Hair

March 25, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Fourways » Montecasino
Website

The play is not nearly as socially relevant as 40(!) years ago, meaning it can now not be much more than a good show. But it is a very good show.

The Shakespeare references are enjoyable, although the plot is not always too obvious.
And in the end, a voice over announcing president Bush's (nice Hair reference in itself) decision to send another 20.000 souls to Iraq makes for a reasonable attempt to draw a parallel between the '60s and '70s public dissent against the Vietnam war and the current dissent against the war in Iraq.

Wikipedia has an interesting article with background info on the original play.

Re-entry

March 19, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Park station

Betsy’s reluctant to drive into downtown Jo’burg alone, in this case to pick me up from Park station, where the Greyhound bus is supposed to drop me off coming from Maputo.
So I figured I might have the chance to hook up with some whiteys, tourists, on their way from Maputo to Jo’burg whom, surely, were going to spend a few nights in some backpackers and would have to get from Park station to their location lodgings. And, although the bus wasn’t nearly full when leaving Maputo (but filled up completely in Nelspruit), there were still two white travellers on board.

Shortly before Nelspruit, the bus made a snack stop. I started chatting with a young girl in a green skirt and a black shirt with Hebrew lettering. She seemed overly happy and travelling alone. What could be better?
Not a tourist, she turned out to be South African, returning to Jozi after a year in a Christian rehab farm near Maputo. Having been addicted to coke, she’d not seen her parents, gotten off the farm, seen any television or listened to any music for one whole year. At Park Station, she was going to be picked up by her parents, an emotional reunion.
The other whitey also just came back from a year in rehab. After an earlier relapse, this had been his second year.

Clearly, sharing a ride was not going to be an option.

Eat and run

March 18, 2007 • Blog

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World » Mozambique » Maputo » Zambezia

After a more relaxed Sunday run, with a clouded sky and a pleasant breeze, I went and had dinner at Zambezia, a place across the road from Fatima’s and the exact same place where, three years ago, I enjoyed a surprise serving of butter. Now, the menu no longer consisted of individual items, but of actual meals. It was good.
At the table next to me, a local black couple were enjoying dinner, drinking wine, where the wine was stored in a metal bucket filled with ice. High class dining, obviously. When the wine was finished, they turned the carton upside down in the bucket. Yes, a carton.

This was not my first visit to Maputo, nor was it my first visit to Fatima’s. Three years ago, I created the portal inZIM.com. On our Southern Africa Tour I did some guerrilla marketing for the website. A promotional sticker on one of Fatima’s walls was still there.

The Muslims are coming

March 17, 2007 • Blog

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World » Mozambique » Namaacha » Samora Machel’s former outhouse

Muslims are making inroads into Maputo. The more upmarket bars and restaurants now all seem to be run by Moroccans, Lebanese or Arabs. More upmarket meaning there’s a menu in more than one language, the floor is swept and the lights actually work. Some of the venues show an Arab news channel running all day.
And what seems to be the only modern department store in Maputo with all the electronic gadgets you can ever wish for (and prizes that would give you an instant heart attack) has its walls covered in English/Arab marketing material.

At the hostel, Fatima’s, it’s clear this is much more the frontier than South Africa is. There’s a Frenchman and a Brazilian/Mozambican/Portuguese/South African who both served in some south east Asian army as a shooter and a sniper respectively.
There’s a 38 year old South African, who has a three week old kid in Cape Town who he’s never seen.
“When are you going to see her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I first need to find a job, get some bucks.”
And there are two Norwegians, two Swedes and three Danes all doing “Field work”…

Run

I weaselled my way into today’s hash. I didn’t want to reserve upfront because of the absurd published cost: 350 dollar per person, without the possibility of organizing your own accommodation. And considering the main venue’s cheapest rooms were 90 dollar per night, you can understand some savings could have been made there.
Now however, I paid slightly less. I arrived just in time at the main venue, the expensive hotel Cordosa, and made it known I wanted to run on Saturday and Sunday.
“How much will it cost”
“Ah… I don’t know… Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out later.”
Later hasn’t arrived yet.

Reasonably well organized, all hashers could choose from three walks and three runs. All were set in the Namaacha province, close to Swaziland, near the only public works project Samora Machel ever completed, a dam which supplies Maputo with fresh drinking water.
I went for the middle distance run, together with some 60 other runners. Only about six of us victims managed to run on a few stretches of the course. The heat was extreme, the humidity killing. Between leaving the hotel and starting the run, I had already finished two litres of water. On the longer run, three poor basterds had to be carted off to hospital for dehydration.

At lunch, at a villa made for/by Samora Machel to enjoy his own private lake, the whole crowd got together. Only four other hashers from the Pretoria hash, but also ten from Harare, old friends, and one from Kabul!

