Google maps, starred places and the four historical forts in Pretoria

Having stayed in Pretoria for over ten years, I thought it would be interesting to  make my children aware of some of the military history of the city going back to the time of the Anglo-Boer War. I tried to find the exact location of the four famous forts in Pretoria and then use the GPS feature on an Android phone to go and find the places. The fourth fort, Fort Daspoortrand  gave me the most problems when I had to repeatedly cross the N4 Bakwena Highway trying to find my way through Gerotek, PMP and all the military fences in the area.

When you "star" a place in Google maps, Google tries to locate the place closest to the nearest registered road. As such it moves your place from where you have marked it.
I tried to  put in a place marker for Fort Daspoortrant at-25.73305 , 28.076740 which is near the mountain north of Lotus Gardens. The "Maps" application on an HTC phone (Wildfire) seems to pick up the place marker without problems, but google maps via Firefox running on a Linux Ubuntu machine ignores the heading of the bookmark (Fort Daspoortrant) and locates the old Boer Fort on the Montana side of the Waterberg mountain! It then associates the Fort with Zander Street. This is a sure way to confuse anyone relying on an accurate place-mark to find the old Fort.
If you try and report the problem to Google, it is almost worse than trying to report an electricity problem to the Tshwane municipality: you are sent from site to site without ever finding a suitable place to report the error.
A good wikipedia article about the forts can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretoria_Forts

Cell Phone Contact Management

For manipulating contacts from an Android phone on Windows, MyPhoneExplorer has some very good features. See:
http://www.avitricks.info/2012/03/whatsapp-pc.html

Tshwane Municipality Domestic Post Paid Electricity Tariffs

The Electricity in the Tshwane Municipality is charged on a sliding scale.
The following explanation gives an idea of how to work out what your domestic electricity is costing you:

Question: Please could you also show how these rates that you have included convert 1057 kWh to R1316.16.

Answer (from NothembaG@TSHWANE.GOV.ZA): The electricity rates table is as follows:

    Band           2011 July 01 to 2012 Jun 30   2012 July 01 to 2013 Jun 30 
i)   1- 100 kWh      R0.9694                               R1.0179
ii)  101-400 k        R1.0294                               R1.1385
iii) 401-650 kWh   R1.0844                               R1.2037
iv)  >650               R1.1554                              R1.2825


I will use the example below: 1057kwh for 27 days.

27/30 *100kwh  = 90 kwh which will be charged with the first tariff rate

27/30*300kwh = 270kwh

27/30*250kwh = 225kwh


1057kwh – 90-270-225 = 472 kwh will be charged with the last rate


I have forwarded to you how the calculations were done, you just add 14% vat to get R1316.16.  R1154.53 *14% = 1316.16

Banks

I noticed that a complaint had been laid with hellopeter about an increase in bank fees at FNB.

 http://www.hellopeter.com/first-national-bank/complaints/safe-custody-fees-increased-625-without-notice-8479hellopeter.com/first-national-bank/complaints/safe-custody-fees-increased

 I have had a similar experience with FNB's exorbitant increases. Have others also experienced this? Maybe the time has come for people to form a society in which we draw up contracts for our accounts with banks such that our rights are protected. At the moment the legal documentation that we sign when we open a bank account is heavily weighted in the bank's favour. If enough people insist on having their own terms, then perhaps we will be a force that the banks will have to listen to. If a particular bank does not listen to us we can boycott that bank and sell any shares in that bank that we might have owned. What do others think?

Beauty, Truth and Justice

For some time I have wondered about the core values that are needed in an educational institution, or for that matter in any institution and the three that come to mind are Beauty, Truth and Justice. In Northern Sotho they would be Botse, Therešo and Thoka. In some way they are covered by the concept of "Botho" (or Ubuntu in the Nguni languages) which is roughly translated as a person's humanity to fellow people. The typical idiom that encapsulates this is "motho ke motho ka batho" or in English - a person is a person because of other people.

This note on the web covers these values quite well and it can be seen that the ideas of striving for beauty, truth and the pursuit of excellence extends back into antiquity. I think these days justice is just as important given the iniquitous inequalities that exist in the world when access to wealth, basic services and education is considered.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/hutchison/040112

Also the following link describes Plato's theory of forms

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/platform.htm

More Energy Concerns

Dr Gary Kendall wrote a piece for the Mail & Guardian which subsequently was printed in the Pretoria news on the 19th July 2012. He makes a case for electric vehicles even though the primary power may have been generated by coal fired power stations.
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/garykendall/2012/05/26/realising-the-potential-of-electricity/

Energy bits and pieces

There has been much analysis about the cost of various technologies used to supply energy. This note will try and list some of the articles that I have come across.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/1863

This is a link to one of Jeremy Wakeford's column:
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/energy-return-on-energy-invested-2012-06-15


And this is a comment from one of Terry Mackenzie-Hoy's columns:

A big wind turbine (Vesta 152) weighs 267 t, so, if it is all steel (which it is not), it must produce at least 4 200 000 000 000 kJ over its life time. If it is a 2 500 kW turbine, then, over 2 000 windy hours in a year, it will produce 180 000 000 000 kJ. Thus, many years will pass before it actually produces more power than it generates. And, on a production basis, a wind turbine has negative energy consumption. So, why, oh, why, are these projects going ahead? Or even being contemplated? ( http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/the-csir-blunders-on-2012-02-03 )

Terry Mackenzie-Hoy replied to my query in a July 2012 article:
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/energy-return-on-energy-invested-2012-07-13
Terry was quite scathing about wind energy in an earlier article in April to the extent that his tongue nearly got stuck in his cheek:
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/wind-farms-may-well-be-another-bubble-that-is-doomed-to-burst-2012-04-06

Funding for Education

Education for profit: Is this necessarily bad? - Curro Holdings

Affordable private education deal signed

JSE-listed private education firm Curro Holdings has signed a deal with Old Mutual and the PIC to expand private education to those who cannot afford it.


http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Investment-Holdings/Curro-makes-more-acquisitions-20111214

Theres-a-lesson-here-20110725

More Nuclear News and Links

www.silobreaker.com