people out of their cars and into modes of transport which would not mess up the environment, but none as radical as the one gentleman who proposed a working model of using hang gliders in order to get to work. This is rather funny as in Holland there are no mountains. This meant that they would have to erect high structures in order to let the people jump off them and get to work. On the other side they would then have some sort of system to park the gliders. A bit far fetched but nonetheless brilliant. That idea obviously also went nowhere really fast.

Now bear in mind that although Holland is only an area of around two hundred by three hundred kilometers, and the average distance of each town between seven to ten kilometers away from each other, this meant that without the car you were virtually stranded, unless you liked riding the bicycle. The bicycle roads were well set up and you could virtually ride from one town till another town, eighty kilometers away by just using the bicycle roads. I knew one old man that would just ride his bike around all day. He would ride for a few hundred kilometers in the day, getting home relatively late at night, only to start again next morning. It made me tired just to listen to him talking about all the riding that he did in a day. I am not an avid cyclist. No sire, I would take my car any day to a smart bicycle.

Riding a bicycle though was probably the safest method of transport. The drivers of the vehicles really had to watch out for the cyclists. Knocking one of them over was the worst that could happen to you. No matter how right you were, you would be in the wrong.

A change is as good as a holiday
I was a contractor in the IT field so I was posted all over Holland. However owing to the fact that I was not fluent in Dutch, it was not surprising that the jobs I got were really pathetic. This happened to all the South Africans and we were used to getting the jobs where you ended up riding train for two hours there and another two hours back. Of course the Dutch contractors would not stand for it so we had to do it. This pretty much went for many other types of jobs as well. If it was not to their liking then they would let some South African do it.

It was only after the first few months of being shunted around from pillar to post that I realised that I could also object to this treatment, which I promptly did. I suddenly became one very unpopular South African. No more was I to be shunted around. Holland had dealt its last bad card to me. Well so I thought. This new attitude that I had acquired only meant that I ended up doing all the really stressful and unwanted jobs close to home.

It got worse and after being in the company for one year, I finally got sick and tired of this treatment and decided to look for another job. This did not take long as the South Africans had gotten quite a reputation as being hard workers and ready to do all the yucky stuff that the Dutchies did not want to do. So within a few days I had found another task master. I was convinced that this company would be greatest I had ever worked for. They really wanted me and I really wanted to work there.

My resignation letter was fours pages long and I have written it without any embellishment or exaggeration. I sent it to all the staff as they had much the same problems as me. For the first time in a year, the director phoned me and asked me to retract it. He said that it was bad for morale etc. I of course knew that he could not fire me as I had just quit so I said that I would not consider it at all.

We spent a few minutes arguing and then I put the phone down and was effectively off work for the next two months which was the required resignation period. They still paid me in full but now suddenly there were all sorts of amounts owing by me to the company. I think that for the next four months in total we lived on virtually nothing. The reason for this is that I was waiting for my new work permit. It did not arrive and after waiting two or three months I realised that I would have to go back to SA if I did not get the permit ASAP.

I phoned the government agency that handled the work permits and they said that I had messed up a perfectly good chance and that they were not going to give me another one. I immediately faxed them my resignation letter shown below and they gave me my work permit within five minutes. They even asked me to help them with a case against the employer that I was resigning from.

This is the resignation letter that I faxed the government agency as well as all the staff members of my job where I resigned.
Dear Director
CC : All staff

It is with great regret that I find myself writing this letter of resignation. I am giving two months notice in writing and will be working my last day on the 22nd of April 1999. Given below is a short summary for my reasons and by giving them I am hoping that your company can react on these comments and sort them out once and for all. The reason I am sending this letter to the rest of the staff is that I feel they need to be able to see that you have responded to these comments in a constructive way, and that we can look forward to a better future and forget the past. I must also add that some of these issues must be sorted out with all the South Africans that came over to the promise of a better future.

I joined your company after having an interview with the Cape Town branch. In this interview it was told to me above other things that you would give my wife an aptitude test to see if she could fit into the IT world. If she qualified, she would receive training and that your company would try and place her in contracts in Holland. Based on this certainty and the promise of a better future, my wife and I liquidated our whole life in SA and moved to a country full of prospects to work for a company with even better potential.

The first impression I got of Holland was negative. We were dropped off at our house which needless to say was not what we had been told we would be getting. We were given absolutely no information of our whereabouts and because it was a holiday we also did not encounter any open shops for at least two days.

