Paul Jacobson

I was skeptical when the Wii Fit came out but now I am convinced …

… I really need to stick with my gym membership.

Technorati Tags:
parody, wii fit, wii

Comments

The show of support for the growing number of refugees in our country as a result of the savage and xenophobic attacks on them by hoards of blood crazed murderers is really good to see. It really is and it is great to know there are ways we can help these poor people who have experienced so much hardship and persecution before arriving in South Africa only to be rooted out because they are foreign to this country and forced to become refugees once again. While I understand that foreigners from neighbouring countries are putting pressure on our economy and the unemployed’s frustration at the increased competition for already scarce jobs but this is just not an acceptable way to express that frustration.

Saul talks about how he feels a bit like a German “living in a town near a concentration camp“. I’m not sure this is the best analogy because this isn’t exactly xenophobia supported by the State (at least not actively) but I understand the sentiment. As I pointed out in my previous post, this is more like the recent violence in Kenya or the horrors of Rwanda as a result of widespread genocide. Ever the optimist, Nic took issue with Saul’s general statement that he is ashamed to be South African and instead talked about how uplifting it is to see the show of support for our new refugees and how he sees himself as part of a solution, not the problem:

I am not going to say that due to one single event (the xenophobic attacks) that is happening now that I am ashamed of my heritage, my culture and my fellow South Africans. I am not. I am uplifted. I am uplifted by the number of people talking, disagreeing and loudly rebelling against this sort of action. A small faction of savages are destroying people’s lives and we must all feel as if we are part of it? Rubbish. I am not a part of that, I never was and never will be. I am a part of the solution to it. I am a part of the growth in people’s consciousness that allows them to step back and say no to this sort of human rights violation.

Great sentiment and I am really glad we have people like Nic to make these statements. As good as it is to hear that, it also glosses over a growing phenomenon we are perhaps not seeing. We are like lobsters being boiled. I am not sure if this is how lobsters are actually cooked but I was once told that you don’t toss live lobsters into boiling water (customers apparently don’t like to hear their food screaming as it dies), you place them in cool water and slowly heat it. Before they realise something is up their goose is cooked, so to speak.

A big challenge South Africa faces is being slowly brought to a boil at which point things fall apart. We have idiot ministers who can’t accept that we have an HIV/AIDS pandemic in this country that needs serious attention, not gardening tips alone. Our infrastructure is under severe pressure because of short-sighted and wholly inadequate planning. Service delivery is lousy. Our government seems incapable of tackling tyrants and instead offers its support of these vile regimes and now we are forced to watch as these mobs roam the streets with weapons, attacking and even killing anyone who might be a foreigner. Justin makes a very passionate point that reflects many people’s views, my own included:

Last week my domestic worker fell victim to these attackers as she and her two daughters, all South African, were kicked out of their house, electricity cut and left in the streets until 2am in the morning. She said that two blocks up from her two people had allegedly been killed for being suspected foreigners living in the area. She also made it very clear that the attackers don’t care what nationality you are, all they care about is creating anarchy.

It is clear that what has started as an attack on foreigners is now just an attack on our freedom because these savages just want to inflict pain and fear into the hearts of all the residents of this country.

I have a very real problem with victims standing up for their rights and in turn becoming the oppressor, all the while doing as much damage as your oppressor has inflicted on you. What good is it setting a man on fire, raping women, or beating someone within an inch of his/her life? Does this actually solve anything, are you really addressing the problem?

I’m about fed up with the state of this nation as are a lot of other people. White, Black, Indian, Coloured, whatever - we all want to see a change and feel safe and secure in our country.

I’ve also had enough of this disrespect for the value of life. Senseless killing is an everyday occurrence in this country and it has to stop. As a parent I am responsible for safe-guarding my wife and two children yet how is this possible when a large chunk of our nation lacks the basic moral fibre for life?

We don’t just have one issue to contend with in this country. It isn’t just a ” small faction of savages … destroying people’s lives”. The water is getting hotter and we’re sniping from the sidelines about the inequity of it all. Where is the real force for change? Sure a couple bloggers and a few hundred people spreading word of a march is a powerful start but where is the follow through? Will the masses mobilise against this violence, our corrupt and inept government and bring about real change in next year’s elections? Sure, the newly constituted ANC leadership is making noises about being less tolerant about that dictator up north and even profiteering in the name of BEE but will we actually see real change in a year when we go to the polls again or will we see an even more racially divided country with less tolerance for little things like freedom of expression, socio-economic rights (you know, to stuff like clean water and perhaps even electricity) that is a long way away from the miracle we all hoped would come to pass when we listened to then President Nelson Mandela give his historic speech in 1994? What ever happened to that spirit of Ubuntu anyway? Anyone remember where they put it?