Maputo visa trip

March 16, 2007 • Blog

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World » Mozambique » Maputo » Fatima’s

On a weekend break to Maputo. My South African visa expires this weekend and although it’s possible to extend your visa through the ministry of home affairs, I -really- don’t want to dive in to the bureaucratic hell which that -must- be. Going on a trip to Maputo is much more enjoyable. And this weekend, Maputo is home to the 2007 Africa interhash (the event was better organized than the website).

More humanophobia

I planned on shooting loads of pictures in Maputo as it is a very picturesque city. On the South African/Mozambican border, I whipped out my camera to shoot a nice panorama picture. But my camera had decided to no longer recognize the memory card. Internal memory? Worth ten images.
The camera, a simple Sony has slowly functioned less and less over the last few months and although I’ve shot nearly 7500 pictures in the six months I own the thing, that really isn’t an excuse to stop working. A bummer: when leaving the country last time, I got sales tax back at the cost of handing over the invoice, so now, I no longer have proof of purchase.
So maybe I should join my poor black brethren at some Jo’burg intersection, carrying a sign “Will code for hardware”.

Water

I had forgotten how humid weather can be. At the border, 35 degrees centigrade, the bus had to wait for a while with the door open and the aircon off. Within minutes, it was like swimming on dry land. And Maputo isn’t much better. In fact, when there, running around, at some point it felt like drowning on dry land.
In Jo’burg, even after a major rainstorm, streets dry up within minutes.

On long distance travel

It’s funny to see how long distance travel has changed in the last few decades. Of course, air travel will never be the same due to the many low cost air carriers operating in roughly half the countries in the world (even though Africa is extremely under represented on that list), but long distance bus and train travel also will never be the same again.
In the past, getting on a long distance bus would always be a bit of a leap of faith: Do I have to switch busses? What time will I arrive? Will I arrive? Where will I exactly arrive? Particularly long distance travel between different countries was even more of a challenge due to the language barriers you’d have to work through to get from A to B.

Now, with the advent of ever present mobile communication, you can expect to have access to some mobile network in even the most remote replaces on earth. You can now always let friends, family or your next hotel know when and where you’ll be arriving. Or, more importantly, perhaps, let them know you’ve been apprehended by corrupt border officials.

Photomarathon exhibition; hash in Jo’burg; talk at Wits

March 15, 2007 • Blog

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World » South Africa » Johannesburg » The Bag Factory

Tonight saw the opening of the exhibition of the first African photomarathon, at The Bag Factory. As we had quite a struggle to get the winning images enlarged, forexed (mounted) and framed, the last few days ended up being extremely hectic. But with a bit of help today, not in the least from lovely Betsy, we managed to get everything up and running at just after 5.30 in the afternoon. And considering we were opening the show at 5:30, it really wasn’t a minute too soon.

Hash

Last Saturday, Betsy and I set the Pretoria hash near our home, in Jo’burg. In the afternoon, in the bleeding sun, I got to set the run while Betsy was creating a Surinamese/Dutch dish for the after party. Then, a few hours later, I got to run the route again, while Betsy was driving around, making sure everyone would get a decent and fresh drink at the halfway beer stop.

Talk at Wits

The day before the hash, I had a talk with Ismail Farouk at Wits university about Soweto uprisings . com. Invited by Christo Doherty, the 90 minute presentation was actually a double bill, the other half being a talk by Daniel Hirschmann, a South African artist who talked about some musical steps he created at the centre Pompidou in Paris.

Listed in ‘TIME’ and a panel discussion

March 04, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » The Bag Factory

Well, not exactly TIME, but the Belgian weekly ‘De Tijd’. In an article on mashups from/on the Low Countries, Brussel stripstad . be was mentioned. The article is here.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, we had the panel discussion with the judges for the Jo’burg photomarathon. Turn out wasn’t great, but not too bad, with some 20 people showing up to chat with Stephen Hobbs, Nadine Hutton and Andrew Tshabangu on photography in Johannesburg and about the future possibilities of the Jo’burg photomarathon.

Arachnaphobia and humanophobia

March 01, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Fourways » Shingara Sands

My crappy laptop died yesterday. In a way, that’s good, since it allows for finally getting a good computer. But as I’m not as financially solvable as is spiritually healthy, it’s also quite a burden.

For some reason, I tend to have a rather bad influence on hardware. My computer breaks, my cameras die, my phones stop working.
And don’t even get me started on software.

So my options? I’d love to buy a Mac or, failing that, set up an Ubuntu-based PC. However, my external wi-fi antenna isn’t very run of the mill, meaning I’ll be unable to download drivers for Linux until I’m connected, and I won’t be able to connect until I’ve got drivers. Catch 22.

