Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen

Be Aware of DPI with Image PNGs in WPF - Images Scale Weird or are Blurry

Scott Hanselman — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:23:03 GMT

Is that enough TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) in the title there? I continue to mentally deny the existence of DPI (dots per inch) as a concept. It's my own fault. I have been living on PCs at 96dpi for so many years, I just stopped caring. This problem we ran into is SO obvious after the fact, but it flummoxed us for a half-hour.

I've been helping a buddy on a super-cool super secret WPF application and the window has multiple states - regular, compact, and minimized. We've got three transparent PNGs for these three buttons. The designer created them and sent them along.

However, with one of them, it kept showing up at the wrong size, and was blurry. Even if we set the width and height ourselves, it looked totally wrong.

Here's wrong:

Unrelated to the scaling issue, I saw that the file was 3099 bytes, which I thought was a little large. I opened it up in the Visual Studio binary hex editor and noticed that I could see strings like "Photoshop ICC profile" in the header. PNGs are lossless (they are like Bitmaps, not JPEGs) and while they compress, there are may ways they can compress, like removing crap from headers.

I like to run PNGOUT on all my PNGs as it'll try different techniques to make the PNG as small as possible without losing any data (without changing the way the PNG looks). I ran PNGOUT on the wrong file and it went from 3099 bytes to 292 bytes. It also just happened it look right afterwards.

Here's right:

So why did it look right suddenly? Turns out that PNGOUT also changes the DPI, without asking, to 96dpi. Here's a little C# program I wrote to test:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Image i = Image.FromFile(@"c:\users\scott\desktop\collapse-wrong.png");
    Console.WriteLine(i.HorizontalResolution + " " + i.VerticalResolution);
    Console.WriteLine(i.Width + " " + i.Height);

    Image i2 = Image.FromFile(@"c:\users\scott\desktop\collapse.png");
    Console.WriteLine(i2.HorizontalResolution + " " + i2.VerticalResolution);
    Console.WriteLine(i2.Width + " " + i2.Height);
}

The output of this is:

72.009 72.009
56 10
96 96
56 10

Both files are 56x10 in dimension, but the first is 72.009 dpi and the second is 96 dpi. WPF defaults to 96 dpi so when it encounters the 72 dpi image it scales it up. If you can't change the image, there are funky ways around it. Personally, I believe if you are running into this because of a designer/developer mismatch, then just coordinate between each other and decide on a DPI, probably 96. In our case, DPI didn't really matter as the designer was developing pixel-accurate images, so we just run PNGOUT on all the images.

I usually run PNGOUT from Powershell, but there is a nice free .NET app called PNGGaunlet from Ben Hollis that provides a nice GUI frontend.

ASP.NET MVC Design Gallery

Scott Hanselman — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:49:36 GMT

My teammate Stephen Walther launched the ASP.NET MVC Design Gallery a few weeks back. This stemmed from an idea ScottGu had to let the community change the default templates that ship with ASP.NET MVC. I was supposed to work on this but headed to Africa for the holidays so Stephen helped me out and took over the project and did a better job than I would have!

You can vote on the designs that you like and that you don't like. You also can contribute new designs of your own.

After you download a design from the gallery, you can use the design by following these steps:

1) Copy the files from DesignTemplateCS or DesignTemplateVB folder into your project (use DesignTemplateCS for C# projects and DesignTemplateVB for VB.NET projects)

2) Do a search and replace the string [YourProjectName]. Replace [YourProjectName] with the actual name of your project as displayed in the Solution Explorer window.

This last step is necessary to get the namespaces right. Most of the templates use helper methods to render the menu items so that the selected menu item is correctly displayed.

Microsoft also is hosting a design competition to encourage members of the community to submit new designs. Submit a new design before January 31, 2009. ScottGu will be selecting the best three designs and announcing them on his blog. Learn more about the ASP.NET MVC Design Competition and submit your designs before January 31st.

South Africa 2008: NewsFlash - Turns out eating less and moving more causes weight loss

Scott Hanselman — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:40:41 GMT

When I left for South Africa I was 193lbs/87kg, my heaviest ever on a 6 foot/1.8 meter medium frame. This was shocking to me because I could totally see 200lbs coming. It was right there ahead of me. As a Type 1 Diabetic getting fat(ter) is deeply uncool. You can literally be a Type 1 (insulin dependant) and Type 2 (insulin resistant) diabetic at the same time. This would mean I'd need to take MORE insulin to do the SAME amount of work. I'd already started seeing this recently as my total daily insulin dosage, usually under 30U (Units) was creeping up to 40U.