Technorati Tags:
south africa, violence, xenophobia, optimism, racial tension

Comments

I probably have the same conversations as most of you, especially when talking to ex-pats who return here for a holiday. The conversation almost inevitably includes a question about whether I would leave South Africa. My response is generally that we have no plans to go and that there are still so many reasons to stay here and work through the crap we see around us. I usually feel good about my answer after I give it because I have this persistent sense that as much as SA is a bit like the Wild West, there is tremendous potential here which simply doesn’t exist anywhere else.

I have certainly not been the only person to see this promise of a wonderful future down here on the tip of Africa. Sites like SA Rocks are a testament to this shared vision. Of course there are plenty people who don’t share this view and find it difficult to move past the many negatives (crime, idiotic government, rising costs, more crime, Eskom just to name a few) and lash out at the country as a whole when they decide to leave, only to be met with outrage by the people determined to stay who see these emigrants as traitors (who wants them anyway?) and a cancer that should be cut out and sent to Perth. Lately I feel like I can understand what may give rise to such anti-SA sentiment - anger and a strong sense of powerlessness. My neighbour was hijacked a week or so ago outside my front gate. She is an elderly lady who was riding home with her granddaughter and they were attacked by a group of youths who assaulted her and even went so far as to try bite her finger to get at her wedding ring (her husband of many decades passed away in July last year). Thankfully she wasn’t badly hurt and the car was recovered relatively undamaged but the proximity of the attack freaked me out, not to mention the savage nature of the attack. I have since spent a couple hours in the early hours of the morning unable the sleep at the thought of the horrors that could be visited on my wife and baby if these kinds of thugs ever targetted my home or family.

I remember reading about the difference between our criminals and Nigerian criminals in a magazine (I think it may have been Maverick). The writer wrote that the difference between our criminals and the Nigerians is that the Nigerians will rob you and may even apologise. Our criminals will bundle you into your car and take you off somewhere to do something even more awful. There seems to be little humanity in the people who think so little about attacking you at your home. It just makes me ill to think about what could happen.

Another vivid illustration of the dangers we face has been on TV and in our papers the last few days. The xenophobic violence has been horrific and haven’t seen scenes like that since before the 1994 elections. It dumbfounds me that people could do that to each other and my only thought is that human life means nothing to the mob that can burn a man alive because he is a visitor to our country. Footage of men moving from home to home with pangas and other weapons reminds me of the genocides in Rwanda and other northern African countries (let’s not forget the recent violence in Kenya over an election result) and I wonder how long it will be before the violence spills out of the townships into the rest of the country. What will happen if these murderers start going from house to house in your neighbourhood looking for anyone who seems remotely foreign of different? When does xenophobia become just racism?

So, yes, there are plenty reasons to think about leaving the country. I see people talking about how loyal they are to South Africa and even go so far as to say they would die for this country. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. Is all this worth fighting for? Sure. Is it worth dying for? Absolutely not. For me, a strong motivation to look at other countries to live in is the thought of my wife and baby being attacked by inhuman psychopaths who value trinkets more than the well-being of another human being. That is a pretty good reason to think about leaving.

Technorati Tags:
emigration, leaving south africa, violence, xenophobia, south africa, hijacking, family

Comments

I thought I would do a post about my office and the various tools I use to do the work I do for anyone who is interested in this stuff. Over the last month or so my office space has transformed being fairly paper dependent and cumbersome to a potentially and largely paperless office. Although I would love to see my office become totally paperless, the way the people I deal with work means that this is probably not going to happen anytime soon so my goal is to reduce the amount of paper I use as much as possible.

My setup about a month and a half ago included a black MacBook (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, 160GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM), a Samsung ML-2010 printer and a Samsung SCX-4720F multi-function printer). I bought the multi-function printer when I started my practice and, at the time, I was using a Windows PC which supports all the functions of the multi-function. When I migrated to my first Mac, a PowerBook G4, in late 2005 I discovered that the only thing I could do with the multi-function if it was connected to a Mac is print to it. The fax function was handled on the machine itself so there weren’t any issues there but I couldn’t scan to my Mac. That particular device (which I believe is no longer being sold) is strictly PC and Linux compatible (although I couldn’t work out how to get Ubuntu to support it).

