arbitrary user

Jonathan Endersby, Recovering Technologist

Why you probably shouldn’t buy an HTC phone in South Africa.

Mar 5

Posted by arbitraryuser in Android, Rants

My mobile phone has a weird bug. The wifi works perfectly and then I leave the house and it never switches over to 3G unless I reboot the phone.

That’s a pretty annoying bug, but what makes it even more annoying is that the problem was actually fixed 8 months ago with the release of Android 1.6. There are also a whole bunch of cool updates as part of that 1.6 release, but still, I’m stuck with version 1.5.

So why not upgrade? Well, the problem lies with a company called Leaf. Leaf are the HTC importers for South Africa. Sadly, if all Leaf did was import the phones we’d be fine, but the over-reaching company gets involved in the process of managing the software on the phones and this is a job they fail at miserably.

When I phoned Leaf to ask when there will be an update made available they said that they were busy “testing” and that I should wait 3 to 4 weeks… This sounds reasonable but unfortunately I can’t believe them. You see, Leaf have a long history of completely stuffing up Android phones in South Africa. This dates back to many many months ago when Leaf first launched the HTC Magic (my phone).

Regular Android phones have an application called “Market” which contains thousands of applications (much like the Apple App Store). You can find all kinds of things like Google Sky Map (hold it up to the sky and it shows you which stars you’re looking at) to apps that make farting sounds. Great stuff, generally.

But when Leaf launched the Magic it came bundled with an app called “Open Market” and no regular “Market”. Open Market had a few (ie, like 30) really really bad applications on it… I think the top rated app was something with wallpapers of dogs. When pressed for an explanation Leaf said that Google didn’t give them permission to use the Market app. After chatting to some people from Google who work on Android it sounds like this “permission” excuse was made up. The more likely explanation is that Leaf were hoping to start selling applications via their Open Market app. Yes, Open Market is developed (used losely) by Leaf. Once they realised that nobody cares about them they buckled and said they were working on an update that included Market… they suggested we wait 3 to 4 weeks while they tested the new version. This was in May.

Eventually, late in August, 5 months after promising something in 3 to 4 weeks, Leaf quietly released an update on their website. The phone was finally what I’d paid for… a fully fledged Android phone… but only for a few weeks as Android released version 1.6 a few days later.

One of the big attractions of Android, and certainly why I bought my phone, is the Open Source and constantly evolving platform… The idea that your phone’s operating system isn’t frozen in time for 2 years and can get updates (automatically if you want)…Unfortunately Leaf are just plain incompetent and don’t seem to care that they’re selling a device that isn’t quite what the customer paid for… Our phones are stuck in time… and, when pushed for an answer we’re told again “3 to 4 weeks”.

When I eventually lost my cool and tracked down Peter, Leaf’s marketing person, he said I should send him an email and that he would get me some answers in a few days… He then got his PR agency to phone me and promise that they would get me some answers the next day… Perhaps ironically it has been 3 weeks and I’m yet to get anything out of them.

So here are the questions I asked Peter in that email 3 weeks ago.

  • When will the HTC Magic get a 1.6 ROM
  • Why has it taken so long? (8 months and counting)
  • What is Leaf doing to correct the problems with the process and how are they going to convince consumers that buying via Leaf is a good idea?

Until Leaf can answer these questions I would advise against buying any HTC products in South Africa.You’re just not getting what you paid for.

The end.

ps. I heard that Leaf are bringing in two new HTC phones, the Legend and Desire… Both look like sweet phones, it’s a pity that if Leaf will probably ruin it for anyone who buys the phone by never releasing any updates. Cash in hand baby, cash in hand.

14 Comments

Getting jacked at Nobu.

Feb 23

Posted by arbitraryuser in Food

I desperately want to be thrilled by food. I am an addict and the drugs don’t work.

Like any addict, I am always looking for the next fix… something that will alter my perception of the world, align the planets and the let me commune with the animals. I’ve had Buffalo Ribs in Canada that could make a grown man cry, I’ll eat Vida E’s overpriced little milk tarts over and over again because they are simply perfect everytime. There’s a place around the corner that does an awesome steak roll for R55 and comes with the most amazing sauce. I’ve had boerewors rolls that tasted like heaven. I’ve had instant coffee out of a flask on the top of table mountain, and it rivalled the best… and I’ve eaten at some pretty swanky places (including my own couch, courtesy of my fiance who knows a few things about foood).

