Tim Harper | Blog
Tim Harper's personal blog, covering kiteboarding, Internet and SEO topics
Google translate, now embedded in gmail with some funny results.
May 4th
So I read a fairly old joke in my gmail today, it was in Afrikaans and google asked if I’d like it translated:
Seeing as though it’s the first time I’ve seen this feature within gmail I decided to try it out with some pretty funny consequences:
| Afrikaans Joke | Googles English Translation |
| DIE SPOOK DROL: Jy voel hom uitkom, maar wanneer jy kyk, is daar niks in die toilet nie. DIE SKOON DROL: DIE NAT DROL: DIE SECOND-WAVE DROL: DIE BARS-’N-AAR-IN-JOU-KOP DROL: DIE BOOMSTOMP: DIE FREE-FLOW-EXHAUST DROL: DIE MORNING-AFTER DROL: DIE MIELIE DROL: DIE EK-WENS-EK-KON DROL: DIE RUGBREEK DROL: DIE MICHAEL-SCHUMACHER DROL: DIE HANG DROL: DIE KAMEELPERD-SPIOEN DROL: DIE GEDOG DROL: |
The ghost wipe: You feel him out, but when you look, there is nothing in the toilet. THE NEW excrement: the wet wipe : THE SECOND WAVE-wipe: THE BARS-A-HAT-IN-YOUR-HEAD dung: THE tree stump: THE FREE-FLOW EXHAUST-dung: THE MORNING-AFTER dung: wipe the Maize: IK-I WOULD LIKE-KON-dung: RUGBREEK THE dung: THE MICHAEL SCHUMACHER-dung: wipe the side: The Giraffe-spy dung: wipe the thought: |
Nobile NHP review (9m kite – 2010)
May 4th
With some really late sub-strength south easter wind here in Cape Town I recently had three long sessions on a 9m Nobile NHP kite (2010 model) recently. The wind was from 14-20 knots each session, and the kite handled really well throughout that wind range, without ever feeling overpowered beyond my control.
More on the performance later, but it really does look slick in the black and gold colour scheme, I can’t find an image online to post here, but I’ll attempt to get one up later. The blue and white one below will have to do for now!
The construction seems as solid as the rest of the nobile range, not as bombproof as some kites I’ve seen though, but all the right triple stitched seams and rough gaurds that you would come to expect these days.
The bar and lines are standard Nobile, but there’s no improvement needed there, the bar is comfortable with finger shaped grooves close to the center of the bar. The bag is standard too, nothing special but it was never a huge selling point for me in a kite anyway.
The only one improvement both Nobile and F-One could make is that they could include some sort of spinning shackle for the center lines, as they do tend to get twisted on themselves if I do kiteloops in only one direction for a session. Slingshot’s below the bar spinning chicken loop is definitely the way forward, I’ve got no idea why other brands don’t follow suite.
So performance wise the NHP is quite impressive, it’s very smooth through the entire window, and has a very direct feel to the kite. It turns really quickly too and the kiteloops feel very stable throughout the whole loop. Unhooked the NHP has all the drawbacks of all other bow / hybrid kites where your normal riding will see you fairly powered up, and you will need to depower before unhooking to make sure you don’t flare the wingtips. I tried this and it worked just fine, I only needed to depower around a quarter of the depower strap to counter this. When I was unhooked the kite still felt very stable and didn’t fly further back in the window like I mentioned on my F-One Bandit 3 review.
I’m trying to think of a negative or two to balance my review but the only thing that springs to mind is this: The kite fell back into the window once or twice when it was on the 14knot side of the wind range, but a quick correction saw it come back to the edge of the window, and this was generally on the beach or when I had turned into a wave / carving turn. (So it may have been my fault in the first place!)
So overall a great looking kite with all the characteristics that I look for, if you are in the Cape Town region and want to test it out yourself call Coci on 083 273 2212. There are only a few in South Africa at this stage, so if you want one I’d get on it quick.
