For comparison with the 2011 census maps in my previous blog post, I’ve drawn similar maps based on the 2001 census data. There are two caveats to this: firstly, the 2001 census only made the race data available at a subplace (i.e. suburb) level, although the density is accurate to similar levels as the 2011 maps. Secondly, the 2001 census did not include the response of “Other” to the race question.

Inspired by Bill Rankin’s “Chicago Boundaries”, and having finally obtained a copy of the small-area data from Census 2011, I decided to draw some similar dot-maps showing how the population is distributed in South African cities. The primary lesson from these is that the legacy of apartheid is still very clearly visible. I suppose that was to be expected.

I took a look at the data from the Who in the World is reddit survey to see what it says about South African redditors. Only 83 survey entries listed their country of residence as South Africa, compared to 409 subscribers to /r/southafrica, so this data might not provide a complete picture.

This is not a metaphor for anything. I’ve been pretending for far too long - I don’t really know why. In retrospect, I’ve known for about eight years, but it’s taken this long to accept it for myself; the process of telling others has been quite quick.

Long ago, I used to have a website which listed the frequencies on which FM radio stations are broadcast from the various radio towers in the Cape Town area. That website died some years ago, but in the past I’ve had a couple of emails enquiring about it. Anyway, I recently discovered FMSCAN, which allows you to select a location anywhere in the world and find out what radio stations you should be able to pick up there, and on what frequencies. So if you need that sort of information, now you know where to get it.

My new desktop at varsity is, as described in the title, an HP Compaq dx2300 Microtower. First thing I did when I got access to it was, of course, to install Linux - Ubuntu 8.10 in this case. It’s a pretty nice machine (although not particularly high-spec) and pretty much everything worked straight away from install. The graphics card is Intel, so I’m not going to be doing any serious gameplaying (this is a work computer, anyway) but it runs Compiz pretty well. Being a desktop, suspend and hibernate aren’t terribly important, but as it happens they work fine.

So, for my Christmas present to myself I got a Huawei E220 HSDPA modem - it’s one of the Vodafone-branded ones, but I reflashed it with the generic firmware. Anyway, it’s an awesome thing to have for a geek like me - I can be connected to the Internet at broadband speeds almost anywhere in the city. It’s particularly useful when I’m on campus, so I can avoid the dog-slow UCT internet connection.

…are trains cancelled due to rough seas.

Rondebosch Village Shopping Centre is in the process of building a new parking deck to double their parking capacity. As a result, the Rondebosch Pick ‘n Pay has put up several copies of this sign:

The most recent Linux distribution releases - Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora 8 and so on - are now shipping with version 1.2 of the XRandR extension for the X server. This allows the user to dynamically change resolutions, refresh rates, and - this is the really impressive thing - switch monitors on and off on the fly. All of this, without ever having to edit xorg.conf, or restart the X server, or reboot. This was one of the major things that the Linux desktop lacked compared to other major operating systems.