When an addict hears about a new dealer on the scene with new, supposedly awesome, crack… the addict does what addicts do… They go and get them some…

This is the point in the story where you find me sitting at a table, having just found of that the ambiguous, nothing-to-write-home-about, cocktail I’d just consumed actually cost R90… I had previously joked about it costing R70… har – fucking – har… and I’m paying for two of us.

The wine list goes around and of course with R90 cocktails the wine was going to be priced crazily… We settled on a bottle that cost R280, for wine that probably sells for less than R60…The waiter said that the by-the-bottle prices were slightly cheaper. They weren’t… we figured this out afterwards. Some snacks are brought to the table for us to “try”.

We all went for the Bento Box special. R195 for a box of 6 dishes. 1. Deep fried calamari pieces (nice) 2. White fish (boring and possibly overdone) 3. Rice and misc veggie (boring) 4. Two tiny pieces of fish rolled up and served on a bed of greens.. (boring) 5. Ceviche (overdone <— How do you achieve that?) 6. Five pieces of sushi: Two Nigiri (boring) and Three small Maki with the tiniest amount of fish (bleh)

The desert was actually nice. Malva pudding sliver with a melon ball sized dollop of citrusy ice cream and some very tasty creme anglaise.

I ordered coffee… it was okay. Not R26 okay, but okay.

The bill arrives and I bring up the fact that they’ve charged us for the snacks they brought to the table… R120 for 12 bleh little taco snacks (there were 7 of us) and R40 for the bowl of steamed beans they brought us at the bar when I was savouring my very expensive, very regular tasting, cocktail. Oh also, R35 for having a tab opened.

So after feeling relatively jacked by the generally boring food, I have to add the not so lovely feeling of being jacked by the waiter bringing random shit to the table and expecting us to pay for it. This was corrected.

It’s said that if you have to ask how much the yacht costs you can’t afford it… and perhaps all the shiny rich people who were at Nobu this evening didn’t think twice paying for their not-so-complimentary taco-snacks and overpriced, boring food… and that’s fine… but I’m not them, and if you’re reading this you probably aren’t one of them either. You’re probably an addict just like me looking for the next fix…

And if you’re like me you are actually willing to spend R450 on a meal that blows your mind and makes you connect with the trees and unicorns. Sadly we’re going to have to keep on looking because it isn’t at Nobu.

I guess I’m not drinking the kool-aid on this one. All the 70’s décor and odd Japanese cliché entrance chants can’t make up for the fact that Nobu was, quite sadly, “regular”… regular and very overpriced.

Perhaps I’m just too poor to eat at places like Nobu? I think though that this is more about feelings and boring food than the wallet damage. I guess Nobu will probably always have a steady stream of stupidly-wealthy hotel guests to fill its tables, but I do not believe that they aren’t hoping desperately for some regular bread-and-butter income from the few million Capetonians living on their doorstep. I don’t see that happening unless Nobo figures out that while there are some of us willing to spend healthy amounts of cash on good food, we expect that food to be better than all the other places we regularly eat at.

ps. I still think Willoughby’s has amazing value for money and you should try Mango Ginger in Observatory for that awesome steak roll. We had lunch at Madre’s Kitchen in Stanford this weekend… stunning.

2 Comments

Corporate Call Centre Rules

Feb 1

Posted by arbitraryuser in Rants, Service

callgirl
  1. Try to employ people who are very apathetic. Your training costs will be reduced as they are far less likely to resign.
  2. When you have your phone system installed, make sure that departments are unable to transfer calls to other departments. By doing this it is far more likely that the customer will just stop calling.
  3. Involve as many people as possible in every process (More hands make light work!) and encourage “arms-length” customer relations. If anything goes wrong it’s best if there’s nobody to blame.
  4. Never transfer the call to a manager, instead always take a message and promise that the manager will return the call within the hour. Obviously the consultant can not be held responsible if the manager never returns the call because everyone knows that managers are very busy managing things.
  5. Managers should never call customers, this is a waste of their time being managers. Instead, let juniors deal with the problem and decide amongst themselves that nobody is to blame. This keeps the company “Dynamic”.
  6. Serious complaints should not be answered by consultants, even if they know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.  Instead, let the already angry customer wait days for a manager to “investigate” before replying.
  7. Voicemail is a great weapon in the modern corporate’s fight against customers. The best voicemail systems should answer almost immediately so that consultants aren’t bothered by ringing phones. Also, make the message as generic as possible so the customer has no idea if their message will reach its intended recipient. Computer “glitches” are a great way to explain the lack of response to voicemail.
  8. Be big, really big. So big that if a customer phones the same number 100 times they are still unlikely to ever get the consultant they originally dealt with.
  9. Employ staff whose language and diction are sub-standard. These individuals are great at deflecting customers; most will just give up after 20 seconds of trying to understand what’s going on.
  10. Always remember, if the customer came to you they must be really desperate! Treat them like crap, anything less risks being confused as “customer service”.
2 Comments