NHP Kite 2010
Are Location based Check-in services purely an american pastime?
Mar 26th
I’ve seen both Gowalla and Foursquare, but there really aren’t many people using the services in South Africa or other countries in the world. Is checking-in a purely american pastime?? Apart from the rewards offered by certain stores, is there any real value that can be garnered from checking-in?
USA:
NY Penn Station
http://gowalla.com/spots/623366
(380 people checked in)
http://foursquare.com/venue/19462
(11744 people checked in)
France:
Eiffel tower
http://gowalla.com/spots/21869
(67 people checked in)
http://foursquare.com/venue/185194
(303 people checked in)
South Africa:
V&A Waterfront cape town
http://gowalla.com/spots/182354
(12 people checked in)
http://foursquare.com/venue/518280
(83 people checked in)
F-One Bandit 3 – Review
Mar 10th
F-One bandit 3 2010 – Review
I’ve had the bandit 3 for just under two months now, and can say that it really is a superb kite. I used to ride slingshot fuels, so the need for direct input on the bar, and quick turning speed were essential in a new kite for me. A few highlights of the kite’s performance that set it apart from anything else I’ve ever flown:
1. The pull from the bandit 3 remains consistent throughout the entire window, the fuels have a very definite sweet spot below 12o’clock and it will slow down as it gets to the edge of the window. This means that when I jump on the new bandit 3, the upward motion is never a jerk upwards, it’s always a very smooth, floaty lift, and then it’s always a smooth float down too.
2. Turning speed, the bandit 3 that I have is a 7m, so it should be quick anyway, but this thing turns on an absolute dime, beating the 2008 fuels I own hands down.
3. Wind range, I’ve been out in 18knots and been happily riding upwind on the bandit 3, and then I’ve also been out in 35knots and been ok too, (just depower and hold on!!). The low end is seriously impressive and this kite will see me through most of the Cape Town wind that we get.
So to give a balanced review I need to mention the two things that I don’t enjoy about the bandit 3…
1. The lines are cheap and nasty – I’m not sure how long they will last, but they really do feel a lot thinner than any other’s I’ve owned.
2. I need to depower to unhook – riding comfortably when I’m on full power on the depower rope, I’ve found that I need to depower if I want to unhook, I’ve also found that when I do unhook the kite is very responsive still, so any tiny tweak sends the kite off into the water, or back to 12o’clock
Overall a fantastic kite, and it is the 3rd generation so F-One has obviously made some improvements along the way. I’ll have to send it through a wave or two to test the construction, but I’d rather not do that for the purposes of a review…
I’ve had the bandit 3 for just under two months now, and can say that it really is a superb kite. I used to ride slingshot fuels, so the need for direct input on the bar, and quick turning speed were essential in a new kite for me. A few highlights of the kite’s performance that set it apart from anything else I’ve ever flown:
1. The pull from the bandit 3 remains consistent throughout the entire window, the fuels have a very definite sweet spot below 12o’clock and it will slow down as it gets to the edge of the window. This means that when I jump on the new bandit 3, the upward motion is never a jerk upwards, it’s always a very smooth, floaty lift, and then it’s always a smooth float down too.
2. Turning speed, the bandit 3 that I have is a 7m, so it should be quick anyway, but this thing turns on an absolute dime, beating the 2008 fuels I own hands down.
3. Wind range, I’ve been out in 18knots and been happily riding upwind on the bandit 3, and then I’ve also been out in 35knots and been ok too, (just depower and hold on!!). The low end is seriously impressive and this kite will see me through most of the Cape Town wind that we get.
So to give a balanced review I need to mention the two things that I don’t enjoy about the bandit 3…
1. The lines are cheap and nasty – I’m not sure how long they will last, but they really do feel a lot thinner than any other’s I’ve owned.