So here we were in a country where nobody really understood us and we understood even less. Enough said about that. Every South African went through the same experience with greater or lesser feelings of anxiety.

The next great shock came when I realised that the amount of money that I had brought with me was not even enough to last me a month. In Cape Town we were told that we need not bring money as we would be given everything to start off with. This was a lie.

My contract that I signed stated that in the unlikely event of me not having a contract that I would earn a basic salary. I was also told at my interview that I would never be without a contract for longer than two weeks. This of course was once again not the case. Five months after arriving in Holland I finally got my first contract. This was a great relief because now I had totally depleted all my sources of money and the basic salary was not good enough to live on. I spoke to the resource manageress and she broke my trust in your company and in her after asking me what sort of company I thought I had joined. You would not help us financially in any way, even after having lied about the six thousand guilders “voorschot” She finally gave in and gave me three thousand guilders.

So now we are sitting with a situation that is not only dangerous for me but for my wife as well. Now this is where I get mad. I guess I have joined a company that not only breaks their promises but also will not help me when I desperately need it. Being in a foreign country and totally on my own, I need to know that I can rely on your company to back me to the fullest when I need it.

At this point your company has already lost me. Everything that comes after this is just water under the bridge. It does not mean much because I do not consider myself as an employee anymore. Now I am a hostage in a foreign country with an extremely bad company as my captors.

I was given a Personal Computer as a prive allowance. For this computer I still have not received any sort of invoice. I feel that this is totally irresponsible and detest the fact that I have to put up with treatment like this.

At a meeting that was held to introduce the newest director (they change so often) it was mentioned that there was to be an enquette (survey) to judge the feelings of the employees. We were also told that we would receive copies of our contracts when we got contracts with outside firms. I am still waiting for the enquette as well as any sort of contract.

The fact that these are not forthcoming breaks down all trust that I have for any company that I work for. Your company is not transparent or honest in their dealings with their staff or their customers. The very fact that we have not had an alternative to the spouse training program bears witness to this fact. All you managed to come up with was “The laws of the country have changed and it is no longer possible.” I really don’t think that it is a fair solution to the reason many of us South Africans came here in the first place.

I had a meeting with one of the directors about one month ago in which I spoke my heart out to him and he made notes at a furious pace. That day I thought that we had established some sort of truce again. But I am still waiting for a response to the questions I posed to him. What about the study allowance of two thousand guilders per employee per year. I was told by my account manager before applying for one contract, to tell the company recruiting me that I was trained in Delphi 4.0 and had been using it for some time now, so that they would consider me for the contract. I said to him that I would not lie to any prospective employer and that I would need training in Delphi 4.0 before even considering such an interview. This did not happen once but several times with various contract interviews. The first few contracts were way out of my field but I was still taken on the interviews and made to look like an idiot. I am still waiting for an explanation or apology.

There is only one thing worse than going to parties and hearing South African people moaning about the company I work for. That is hearing the customer we contract out to airing their negative views about your company. In my search for a new career I have had to listen to the worst kinds of ridicule about your company. This is sad as it has mostly South Africans bearing the brunt of your stupidity. This is the last thing I need to hear when on an interview for a new career. If you are interested then we can still get together and talk about the comments and see where we can salvage something. Make an appointment and I will get back to you. This is the same response I have gotten on countless occasions from you. I have on most o9ccasions never received a response or even an acknowledgement that says “We know you called and action will be taken on such and such date or time.” It is pathetic to say the least.

To this I must add that any company who takes 55% of the money I earn needs to do a lot more than just talk and give me a ticket to their country. In my eyes this is the only thing you have done to entitle you to any money. The rest I feel is highway robbery. Your threats that you have done so much for me and will therefore not give me a good recommendation to any new company where I look for work is pathetic and ill founded. This was told to me by one of the directors last Friday when I told him as a gentleman that I had other offers and that when considering any t\new contracts with my current contract to take into consideration that I would be gone in two months time. I did this all out of respect for the consequences you would have to face if I left the current contract immediately and left you in the lurch. I feel that by giving you a fair warning I put myself and my further life in Holland at risk due to the way you play the game. I know it is a hard world out there and that you are prepared to fight dirty to keep me here. Just remember: The only way to win is to be prepared to lose. I already have lost everything so now I can only win.