Who are you?

Dec 28

Posted by arbitraryuser in Life, Philosophy

2010 promises to be an incredible year. I am now officially employed by my own company. I can come and go as I please — as long as the work gets done… that’s an awesome situation to be in, however it is simultaneously terrifying.

The buck stops with me. There is no leave, no ‘office hours’, no room for failure. The project can’t get shut down by ‘higher-ups’ and there are no bosses to blame, no archaic “that’s-the-way-we’ve always-done-it”s to get in the way. If something isn’t 100% perfect it’s my problem and my job to fix it. The important business decisions are made by myself and the other directors. There’s a certain arrogance that is required to walk into a situation like this and even though I’m generally quite arrogant (ask my friends), I am truly humbled by it.

All these changes naturally found me updating my About Me page and I was reminded of something that I was asked by my Zen Master (yes, I had a Zen Master) a few years ago. “Who are you?”. I went through the process of listing off a bunch of traits and characteristics, eventually resorted to rattling off qualifications… The whole while he sat quietly, saying nothing. When I eventually stopped talking he again asked “Who are you?”.

“Jonathan Endersby” I replied, hoping that perhaps he had forgotten my name. “Correct!” he said happily.

At the time I didn’t get it… but over the years it has become a profoundly clear truth. Traits and characteristics are just our (very human) way of trying to identify the similarities between ourselves and other people. We do this purely for the benefit of others… We reduce ourselves to labels so that they can make assumptions about us. Obviously this isn’t a bad thing. If you’re a medical doctor it’s far easier to say “I am a doctor” than to say “I am Gregory House”… especially if someone is bleeding to death and needs help.

The important thing is to make sure that you never let those characteristics define who you are… In other words: You are You… Characteristics are just words that describe you… You must never confuse the two… If you think that the word “entrepreneurial” is a good way to describe yourself, that’s great… but be careful never to let the label have an influence over who you are or what you do. When you let your labels start to have an impact on your thoughts or actions you’re on the first step to becoming generic, boring, useless even.

Why does this matter? I believe that introspection is a very important part of life. Knowing who you really are… What you stand for, what makes you tick etc… These are the things that we should be drawing on when we need to make tough decisions. Knowing who I really was helped me get to where I am now and will continue to help me make the tough decisions I need to make in the future.

So, here’s to 2010 and knowing who you are. May they both be the start of many great things!

2 Comments

Learning Photography

Dec 4

Posted by arbitraryuser in Philosophy, Photography

This started as a comment on Joe’s blog post about one of the courses at the Cape Town School of Photography. I do not consider myself a good photographer by an stretch of the imagination, but I do have fun and right now I’m happy with that. One day when I live on a farm I’ll get past step 3.

I think the best way to learn is to:

  1. Learn the absolute basics of photography – Buy a book on photography… If the book pre-dates digital it’s a good thing!.
  2. Figure out how the basic photography concepts map to your camera.
  3. Take lots of pictures. Set yourself goals like “Today I’m going to take pictures of straight lines” etc.
  4. Repeat step number 3 for 6 months to a year.
  5. Consider going on an advanced course but it must be a *photography* course, not a DSLR course… Aspiring writers don’t go on MS Word courses, neither should you.
  6. Try and find people on websites like flickr whose stuff you really like and examine it in depth… figure out exactly what it is about a certain photograph that you like. Try remember that stuff next time you’re taking photographs.
  7. Start critiquing your photographs. A tiny bit of over exposure, slightly off composition etc. If you can, get other photographers to do the same for you… unfortunately you might not agree with what they have to say… everyone has their own style.
  8. Apply the critique and tighten up your technique.
  9. Ask yourself the question: Am I trying to be a photographer or take photographs that capture something, say something, do something?
  10. Do whatever it is that makes step 9 a reality.
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Murray and Goethe

Nov 9

Posted by arbitraryuser in Life, Philosophy

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

- W. H. Murray

ps. I’m engaged :)

5 Comments

The Times regrets the error.

Oct 14

Posted by arbitraryuser in Uncategorized

In 1920 the New York Times famously stated “That Professor Goddard, with his chair in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react—to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

Robert H. Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was a professor of physics and the pioneer of modern rocketry, but perhaps more importantly he was a scientist who dared to speak the unspeakable… that man could one day travel to the moon… He was dismissed as being a crazy person.

He spent his life building, testing and perfecting liquid fueled rockets, he was often laughed at and ridiculed with newspapers running headlines like “Moon rocket misses target by 238,799 1/2 miles.” He never gave up.

50 years after that embarrassing New York Times blunder,  and the day after the Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the New York Times issued an apology. It read “Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”

Now read “The collider, the particle and a theory about fate“.

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Ging!

Sep 28

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Ging, Life

This evening at the GeekDinner someone pointed out that I haven’t blogged about my cat, and best of all, they weren’t being sarcastic.

So for everyone who’s not following me on twitter, here goes.

just over a month ago someone posted an email to the community mailing list saying that they had rescued a kitten from the train station and asking if anyone had lost it. The cat would end up at an animal shelter if no owner was found and that just wasn’t an option so I mailed the woman and told her that I would take the kitten if nobody had claimed it after a few days.

A few days later we got Ging.

Ging likes to eat.

Ging likes to eat.

Ging is the most precocious cat in the world. She’s tiny but is fearless and wants to explore everything.

Ging is always ready to pounce.

Ging is always ready to pounce.

But Ging is also a lover.

Ging loves things that are tasty.

Ging loves things that are tasty.

But never, EVER, turn your back.

Because the Ging will get you!

Because the Ging will get you!

Ging sits on my lap while I work and lies on my chest while I watch TV. It’s all incredibly cutesy, but I must admit that I’m totally sold on cats now. Dogs are still awesome, but in a very very different way.

As usual you can see more of my photos on my flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbitraryuser/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbitraryuser/
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Quick and Simple Server SMTP

Sep 15

Posted by arbitraryuser in Linux, Tech, hacking

I have a number of servers that I look after in various places on the intertubes. I like to have things like MDADM (Linux software RAID manager) be able to mail me when the something goes wrong like a disk dies etc.

Some of these machines are in places without reliable SMTP servers for me to send mail through and I’ve tried running my own postfix and delivering the mail directly, but invariably I run into situations where the servers that I’m trying to deliver mail to don’t like DSL IPs… and not getting a mail about a dead disk is kinda a big issue.

I also don’t trust a lot of ISP’s SMTP, and some of my servers move around, so one day it’ll be behind a DSL IP and the next behind a Verizon IP (where it can’t talk to smtp.dslprovider.net etc).

My solution is quite simple, use google. (This guide is for Ubuntu but I’m sure you’ll figure it out with other distros)

  1. Create a gmail account for monitoring. I do this because I don’t want my gmail password floating around in plaintext on various machines.
  2. Install the ca-certificates package

    $ sudo aptitude install ca-certificates
    $ sudo update-ca-certificates

  3. Install msmtp

    $ sudo apt-get install msmtp

  4. Configure msmtp

    $ sudo vim /etc/msmtprc

    Set it to something like

    account gmail
    host smtp.gmail.com
    from myemailaddress@gmail.com
    auth on
    tls on
    tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
    user notifyemailaddress@gmail.com
    password mys3cr3tp455w0rd
    port 587

    account default : gmail

  5. Create a sendmail simlink

    $ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/msmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail

  6. Run a test

    $ echo “This is a an awesome test email” | msmtp youremail@domain.com

  7. If you want mdadm to mail you when something goes wrong

    $ sudo vim /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

    and put your email address on the line that reads something like

    MAILADDR youremail@domain.com

  8. And then run a mdadm test by running

    $ sudo mdadm –monitor –scan –test –oneshot

  9. If everything is working according to plan you should receive an email. You can now rest assured that any future MDADM issues will get to you.
1 Comment

You can keep Mr Huntley

Sep 7

Posted by arbitraryuser in Life, Politics, Rants, Uncategorized

Part of me wants to write a scathing commentary on how much of a tonsil I think Brandon Huntley is, but there’s no point in beating a dead horse so I’ll just say it once. Brandon Huntley is an a-grade, raging, super massive ass hole. There, I’m done.