It walks

Also, practically on the very exact same moment my laptop died, Betsy discovered a huge spider in our bathroom. Huge. Seriously. Larger than the outstretched hand of a grown man. And with long hairy legs to boot.
Normally, it’s Betsy who gets rid of these annoying bugs, but this time, even she was overcome by the challenge of having to remove this impressive arachnid.
Before having seen it, I suggested using the vacuum cleaner on the little critter. Then, when I saw it and several expletives later, it was obvious vacuuming the animal up, clearly, was not going to be an option. This was the type of spider you see in spider and insect museums; with a note saying they eat baby cows and whatnot.

I moved one of the chairs from the dining table to the hallway, so that, standing on the chair, I could look in the bathroom mirror and keep an eye on the spider, lounging on the wall right in front of me, but on the other side, possibly assuming it was blending in nicely with the brown tiles it was hanging on to. Meanwhile, Betsy, still shaken, kept a safe distance and in quick succession, smoked a series of cigarettes to calm the nerves.

A slipper? Still the vacuum cleaner? A newspaper? Insect repellant. Normally, we prefer removing offending bugs alive, escorting them out of the premises. But after our first parktown prawn a few weeks ago, we decided it might be wise to have a weapons grade insect killer in the house. Just in case.
Clearly, this was just such a case, although neither of us was sure the spider -didn’t- have a weapons grade armor to withstand such an assault.

Betsy still at a distance, I went in for the kill. Charging and spraying, adrenaline pumping and using war cries to urge myself on, I chased the animal around the bathroom as it scrambled away in a frenzy. Imagine the hand from The Addams Family, bringing friends and going wild. Although I was also somehow reminded of a panicking circus clown running away from a fire.

Several times, in all its cunning, the superbug played dead, but it was unable to fool me. And, in the end, I even had some insect repellant left. Bring ‘m on! Or rather, not.

Getting a grip, it took a piece of cardboard to transport the crumpled up beast to the toilet and flush him out of our lives. A few cigarettes and strong liquor to wind down.

Photomarathon, a city walk and Chinese new year

February 28, 2007 • Blog

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World » South Africa » Johannesburg » The Bag Factory

Last Saturday saw the first African photomarathon, in Jo'burg and, together with Bronwyn and Rat from The Bag Factory and Ismail Farouk, I was one of the organizers.
It was quite a success, 69 photographers started the 12 hour marathon and only three bowed out before the end of the day. And not one because he was shot.
Two follow up events are set for this Saturday, a panel discussion, and March 15, opening of the exhibition and the prize ceremony.

Saturday evening, after all was over, I was feeling terrible. I thought it was simply because I was getting old and can't handle actually working hard, any more, but then Betsy realised I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. And, indeed, I wolfed down some chow and felt much, much better.

Oscar

A relaxed Sunday later, we had a tough night ahead as, earlier, I had won tickets to a red carpet event, here at Montecasino, where the Oscar ceremony was going to be shown on a huge cinema screen, followed by a champagne breakfast.
Most winners were quite predictable and, for the first time in many years, it was again mildly interesting to see this incestuous circle jerk.

City walks

Earlier, in fact a few weeks earlier, I went on two city walks with Ismail. One was organized and took us through the area around the Drill Hall, the venue of the infamous Treason Trial. The other took us from The Bag Factory to the Carlton Center, scouting a route for the Photomarathon, one week later.

The year of the pig

Yeah, we also got assaulted by fireworks wielding Chinese in Jo'burg's Chinatown during Chinese new year's celebrations.

Refuting a Reuters article on maths

February 23, 2007 • Blog

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World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Fourways » Shingara Sands

This article debunks a maths statement from a Reuters article.

Background

Through an article at Slashdot I came across an article on Reuters which combined mathematics and Iran, two of my favorite interests.

The article talks about the pattern on a particular shrine in Esfahan, Iran. To illustrate Esfahan’s beauty to the uninitiated, at some point, a rhyme did the rounds saying “Esfahan is half the world”, suggesting that if you’d seen Esfahan, you’d seen half the world’s beauty, and that in one place. Esfahan is full of, indeed, beautiful mosques and shrines and you can find some beautiful pictures of Esfahan at my Iran photoset at Flickr.

The shrine mentioned in the Reuters article is called the Darb-i Imam (although mostly it would probably be called Darb-e Imam or Darb-e-Imam) and talks about a pattern above the shrine’s door, shown in the picture below (which accompanied the original article).

As you can see, the pattern’s very pretty. But the article overdoes it and roused my suspicion, starting with the leader “Magnificently sophisticated geometric patterns in medieval Islamic architecture indicate their designers achieved a mathematical breakthrough 500 years earlier than Western scholars, scientists said on Thursday.”
I’ll try to summarise the article in a few sentences.

