Star Wars Day

May 4th is Star Wars Day. Think about it, then say the date out loud. ;-) Thanks to the guys at the Daily Maverick for this one, as well as Wookiepedia.

Blatant eToll Lies by SANRAL

After reading Andrew Feinstein's book on the South African arms deal and how much money was wasted by corrupt ANC officials and ministers, I am not surprised by all the ducking and diving surrounding our e-toll fiasco. I recently obtained a copy of the Government Gazette (No 35263, 13 April 2012, Vol 562) that lists the actual toll fees. It is not a pretty sight. And it shows how badly SANRAL has been lying to the public.
I used their "toll calculator" to work out the costs of a return trip to Dennis Polack in Midrand. I stated that I don't have an e-tag and was driving in a passenger vehicle from Beyers Naude to Olifantsfontein. The quoted price for a return trip: R33.63, including a time of day discount. In spite of their nifty little map, they lied.

Page 9 of the Gazette shows 6 columns. The column that applies to me is Column 6, a non-registered user who has no e-tag. They carefully ignore this column, but rather use column 5, which is for registered users who don't have an e-tag. These are people who have paid in advance for their use of the roads, and have foolishly handed over their banking details to SANRAL, and agree to have the money deducted from their account whenever SANRAL decides to do so, irrespective of road usage. I'm not that much of a sucker.
I've shown the actual column 6 figures above. The total without discount is actually R 106.20, quite a lot more (215%) that the R33.63 they quote. I'm entitled to a discount if I pay within 7 days of driving past the toll plaza, irrespective of whether they have sent me an invoice or not. Their revised terms and conditions (after much criticism) doesn't mention what they will do if I don't register. They clearly haven't a clue.

Update: I called their call centre and got a reference number 2001010574. The person who took the call tried to assure me that I would only pay R33.63. I told her to forward a recording of the call to her supervisors. I also gave them 30 days in which to fix their web site. Like they are going to listen.
When I saw this headline (while the court case was on, Mr Idiot Minister) I knew that someone had just banked his bribe. These guys are so blatantly kleptocratic it's sickening. The ANC are completely out of touch with their own members, let alone the public at large.

Update: The SANRAL CEO has "resigned". Presumably that will make him unavailable to answer questions when the court review begins. I wonder why ... ?

ANC's pro-Apartheid slogan

© 2012 Zapiro (All rights reserved) Printed with permission.
For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com

I was gobsmacked to discover that the theme for the ANC's centenary celebrations is "unity in diversity". Are these people completely insensitive or just plain stupid? Do they not remember 31st May 1981, when Bruce Fordyce put the word "comrade" back into the Comrades Marathon? I guess they were sipping champagne in London and so were a little out of touch. Here in South Africa politicians like PW Botha were proclaiming "Unity in Diversity" as a justification for the racism of Apartheid. It was the theme of their 20-year celebration of the declaration of a "republic" on 31st May 1961.
Our corrupt and glorious leaders also have short memories, or none at all. So now they will sip more champagne at party-political events around the country, paid for by the same taxpayers who paid for the corrupt arms deal, and forget about the suffering and poverty of the people they supposedly liberated. Then they will go home and count their share of the bribes they were paid, and not worry about all those who died of AIDS because there was no money left to treat them, because it was all spent on arms we don't need or can't use.

The Seven Way King

I heard a recording of this famous sermon "Seven Way King" (aka That's My King) as spoken by Dr. S.M. Lockridge in Chicago in 1976. The audio is slightly edited for a better flow in the video. Now it has been turned into two inspiring videos. Watch them and marvel.

How much sugar in "All Gold" Tomato Sauce? 36 spoons!

All Gold Tomato Sauce has been a family favourite for years. They claim there are 36 tomatoes in every bottle, but that's just advertising lies. Only recently have I asked the question: how much sugar is in the sauce?
Today I obtained the answer: 21.3g of sugar for every 100g (or was it ml?). So that means that a 700ml bottle has 150g of cane sugar, i.e. 35.5 teaspoons of sugar (4.2g). Ouch! Not so healthy after all, even though there are no preservatives. Still, it's better than "ketchup" which has all kinds of other nasties.
They have a version with artificial sweetener instead, but I think the health risks of that concoction must be pretty toxic. One has to ask why they need to put so much sugar in the product. To counteract the taste of the vinegar? The mind boggles. I mean, there's a teaspoon of sugar for every tomato in the bottle! I guess they had to "work hard to cram them all in".

Update: According to the label (which uses a very small font) there are 27g of carbs per 100g serving. That means that in a bottle there are 40g of carbs not comprising cane sugar. Divide that by 36, and you get some very small tomatoes, unlike the giant ones shown in the TV ad below. According to Answers.com: "One medium, whole, red, ripe, raw tomato, 2 3/5 inches in diameter and weighing 123 grams contains 5 grams of carbohydrates, on a year-round average." That means there would be 8 tomatoes in a bottle of tomato sauce, not 36. Since they actually use "reconstituted tomato paste", the ad agency claims about tomatoes have been all lies from the beginning, whichever way you look at it. I don't understand why food companies think it is OK to mislead the public like this.

