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.