Voting pics added to flickr

Check out my voting  pics on my flickr photostream.

More to follow later.

A long way travelled, a long way left to go

I had an argument with a friend of mine yesterday. It wasn’t ugly or bitter, but it upset me massively. Maybe it was so much worse because we were stuck in a car together for five or so hours, and people can be a bit testy in those circumstances, but even though I realise this it still got under my skin.

He is an America traveller, who has been around the world over the last ten years or so. He is now working as a volunteer in Kliptown, Soweto.

Anyway, he got to saying first off that Africa (and I’m assuming he includes SA) is lawless on a level he couldn’t comprehend when he got here, bearing in mind he has been all over the world already. He likened it to Gotham without Batman (in Batman Begins), which is a terrifying, dark and almost post-apocalyptic world. I take offence at this comparison. Despite our obvious and undeniable crime issues, citizens do not live in constant fear and the issues are certainly not country-wide without exception.

I think my point is that the blanket statement doesn’t ring true for me. I grew up in the Eastern Cape without burglar bars on our windows, without knowing anyone who had been hijacked, without any real fear beyond what is rational and universal.

I am a lot more aware of crime now in Johannesburg, where I have had a few brushes with fear, but still it’s no Gotham.

His second point, and this is where I really want to focus, was that things were getting worse and to stand by the ANC given this deterioration would be an evil act in itself. I am not an ANC supporter but I think denying their gains over the last 14 years in effect rejects everyone’s progress and achievements in building our new South Africa.

There is corruption and slow movement on social issues and back-breaking poverty all around us, but we are working on changing an entire country, working on stretching infrastructure and industry designed to serve 5 million people to now serve 50 million people.

Rather than rabbiting on for another load of pages I have included below some information that records UNDENIABLE progress in many areas. They are NOT a denial of what is wrong here still, or a statement that we couldn’t do more, because we ALWAYS can! But, rather, it is an affirmation of what has been achieved.

This information is sourced from the Quick Facts page of SA Good News:

• South Africa ranks second worldwide in terms of the transparency surrounding its budgets – just behind the United Kingdom, tie with France, and ahead of New Zealand and the United States – according to the Open Budget Index.

• South Africa ranked 44th out of 131 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2007/8.

• More than 12,000 ‘Black Diamond’ families (South Africa’s new black middle class) – or 50,000 people – are moving from the townships into the suburbs of South Africa’s metro areas every month, according to the UCT Unilever Institute’s Black Diamonds 2007 survey.

• South Africa is ranked 20th out of a total of 128 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2007, ahead of many developed nations, including, the United States (31), Switzerland (40), Austria (27) and France (51).

• The black middle class grew by 30% in 2005, adding another 421,000 black adults to SA’s middle-income layer and ramping up the black population’s share of SA’s total middle class to almost a third, according to the Financial Mail. Between 2001 and 2004, there were 300,000 new black entrants to the middle class.

• South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, higher than any country in Asia, the Middle East or South America, and ahead of Japan, Spain, Italy and the United States.

• Home ownership in SA has increased from 64% (5,12m households) in 1994 to 78% (7,9m households) in 2006, according to a South African Advertising Research Foundation development index

• South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)

• Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education

• Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor

• In 2005, 10 million South Africans benefited from access to social grants

iBurst: a review (so far)

I finally got around to organising my home internet. I cant believe I’ve been without it for a full year! My initial thinking was that I’m already on the internet for 9 hours a day, not having at home would force me to be less reliant on it. But all I did was put myself through 12 months of “cold turkey” agony, and then I caved.

So we decided to go with iBurst, because of my raging ethical objection to using Telkom, and a desire to skip 6 months of applications and waiting. We toyed with the notion of going with a 3G card but we both get terrible reception in my flat (in the middle of freaking Sandton!) and eventually got a friend to come round with her iBurst to check out the signal before we ordered.

On Wednesday last week I went to the iBurst website to try order online. I got through the first lot of personal details in their rather clunky form, before I gave up having being put off by unanswerable banking questions. I mean are you with Absa Allied or Absa United? I dont know! I thought I banked with Absa, and can barely remember the time when there was Allied etc, furthermore NO ONE uses those terms anymore so they are meaningless to the average consumer.

So, I scrapped my online application, downloaded a form, filled it in and faxed it off. No major issues there, until after half a day when I hadnt heard from them, I called to check the progress. They claim they had not received my fax. An admin person gave me her personal fax number and I faxed it off again. This nice lady put it in the hands of a sales person, who had within the hour called me back to confirm receipt, request a few more standard supporting docs and then said i’d hear from them.

Friday I expected a call to hear if I’d been successful in my application but when I didnt I put it down to normal delays, and got on with my weekend. I was completely surprised on Monday morning when a RAM delivery van arrived with a package for me from iBurst! I still havent heard from them, but not speaking to a sales person again is actually preferred from my stand point.

Not quite the 48hrs they claimed, but not far off either.

Got the package home and installation was pretty painless, although I can see where there may be a few issues if I was less technically inclined. Having said that the package comes with a voucher for Dial-a-nerd installation should someone be really stuck.

