Weekly Head Voices #136: Slightly more than nothing much.

The majestic view from Bodega onto the Dornier cellar and the Hottentots-Holland mountain behind it.

The majestic view from Bodega onto the Dornier cellar and the Hottentots-Holland mountain behind it.

Welcome back peeps! Make yourselves at home.

It seemed that nothing much happened during most of the week, but I started writing anyway. It turns out there was slightly more than nothing much. Writing stuff down does have its perks.

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #134: SCARF.

Untitled artwork by GOU#2 (age 7), who is also known as My Most Favourite Middle Child.

Untitled artwork by GOU#2 (age 7), who is also known as My Most Favourite Middle Child.

I somehow forgot to take photos this past week. At the very last moment, GOU#2 delivered, as if commissioned, the piece shown above.

The WHV visual element lives to fight another day!

The rest of this post is divided into three parts: One for the programming nerds, one for the running nerds and one for the arm-chair psychologists. Feel free to pick and choose!

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #132: Potato deadline.

Fragment of potato skin, taken with phone camera through GOU#2’s microscope at 100x.

Fragment of potato skin, taken with phone camera through GOU#2’s microscope at 100x.

We have a serious deadline coming up on Tuesday, so I’m going to make these few WHV minutes count.

BULLET LIST TO THE RESCUE!

Weekly Head Voices #131: Function over form.

Do you know what time it is?

It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for a new edition of the WHV!

GOU #2 has made what will probably be the most significant contribution to this week’s edition. I am happy that it’s in the form of an art piece, although I am slowly also growing quite excited at the prospect of one of my GOUs popping up here one day with an acerbic comment.

Our family through the eyes and hands of GOU#2 (age 7), also known as My Most Favourite Middle Child.

Our family through the eyes and hands of GOU#2 (age 7), also known as My Most Favourite Middle Child.

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #130-2: Direct experience dopamine.

Photogenic and non-camera-shy dragonfly I met in Paarl over the weekend.

Photogenic and non-camera-shy dragonfly I met in Paarl over the weekend.

As I went through my notes to extract material for this week’s post, I noticed a small discrepancy between the task description for the previous post and the published version: #129 in my notes versus #130 in the published post!

It’s too late now to rename #130, so in this reality I’m just going to have to deal with the fact that WHV #129 will never exist. I have decided to name this edition #130-2 so that eventually (well, in about a week), we will be back to uninflated post numbers. Nobody likes inflation. Except perhaps tyres. And balloons.

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #130: TTAGGG.

Lovely summer’s day. Not much rain.

Lovely summer’s day. Not much rain.

Water

On the water front (I see what I did there): Day Zero, that is the day on which the whole of Cape Town’s municipal water will be cut off, has been brought further forward to to April 12. Citizens will be able to fetch drinking water every day from 200 collection points. Judging by how quickly shelves of bottled water are currently disappearing from the shops and by panicky facebook posts, people are stocking up in advance.

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #128: Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

Hey friends, welcome back!

We have to talk about the water situation, seeing that Cape Town is now in the international news as being on track to be the first major city EVAR to run out of water.

In short, if it doesn’t rain in substantial amounts during the coming three months (which history and projections say it won’t), the municipal water supply will be shut off on April 21, a date festively referred to as Day Zero.

Read More

Weekly Head Voices #127: Readers are leaders.

Betty’s Bay Beach impression by Genetic Offspring Unit #1, age 11.

Betty’s Bay Beach impression by Genetic Offspring Unit #1, age 11.

  • This week I worked on automated email analysis and storage for side-project #38465 (more on this in future editions) and on bits of UI for a wxPython desktop app (yes desktop app! some of us fortunately still get to make them!) for my current main work project.
  • Had to make screencast to demonstrate milestone deliverable of above-mentioned main project. Making screencasts is an obscure but longstanding hobby of mine, but I needed to level up slightly, so the business bought me ScreenFlow 7.2. For the first time ever, I recorded the screencast in multiple segments and did the voice-over later. Soon these new skillz will trickle down to my publically available screencasts.
  • On that topic, having a good microphone is crucial, not only for screen recordings but also for video meetings. I recently acquired the Samson Go Mic to complement my larger Samson C01U. The Go is brilliant: Recorded voice quality comes close to the C01U in spite of the Go’s compact form factor, and it has a hardware switch to select either of the the built-in omni-directional, for meetings, or cardioid, for more dedicated voice recording, microphone elements.
  • Ironically, an ex-colleague posted “How to Fix Facebook—Before It Fixes Us” on Facebook, a long and worthwhile read on how FB is used to spread fake news that effectively manipulates public opinion, and what should be done to remedy this. Here is a choice quote to get you started:

We still don’t know the exact degree of collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. But the debate over collusion, while important, risks missing what should be an obvious point: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other platforms were manipulated by the Russians to shift outcomes in Brexit and the U.S. presidential election, and unless major changes are made, they will be manipulated again. Next time, there is no telling who the manipulators will be.

Read More