The core piece of equipment in my office is my black MacBook.

This is the hub and essential tool for all my computer based activities. This isn’t the right place to talk about all the benefits of the Mac operating system and its latest iteration, Leopard, in particular. Suffice to say it leaves Windows in the dust and has as a possible next best option Ubuntu Linux which I used while my MacBook was in for repair and I was waiting for the new one.

Another important tool is 37 Signals’ Basecamp which I have been using as a client extranet and project workspace for some time now. Quite a lot of people use Basecamp and for good reason. It has a great interface and is really easy to use. I subscribe to the $49 Plus option which gives me 10GB of storage space, SSL security and enough projects to manage all my active files and more. I recommend Basecamp for anyone wanting to collaborate on projects and have considered doing it online.

I soon bought the ML-2010 (which is Mac compatible) so I could print directly from my Mac and kept the multi-function connected to the original PC for scanning jobs. I used the multi-function to send faxes and occasionally make copies of documents although I realised that I had better quality reproductions if I scanned the documents first and then printed copies as opposed to making straight photocopies. Incoming faxes come to me via Digifax which I have been using for a couple years now. It is a pretty simple fax to email solution.

The challenges with this setup were largely to due with the incompatibility of the multi-function with my PowerBook and then my MacBook. I had to get up from my desk and go to the PC to scan a document and then save the scan to a shared folder which I would then access from my Mac to retrieve the file. I sometimes found that the scanned files didn’t jive too well with Preview and I sometimes had to work some file format voodoo to sort out the scans. I also had to print documents to be faxed, head over to the multi-function at the PC desk and fax the documents manually. This isn’t an unusual workflow but given my desire to be able to handle faxes entirely digitally, it wasn’t a step in the right direction.

The first step I took towards a new workflow was inspired, in part, by Jason Calacanis who often spoke about how his employees at Mahalo have at least 2 displays at their work stations and often have 3. The reason for this is that this sort of setup improves productivity. I had been thinking along the lines of a second display for a little while already because it would save me having to constantly flip between applications when I work with multiple documents on my Mac. I have been scanning documents and working with them digitally for a little while so this became a problem I wanted to solve so I bought an Acer 22″ LCD monitor (mine had a silver trim) to accompany my Mac. This has already improved my productivity because I can comfortably place two documents side by side on the LCD monitor and work off my MacBook. This saves me a lot of window switching and frustration. I can refer directly to the documents and items I am dealing with without interrupting my flow every few minutes to switch windows.

The LCD is also great for media so I often move iTunes to the LCD and watch videos on the LCD. Another handy use for the LCD is to move Skype, IM and Twhirl onto the LCD so I can keep working on my MacBook and keep an eye on any incoming messages.

My next three purchases were inspired largely by Grant Griffiths, the home office lawyer and guru on mobile legal workers. I have been chatting to Grant for a while now and he has often told me about his setup which includes a scanner called a ScanSnap and a nifty piece of software called PageSender. ScanSnap scanners are really well made sheet fed scanners than can scan straight to PDF. There are versions for the Mac and the PC and Grant told me about how the ScanSnap has become such an invaluable part of his office that he just couldn’t see himself going without one. I had grown pretty frustrated with my scanning workflow using the multi-function through the PC and really wanted a Mac solution (I don’t see the PC being around for much longer). So I saved up and bought a ScanSnap S500M (it looks like the S510M which apparently wasn’t available here). This device is such a cool device I agree with Grant completely that it has become indispensible to my office workflows. For one thing it is really fast. The pages basically just feed through as if I am cycling paper through the machine and I get a double sided colour scan. I can customise the image resolution to suit my needs as well as specifying output folders, automatic file naming and output formats. What really makes this purchase worthwhile is that the scanner comes with Adobe Acrobat (I got version 7 with the ScanSnap for my Mac). This is worth a few thousand rands already. Using Acrobat you have more options for manipulating your PDFs than Preview allows for (although Preview in Leopard is a huge improvement over the Tiger version). I am already considering upgrading Acrobat to version 8 Pro to have the benefit of the additional functionality.