According to the article, some decorative designs on medieval Persian architecture reached such complexity they appear to be “quasicrystalline” designs, according to Harvard University’s Peter Lu and Princeton University’s Paul Steinhardt. Quasicrystalline designs were first described by mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1970s and they are characterized by a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry. [my emphasis – I will come back to this later.]

The article quotes Lu as saying it’s “[a]bsolutely stunning” and mentions that research has indicated that by the year 1200 an important breakthrough had occurred in Islamic mathematics and design, as illustrated by these geometric designs. Then, the scholars question whether the architects were aware of the underlying maths or just “got lucky”.

Debunking the article
I always tend to be suspicious of maths in popular news articles and this article was no exception. I might have heard of “quasicrystalline” before, but if I did, I’ve forgotten it. Here’s the definition from the article again:

Quasicrystalline: a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.

I was suspicious because the picture of the shrine clearly shows the pattern is symmetrical along a y-axis right through the middle of the picture. So I downloaded the image and started playing around a bit.
Typically, Persian Islamic motives are often quite complex but also highly symmetrical. In this case, the many dots of the pattern are surrounded by ten identical smaller tiles, suggesting it would make sense to work with 10-sided polygons. After a bit of playing around, below is what I came up with:

The original picture is in the background. The bottom right corner is coloured red, which I took as the base for all other points in the pattern. Inside the red square, in the pattern, several of the dots are connected with lines. I rendered those lines and mirrored them in all directions. And, lo and behold, an extremely regular pattern emerged, which featured large 10-sided polygons.

True, the overlaid green pattern doesn’t match the original pattern in the picture perfectly, but that seems to be due to distortions in the original picture.

Conclusion

Either Peter Lu and Paul Steinhardt are crap scholars or the Reuters journalist is crap at his job. I hope it’s the second.

Update
There’s also an article on BBC News about the very same thing but their wording is more reserved:

The Islamic designs echo quasicrystalline geometry in that both use symmetrical polygonal shapes to create patterns that can be extended indefinitely.

Come, it’s already dusk

February 22, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Rosebank » Rosebank Mall

Part of the Iranian Film Festival at Rosebank, in Johannesburg.

Directed by Ensieh Shah Hosseini, like Puran Derakhshandeh, the director of the other two films we saw at the festival, a woman.
The movie is good, has several decent storylines intertwining and a few interesting characters. The leading female, a gypsy widow after her husband died at sea, is a bit too angry during the whole movie, but she’s quite pretty, so that’s okay.
The story is mostly about her being trapped, as part of her tribe, at some unnamed island in the Persian Gulf. She realises, almost too late, she actually has a chance of escaping with an engineer from up north.

As with the previous two movies we saw at the festival, the translator should have done a much better job to make the dialogues and the more delicate details of the story understandable for the audience. Here’s the write up from Mohammad Ahmadi’s website, the cinematographer:

A young gypsy woman who has fled her tribe falls in love with a fisherman in a remote island and they make a promise to get married but on their wedding night instead of himself the fisherman introduces his friend as the groom.
The woman is compelled to marry him and not long thereafter her husband drowns in the sea. Having regained her freedom she decides to take revenge against her disloyal lover.

At the end of the movie, in a dialogue between the woman and her disloyal lover, the delicate situation is explained, but not translated, and the non-Farsi speaking audience was clearly confused by the odd conclusion to the story.

In the festival programme, the name of the movie was giving as “Come, sun is setting”. However, the film itself opened with the translated title “Rush, it comes”. The write up in the festival programme also strongly suggested we were watching another movie as scheduled:

This is the story of the riparian people who do not easily give up struggling with the difficulties of daily life. These people are a shining example of friendship and devotion. In this film, the audience witnesses how a man’s love eventually leads to his self-sacrifice.

Trying to find information on the film, online, hoping to learn the actual title and some background information, it turns out there’s practically nothing online, not even on IMDB.

Usage of the term ‘riparian’ in the festival write up was typical for the translator of the movies: occasional use of correct English words practically no one has every heard of. Riparian means something like:

Relating to or living or located on the bank of a natural watercourse (as a river) or sometimes of a lake or a tidewater.

But this definition doesn’t help, at all, in the context of the movie. As the women in the movie, in public, wear wooden masks to hide their faces, the island on which the film is set is most likely near Minab, close to Hormoz Island and the straight of Hormoz.


Foto by elena senao
There is one great(above) and one not so great picture on Flickr of women wearing these masks. Interestingly, ethnologists believe the masks are leftover fashion items from when the Portuguese ruled the region.