At every stage of the game I have had my “werks vergunning” work permit flashed at me in a way that makes me feel like a hostage in a hopeless situation. May I remind you and if I am wrong then I will retract this, but I am currently working for a company under a “werks vergunning” bearing another companies name. This is illegal in Holland. It is quite ironic really as I have never even been to the company mentioned on the “werks vergunning.”

By the way it is this very passage that had been my tactical savior when faxing it to the department working with the work permits. (This is for the benefit of the reader and not the director)

I have been on countless occasions to Enschede for meetings where the agenda was discussed and absolutely no action taken. If action was taken I was not informed. I have better ways to spend my precious time thank you.

I came to the Netherlands to build a brighter future for myself and my family. Up until now I did not feel that my future has brightened up by even one Candella. There are still lots of issues that I feel will remain unsolved but I have one final thing to say. I will not be taken hostage by any company, I resign. I have my future as well as my wife’s to think of. I also demand a letter of apology for all the broken promises and threats that I have had to endure whilst in your employ. With respect to this last statement, I am extremely serious and hope to receive a response ASAP. The original of this letter will follow shortly by post.

As you can see I have sent this letter to all the staff members and I am sure that they will read it with relish. HOWEVER, deal with these issues in a visible and constructive manner and I will send a retraction letter to the same staff members as each issue gets sorted out.

Yours truly

John Weber

As I was typing in this resignation letter in to this book now, I can feel again the intense dissatisfaction with the way we were treated. It was not fair and I was right not to endure anymore.

Well the director phoned me up as I said and you can imagine that he was livid that I had sent the letter to al the staff. He had a lot of fires to put out after that week. In actual fact he resigned shortly afterwards and a new guy took over. They also renamed the company due to its extremely bad publicity out in the IT field.

A lot of my fellow South Africans still worked there for a few years taking the abuse dished out to them. Shortly after I left Holland I was told by some of my friends that the company had closed down leaving them with no salary for two months. The nerve of it all was that they were not even told of the closure of the company. They heard it via the grapevine. Well, so much for that company.

A new company, a new life
So it was that I started at the new company. They had branches situated all over the world with an estimated 55 000 employees. They treated us a lot better and although I was still a foreigner the prospects looked better. It was only a matter of time though before I realised that being a foreigner in Holland would keep me humble. I would never be involved in really interesting projects or do anything really important for them.

I am not bitter about the time I spent with them as I had a lot of my colleagues that really looked after me and tried their level best to accommodate my culture. I was invited to many functions and parties with them which is actually unusual as they do not mix well really. As an employee you meet your colleagues and you never get to see them on a social level.

One of my colleagues actually became a good friend. He was also extremely technical and he did some very weird projects of his own. Recently he sent me some photos of his latest project, inviting me over for a drink. It would be an expensive drink to say the least as I would have to fly to the Netherlands to enjoy it.

There were good times and bad times but the bad outweighed the good by far. I always say that when the bad outweighs the good times then it is time to get a movin’ along. It is usually very difficult though due to one of natures law which states that a body in rest will try to remain that way and unless a force is applied externally it is difficult to start the motion.

ADSL rules
This was truly one of the things in Europe which did not suck. ISDN was good but ADSL was king. In South Africa ISDN is expensive but still the better choice when it comes to running a business. This of course is only due to the way ADSL is being offered here in SA. In Europe it is fast. It is always on and it is cheap. You do not have a cap on what you can download. Instead they make services which allow you to fully utilize ADSL. Try that here in SA and there just would not be enough bandwidth to go around.

Very strange though that they have managed to get it right in Europe. I wonder what or who is actually boycotting the growth of such a wonderful alternative to 56 K or ISDN bandwidth here in SA. ADSL in Europe makes the information super highway take on a new meaning. Here in SA you still are bumping into each other on the super highway. Yeah right. If only the normal guys weren’t being penalised for all the other people downloading movies etc.

What a load of rubbish, this is exactly what the internet is about, being able to freely move in and out of worlds without actually having to go there. This book would probably never have been written if I could surf over the internet at the speed of light and visit all the places in Europe that I now physically went to. Not being the touristy type, touring using the internet really makes sense until you land up in SA where you are throttled to death even on the internet.

Anyway, if there was one redeeming factor in Holland for me, then it was the super lightning fast internet. It was of such a nature that one could use it to make phone calls using your computer and if your computer was fast enough to keep up the pace, you could play games while talking and never realise that you were on the internet and not a phone line.

