Paul Jacobson

Just as I thought: my Evernote experience has improved noticeably by deleting the hundreds of tags with 0 or 1 note associated with them.

The trick was deleting the tags in smaller batches of 10 to 20 tags at a time. Evernote reindexes and syncs after each deletion and deleting too many tags in one go slows Evernote down dramatically.

I think I have been to the Beluga restaurant once. I had lunch there during a trip to Cape Town a couple years ago and when I have thought about fancy places to visit during future trips, it has tended to pop up in my mind as a possibility. That won't be happening anymore (not that this matters in the scheme of things). After reading about Shaun Oakes' and his girlfriend's recent experience there and, particularly, the owner's responses to feedback from Shaun's girlfriend, Beluga has the appeal of rotting fish on a beach on a hot day.

Its a familiar story about a poor experience at a restaurant although with a good response from a manager working that night. Unfortunately Beluga's owner, Oscar Kotze, missed the boat entirely and behaved terribly:

As the restaurant owner though, is this the way you deal with patrons who say things you don’t like? Ban them and threaten to chase them away? Maybe I’m being biased, but I thought The Girlfriend’s email was pretty reasonable. Granted, some of the things she said made her sound quite pretentious a bit of a tit, but she was emotional at the time, so I am willing to forgive her. Oscar Kotze’s response was completely over the top though. This doesn’t feel right to me, he has a massively popular little spot in Cape Town, but he seems to have a really shitty way of dealing with people.

This has the makings of an academic case study for social marketers but it has a real world angle. Kotze ignored offensive behaviour by one of his waiters, threatened Shaun's girlfriend with criminal charges and banned Shaun and his girlfriend from the restaurant altogether. Sure, its his restaurant and he can limit admission. At the same time his customers can choose to go elsewhere and hopefully some will. Will it make a difference to his trade? Possibly not. Is it important to know who you are dealing with when you visit a restaurant like Beluga? Absolutely. Be sure to read Shaun's post and the comments too.

Its been a year since my brother-in-law, Cliff Hoffmann, passed away. Its fitting that today is such a sombre day here in Johannesburg. I took the photo below at a lunch at Gina's late grandmother, Granny Ruby, on the 2nd of January 2011. I remember that day being a pretty good day. We were visiting with Aaron and Faith (less than a month old and still so tiny) and Gina's aunt and uncle were visiting from the United States.

I wrote a short post after Cliff's funeral which you can read here. He left a lot of people behind who miss him every day. Today, I'm thinking about his family (Gina, Lindy, Matt and Bangar) and his close friends (Timor, Dave, Gary, Rafique, Kara and Laura to name just a few) and so many others who were close to him, respected him and feel his absence daily.

I am an Evernote ninja. I have managed to maim my local database for the 2nd time and did it so expertly, I'm not even sure how I managed it.

Actually, I do have a thought or two. I realised that I have a lot (really, a lot) of tags which either aren't being used by any notes or are used once or twice. It seems that all those tags are slowing Evernote down, so much so that anything I do with tags makes Evernote unusable for a few minutes or so. So, armed with this hypothesis, I decided to delete all the tags with 2 and few uses. Unfortunately the act of selecting all those tags was enough to crash Evernote and every time I opened the app after Force Quitting it on my Mac, Evernote remembered which tags I selected and tried to do that again, crashing the app all over again.

I'm backing up all 12GB of my local database and then I am going to remove Evernote from my laptop and download it all again. I should be done in March.

We're at Sandton City for a movie tonight and these kids just take me back 20 or more years. This is basically what my group of friends and I looked like back then in the same mall and wearing pretty much the same clothes!

I'm watching the Apple iBooks event video and wondering how much longer our kids are going to remain in the technology dark ages.

Why are these new technologies not becoming universally available? Why aren't local publishers making their books and materials available for digital platforms? They have no real excuse not to release their books in digital format, even if its for students and schools who can afford digital devices to access them.

Road accidents happen all the time and most of us encounter them when traffic backs up and first responders are on scene. An accident happened outside my offices today at about midday and two local community organisations were on scene within 10 to 15 minutes to provide assistance.

A passing motorist (in the BMW, kudos to them too!) and SWAP security were on the scene almost immediately. The SWAP security patrolman called in medical assistance right away and stood guard until the Hatzolah ambulance arrived, waving off traffic and clearing a path for the medical team to park and get started.

You may not have heard of these two organisations so here is a little bit about them:

SWAP is an innovative, multi-faceted anti-crime initiative designed to proactively combat crime, utilizing a mix of early identification, counter-observation, surveillance and static and mobile armed patrols. SWAP is endorsed by inter alia, the Station Commissioners of Norwood and Bramley Police Stations, the Norwood CPF and the CSO.

CSO, one of the organisations which is heavily involved in SWAP and its sister body, CAP, is the Jewish community's security organisation tasked with securing Jewish facilities and the Jewish community as a whole.

Haztolah is another community organisation staffed by dedicated volunteers:

Hatzolah Medical Rescue, Johannesburg, was started in 1998 to assist the existing medical emergency services in the area, which are under enormous strain. The organisation is staffed by a group of Torah observant Jewish volunteers and is provided as a free service to all Jewish people within our operating areas.

Seeing representatives of these two organisations respond so quickly inspires more than a little pride in these two organisations and the members of the Jewish community who are hard at work serving the local community, in this particular case irrespective of religious affiliation. Today, this motorist needed help. SWAP and Hatzolah were there to provide it and in 20 minutes it will all be over and these everyday heroes will be helping someone else in need.