The masks, interestingly enough, are believed by ethnologists to be leftover fashion statements from when the Portuguese ruled the region.

The impossibility of fighting SpamCop?

February 14, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Fourways » Shingara Sands

I had a short fight with my hosting provider, MidPhase, today. Without a warning, they suspended two of my domains: SkipDistance.com and PhotographySA.com. The reason being that SpamCop, an online service which claims to detect spam emails, had marked one of my emails as spam and had notified my hosting provider.

What ticked me off was that Midphase suspended both domains without a warning. This happened around 6pm on a Wednesday and I was out. When I came back, I checked PhotographySA.com to find it no longer active. I first thought Midphase was going through one of their regular fuckups as they’re not too reliable in the first place (yeah, I’ve been wanting to move to a different host, but with 30 hosted domains, moving to another host is quite a pain), but checking some of my other domains also hosted at MidPhase, they came up fine. Confused, I absent mindedly looked at my mailbox and found a message from Midphase saying they’d suspended two of my domains. Below the message I received:

Hello.

We received spam complain regarding two your domains PhotographySA.com and SkipDistance.com. Our policy does not allow Spamvertised web sites. So, I’ve disabled these domains.

Followed by an extremely cryptic raw copy of a message which, after staring at it for several minutes, I assumed was sent by SpamCop to someone at MidPhase. The meat of the message was at top, where it said that my two earlier mentioned domains were spamvertised. Here’s the cryptic copy:

[ SpamCop V620 ]
This message is brief for your comfort. Please use links below for details.

Spamvertised web site: http://PhotographySA.com/
[report url – removed] is 205.234.193.232; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:02:00 GMT

Spamvertised web site: http://SkipDistance.com/
[report url – removed] is 205.234.193.232; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:02:00 GMT

[ Offending message ]
Return-Path: [my email address]
Delivered-To: x
Received: (qmail 10786 invoked by uid 399); 12 Feb 2007 09:13:45 -0000
Delivered-To: x
Received: (qmail 10780 invoked by uid 399); 12 Feb 2007 09:13:45 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO qb-out-0506.google.com) (72.14.204.236)
by mail4.hivelocity.net with SMTP; 12 Feb 2007 09:13:45 -0000
X-Originating-IP: 72.14.204.236
Received: by qb-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id d8so547097qbc
for ; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 01:08:03 -0800 (PST)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
d=gmail.com; s=beta;

h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:mime-version:content-type;

b=aauVJ+TTgoXeL/TQgpm12UDnaMUnuUIJhDh2cQEcmXbKBptx/elEdgh/WRa6Du2hBkyRJtBNtZyh3vwPBhW+pNc3JuzDFpW6nHxOvaof2IXa5Q2ygcZ/5sdIh+6MCiZO1614M+m1j+U9TbCY5VT1FwjtojVtixXUgscJfx3otUU=
Received: by 10.70.32.6 with SMTP id f6mr14443319wxf.1171271282968;
Mon, 12 Feb 2007 01:08:02 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.70.23.8 with HTTP; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 01:08:02 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: [email protected]
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 11:08:02 +0200
From: “Babak Fakhamzadeh” [my email address]
Reply-To: [my email address]
To: x
Subject: First African photomarathon, in Jo’burg: Feb 24 2007
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”—-=_Part_53206_31723597.1171271282900″
Content-Type: text/html
X-SpamCop-note: Converted to text/html by SpamCop (outlook/eudora hack)

Hi,

You might not be aware of the first African
photomarathon, which will be held in Jo’burg on the 24th of February
and is organized by PhotographySA.com and The Bag
Factory.

You can find more information about the event at http://PhotographySA.com.
A press release can be found here:

Click to access Photomarathon-Johannesburg-2007-press-release.pdf

Please feel free to ask for more info or to
forward this email to anyone you think might be
interested.

Greetings,

Babak Fakhamzadeh
PhotographySA.com
—
Jo’burg photomarathon: http://PhotographySA.com
Find the right budget airline: http://SkipDistance.com

And realise that the part which holds my original email is now actually legible, as my blog software takes out all the html characters (such as all the break tags).

So rather annoyed, I contacted online Midphase support, who told me to respond to the email I was sent and tell them I hadn’t sent spam. That, and it was going to be resolved within the hour.

Now, realise that the email I sent went to a few dozen photographers, printshops, galleries and whatnot, in South Africa, contained a link to a press release and was, telling them about next week’s photomarathon in Jo’burg, therefore very relevant for the intended recipients.

Also, I checked PhotographySA.com about two hours after it was suspended. I could have been out for the evening, not checking my mail or website for 12 hours or more. For that time, and probably more because my hosting provider is in the US and if I’d check in the morning, I’d have to wait for support to wake up.
And then, besides the unreasonable suspension of PhotographySA.com, there’s the extremely unreasonable suspension of SkipDistance.com.

Here’s what I sent back to MidPhase:

I find it amazing you suspend domains BEFORE checking with the domain owner. This does not reflect well on your business practice.

Both domains should NOT be suspended. What seems to be the offending mail, which you include in your message, was sent, by me, to around 40 email addresses of related businesses: photography-related businesses or individuals in South Africa.
As you can see from that email and if you’d taken a look at the website in question, PhotographySA.com organizes a photography event in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 24, endorsed by the municipality of Johannesburg. The 40 email addresses were mostly suggested by existing participants to the photographic event.

Why also the domain SkipDistance.com has been suspended is fascinating.

Please resolve this ASAP. Photographers are registering through the website PhotographySA.com and the domain being offline does not reflect well on the organization.

So by now, if you’re still with me, you should have gotten an idea of what happened: One of the recipients of my email complained with SpamCop, or, even worse, SpamCop automatically intercepted my email and marked it as spam. Then, SpamCop sent a message to my hosting provider and my hosting provider, acting on SpamCop’s message, suspended the two domains mentioned in my email, without checking with me first.

Luckily, within the hour, the domains were back online. Here’s MidPhase’s response:

Hello.

Yes, but it seems SpamCop has another viewpoint.
They recognized your email as SPAM.
I’ve just activated suspended web sites back.
But if we get such complaint next time we’ll have to block your web sites again without back reactivation. So, please be careful and don’t send such emails anymore.

Thank you.

Now this is where it gets spooky. If you don’t see why, read my reply to the message above.

Thank you.

However, this approach (of suspending domains) can not be acceptable. The possibility for an outside party to shut down a domain for spamming without the ability to respond to the accusation is like being jailed without a trial.

To put so much trust in a service such as SpamCop is unreasonable and even scary. The SpamCop entry at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamcop) shows that although in general SpamCop might be a valuable service, it also tends to make mistakes. And it is exactly these mistakes you, as an ISP, need to be careful of as they -will- push your customers away from you.

What’s important here is that, through SpamCop, anyone can apparently easily get a domain suspended just by sending a bit of ‘spamvertising’. As I say above, this is like being put in jail after being accused of murder, without the possibility of trial or a defence.

So, here’s my five steps to getting any domain suspended.

Five steps to getting any domain suspended

  1. Find the offending domain (example domainoffender.com).
  2. Create a Gmail address which can be linked to the offending domain (example: [email protected]).
  3. Send a bunch of emails to a large group of people, praising the offending domain.
  4. Wait a day or so, assuming you’ve hit one recipient who uses SpamCop.
  5. Send another bunch of emails, preferably to the same email addresses as before.

Now, if the offending domain’s host was MidPhase, as it was in my case, the offending domain, according to MidPhase support, would have been ‘ block[ed] … without [the ability of] back reactivation ‘.

As, apparently, responding to these accusations of sending spamvertising around is not possible, the only possibility for the owner of the offending domain is to move to another hosting provider.

Needless to say, this lack of democratic values on what some consider the most democratic platform in the world, is shocking.

Ian Kenneth – Trust is not an option

February 12, 2007 • Blog

World » South Africa » Johannesburg » Fourways » Shingara Sands

This novel is not, yet, available in the shops. One of my pictures is used as cover art and I received a courtesy ‘proof copy’.

‘Trust is not an option’ isn’t great, but it’s not bad either. It’s a crime novel and I’m not too keen on them, but this one is as good as many and has a decent twist near the end, even though I felt it coming.

Several aspects of the story feel like they still need to be roughed out. Ian Kenneth has a rather strange attention to details which are, most often, left unsaid; things like the brand of laptop used by the lead character or the exact year in which a particular business transaction took place, without them adding value.

The second half of the novel was easier to read, as if the author was starting to get the hang of it, writing in a less passive, more attractive style. Also, during the first half, I had the feeling, on several occasions, that the author was trying to show off his knowledge of the international locations that feature in the book. His early inexperience as a writer also shows in awkward jumps in time within one paragraph.
Kenneth’s tendency for factual descriptions of locations or persons gives the story a bit of a shallow feel, but at the same time also makes it very real, very gritty, maybe even in-your-face.

And there’s a few hiccups with the story line: What’s with John’s fascination with his dead father? And why is he so emotional when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, professionally (a 10 percent raise isn’t enough)? And why is Robert so obsessed with the probable death of his employer, a man he hardly knew? And Claudia’s fidelity (or lack thereof) is a tad too obvious.

