by R.I. Pienaar | Feb 16, 2004 | Uncategorized
This weekend I flew Cape Town Johannesburg and back on SAA. I was very impressed.
Everything went right, I did my booking using voyager miles that I accumulated over the years and paid a grand total of R175 for my return ticket. I cannot remember a single detail about the flight that was wrong, the air planes were nice and big inside, lots of leg room and overhead storage room. The staff was super friendly and helpful – even greeting in no less than 5 languages, the food we were served on both flights were very nice and the flights ran perfectly on time.
I misread my return ticket to Cape Town and so missed the flight, without a single hassle at all they booked me on a later flight, even waiving the R75 ticket change fee.
Excellent and a huge improvement from the last time I flew them, its good to know you actually get something for your extra money you would pay.
by R.I. Pienaar | Feb 11, 2004 | Uncategorized
Today I noticed my Windows Updated is telling me to update my Bookshelf Symbol 7 font and that it is marked critical. Immediately interested to know what is so critical about a font I read the knowledge base article which says:
A critical update is available to remove unacceptable symbols from the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font that is included with Microsoft Office 2003. The Bookshelf Symbol 7 font is contained in the Bssym7.ttf file.
After some googling I came across the following statement from Microsoft:
Microsoft has learned of a mistake in the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font included in the Microsoft Office System client applications. Due to an unintentional oversight, we failed to identify, prior to the release, the presence of two swastikas within the font. We apologize for this and for any offense caused. Microsoft is taking immediate measures to remedy the issue for all customers.
Some further reading up about it got me across the following blog posting where someone points at legit use of swastika’s, I think the world should just get over it and move on, this kind of censoring is insane.
by R.I. Pienaar | Feb 9, 2004 | Uncategorized
I made the mistake of buying a return ticket to Johannesburg from Cape Town with kulula.com. The internet site was a bit broken but a few refreshes got it going again and I thought it would all be fine – I should have just given up here.
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by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 8, 2004 | Uncategorized
In many large cities there are train, bus, underground and sometimes water based public transport systems, these can be very confusing and you can spend hours a month staring at various maps to figure out the best route from A to B. Enter Mรฉtro a tool for your Palm, PocketPC or Smartphone that will calculate the quickest route or route with the fewest changes for any of these systems. It currently covers over 250 Cities and amazingly is also freeware.
A full overview with plenty of screenshots are available here so I will not be posting any screenshots here, but this is an essential tool for anyone living or traveling to a large city.
Important features include:
- More than 250 cities covered
- Interface available in more than 30 languages
- Compute routes based on Place of Interest, Station Name, Contact details for some stops.
- Contact list with address/station associations in order to do route computes based on contact name
- Full display of stops on individual lines
- Auto-completion of inputs
This is definetely an essential tool, one that I have been using since about 2000 on my Palm based PDA’s
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 7, 2004 | Uncategorized
Since the iPaq I got has both bluetooth and wifi it is very useful in a networked environment and so the obvious requirement is a networking tool that can do the usual diagnostics work. I found a excellent freeware tool called vxUtil from Cambridge Computer Corporation.
Features:
- DNS Audit
- DNS Lookup
- Finger
- Get HTML
- Network Interface Info like ifconfig or ipconfig
- IP Subnet Calculator
- Password Generator
- Ping and Ping Sweeper
- Port Scanner
- Quote
- Time Service client
- Traceroute
- whois
All round excellent tool one that I often use, view the extended entry to see screenshots of it in action.
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by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 6, 2004 | Uncategorized
I have created a new category for iPaq and Pocket PC related postings, I am hoping to post here bits about all the software I use on my iPaq mostly as a place where I can come back and find things that I loose but also in the hope that someone will be finding it interesting.
A shortcoming in the Pocket PC 2003 OS in my view is the lack of a simple to locate battery monitor, the battery monitor only appears when the iPaq is nearly flat otherwise it is buried deep in the settings menus. I found a good freeware system tray battery meter at Birdsoft and it works really well so far, below a screenshot of it in action. It does not provide much functionality but clicking on the icon allows you to click on short cuts to the power management and the battery management of the iPaq, not much else you would want from such a tool.