Due to the fact that I had ADSL in Holland, I was able to make an incredible website running from inside my home. It was made using a rather small web chip that had a lot of things such as a web server and serial ports integrated into it. I used it to control an online paint ball gun and at that stage it was called pelletcam, the reason being that the gun was pointing at a few targets and the targets were being viewed by a camera. The gun could be moved in all directions and actually shot from anywhere in the world via any internet browser.

I had to remove it after a week or so though as the people from all over the world were shooting it to pieces. It cost a fortune to set up and a few days to shoot to pieces. Due to the paintball gun being really powerful and shooting range only being three meters it was devastating. The balls were made up for me in England and the paintball gun was semi automatic and only needed to be primed once. It could shoot more than a thousand five hundred rounds using a special canister filled with CO2. You would not like to stand in the way of this thing when it went off. Unfortunately it also made aloud noise even after all the padding was in place and every attempt was made to silence it. It was fun though and was made possible through having an ADSL connection that was always on.

Shotcodes - WOW

2007-06-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

This is probably one of the most exciting developments I have seen for a while. Really original and totally awesome.

Download the software to your cellphone from http://www.shotcode.com/download onto your smart cellphone with a camera and then use shotcode software to take a photo of this image and then see what it downloads to your phone.

This is going somewhere, I am not sure where but I will give you more on this subject later.

Jealousy makes you nasty

2007-06-04T02:01:00.000-07:00

This article was written and published in the Gansbaai Herald after one of my friends got picked up for smuggling Perlemoen. I was obviously quite shocked to hear of this as I knew him rather well. What he did or not do is not what I am writing about. It is the fact that neighbours and family got so jealous of him that they would ruin a lovely place like Gansbaai just to see him and other friends go down.

Jealousy makes you nasty!

Having lived in the Netherlands for a few years, I never really got used to the effects of living in a fishbowl type of neighbourhood where everyone watched everyone else to see whether they may be able to trap their unsuspecting neighbours in an act of wrongdoing. It seemed that civil servants did not need to do their job as the neighbours would routinely inform on the wrongdoers in any case. Their bad habit has been nurtured so long now that it has become a natural talent. It is at this advanced stage where watching and telling becomes spying and informing. It really can start doing harm to a whole community. Gansbaai beware!

I have recently visited Gansbaai a number of times in quick succession and for varying number of days on each visit, and I noticed the same sort of begrudging tendencies of some of the inhabitants of Gansbaai whom actually deserve compliments for taking this irritating and extremely childish bad habit to new heights. Remember if you can’t raise the standards of your environment (by keeping up with the Jones’s), please don’t try to drag everyone around you down as well.

It seems that every article in any local newspaper you read has something to say about an alleged syndicate which somehow seems to be linked to the words “Dis waar ja!” What strikes me as being really weird though is that some articles say alleged and others seem to take it as fact.

In my opinion, all articles of this subject should maybe start with words like
“Dis beweer ja!” or “Dis gemeen ja!” I suppose that it is not really as sensational as “Dis waar ja!” but it certainly is more representative of the whole situation and doesn’t condemn them for a crime that still has to be proven in court where a jury and judge presides.

To get back to the main topic though, jealousy makes you nasty and it is plain to see in a small town like Gansbaai. In bars one has to just ask someone their name and all backs get turned away from you as they suspect you are out to nail them.

More than once I have even been accused of being in the police force or one of the task forces assigned to crime on the coast. It is sad that our usual South African politeness is now our worst asset. Imagine being shunned in a bar of all places because you may be the one that has come to change their lives in a drastic way with your all inquiring questions of “Hoezit en wat is jou naam.”

I feel that this is mostly due to the fact that you have so many neighbourly spies around you tending to your downfall that you never know who is friend or foe. If you are genuinely concerned as to the safety of your environment set up a neighbourhood watch and stop watching the neighbours. It is childish and will not do your community any good. Besides which, has nobody ever told you as a child not to tell stories.

One of the sad factors in the ill gotten gossip that actually makes it to print, is that nobody seems to have the guts to actually put their name next to the senseless drivel that they write, at least that way one could see who the well meaning benefactor is and one can judge for yourself whether it comes from someone who wants to change things for the better or just malicious gossip. In turn one should also remember that that which comes around goes around. So keep it up and in your turn one day you too may be flamed down in a blaze of glory just so that others may watch you burn. If your neighbour does not have a high enough fence, try to abstain from looking over it so often.

