Melanie Voerman

“Congratulations, you and your MacBook Pro
were made for each other.”

For all, who are interested in the new OS for Mac which will be in the shops tomorrow: There is a showcase at Digicape!

And even if you know all about the new features already - tomorrow you’ll finally get the chance to testdrive it yourself…

Venue: Digicape
Address: 1 Roeland Square, cnr Roeland & Canterbury Streets
Date & time: Fri 26 Oct, 6pm

And for those who don’t know anything about the new features yet Digicape is giving away 100 free Leopard tutorial discs!

I grew up in Germany and was thought some habits to save energy and be environmentally friendly. As I came to SA I found that lots of these things are not in everybody’s head here. So here is my list of things I automatically do:

• switch off appliances when I leave a room (TV, Radio, Lights), also don’t leave the TV on standby
• switch the car off, when I stop - sometimes even on robots with long red-phases
• use paper on both sides. I use the back of old printing paper as scribbling paper for shopping lists and phone notes
• turn the tap off when I’m brushing my teeth or washing my hair in the shower
• avoid tins and tetra packs and prefer glass bottles (very difficult here in SA!)
• Use my own shopping bags and avoid plastic bags
• Use lunch boxes instead of clear wrap and tin foil (for lunch sandwiches as well as cheese or left over food in the fridge)
• Keep rubbish on me till I see a dust bin (too often I see kinds dropping the plastic of their chocolate or chips)
• If I ever have a garden, I’ll have a compost heap

Most of these things are not just good for the environment but save money as well.

In Germany every household has 4 bins: Plastic, Paper, Bio and residual waste. So I’m used to separate my waste and it actually hurts a but to through it all in one bin. I’ve heard there is a place to drop glass and paper of somewhere in town. If someone knows more about that, please let me know!

What really concerns me is the disposal of old batteries - in Germany we have a collection point for them and one is not allowed to through them into the normal bin - how is that here in SA?!

This was my contribution to the blog action day.

On October 15th, bloggers around the world will write on one topic: the environment. As far I could see only 3 South African Blogs are listed yet - and I think it’s time to change that!

So - get involved!

Saturday, half past five: I am sitting at the bar at the Deer Park Cafe and look around: There are some Microphones and a Guitar in the front, a guy with a camera and some people sitting in groups around tables. I order a fresh fruit juice and watch the scene…

7 o’clock: The Cafe is now quite full and Heather and Jimmy step to the front to open the event. The atmosphere is open and inspirational. I don’t know one person in the room but had already some interesting conversations. I feel part of the mixed crowd and enjoy all the Geek T-shirts. I would say, this party is a success : )

Wine and snacks were for free, two singers and a few talks made it personal and everyone was open to meet and connect. I spoke to many people about things like Wikipedia, Open Street Maps, the One Laptop per Child Project, Facebook and the Cape Linux User Group and got lots of new thoughts and ideas.

Thanks for this great event!

Now I’m looking forward to the GeekDinner to meet some of the people again!

Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Heather Ford (from iCommons) started the “50 great parties club“. They call the open source communities around the world to organize a party.

The Cape Town Party with Heather and Jimmy happens to be just around the corner from where I stay.

Via: GeekDinner, Dave Duarte

I’ll report back!

From Germany I know BarCamps. Well, I never got the chance to attend to one but always found it very interesting. Unfortunately the Cape Town BarCamp seems to be dead. I assumed there was very little community behind it. Only slowly I found some Sites and Blogs from people in Cape Town who actually do what I do. Now I found out, that I was just searching for the wrong expression: Here the geeks meet for a GeekDinner - it seems to have a similar concept than the BarCamp; just shrunk to one evening. Two days after checking out the Cape Town GeekDinner Scene an email arrived with the message:

“The fourth in the new series of Cape Town GeekDinners will be held on Thursday, September the 27th, at Summerville in Camps Bay, at 19:00 for 19:30.”

I’ve put my name on the list and hope the little one knows his due-date…

How exciting!

At University logo design was always known as one of the hardest disciplines in Design.

I would not call myself a Designer and I would not dare to offer logo design.

But I must say: it is fun to get creative with a name. And I was amazed how quickly you get to a whole selection of ‘Logos’…

It all started in 2004: I worked six month for Flatspin as Web Developer during my ‘practical semester’. More about my internship on the website I created at that time and in my report.

As I returned to Cape Town last year I worked as a freelancer and Flatspin became my first ‘clients’ - till they offered me to step in for Richard, one of the partners of the company who was going on a one year sabbatical.

In December I started as Project Manager and took over, what Richard had done in the past years: Client Relationship Management, internal and external project management and the occasional website update and code fix.

I enjoyed meetings with clients, the conceptual work on websites and the responsibility for quotes, clients and projects. Now it is all over - sooner than expected: Yesterday was my last day at Flatspin – I am now officially on maternity leave.

I don’t have too many plans yet on what to do next – I’ll keep that open till I know how well I will cope with the inevitable ; )

The idea is so simple that we all could have thought of it: if you want to make an image smaller just delete those lines of pixels that contain the least information. Ariel Shamir calles it ‘least energy’ (least contrast/change in detail).

It also works the other way around: if you want to increase the size of an image simply add information there where it is the least noticeable. And if you’d like a certain part of the image to be eliminated just select it and the resize algorithm will take care of it first.

You can’t follow what I am talking about?

Watch this:
YouTube - Image resize

Sources:
Ariel Shamir
Siggraph 2007
Digital Photography Review
Macwelt (german)