2. I need to depower to unhook – riding comfortably when I’m on full power on the depower rope, I’ve found that I need to depower if I want to unhook, I’ve also found that when I do unhook the kite is very responsive still, so any tiny tweak sends the kite off into the water, or back to 12o’clock
Overall a fantastic kite, and it is the 3rd generation so F-One has obviously made some improvements along the way. I’ll have to send it through a wave or two to test the construction, but I’d rather not do that for the purposes of a review…
f-one_bandit_3_most_wanted
- f-one bandit 3 Kite
Google’s site performance tool needs some more work.
Feb 3rd
I just read a nice intro to the new site performance tool (that is currently in labs) on seomoz by a guest blogger scotiasystems: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimizing-page-speed-for-ranking-using-google-tools And decided to check it out in webmaster tools:
The site performance tool looks as vague as all the other webmaster tools stats, but it does have some interesting data:
For one of my US hosted sites (Dedicated hosting on 1 server) I get:
Speed rating of between 0-20 On average, pages in your site take 3.5 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 58% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is 25.14 KB)
And for comparison a Kenyan hosted site (2 servers with double the hardware specs each AND a load balancer), I get the following stats: Speed rating of between 0-50 “On average, pages in your site take 9.6 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 92% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is only 6.88 KB – built for mobile)
So the site is really slow to google’s crawlers, but do they take into account that they may be crawling a page from half way around the world? I wouldn’t mind so much if I hosted on a server down the road from Mountain View California, but because this is Africa, I’m a little concerned.
Another issue I picked up is that google’s very own page ads and analytics scripts are picked up as possible solutions to increasing the speed in your page load times, as they suggest:
Minimize DNS lookups The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
So, make your pages faster by writing your own analytics and ad server, and try to be located close to us, thanks google, very helpful.
Ushahidi – Haiti earthquake response
Jan 14th
I’ve been following the progress of ushahidi for a while now, it’s a crowdsourcing platform for crisis information, and was first used in the post election violence in Kenya in 2007. Since then they have taken the platform from strength to strength, and have got some real exposure with the latest deployment covering the Haiti earthquake that happened yesterday. There’s a great blog post explaining what ushahidi has managed to do in an extremely short space of time here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/01/13/haiti-earthquake/
I take my hat off to the Ushahidi team for their efforts over the last 24hours, you have done a superb job at getting the platform up and running, and by the responses coming in to the system, I know that this project will make a real difference in the relief efforts.
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ for more details and up to the minute reports from the island itself.
As a side note, it’s the first time I’ve seen google’s ‘Latest Results’ when doing a search for haiti earthquake in their results page. http://www.google.co.za/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=haiti+earthquake
It scrolls real time search results as they are indexed by google, fairly impressive I must say!!
Nobile NHP 3D 2010 Kiteboard | Review
Dec 31st
So it’s been quite a while since I did a review of any new kit I tried out and liked, and now that I’ve had my brand spanking new Nobile NHP 3D 2010 board out on the water for a number of sessions I figured I should give it a review.
So the first thing I noticed out of the box was was the massively different rocker, it looks a lot more like a wakeboard than a Kiteboard, and it’s obviously being aimed at a more wake focused rider. So this being said I was a little apprehensive about how it would perform in the wind chop that we get in Cape Town. First time on the water it just felt so beautifully smooth, so that worry was totally unwarranted. The next thing I noticed was the almost zero amount of spray that came of the heel edge and up into my face while kiting, I’ve got no idea which part of the board design is responsible for this, but it seriously makes a huge difference.
Next thing I noticed was the Pop, now a lot has been said about it and brands always mention this as a selling point, but i noticed a huge amount more effortless pop than my previous ‘06 555 board. The 3D moulded bottom is another selling point from nobile, it’s basically a wakeboard style channel system that runs the length of the board, and it does make a fairly significant difference to landings, they just feel a lot more stable than my previous board, so yes, not just marketing hype on that one either.