John Weber
johnkweber@yahoo.com
All email I get that offends me gets treated as spam anyway.

Motormail - Not in use anymore - Good idea nonetheless

2007-06-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

A communication platform for road users
How http://www.motormail.nl works

By : John K Weber

Once again the promise of new technologies to be learnt, has prompted me to embark on a new project. This project is unlike anything I have ever undertaken as it involves Linux and the underlying operating system plays an important role in it's development.

Calling all licensed vehicles
The main aim of this project is to allow all road users to be able to communicate without having to know anything about the users that they are communicating with. There are many ways to achieve this but I have chosen for the simplest of all. EMAIL. The saying used to be that money makes the world go round. I think that that should be rephrased to email makes the world go round.

In the fraction of the time that it takes to write an email, it gets sent to its destination. It is a very powerful medium that has made its way into the 21 century in no small way. So it is with this in mind that I decided to use email as the underlying medium for communicating with all road users.

Motormail allows any person to send an email to another road user based on their vehicle registration number. As simple as that. Even if the user is not currently registered, the emails are stored and delivered to them as soon as they decide to register.

The mechanics of email are so simple to set up that it is also not as large a project as is assumed when starting out.

Cobalt RAQ 4 server
I have my own Cobalt RAQ 4 server set up in Amsterdam and linked directly to the internet backbone.

The Cobalt RAQ 4 allows the users to set up web sites using a smart web interface. It requires absolutely no experience with Linux which is the operating system or Apache which is the web server of choice. It allows the user to setup emails and web space so easily that it takes around two minutes at the most to set it all up.

Automatic email creation
The main problem is just to create the script that will allow the email accounts to be created on the fly. This is essential so that the user can use their email accounts as soon as they are opened. This script requires in depth knowledge of the Linux operating system and seen as that I have no clue as what is going on I decided to call in the experts.

I have recently purchased a product that would allow me to set up the user accounts on my Cobalt RAQ 4 server and setup the databases etc with minimal effort. It is a sort of shell that works around the user interface set up for the Cobalt server.
Due to the fact that port 81 is closed in most network environments, it is impossible to set the account up without the port 81 being opened. So this product "Auto Setup" allows me to set up the user accounts now using the http port, port 80.

Remote project completion
So I emailed the owner of this product "Richard Kurth" and requested a quotation for the script I needed to create the emails automatically.

How Motormail is set up
The technical glue that keeps it together

Having requested the quotation from Richard Kurth I got a extremely prompt reply saying that it would cost $150 to create the script. I accepted and the next day my script was set up on my server without me having to touch it at all. Excellent, I have just outsourced my first project and by email of all things. So now that I have established that email makes the world go round….

How does the email account get created
So what happens? The user sets up an account by giving a vehicle registration number and a password which allows access to the POP3 email account. He details get stored into a mySQL database and using a Cron tab (scheduling mechanism in Linux) the database is read out and all users that are currently in the database get created one by one.

Once the email account is created the ser may immediately use it to send emails or read emails that may have been posted to the account before it was created.
However there is still one problem. How do the users know when someone is registered or not. I mean it is not really possible to send an email to someone who does not exist. As soon as you send it you will get an email back saying that the user does not exist.

The catchall email account
In order to solve this problem the Cobalt RAQ 4 allows the web administrator to setup a catchall email account over and above the email accounts that are already setup. This entails setting up an account that will catch all emails sent to a domain name.

This is a really handy solution because now anybody can send an email to any registration number at motormail and it will get sent to the catch all account.

A loop to beat all loops
I then have a program called RSVP that runs in the background on a system attached to the internet using ADSL and running on Windows. This RSVP program costs around $40 dollars and is probably the easiest program to use when it comes to email processing for Windows.

The program will fetch all emails from the catchall account on the Cobalt RAQ 4 server and will resend them and then delete them. This means that if the account has now been created it will just catch the email or otherwise if it has not yet been created it will be sent back into the catchall email account, only to be resent again in a few minutes. This means that no matter whether you are registered or not at the Motormail site your emails will always be kept and delivered to you after you have registered.

The hardest part is yet to come
Now, of course, this all really means nothing when only a handful of people use this service. So it needs to be marketed.