If Kenneth is able to take out the rough edges, this could be quite a decent, if not good, novel. The novel taking place in slightly obscure European locations like Sitges and Varna gives it a feel of an old fashioned spy novel. The tale could also work as the script for a thriller.

On a book cover, Hash at Hartbeespoortdam and tickets to the Oscars

February 05, 2007 • Blog

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It’s not everyday that a picture of mine graces the cover of a book. Check out my study of the Varna liberation monument, in Bulgaria, has made it to the cover of a, as yet, unpublished book by Ian Kenneth: Trust is not an option. Expect the book to be reviewed here within a week or so.

The weekend we spent at Hartbeespoortdam, celebrating 20 years of hashing in Pretoria. Needless to say, perfect, well bloody hot, weather, lots of drinks, some would say too many, and good food.
On the first night, I had to do a bit of education, explaining such interesting terms as ‘teabagging’, ‘docking’, ‘felching’ and ‘snowballing’.

Sunday evening, we headed out to see the excellent The Last King of Scotland, which was on at a preview showing at the nearby Montecasino. The showing turned out to be part of some movie club, led by one of South Africa’s most prominent movie critics (if not the only one), Barry Ronge (702 Talk Radio calls him South Africa’s most acclaimed and well-read entertainment critic). Several months ago, I signed up to be notified of events, related to his movie club, at Montecasino, but never heard anything. Now we’d stumbled into one of his ‘shows’. Both before and after the film, Barry extensively reviewed the flick, but also gave away a few prizes.
In what he claimed was a random draw, he paired the letters of the movie we were going to watch (The Last King of Scotland) with their position in the title of the movie (so, T1, H2, E3), to obtain seat numbers, handing out the prizes to the people in those seats. And if, by chance, no one would be sitting in the winning chair, the prize would go to a person nearby.
We were sitting in row E, which was fully occupied, in a very busy theatre. After 10 prizes were given away, I thought the fun was over, until he started handing out even more prizes, after a short speech, according to the same principle, although he made several mistakes, which no one really seemed to notice. Still, I quickly made my way to row A, which was empty. Barry first looked at me as if thinking “Who is this guy? Am I supposed to know him? What does he want?”
“I’m moving to row A.”
Barry apparently hadn’t thought of that possibility, the audience laughed, “One for the gentleman, for ingenuity!”

So I had my prize. A double ticket to attend the nightly live broadcast, in what might be the most exclusive movie theatre in South Africa, at Montecasino, of the Oscars. It’s supposed to be a red carpet thing and it’s followed by a breakfast.

After the film, there was something of a Q&A with Barry. Barry talks regularly to a particular correspondent in Hollywood. That correspondent, last week, had had dinner with Forest Whitaker. That’s three degrees to The Last King of Socotland.

Oh, and compelling eye witness accounts of the nuclear attack on Japan, here and some very disturbing pictures.

Rate a few and win a t-shirt

February 02, 2007 • Blog

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As I made absolutely zilch with my last try of blogging for dollars through CREAMaid, I figured I’d try it again.

The guys from Berda are having a FREE Custom T-Shirt Contest (sorry for the caps, but that’s required by the submission guidelines of CREAMaid). You can try your best at winning a free t-shirt. They give one away every week, so you stand a decent chance as long as you’re in early.

The site uses the often tried and well working concept of ‘Rate my…’, where the HotOrNot ripoff Rate My Poo is probably the most disgusting but hilarious incarnation in this series.

What’s nice about the compo is that you submit your own design to be rated. If it ends up on top for the week, you get your own design printed. But what’s strange is that the contest rules say that the design which gets the -most- votes wins, not the design with the -highest- score/votes.

Gripes? They could have done some more work on the design. Not only is it a HotOrNot ripoff, it also looks like what HotOrNot looked like when they opened up shop, what, 10 years ago? And why is it so many people (mostly Americans) think the world begins and ends on their continent: “Worldwide participation is permitted, however, winner’s order will be shipped to USA location only.”
And your design ends up being property of Berda, for them to make money off.
Hmmm, maybe it’s not such a good thing after all for the regular Joe.

http://www.creamaid.com/cream.swf?id=10000001251000002414

Elfstedentocht in Mongolia, pool party, photomarathon, cricket

January 29, 2007 • Blog

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The Dutch newspaper 'Volkskrant' has an article on the next 'alternative Elfstedentocht', which will be held in March on Khovskol lake, in Mongolia. Wish I was there.
Interesting will be how they'll get the riders and supporters out there: the lake, beautiful as it is, is in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile, here in Jo'burg, where everyday the temperature rises to the 30 degrees centigrade mark, I've started organising the first African photomarathon, which will be held on February 24th, right here in Jo'burg. The main sponsor of the event is The Bag Factory.

