My time in the news..

Pigeon beats Telkom

2009-09-09 12:23

 

Birgit Ottermann

Cape Town - Winston, a homing pigeon, has made history by beating a Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, outside Durban in just 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds, whereas the ADSL download was "still just under four percent complete" at 11:45. 

South Africa's most famous pigeon, left Howick just after 10:00 on Wednesday morning and flew a distance of around 70km to deliver a data card (strapped to his leg) to financial services companyThe Unlimited at its head office in Hillcrest.

Winston easily beat the ADSL line, despite giving it a 26 minute head start, while stretching his wings and waiting for the company data to be downloaded onto the memory card.

A confident Winston flew straight to his home in Gillits, outside Hillcrest, from where he caught a short car ride to reach the Hillcrest head office.  Homing pigeons have a natural ability to find their way home from any point of departure.

Winston enjoyed huge support with messages from fans on his Facebook profile and constant tweets on his Twitter feed. 

He himself also twittered several times with comments like "flying weather cloudy and cool, feeling good, no major problems to report... Hillcrest traffic is a worry".

Right from the start, the general consensus was that Winston would beat Telkom.

Cyber Stone Age

South Africans have long lamented the country's slow internet connections and limited bandwidth. 

Despite the launch of the new Seacom cable about two months ago and promises of superfast internet at affordable prices, South Africans are still stuck in the Cyber Stone Age.

The Unlimited Group initiated the pigeon race after intensive research in alternative methods of delivering electronic data fast and efficiently.

"We came across the lesser spotted internet protocol: IPoAC or CPIP, commonly known as Internet protocol over Avian Carrier or Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol respectively," the company said in a statement on their website.

Hundreds of fans followed Winston's historic flight online, however, many of them had to settle for Twitter updates, as, ironically, their internet connections were too slow to watch the live stream.

"Crap! Internet connection useless! Unable to watch live stream, plse post running commentary so we know how Winston's doing!,"  Jackyah333 tweeted on Twitter.

"Yeah thats why this #pigeonrace2009 is a great spectacle of telecoms inadequacy ;)" another Winston fan Kahlil_Incubus added.

According to a Sapa report, Telkom spokesperson Pynee Chetty declined to comment on Winston's win, requesting the news agency to send questions via e-mail.

Food for digestive thought

1. A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for!

2. Intelligence is like underwear. It is important that you have it, but not necessary that you show it off!

3. If your dreams determine your future, why not go to sleep now?

4. When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail!

5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

What a lovely Country…

Dozens of killers in Saps'

2009-09-08 22:23

Johannesburg - Dozens of South African policemen have committed murders and rapes between March 2008 and March 2009, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa has said.

In a written response to a question in Parliament, Mthethwa said more than 600 police had been investigated by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), which found some had also abused drugs and stolen property.

It is unclear how many faced criminal prosecution and if they are still in the police service, said the minister.

38 cops guilty of murder 

"To obtain the information would be time-consuming. The redeployment of police employees to carry out this task would be to the detriment of other essential duties or service delivery to the community," said Mthethwa.

A copy of his response was obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

The ICD found 38 policemen "guilty" of murder, 33 of attempted murder and 30 of rape. The highest number of offenses was for theft, with 108.

Questions of credibility

"The total number of members charged (committed crimes) in the financial year 2008/2009 were 669," said Mthethwa.

The findings could raise questions over the credibility of the Saps, charged with tackling one of the world's highest rates of violent crime and making the streets safe before the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

There were 18 487 murders, 36 190 rapes, and 14 201 reported hijackings in 2007-8, according to police. 

About 50 people are murdered each day.

- Reuters

The Face of Police SA

Ok so it's been a blogging dry spell for me as of late, haven't really had a chance to get intimate with the keyboard so to speak, however, the years have done something to the metal head in me and I have somewhat calmed down and conformed to the norms of everyday life L.

 

In fact just the other day I entered (yes me) a "modeling" competition K its called The Face Of Police WOW…

Anyways if any of you are keen on getting me closer to victory click here and vote smoking J
http://bit.ly/f3H0N

 

Peace

 

Till later J

TGK

Meet Osiris

Ok so this is really getting to be quite a mixed up story, however I tell this now, for today I mention what's going to happen to my dog Osiris…

So il skip forward to earlier this year (2009 ;) ) myself and the wife went to the Animal Welfare to adopt a little "devil-dog" and Osiris we called him. He is light brown, a cross Alsatian and Staffie, cute lovable bastard.

Anyway this morning is his six month birthday, and he's getting snipped K so off I go to the vet, so to everyone out there, welcome Osiris and this is his last day of being a man L

Peace

The 1st Gig

So after the switch in roles we practiced for a lifetime it seemed, and turned down quite a few gigs, due to nerves I rate. Either way eventually we accepted the initial/1st/power house ;) gig which was the opening act at a friend’s 16th birthday/house party.

We got on stage and the MC introduced us as "Cell Tone", and behind the scenes we had changed our name, (on the night of our first show a name change, who the F**k does that) from Cell Tone (which I found sounded too much like the device bleh) to [Dv]8.

We had 3 songs of our own which went off like a dream the crowd loved it, loved it so much that a dude actually had his shirt ripped in the pit which he then later gave to me (weird?).

Then we played the last song of our set, the song that ppl would remember us by for some time, KoRn - Blind :)

Was HUGE....

The early stages...

Ok so back to the story, it must have been around September of 2001, myself and 3 friends from high school formed a alternative band that had no name bleh.
(Oh for the purpose of this story all the ppl involved will be renamed to some wierd sh*t)

So this 3 piece consisting of drums (myself - however i was kit-less), Guitar (The big bear) and Bass (Church boy). We found another Guitarist (Yetti) who brought to the table the name Celltone.

So now we were a 4 piece with a name and no vocalist and a drummer without a kit - bummer.

Eventually early 2002, we found a drummer with a kit so i was then phased out of that position in the band and moved into the new one, the one that would change my life/lifestyle...