Of all the things to do when creating any web site, the marketing is the main pain.
It is actually up to word of mouth to make this site work as a large advertising budget is out of the question as the service is mainly free. The only way it can pay for itself is to place a small text advert in each email when it is sent. So the costs have to be kept as low as possible as the users are sick and tired of having banners placed all over the place.

Take Yahoo! for example. It used to be a really great Service but it now has so many adverts that it is nauseating to even look at it. So the advertising which usually pays for all web sites is out the window. As is the small one liner text advert within each email is already bad enough but it is a necessary evil nonetheless.

So what can you do with motormail!
Have you ever been driving down the highway when your dream car which is actually an exotic import zips past you. Wow if only you could chat to that driver and ask a few questions like "where did you actually buy this car?"
An another occasion you drive past this car for sale. The only problem is that the for sale sign has no price or telephone number. It probably does have one but not something you can see before zipping past it. Well now with a bit of training(reading number plates through your rear view mirror) you can actually just note the vehicle registration number (97GXSB) and send an email to 97GXSB@motormail.nl and you will be able to establish a dialogue through emails.

Simple isn't it?
So why don't you register and make it work?
Just browse along to http://www.motormail.nl and set up your very own email account. Just supply your vehicle registration number and a password with which to login to the site to read and write emails and you are A for away.
So who thinks up these great ideas?

Well this one was thought up by Esther Zijlstra from CSC in Bunnik and the work was performed by John K Weber and partly by Richard Kurth in the USA.

I also would like to acknowledge the fact that we are using a very easy to install email client called instantwebmail. This client blended straight into our website without any changes at all to it. As is. This is seldom the case with any web projects. These guys have made a really easy to apply Web Mail client. Check it out at http://instantwebmail.sourceforge.net/

It won't make millions
I can almost guarantee that this site will not make millions, however it will breach the gap between the members of the public and the road users.
This domain name has already been purchased for most countries by a different party. It has no affiliation with our site at all.

What next?
I am currently still busy with a remote weather station, which will be able to send all status messages via SMS to a ground station which is also online at all times and available for research. There will be more of this project in the near future. Keep your eyes open for any other interesting ideas and you may always send them through to me at johnkweber@yahoo.com - JKW

South Africa's ABAT unveils plan for mini-UAV courier business

2007-05-23T03:04:00.000-07:00

ABAT UAV had it's wares on display at the Ysterplaat AAD show in October 2006. It was really amazing and there was an amazing response to the autopilot as well as the small planes which we chose as a platform to test and fly the autopilot. Here is an article as written by Peter La Franchi from http://www.flightglobal.com/

The full article as printed by Flight Global can be viewed at http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/Article.aspx?liArticleID=209216&PrinterFriendly=true

South Africa's ABAT unveils plan for mini-UAV courier business
By Peter La Franchi

The South African-based autopilot manufacturer ABAT has unveiled concepts for a local area courier delivery business based around small electrically powered UAVs.

The “Posduif” – an Africans language word for carrier pigeon - business would utilise a flying wing UAV manufactured from Styrofoam with a pusher propeller and an underslung payload canister. The Styrofoam airframe is sufficiently strong to support repeat operations, but lightweight enough to ensure low kinetic energy ground impact effects in the event of a collision or system failure says company co-founder John Weber.

The UAVs would be dispatched from a central co-ordination centre, with launch either by hand or a rail system. The delivery point would be pre-calculated using GPS with the flight planning system incorporating ground maps, air charts, and a terrain elevation model to allow a safe route to be plotted. The original software suite was developed as a toolset for use in planning aerobatic routines for manned aircraft says Weber, with its evolution into a UAV flight planning system commencing some 18 month ago.

The basic UAV has a 60km range, and uses a GPRS modem, operating over commercial cellular telephone networks, as a datalink. The maximum payload is anticipated to be 0.7kg.

The system would have particular application in supporting remote communities in the African environment Weber says, but could also have a role to play in established urban environments, particularly where speed of delivery was an issue.

Once at the delivery point, the Posduif would either perform a landing, with the lower wing surface acting as a skid, or simply drop the canister from low altitude and then return to the dispatch point.

Weber says if the UAV lands, its return would be achieved by the package recipient simply picking up the UAV and throwing it back into the air. The UAV would automatically detect that it was airborne, stabilise itself and identify its location, and then engage a pre-loaded return flight programme to return to its original departure point.

For high use recipients the business model could also involve setting up a rail launcher with integrated battery recharger to allow for air vehicle return.