New Typefaces for Windows 8

I have been fiddling with the Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview, looking at the new fonts. Bear in mind it is only a preview, so there could be more on the way, but probably not.
The biggest surprise is that the infamous Comic Sans finally gets a legitimate italic and bold italic, instead of having to rely on slanted letters for an oblique version. In the book "Just My Type" there is this joke:

Comic Sans goes into a bar, and the barman says: "We don't serve your type".

Above is the new Windows 8 version. Note the "b" and "t" in the italic. Below is how XP, Vista and Windows 7 treat the same font family:

Given all the hoopla about the new "Metro" interface I was expecting a new Metro font. It's called Segoe UI Semilight, and it joins the rest of the Segoe UI family, which first appeared in Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Segoe UI now has the 4 standard variations, plus Light, Semilight and Semibold. Gadugi (Regular, Bold); Myanmar Text; and Nirmala UI (Regular, Bold) appear to be new variations of Segoe UI for other languages, probably Cherokee, Burmese, and various Indian and regional Asian languages. Aldhabi has arabic characters and some interesting swirls, as well as Latin characters. It looks like a small letter version of Times New Roman or Calisto MT.
I have also been having fun with Typograf, a wonderful font utility and font manager. I plan to buy it at the end of the month.

A Fresh Look at Fonts

Most of the time we don't notice fonts, and that's the way it should be. Good layout is invisible, by design. Good layout is supposed to draw you into a page, not distract you. By contrast, bad layout is instantly noticeable, even if you aren't entirely sure why. It just looks "wrong".
There is a lot of incredible technology in making fonts look good on screen, and print well on paper. Most of it is subtle and deliberately unobtrusive. Yet have a look at text that has been scanned as a graphic, and it's easy to see when those techniques are missing. The text looks horrible and grainy.
Last month my wife gave me this marvellous book: "Just My Type" by Simon Garfield. It is well written, informative and fascinating. If you're a typeface junkie like me you'll enjoy every chapter. Even if you're not, you'll find out a lot about the wonderful world of typefaces, legibility, and even some stuff about road signs, airports and train stations.
In the last few weeks I have really begun to notice the fonts around me, something I haven't done in years. It's great to be "back".

Scam Alert: The Griffen Holdings posing as Griffin Holdings

The Griffen Holdings is a low profile call centre that sells "stock market training" courses. These guys rely on their relative anonymity and the similarity in name with a legitimate investment company called Griffin Holdings.
The Griffen guys regularly break the law by making unsolicited marketing calls to people like me, and then can't tell me who they got my number from. That's a violation of the ECT Act, not to mention annoying. They are so "upfront" that they hide their call centre number, and don't give it out even when asked. Extensive searches on Google have revealed only one contact number, and this is for faxes. I found several jobs ads for them:

Field Sales Consultants needed. our callcentre makes appointments for you. Own car and cellphone needed. Must be available immidiatly [sic]. Fax CV to 086 554 5978 or e-mail.

They exploit the unemployed by working on a commission-only basis, unless you regard R10/month as a legitimate salary. I joined the web site to "apply" for the job and found their contact number to be (012) 644 2476, and a related web site, which doesn't mention "The Griffen Holdings" anywhere on the site.
I contacted the legitimate Griffin Holdings and they assured me they don't have a call centre or sell stock market "training". They wrote:

There are a number of Griffin companies (some spellings Gryphon, Griffen etc). We do not offer the service you refer to.

So it seems that the secretive Griffen Holdings is a lot more dodgy than they'd like you to believe.
Update: In response to my email enquiries, they ("Admin - The Griffen Holdings tghadmin@sharetrackin.com") said

We hold seminars every Monday for our existing clients and receive names and numbers of people who they think might benefit from our services or be interested.

What a load of BS, because anyone who knows me would know that I'm not interested in being contacted by anyone from a call centre! If they took the trouble to become members of the DMA they would also know that I'm on their "Do Not Call" list.
Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002. states the following:

45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers, must provide the consumer—­
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer's personal information, on request of the consumer.

So although they provided the "opt-out" option, if they cannot identify the particulars of the source, then they are breaking the law.

Update 3 April: One of the Griffen Holdings "franchise holders" (he said there are a dozen or so around the country, each with their own call centre) called to tell me that it isn't a scam. He explained that they get the phone numbers from "lists", not only from "seminars". he confirmed that he had no idea where they got my number from.
They sell stock market software for R19,200 and offer a guarantee that if you don't make a 40% profit in 6 months then they will refund your R19,200. I have asked to be sent a copy of the contract. It sounds too good to be true, which means it probably is; not even Mr Madoff's ponzi scheme offered that kind of return.