PageSender is a great fax application produced by Smile on my Mac which also produces gems like TextExpander which I use to automate a number of text-based tasks. The MacBook doesn’t ship with a modem so I went out and bought an external fax modem to go with PageSender. Between the ScanSnap and the PageSender/modem solution, I no longer needed the multi-function for the two main tasks I used it for, namely faxing and scanning. The only thing I can’t do with the ScanSnap is scan items that won’t feed through and which I would have used a flatbed scanner for. This isn’t a big issue for me because the ScanSnap will feed just about anything from an A4 page to a boarding pass.

My MacBook’s recent (complete and catastrophic) hard drive failure reminded me about the tremendous importance of good backups and big enough backup drives. Time Machine on Leopard was instrumental in preserving my sanity (it is a good reason to upgrade to Leopard). I wound up buying a new MacBook because I thought it would take a lot longer for the hard drive on my “old” MacBook to be replaced (it was still under warranty) and the new MacBook quickly picked up my Time Machine backup on my LaCie external hard drive and restored just about everything I thought I had lost. I even discovered that I had managed to backup my iTunes and iPhoto libraries! What I found, once I had my new MacBook up and running (it took me more time to reinstall all my apps than it did to restore the backup) I found that my external drive was too small to serve as the Time Machine backup for the new MacBook with its bigger hard drive. I set out to buy a second external drive and bought a Western Digital My Book 750GB USB drive which looks a lot like the one in the photo below:

Along the way I learned that you really should make sure the drive you want to buy is formatted for your machine. I first went with another WD drive that only seemed to be suited for a Windows machine and because it was an ethernet drive without a USB option, I couldn’t access the drive on my Mac and reformat it so I returned it.

By the time I bought this new external drive I had received my old MacBook back (I’ve said it before, C3 in Randburg is probably the best Apple dealer I have come across in terms of price, service and expertise - I won’t use anyone else for anything more substantial than a cable adaptor) and it turned out to be a relatively easy process to re-partition the new drive for the two MacBooks (my wife is using my old one and is thrilled) and share the drive via my USB port on my MacBook. I was advised to partition the drive and create a partition for each Mac that is going to access the drive. Each partition then shows up as a separate drive on my desktop and in Finder. I set my partition on the drive as my new Time Machine backup drive for everything on my Mac and the old LaCie drive has become a secondary backup drive for media and key documents. Time Machine will backup your entire profile by default and this means that when you restore a complete backup you get your user accounts, settings and all your files and folders back pretty easily. It certainly takes the edge off a drive failure and makes the cost of a bigger drive well worth it (not that external drives are that expensive these days). At the end of all this I have around 900GB of storage space, primarily for backups.

Not only has my desk changed a lot in the last month but my workflows have changed quite a bit too. I am donating the multi-function to Hospice and, instead, I now have the following solutions for my needs:

• Basecamp for project collaboration
• 22″ LCD screen for additional screen real-estate
• ScanSnap to handle scanning (including scanning incoming paper documents for paperless archival and faxing)
• PageSender and the external modem for outgoing faxes
• Digifax for incoming faxes via email
• Two external hard drives for complete Time Machine and redundant backups

One important need which I am not filling yet is some sort of power backup for when loadshedding returns and to cater for general power failures. At the moment this isn’t a pressing need but as Merlin Mann put it, you usually don’t realise you need more toilet paper when you are standing in the aisle at your local Woolies/Pick ‘n Pay/Spar.

Technorati Tags:
acer, lcd, macbook, scan, scansnap, basecamp, fax, pagesender, digifax, office productivity, western digital, external drive

Comments

Remember how we used to talk about technological innovations helping us become more productive and efficient? When was it we last made some comment along those lines? Ah, yes, yesterday! Oh, and a day or two before that. Unfortunately the tendency is for technological innovations to complicate our lives even more. My bugbear at the moment is the increasing volume of email I receive on a daily basis. My big challenge is keeping up with that email and remaining being productive at the same time. The amount of stuff I had to contend with reached a critical mass and I just couldn’t manage the flow terribly well. My solutions included picking up a copy of Getting Things Done and buying a license for the fantastic OmniFocus to help me implement some sort of GTD methodology. I am still working through the book (ironically I am struggling to set aside time to read the book properly) although I’ve been using OmniFocus for a little while now to some success. My own GTD implementation is very much a work in progress.

