Jeff Brown's blog

It's already at www.wildcoast.co.za/node/96

CASABio (Collaborative Archive of South African Biodiversity) is an NGO dedicated to the conservation of the earth's species.

Their bottom line is: get involved!!!
It's one way you CAN help protect our natural heritage.

CASABIO have submitted the following protest posters against the destruction of our Pondoland Center of Endemism:

PRESS RELEASE 12 -04 -2010 N2 TOLL ROAD - GOVERNMENT APPEARS OBLIVIOUS TO THE COMPLEXITY OF REAL ISSUES AT STAKE A recent parliamentary response to questions about the N2 Toll Road, posed to the Minister of Transport, shows the government has a deeply flawed understanding of the broader issues surrounding the N2 Toll road debacle.

SOURCE

Daily News - 5 March 2010

Related Article: * Toll tariffs to rise

By: Christy van der Merwe
10th February 2010

The hearings involving interested parties appealing a decision to grant Transworld Energy Minerals (TEM) a licence to mine heavy minerals from the dunes near Xolobeni on the Wild Coast, scheduled to take place this week, were cancelled.

The committee of four people, which was appointed by the Mining and Minerals Board to oversee the presentations from all parties involved, could not proceed because it had not received the necessary documentation from the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR).

The Legal Resources Centre's submission to DME on behalf of the ACC and Xolobeni community is rather long-winded and dry; but also interesting, and thoroughly convincing: 

THE DEPARTMENT OF MINERALS AND ENERGY

INTERNAL APPEAL/REVIEW OF THE AWARD OF A MINING RIGHT TO TRANSWORLD 
ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES (SA) (PTY) LTD

Appeal/review instituted by:

THE AMADIBA CRISIS COMMITTEE

Directed to:

MINISTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MINERALS AND ENERGY

2 Recent print articles, which only appeared in the Daily Dispatch Online today, have already been published in the Weekend Post and on other environmental sites; proving conclusively that public perception is strongly against the mining:</i>

UPDATE on the proposed exorbitant fee increases. Not so bad after all:

The currently gazetted prices, with effect from 1 October 2010, for fishery permits are as follows:

Not to over-stress the absurdity in the first place, of bureaucratizing access to their coastal resources for the uneducated, impoverished, and already marginalized inhabitants of the Wild Coast; but there has been a recurring theme of blatant government incompetence played out over the past few years at Hole in the Wall.

South Africa: Late Start For Crayfish Licences, Inter Press Service, Thursday, December 31, 2009 (posted by Global Issues)

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=367920

So here's a basic outline of the Volunteer programme I would love to get going: www.wildcoast.co.za/ict4d Please contribute some constructive criticism and/or suggestions. I have this unshakable belief that it's important (even if only for the 2 percentile) and that it will work, but I've got zero resources, and even less confidence, at the minute.

Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, the paramount chief[1], or king, of the Thembu tribe, has been sentenced to an effective 15 years imprisonment.

• Five years for each of the three counts of arson;
• One year for all seven counts of kidnapping;
• One year for defeating the ends of justice;
• Five years for each of three counts of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm; and
• 10 years for culpable homicide.

   

There are arbitrarily 2 types of people on earth: upright dudes, and uptight bastards. Cats and Grinches, or those who grew up reading Dr. Seuss, and those who did not. (Not too sure about the last one, but I speak for myself, and books like The Lorax inspired several generations with a love of reading and a strong bias toward environmental conservation. Thanks to Theodore (Dr. Seuss) Giessel: www.wildcoast.com/lorax)

I posted the following comment on a local resort owners blog (http://chintsa.blogspot.com/) after he came out in favor of the N2 toll road. Needless to say it never went past moderation:

<i>I believe your side of the argument is commonly known as "enlightened self interest": you own a resort on the coast and stand to benefit greatly from any infrastructural improvements and tourism opportunities. Fair enough.

From Avaaz:

Dear friends,

the results are in – more than 100,000 Avaaz members took part in the worldwide vote about whether we should go all out to organise a massive global wake-up call on climate change on September 21, and over 96% of us voted YES!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327236.700-roads-are-ruining-the...

Heh. This is funny. I know it's a fact I'm scared as hell of posting to a Linux user forum or group. I always feel like an idiot.

Still. I loves the penguin.

SoOo. Linux is gay because:

[dm] I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.

[dm] For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me.

[dm] Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid.

[dm] They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.

* ion has quit IRC (Ping timeout)

[dm] brings a tear to my eye... :') so true..

[dm] So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.

[dm] this person must be a kindred spirit of mine

(http://bash.org/?152037?)

A N D . . . to show how much less painful it is to prove what an idiot you are, rather than ask for help on a n*x forum:

[Jon^D] I had to cat 8-9 seperate quote files, compare each line in each of them to make sure there weren't any duplicates then sort
[Jon^D] I wrote a nasty perl script to get it donw
[Jon^D] and it didn't work very well
[skank] cat quote*.txt |sort |uniq

*lol*

A spectacular glimpse of the Wild Coast.

<b>Available from http://www.impactvideo.co.za/prod_det.asp?ID=1520 </b>

Shoreline is a South African documentary series commissioned by SABC 2. It is a multidisciplinary showcase of all the unique and diverse features along our coastline – geology, paleontology, history, settlement patterns, marine biology, ecology etc.

The movie Bustin' Down the Door is named after the controversial article written by Rabbit Bartholomew for Surfer Mag in 1977 - and is a compelling piece of modern history depicting the radical style Australian and South African surfers introduced to Hawaii in the 70's, turning surfing into a professional sport

Everything I know today I learned from Chappies. ;)

Actually these were from Reddit. Also check out "Today I learned" on Reddit.

Last month something went horribly wrong with my data bundle purchase, and after pumping R389 of airtime in, I did the usual and dialed *111# and went through the motions of converting that to a 2Gb data bundle. However something went wrong, and I didn't notice that the transaction didn't complete. So I merrily went ahead and put the SIM into the data card and used up all R389 odd in 3 days... at R2.00 per meg! Extortion!

Worst part is that was when a Drupal upgrade went haywire and I was busy uploading and downloading a 40Mb database and 120Mb data backup.

The Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism have issued an Environmental Authorisation (EA) for the establishment of a 132kV substation at Zwelethu (near Bizana) and 2 x 132kV lines to feed the South Coast, Bizana & Xolobeni region. 

Eros_Port_Edward-Environmental_Authorisation_13Aug09.pdf

Anyone wishing to appeal any aspect of this decision must lodge a notice of intention to appeal with the Minister of DEAT by the 28th August 2009. Further details are contained in the EA.

Beauty passed away last night.

Beauty passed away last night.

A beautiful soul, "Beauty" was my housemaid for many  years, and a beloved friend. She's only about 2 years older than me. I collected her on her way back from seeing an igqirha on Friday night and she was complaining about a terrible headache. I didn't think it was that serious... 

22nd August – 12 September 2009

Lee Jay (11/09/86)
A beautiful 22 year old who was in a shocking car accident in May 2007, when a speeding taxi jumped a red light which destroyed her vehicle and left her with a broken neck, and is now a quadriplegic.

To all our visitors:

During a routine upgrade, a beta module caused a whole load of links and photos to go missing. Restoring the backup, which is about 160Mb, proved to be impossible over a GPRS/Edge connection, and we will be restoring the links manually in due course.

This equation should be taught in all math classes!

From a strictly mathematical viewpoint it goes like this: 

What Makes 100%?

What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.

How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life? 

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions. If: