Jonathan's Musings

In this day in age of throw away society and the rapid pace of development, humans as a species are generating enormous amounts of waste which is not bio-degradable nor of any practical use after a certain time.

Things like fax machines, telephones, computers, mobile phones... that are outdated as soon as you've bought them and are generally cheaper to replace than repair a year or two later!

I'm sure that some of you, like myself, are loath to throw away old electronics which you know could be useful to someone or have some value if only in the metals and components they contain.

Recently I've needed to do a cleanup of such items and did a bit of searching around to see what could be done with them. Most 1st world countries are well on their way in tackling this issue of e-Waste and while South Africa is a bit behind, I am glad to say there are solutions for us as well!

The motto of most anti-waste movements is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Reduce speaks to trying to use less throw away products and thereby reducing the amount of waste generated. I hope most of us try and do that anyway. Reuse speaks to selling old stuff or giving it away to worthy causes. Sure thing, but that only helps if it is working and if it isn't so outdated that they'd just throw it away themselves! If this is the case, then the only option left to you is: Recycle!

If you have equipment such as this, I urge you to visit this site about e-waste and the recycling thereof and find out where you can take stuff in your area.

I was extremely happy to hear that PikiTip (The JHB metro waste disposal company) offers a service whereby you can take equipment such as this, to normal garden refuse sites and place it in a special bin! They will then pass it on to Reclam who will recycle it.

You can get a list of PikiTup sites participating in this program on the e-Waste website, on PikiTup's website or by phoning PikiTup's call centre.

The Woodmead Garden Refuse Site is my next stop when next I go through to JHB and I will have a smile on my face when I gleefully toss my old dud monitors, phones and printers into the bin, knowing that at least there is some life left in them!

I suppose I am violating the common held laws of conversation topics by bringing politics onto my blog, but I feel that as a South African, I must voice my disgust and contempt for our President, Thabo Mbeki.

What did he do when South Africa was (and is) faced with the huge pandemic of HIV/AIDS?
He stalled the release of anti-retorvirals which could have saved many lives.

What has he done about the current crime situation that pervades almost every aspect of South African life?
Nothing effective.

Did he do anything about Robert Mugabe's Government's recent complete and utter disregard for the laws of good governance and the upholding of human rights?
Nope.

In my opinion, he is a coward, who rather that facing the issues (which may force him to, heaven forbid, admit he was wrong or speak out against his peers), seems content to rather glide beneath the radar and ignore/defend his government's incompetence and inability to deal with the prominent issues facing South Africa and its people as well as those of our neighbouring countries.

But hey, what do I know! I'm not a political analyst... But Tony Leon (A man I have far greater respect for) does know what he's talking about. Read his views on the matter.

As is obvious by now, I like Paul Graham's essays ;-)

So much so that I added the RSS feed indicated on his site to my news reader of choice.

I didn't like the fact that it didn't include a brief description of the article though, so decided to create one that did.

Took some educated guesses at pattern matching between the articles so I could generate the descriptions (You don't make it easy though, Paul... as the HTML is quite sticky) and slapped together a PHP file to do the processing, and "Voila!"... an RSS feed with descriptions was created ;-)

You can get this feed by using this link:
http://word.lazyant.co.za/content/pgessays.php

This will give you a feed of the last 20 essays, with descriptions of 500 characters, in RSS 0.91 format. Optionally, you can add a format parameter with any of the following values: atom, js, rss20, rss10 or rss091 to receive the feed in your preferred format.
eg. http://word.lazyant.co.za/content/pgessays.php?format=rss20

Paul Graham is my new favourite writer!

Besides his great article on startups (discussed in my previous post), he has a number of other "essays" on his site which I opened while reading the article on startups.

The first article I read of those opened was entitled "Why Nerds are so Unpopular".

It is an extremely insightful discussion of the modern schooling system and a look at the social maneuverings of the various groups in it (Nerds, Freaks and the popular kids).

Being part of the Nerd group at school, I always felt out of place, and felt that life would really start once I had got all this stupidity out of the way! While I probably always innately knew I was right and knew the reasons for my seeming separation, I never dwelled on it.

This article puts into words what I always felt, but never truly expressed.

If you were/are a nerd, read this article.

If you are a nerd still in school, why are you still reading my post?

In the current stage of development I find myself, I am very interested in ideas and how to turn them into successful ventures.

I also find it extremely interesting reading about other people who have done the same thing (eg. The Google Guys).

A like minded associate of mine and I have been discussing such ideas over the past while and he recommended I read an article by Paul Graham about startups.

(Paul Graham and his fellow founders started a company called Viaweb in the US which eventually was bought by Yahoo for approximately $45mil and is today known as Yahoo! Store.)

I have just finished reading it, and can highly recommend to just about anyone thinking of starting a startup (In my book, that should be everyone, so read it even if you have never thought of it!)

It is very true, delightfully funny, and inspirational!