One bit of marketing hype is the human concept (?), what a name! And seriously, a slightly different shaped toe edge to heel edge is not a new concept at all, it’s been around on snowboards for ages. The difference is barely noticeable, the one on the new T5 is very noticeable, so i’m not quite sure on why it’s such a huge part of the board description.
Last but not least that I should mention is the inclusive IFS Pro footpads, which I’m a huge fan of, at least they aren’t an additional cost when buying the board.
That about sums up my experience on the board, I’m really enjoying it and will leave you with the following images:
(Mine’s the black one, oooh she’s a beauty!)
nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard
nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard_specs
More details on the nobile website:
Kiteboarding Tofo | Mozambique
Dec 29th
Tofo Mozambique is an amazingly beautiful place, right near the inhambane peninsula / lagoon but on the indian ocean side, it’s Africa though so be prepared for the heat, the mozzies and the 2M beer!
Here’s a brief run down of the kiting that I managed to get done in Dec 09:
We were there for around 10 Days, and 3 of them were kiteable with a 14m, this is not the windy season so it’s to be understood. There was almost no swell at all either, so some nice flat sections between the waves. The light 10-12knot wind was from the East, so onshore too which made things a bit more difficult to get out for some, but I still managed to get out beyond the breakers. According to Rowan from tofo kite the wind is a lot better from the NE and SW, though to me it looked as though NE would be best suited for cross on conditions. The SW would have to come over a large hilly section of land before it hit the main beach.
There are three main spots:
Tofo main beach, which is right in front of Tofo town with loads of restaurants and a fairly large sand bar creating a super flat spot on the inside, though because it was busy holiday season this was full of swimmers. There is also a few dive charter boats and fishing boats going in and out of the beach but not enough to get in the way.
Tofinho point, this is a fairly famous surfing spot with a sick looking right hander, the beach is mainly rocky reef right on the point and then there’s a flat reef that runs the whole way up the beach towards Tofo. Sketchy launch apparently, so not many guys kite it.
Barra, this is north of Tofo and will have a good cross shore on an Easterly if you are on the northerly part of the peninsula, this runs all the way into the lagoon. Otherwise it’s also good on a NE (apparently).
The water was nice and warm, round 23-25deg celcius, so boardies and a rashy all the time, just watch out for the blue bottles and jellyfish, they give a mean old sting, but taking a piss on it takes out most of the burn.
We stayed at Turtle Cove, a Surf and Yoga Lodge / Camp Site – We were very unimpressed by the accommodation though, I’ll post the open letter of complaint to them here when we have put it together.
Tim
Is all the South African VC only going to go to internet startups with proven revenue models?
Oct 9th
With the recent news of the springleap investment by Lord Duncan Barratt(??) (Original press release) it left me wondering whether initiatives like Siliconcape will ever really help South African internet startups get anywhere.
Most bootstrapping, hardcore internet startups do not have any idea on their revenue model when they get going (dare I mention twitter?). They pretty much have a great idea, work on it until it’s a finished product, launch it, and go broke. Whether you like it or not, startups don’t fund themselves and there is a significant amount of work to be done to get any form of company going, which in turn requires time, and ultimately you need a salary to be able to eat.
I really like the idea of SiliconCape, I think that there is a great tech community in Cape Town, and bringing all the top Internet guys together and branding them correctly will definitely attract more top talent to our Fine City.
BUT
In terms of actual VC investment though, how many other startups have been funded in the last few years in SA? (Ok I actually have no real data to support this)
Mxit was selling themes and wallpapers before it received it’s boost from Naspers, so is this the general trend, start making some money, however small, and then get somebody to take you to the next level??
Carrier Pigeon Faster than ADSL in SA – Winston now an internet celebrity.
Sep 10th
So I first read about this story here:
And then got a few more links sent to me about this story:
Second Story
Which was probably prompted by the huge response to it trending on Twitter:
And many other sites mentioning it:
Mashable
Reuters
Classic.
Follow Winston here:
Winston