Canada is a lovely country, it’s so lovely it gets boring. When I was living there they had a shooting in Alberta. For two days the news covered this shooting, which is entirely reasonable until you found out that nobody actually died; in fact nobody was even hurt… actually, nobody was even shot at… it was just a guy shooting his gun into the air to show how much of a man he was. For two days they covered something that probably happens on an almost hourly basis in the Cape Flats. When a Canadian says their car was hijacked they actually mean it was stolen…. when they weren’t around, stolen… because in Canada the idea of someone actually forcing you out of your own car at gunpoint is just too far fetched for them to comprehend. Keep that in mind.

Canadians are also lovely people, they are friendly and helpful. I didn’t meet any racist Canadians while I lived there, but I also didn’t meet many black people. Canada has a much better reputation for “knowing about other countries” than the Americans, but the truth is that a lot of them, while *knowing* full well that we have cities and suburbs etc, still have a very romanticised, sleeping in tents in the bush with the lions roaring in the distance, idea of South Africa.

In contrast, South Africa is a pretty scary place at times. We have levels of crime that are unbelievable. Babies getting raped, people getting shot for the cars etc, just insane… and it’s published internationally.

Enter Brandon Huntley. He went to De Villier’s Graaf High School in Villiersdorp, an Afrikaans boarding school about 100km outside of Cape Town. This is a school for kids who had been expelled from other schools or wanted to get as far away from their parents as possible, a school where the machismo and racism run side by side. The boys are tough; disputes are resolved in fist fights where the loser can walk away covered in blood, and the winner, a hero. Kids go through initiations that involve being caned repeatedly for no reason. The idea that any boy who attended De Villiers Graaf High School could end up as the repeated victim of racially motivated attacks is very very hard to believe. And I should know; I went to school with Brandon Huntley… I only stayed for a year. He was 1 year ahead of me.

I don’t remember Brandon clearly but his face seems familiar and based on what people who knew him better have said about him, he fits very neatly into a stereotype that existed in the school. Hard, tough and mean. He did martial arts and played rugby.

Brandon claims that he was attacked multiple times, by black people, who attacked him because he was white. To put this in context, I have never been attacked by a black person. I know a few people who have been mugged by black people, but they knew, just as their attacker knew, that the attack wasn’t motivated by the colour of their skin, but merely because they had stuff worth stealing. When Lucky Dube’s attacker pulled the trigger it was because Lucky was driving a luxury vehicle… No other reasons, No racism needed.

Brandon claims to have scars on his body from all the times he was stabbed by black people who were attacking him because he was white. I find it so incredibly far fetched that a tough white kid who went to the school he did, and subsequently lived in the suburbs he lived in, ever got attacked by anyone… without provocation. I think that it’s far more believable that Brandon went around looking for shit, picking fights with people in night clubs and occasionally came off second best.

There are really two issues here.

1. Brandon lied in order to stay in Canada. There are some unforgivable lies. Lying about being the victim of racially based attacks in South Africa is one of them. Brandon has perverted the most painful element of South Africa’s history to his advantage and in doing so has brought about a world of pain for himself. I’m sure he never thought that we would find out what he’d said, but now he has made himself unwelcome in two countries… one of them being the country of his birth. We legally have to take him back… pity.

2. The Canadian authorities believed his lies. The individual who processed Brandon’s application is definitely a racist. Brandon’s story seems unbelievable, even to most Canadians. To be in a position within government responsible for dealing with foreigners on a daily makes this official’s ignorance unbelievable… ie. I don’t believe that he really believed Brandon, I think he just wanted to help Brandon get away from the savage and vengeful blacks that both believed in. The part of this story that is so incredibly sad to me is this: The officer responsible for approving Brandon’s racist lies is also responsible for approving, or denying, the refugee applications from countries like Darfur. What chance do honest, petrified human beings, whose families have been slaughtered and who happen to be black, have of gaining asylum when being interviewed by a man like that?

1 Comment