I live in a flat in Strathavon, Sandton, Johannesburg. Despite being in the “hub” of SA’s economic power centre, our signal waivers from 40 to 60%, occasionally hitting 70% for short periods. Given this limitation I am happy with the speed and connectivity. We went with the “giga” or 1GB package, so as to keep money (and my reliance) under control.

I would advise though that users turn off their windows automatic updates as those can chew through precious bandwidth in minutes.

My biggest gripe: the online application form which really needs some usability testing.

My positive point: well, I’m blogging from bed at home (sick as a dog, but that’s another story).

Going now to sleep off the “dreaded lurgy”. Cheers!

Holiday round-up

So … granted this post will only be interesting to a few of my long-suffering friends, but I thought I’d write a “what I did on my holiday” post – in the Sub B / grade 2 style (with slightly fewer misspellings).

The dreaded family xmas turned out to be FANTASTIC. None of the things that I had imagined would happen did, and all the imagined tension was just that — imagined.

What a pleasure to reconnect with family, some of whom I hadnt seen in 13 years and to learn that we still get on like we always did.

I had a true “return to childhood” holiday – the Natal beach holiday where you never get out of your costume, stay active, run around with water pistols, and sing xmas carols like you mean it.

It was a total break from the grind – especially because I stuck my cell phone on silent and put it in a drawer for 90% of my time away.

Then I headed down to my beloved Eastern Cape to spend New Years in Kleinemonde. Here I continued the completely cut off from the world trend, surprised myself by swimming a mile in one go, and read three meaty novels. We also enjoyed an anti-Oxbraai evening of all things calm and cultured.

Kleinemonde pics are on my flickr photostream.

And now I’m back at work and it’s pissing with rain. Appropriate much?

And we’re back!

Happy 2009!

Eeek – almost out of this decade and we still don’t have an acceptable name for it! [Ed's note: the term "noughties" is too awful for words]

Anyway, I am back from my much needed holiday. Brown enough and freckly (damn genetics!) and oozing zen-buddhist calm (for the next 12 hours or so).

Holiday round up and pics to follow (at some point).

Hope you had a great one!

Merry Xmas!

more about “Facebook | ElfYourself“, posted with vodpod

New Cape Town Tourism website – yay!

I can finally reveal the project that has been keeping me up at night, keeping me at work late and keeping me super busy. We’ve just completed the new Cape Town Tourism website.

It’s beautiful and huge, and packed with content almost all of which went through my spreadsheets at one point or another, as I’ve been managing the flow and uploading of content, and I also wrote quite a bit.

It boasts an itinerary functionality and a creative commons flickr feed which are quite exciting and innovative (particularly in terms of South African websites).

Obviously I welcome feedback, but be gentle with me – it’s been 5 hectic weeks and I’m still suffering from the post-production-“labour pains”.

Quick catch up

Only a few weeks into this blog and I already have a six day gap between posts, typical!

I’m running around like a headless chicken currently, doing all the things I poked fun at in this post, like trying to get into slightly better shape (gym trainer: check), finish up loads of urgent work (looming deadlines: check) and mentally prepping for a big family Christmas (overwhelming sense of anxiousness: check).

Our big new project (which I’ve previous alluded to) is due to go live on Monday, 15th. Handing over to client on Thursday, so I have a bunch of late nights lined up, which I am less than pleased about. But following that I should find some down-time which will be a massive relief, to me and my nearest and dearest.

I’m finding it really hard to get into the Christmas spirit for my first festive season back in South Africa. Having lived in the UK for two Decembers you start to understand the “holly and robin” motifs, the need for cheery xmas lights and decorations, the huge meals. But here (in the 30 degree heat, beach sand between your toes [not quite yet] and a gin and tonic in each hand) the fake pine trees begin to look a little ridiculous.

Working on it though, choking down the “bah humbugs” as best I can.

Cigarettes and Cinnamon

It’s a couple of months past the first release of this, but I finally found the video, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I love this song. And the Goth vs Eighties video really does it for me too (predictable, much?) …

Damn! Why isn’t the insert video thingy working Got it working, but here’s the link still: http://www.myvideo.co.za/video/cigarettes-cinnamon

Analytics at a glance?

What is the value of knowing the bounce rate across your whole site, rather than one specific page? Or that visitors spend 2 min browsing your pages? How can I use that info to shape my web strategy?

Or rather, what I’m really asking, is “Does providing non-web savvy clients with analytics data have any real value?”

Analytics has became a bit of buzz word with middle managers in off line companies in SA, and they are either demanding this info to feed back to their boards, or web companies are using the existence of these reports to further sell their services.

But I think that some of this info represents both wasted time (on the part of the report writer) and false value to the client. If you have a purely information focussed site (small, seldom updated, “this is us, now contact us in the real world” type site), wouldn’t you just want to know, “am I getting visitors?” or “are we growing?”.

I would argue that automating this type of reporting is the way forward, especially since it frees up time to spend on valuable reporting, the kind that looks at user journeys and their relative success or failure. Or is the lack of “analysis” too controversial?

Do you do reporting for your clients / organisation? What is valuable information to you?