Weber says the primary obstacle to the launch of the business remains approvals from South African civil airspace regulators. However he anticipates solutions in the form of a more open flight approvals regime and certification basis for civil UAVs in South Africa in the not too distant future.

As an interim step, ABAT is promoting the basic Styrofoam UAV as a farm management system, adding a low cost staring digital camera to collect imagery. The airframe material again lends itself well to this user community says Weber, as while many South Africa agronomists already using light aircraft in property management and stock control roles, there is a high potential for frequent crashing in the early stages of introducing a UAV system.

A glassfibre or all composite airframe is unlikely to be sufficiently robust to be re-useable after impacting a solid wall or tree Weber says, whereas Styrofoam will absorb the bulk of the impact. If the airframe is badly damaged however, the autopilot and engine module can simply be removed from their mounts and placed into a new wing, something farmers could do themselves.

Online Gun

2007-05-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

The world of the extremely bored technician

How a tech nut thinks
By : a tech nut of note

Without a challenge, a keen inquiring mind gets bored in an instant. An ever, advancing level in the challenges faced is what keeps this certain breed of technician from becoming insane. Like a junky awaiting his next fix, the tech nut awaits his next biggest challenge. The one hardly finished before the next has to be found.

The result of this weird addiction
One of the main features in the tech nut’s repertoire of rare and mostly fascinating ideas and projects is the ability, to stun people into silence, make the audience applaud with enthusiasm or most often laugh out load and to his face.

The latter reaction is what has greeted this tech nut in his latest venture. In his quest to find the most interesting and exciting elusive challenge he wondered into the world of the insane when he decided to conquer the real outside world, spoken about in many circles, but only with vague insinuations and rarely with any conviction, with the ever popular phenomenon, known to the uninitiated only as the internet, web and ultimate source of entertainment.

In order to capture an audience that, to say the least, is as fickle as fate, must be the ultimate challenge. Well with a good dose of imagination and some really way out mental glitch, he came upon the idea of shooting via the internet. Not just any shooting mind you, a real live gun that makes a noise and is likely to hurt if aimed at you.

Gripping stuff

Once it had taken post in his mind it began taking root as the idea twisted him this way and that. Not letting go of him until he had totally given in to the idea. What was he thinking? What would his wife say every time the shots rang out in his living room, never mind the mess that would be his living room while he struggled with the very fabric of existence as he slowly painstakingly put the pieces of this very extraordinary puzzle together?
This is it, the tech nut’s delight
The number of challenges facing him began to mount. What gun? What will they shoot? Where will the funding come from? How will it all work? (obviously secretly delighted that he had managed to figure out a problem that would keep him solidly busy for more than a day) Why – oh don’t bother, “Why” does not figure in this equation.
One of the most difficult things to figure out, would be to make this so called online gun do what the demanding audience would require of it to do.

Given the fact that the very idea of guns scares off so many people that it might have been insane to even contemplate such an idea, he nonetheless decided to give his full and undivided attention to this man made problem.

This is his story
Seen from the eye of the average Joe, this may be the time to put down this article and leave it be. It can’t be worth anything as it is not marketable. Maybe not, but it sure is interesting. Ain’t it.

How Pellet Cam is set up
The real nuts and bolts stuff

This is a highly technical story due to it’s complexity and therefore is not for the faint hearted. It may however be the light that you have been looking for. I doubt it but you never know. Also please take note that the project is not entirely finished yet as it is still lacking a bit of funding for various items. It should however be finished on schedule within the next two to three weeks.

The technical idea behind it all
The idea is to have a gun that can be maneuvered via the internet. It can be made to point at a target and actually shoot a projectile in order to hit the target. There is no prize, there is no glory, it is just to give you that feeling of touching something out there without physically being there to do it.

The original idea was to use a pellet gun, but due to the fact that I keep on getting the question of “When is it going to be ready so that we can shoot the darn thing?” I decided to use an easier implementation that would not require a fully automated loading tray. The actual work that goes into manufacturing this sort of tray would not really be compensated financially at the end of the day, and due to it being wholly self financed the shorter route has been taken. Of course a a tech nut I would still like to do this and now have the time to actually really go into it while the people still have the ability to shoot.

The idea behind it all is of course that in order to sell anything or advocate any sort of ideas via the internet, one has to have an audience. Well this may just bring that audience to my web site.

