Zapiro: Telkom’s response to Winston’s victory

This is Zapiro’s response to the story of Winston, the carrier pigeon which proved, once and for all, that – in South Africa at least – sending data by carrier pigeon is faster than transmitting it by so-called broadband:
Hehehehehe….
Brilliant.

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SumbandilaSat has been launched!

Yay!
This afternoon, at 17h40, I hopped on over to http://www.tv-tsenki.com/livechoose.php to watch the live video feed of the imminent launch of SumbandilaSat, South Africa’s second satellite.
I quickly figured out that I could do screen captures by pressing ctrl-printscreen and then pasting it into my picture editing software.
At first, it looked like nothing was going [...]

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Is the world your ashtray?

Brace yourselves for a rant.
I have lost count of the number of smokers I’ve seen on our roads, who toss their burning cigarette butts out of the window. They seem to have absolutely no sense of what is appropriate behaviour and what isn’t.
I get particularly cross at them when they do it during a [...]

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Movie review: “Doomsday”

Urgh.
What a waste of resources – shooting this drivel.
What a waste of (a handful of) otherwise good actors.
And what a waste of time – watching this sh*te.
If you have a sensitive stomach, avoid this one. *Especially* if you’re having supper on the sofa while you’re watching it.
However, if you like watching:

heads chopped off
[...]

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Still no lift-off for satellite

As I wrote in my previous post, South Africa’s second micro-satellite, SumbandilaSat, was supposed to have been launched on Tuesday at 17h55 local SA time. The launch, on the back of a Russian Soyuz 2 rocket, was delayed by 24 hours until Wednesday (today) because of technical problems and bad weather.
I’d been keeping an [...]

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A catnip thief?

Hey!
Who’s been chomping on Tuffy-cat’s brand-new catnip plant?!
This is what it looked like on 3 September 2009, which is only about two weeks ago:
And this is what the poor thing looked like today:
Strictly speaking, it’s been looking like this for a couple of days now, but I wasn’t able to take a picture earlier because [...]

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The imminent launch of SumbandilaSAT

A South African micro-satellite by the name of SumbandilaSat was supposed to have been launched yesterday (Tuesday):
“At exactly 17:55 today [Tuesday], South Africa’s SumbandilaSat will launch into space atop a Russian Soyuz rocket in Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The 81 kg microsatellite will orbit about 500 km to 600 km above the earth, gathering data that [...]

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’tis a strange world we live in

Did this chap really think he’d get away with it?
Quite some time ago, in November 2007, a security guard by the name of Tsheko Maloma, employed by the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality in Groblersdal, stole a Vodacom 3G datacard from his employers.
Verily, a trustworthy chap, no? Definitely someone you’d like to have guarding your assets?
Maloma [...]

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The KAT containers head north!

On Monday morning, bright and early, we “rushed” down the N2 (or rather, as slowly as the early-morning commuter traffic allowed) to make it to the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Observatory, Cape Town, around 8h00.
The sun was hiding behind a solid grey blanket of cloud, which fortunately did not release any rain. In [...]

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Preparing for the departure of the KAT containers

Background
On 6 May 2009, four containers arrived at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Observatory, Cape Town.
These weren’t just normal containers, though. These were very special containers: high-tech, RFI-shielded containers, especially designed and outfitted to accommodate all the complicated equipment that will be needed to  control, operate and process the data from the brand [...]

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