Anyway, that introduction is supposed to set the scene for why I attended an event hosted by BulkSMS.com at the Balalaika Hotel in Sandton which I understood to be about handling technological stress in our daily lives. There were two speakers on the day, Dr Piet Streicher (MD of BulkSMS.com) and Ramon Thomas (MD of NETucation). Streicher spoke first about the effect of mobile phones in our society. One of the first points he made was that changing technologies mean we should change our habits and used the example of how we used to be more focussed on a phone call when the predominant way we received a call was on our home phone. Streicher made the point that there is an increasing need for better mobile phone etiquette. Some tips include switching your phone to silent when you sit down for a meal, not wearing the Bluetooth headset when you are not actually using it and definitely not taking calls in the loo. There were also a couple tips for better sms etiquette and although I can understand some of the concerns, I wonder how valid the concerns are going to be as more and more people interact predominantly using sms, Twitter or other similar services.

Streicher gave out some info for people who are suffering from huge amounts of sms spam using sites like www.smscode.co.za (to identify a spammer), www.waspa.org.za (the Wireless Access Providers Association only has jurisdiction over its members) and www.stopsms.co.za (where spammers are named and shamed). I haven’t really received all that much sms spam although it is certainly on the rise. It is a bit like a localised rash that only requires a little bit of cream once a day or so.

A nasty service called Winks (or something like that) was actually shut down through misuse of premium sms’s for replies. This service facilitated an sms version of something like the Facebook poke and a person who received an anonymous “wink” would have to fork out R20 for a premium reply to find out who sent the message. That company was fined about R250 000 for that stunt. Premium rates are supposed to be disclosed but they tend to be hidden (try see the premium rates on those stupid mobile content ads which largely sell subscription services at a couple bucks a month hidden in the fine print that flashes across the screen for 2.3 seconds).

Interesting tidbit: all sms’s sent on SA networks (well, the vast majority) can be tracked where there is abuse. Services which don’t implement opt-out notifications risk hefty fines per sms (tens of thousands if I heard correctly).

Ramon’s talk was pretty much what the whole afternoon was about for me. His talk was sub-titled “Stress in a Wireless World” … oh ja! He started talking about the paradox of choice with particular reference to social networks. I read a comment on a post I published on the iCommons website recently about a social media aggregator (I forgot the name) which looks a lot like FriendFeed and a couple other similar services. The problem with all of these aggregators is that there are so many available and not everyone uses the same one so you wind up signing up to many of them where you are faced with each person’s multiple content streams. So we go from following a couple blog feeds to following a couple aggregated content feeds, each one comprising more than one (often half a dozen) individual feeds. An interesting perspective on this paradox of choice is that with all the choice we have we have no-one to blame but ourselves for getting caught up in it all … well, do we? Ramon flashed some user stats including Mxit’s 7.5 million users, 6.5 million of which are South African. Wow!

You know how old folk stories warned young men about going blind through masturbation? Apparently using instant messaging can make you 10% dumber. I wonder if that is cumulative? It turns out, TV does a similar thing so I think I am a goner.

A couple good points are to keep company policies updated to keep up with changing technologies, unsubscribe from email newsletters and instead subscribe to feed versions (if they exist) and just don’t check email first thing in the morning (sorry Danie) - rather do the real work first thing in the morning and check your email later in the day. This is an interesting one because my daily workflow has started with a review of my email first thing in the morning and processing my email to zero so I can start the work. Maybe I should rather process my email before I close off each day, keep Mail.app closed until later the next day and rather get started with the real work when I start work.

Ramon’s tip for stimulating anticipation and excitement in a relationship: cut digital conversations with your significant other without warning and attribute the interruption to a network failure, thus keeping the fires burning … (Simone wasn’t impressed with this technique)

All the technological buzz means we don’t get to relax all that much so Ramon suggested a day a month/week when all technology is turned off completely so you can unplug fully and really relax. Not a bad idea although he suggested turning off mp3 players … I am not sure I can leave my iPod at home …

Ramon gave a punt for Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-hour Workweek, which I have heard about and have been thinking about reading (right after GTD and Iain M Banks’ latest, both of which are still sitting beside my bed). I think my preference is to buy the audiobook though. I spend more time with my iPod than somewhere I can ready a paper book.

Another tip I like is to change your voicemail message to ask people not to leave a voice message and to rather send an sms or email.

Technorati Tags:
piet streicher, ramon thomas, technology stress, productivity, gtd, tim ferriss

Comments