Last weekend, we spend some time at Christo's pool party where too much whiskey, beer and great steak knocked me out.

And some two weeks ago, Betsy, Jasper and myself went over to Centurion to check out a test match between South Africa and Pakistan (I'm talking cricket here). Test matches tend to last four or five days and we only saw half of one.
During the lunch break, the crowd was allowed on the field, but not on the pitch (is it called a pitch?), and they went wild. Everyone had brought cricket bats, balls, soccer balls and whatnot.

33 1/3 and a tiny crocodile biting through a bic pen

January 09, 2007 • Blog

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Today is a very special day. Today, I pass the one third of a century mark. Yes, I'm 33 1/3 years old. Damn I'm old. Ancient. Parched.

Anyway, went to a crocodile farm on the edge of Jo'burg with Celie last week. The crocs are rather boring, they just bask in the sun. But we also got to hold a tiny and very cute little critter. Apparently, even when they're small as this, they can still bite through a bic pen.

Chinatown and hash in the weekend.

South African style

January 01, 2007 • Blog

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Truly South African, we had a braai on new year's eve. Next to the lodge where Mark and Angele live, a bit of a dump, run by Mr South Africa 1974, we were about 10 guys, all working at IBM except me, first enjoying a braai and then enjoying Cheronne's Singstar game.

Today, truly Dutch, we did a new year's dive at 12pm. Yes, this is Africa, but it was still a bit fresh as it was overcast.

The best wishes for 2007

December 31, 2006 • Blog

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Well, Christmas is gone, but I can still wish everyone all the best for 2007. In fact, you can also choose the new year’s card that suits you best from the three below.
If you click on a card, you’ll be taken to Flickr, where you can see a larger version of that very image.

The above image is the one I wanted to send around. But Betsy couldn’t appreciate the object at the foot of the tree too much, so I had to come up with something else.
Instead of a dead baby (which is actually a doll), I inserted two dead drunk idiots.

But although two dead drunks are funny, I figured I was missing some deeper artistic sense.

So, combining the drunks and the baby, I think I’ve come up with something a real artist could create some spin around, invent some deeper meaning or whatever.
This one is my favorite, but if you like one of the other two better, just assume you reveived that card for new year’s.

What do you think?

Sweets of Iran

December 30, 2006 • Blog

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There seem to be more different types of sweets in Iran than you can shake a stick at. And there all so good! Well, most of them anyway. Here’s a few. Additions are very, very welcome.

+ Abnabat qeichi (آبنبات قیچی). From Mashhad, Qom, Yazd.
+ Badam sukhte (بادام سوخته). Sugared almonds. From all over Iran.
+ Baklava (باقلوا ). From Yazd.
+ Bastani (بستنی). Ice cream. From all over Iran.
+ Dates (خرما). From Bam.
+ Faludeh (فالوده). From all over Iran.
+ Fresh dates (رتب). Also a type of packaged but very juicy dates. From the south of Iran, typically Bam or Kerman.
+ Gaz (گز). A nougat like sweet. From Esfahan.
+ Gush-e fil (گوش فیل). From all over Iran.
+ Halva (حلوا). From all over Iran.
+ Jakh dar behesht (یخ در بهشت). A type of ice cream. From all over Iran.
+ Joz-e qand (جوز قند). From all over Iran.
+ Kachi (کاچی). A soft type of halva. From all over Iran.
+ Kolombe (کلمبه). From Kerman.
+ Lavasak (لواشک). Not really a sweet, but a very sour thin layer of processed fruits. From all over Iran.
+ Masqati (مسقطی). Fom Shiraz.
+ Nabat (نبات). From Mashhad.
+ Nan-e berenji (نان برنجی). From Kermanshah.
+ Nan-e nokhodchi (نان نخودچی). From Kermanshah.
+ Noqa (نوقا ). More commonly known as nougat. From Tabriz.
+ Noql-e pir-e zan (نقل پیر زن ). From Mashhad, Qom.
+ Pashmak (پشمک). A more solid type of cotton candy. From Yazd.
+ Pistachio (پسته). From Rafsanjan.
+ Qottab (قطٌاب). A pastry made of eggs, yoghurt, flour, almonds, and cardamom. From Yazd.
+ Ranginak (رنگینک). From the south of Iran, typically Abadan and Kerman.
+ Reshte Khushkar (رشته خوشکار). A rice based sweet. From the north of Iran.
+ Sholl-e zard (شلٌه زرد). From all over Iran.
+ Sohan (سوهان). A brittle pistachio based sweet. From Qom.
+ Tut (توت). A marzipan like sweet. From all over Iran.
+ Zulbia bamie (زولبیا بامیه). Sugared bread sticks. From all over Iran.

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