The gun is a semi automatic paintball gun with a remote Co2 tank that allows it to shoot 1000 rounds without being refilled or manipulated in any way. This is a cheat obviously due to the fact that every 1000 shots I will still have to replace the cylinder but I was not prepared to go through the cost of actually automating that as well.

A laser site (that incidentally comes from a real gun and was purchased in South Africa in December) is placed on the gun so that the users can view the position of the gun. The laser points to the targets and the idea is, where the laser points is where the projectile will hit.

The targets consist out of a number of metal plates, which are also customary in a normal shooting range for close range shooting. The plates have micro switches that are activated when they are hit. This allows me to keep an electronic score over and above the visual realization that the targets have been hit.
There is a camera that provides a constant visual image to the user that is currently shooting. They can therefore see the targets as well as the laser which points to the targets.

The main electronics behind it all
In order to make all the parts move, a web server is needed that will be able to translate the users requirements into actual movement of the gun.

For this purpose I went scouting on the internet and found the perfect partner that would be capable of achieving my goals.

It is to be found at http://www.bcl-online.de

The web server shown above is a totally self sufficient unit. Other than the power supply that is connected to it, there is nothing else needed to host your sites. It does not have too much space obviously so it should be carefully designed in order to maximize the experience for the user. In order to achieve this I am currently using Flash. The Flash files are relatively small and achieve a lot besides being easy to create.

A web server alone, is nothing!
In order to move the servos that are connected to the gun’s mechanism the web server has to talk the language spoken by servos and other interesting objects.

The humble servo, used by the average hobbyist is one of the most versatile items to use when it comes to automating machines (it is relatively cheap as well), of course when it came to finally purchasing servos I soon realized that the average servo was not going to be able to hold the weight of this large paintball gun which weighs a considerable amount when loaded with 200 paintballs.

The servos I chose eventually turned out to be digital servos which meant that I need to buy a digital servo programmer as well (I see a new project to begin on straight away – a computerized digital servo setter upper). They cost a fortune but are capable of lifting 20 kilograms without breaking a sweat. Also the gear trains are supposed to be unbreakable. I sure hope this is the case as the success of this project is riding on that factor.

A language unlike anything we know
The servo needs to have a signal that is given at specified intervals in order to move. This signal needs to be between 900 and 2100 microseconds and needs to be repeated every 20 milliseconds. Now, actually this should be no problem as any computer is capable of producing these types of PWM (pulse width modulation) pulses through careful programming of a few timers.

Well in actual fact it turned out to be a nightmare. I created something in Delphi and it worked fantastically, on one servo. I needed at least 5 to work simultaneously. So what to do.

I finally ended up wading through several hundred web sites each professing to have their own servo drivers. Most of them would handle one or two but no more. Finally I got a subscription to the Elektuur which is an electronic magazine here in the Netherlands, and checked out hundreds of articles till I found the correct circuit. It had to be done electronically as it would leave the microprocessor free to do the rest of the work as well as move the servos when it was required.

I first tried making the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and after a few tries I let some company make them for me at a ridiculously low cost, even less than the cost of the items I had purchased just to make 1 PCB.

The basic idea was that the web server would talk I2C to the servo controller and tell it to move to the correct positions and the electronic controller would translate this into the correct signals required by the servos.

Why Technical Ambitions

2007-05-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

Anybody who knows me even reasonably well will know that I am a gadget freak. I love and live for all things hi-tech. Ever since I was a little kid I have been experimenting with electronic gadgets and any other types of gadgets that I could lay my grubby little hands on.

The love for gadgets is a really easy way to lose money fast. Every new day millions of gadgets see the light of day. We only see a fraction of those. Due to the internet admittedly we see a lot more than say 15 years ago, where the only gadgets I saw where in the electronic shops and Newworld Pharmacy in Pretoria, South Africa.

My love for gadgets has taken me down many wonderful roads and I will die a gadget freak I guess. My grandfather who lived to be 93 years old, said to me the weirdest thing when he first saw MNET, "Boy this new fangled stuff is enough to blow your mind" Bear in mind that he worked for Telkom for half his life as a technician. So as one can see new things will be blowing our minds soon. My kid will one day be showing me things which I wont understand (actually he does that already)

Anyway I have created a few interesting projects and I will share them with you. I have had many firsts in my life and I think the one that no one else has had will be the first article I write about. Unfortunately it is not online anymore as it costs a packet to run and is a lot of hard work. However maybe one day it will again be online for the viewing pleasure of all.