Then we headed to Africa for our semi-yearly sojourn. Fast forward roughly a month and I'm 176lbs/79.8kg. That's 17 pounds, or as a newly svelt person me likes to say "I lost, like, 20 pounds!" The trick will be to keep it off, but here's what I think worked (as I lose nearly 20 pounds on EVERY trip to Africa, and nearly every trip overseas. The tragedy here is the re-gaining and re-losing of that same 20 pounds.)

These are totally obvious observations/tips, but I'm a little dense, so I'm writing them down.

That picture to the right is me when I was thinner. I'm also the short one in the picture.

Don't Eat a Serving Larger than Your Fist

I didn't consciously do this, it just happened. As my wife and I discussed in our recent podcast, folks just show up to visit and food is divided appropriately. This is not to say that I wanted for food in any way. I didn't. It's that my hosts in South Africa gave us a reasonable amount of food, not an American Amount of Food.

This just happened to be about the size of one's fist. Kind of unrelated, I mentioned this to the boy's doctor since the older boy wasn't eating that much and he said that most kids will naturally eat what they need to, no more and no less, and that amount was often about the size of his fist. We'd been wasting a lot of food as I was giving him a plate full of food as big as his head! So, it's a fist-sized serving for me.

Eat Breakfast

I am notorious for eating one giant 1pm meal, ahem, then a giant 6pm meal, then a small (read: almost giant) midnight meal. This didn't fly in South Africa, as there was a lovely light breakfast at 7am, lunch at 1pm, and a dinner around 6pm. Each was appropriately proportioned, especially lunch which went on the assumption that you ate breakfast.

I realized that I've been eaten Epic Lunches to stave off death by starvation from skipping breakfast entirely. While eating breakfast does make my diabetes a little more tricky to manage as it adds a new variable, breakfast does support the next tip...

Eat Only Enough to Get You To the Next Meal

You Will Eat Again, In Your Life, You Know

My brother, the Ironman competitor and firefighter, taught me this not-obvious-to-me tip. He says that folks who aren't eating often enough eat like it's the last time they will ever eat. Rather, try eating with the knowledge that you will eat again in a few hours. If you realize that this meal only needs to get you to the next meal. This is the single most powerful dieting tip I've got.

Reset Your Full Indicator

My wife calls overeating "Pushing Through" as in "Oh, I pushed through with that last bite." Not recognizing what full feels like is a big problem for me. Basically you can reset your internal gas tank indicator by just thinking about it. "Am I full?" "Do I really need that next bite?" This has caused me to eat about 1/3 less without actually feeling any less full. Actually, I feel less bloated after meals.

Aside: I actually have personal data (and charts!) that reflects this - while I was in South Africa my daily insulin usage (and hence, carb intake) went from 30-40U a day to 20U. Basically I used 33% to 50% less insulin per day.

Move More

I didn't visit the South Africa that a lot of people do. In my South Africa not everyone has a car. In mine you can easily fit 9 people into a VW Golf. Either way, I walked a lot. If there's no car available and you want to go to the mall that's 3km away, you walk. This, along with sweltering heat and a lot of water, is another nice way to lose weight.

This year I've started working out, six days a week, for eat least an hour. I'm alternating cardio and anaerobic exercise. I'm finding that if I time my workouts with the length of certain television shows, I can make it through without going insane. That means, 40 minutes of cardio while I watch, say, Heroes. Then 22 minutes of weights as I watch Arrested Development. I'm actually watching more TV (and enjoying it) but I don't have to feel bad since I'm moving.

Drink Water

Yes I know if you drink WAY too much water you can mess up your salt/electrolyte balance, but a few liters a day are what I've found is the right amount for me to lose weight. I can't overstate how water intake directly affects weight loss. It's really amazing. Everyone I know with 6-pack abs carries a water bottle around with them. While I was in Africa I really upped my water intake because of the heat, to the point where drinking water at every turn was second nature.

What are your weight loss tips, Dear Reader?

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss,Diet

Back to Basics: Explore the Edge Cases or Date Math will Get You

Scott Hanselman — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:29:44 GMT

Disclaimer: I don't work for the Zune team and I don't know anyone on the team. I think that Z2K9 was a bummer, but I don't have any inside knowledge. Everything here came from the public interweb.

Dates will get you every time. Further more, it's all about Edge Cases. This is one of the things you'll think about when doing Test Driven Development and it's one of the things that everyone learns in Computer Science 101. You really have to hit those edge cases, be they dates, or number overflows, or buffer overflows.

The news reports:

"A bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year affected Zune users," said the company in a statement. "That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009."

Disclaimer*2: I have no idea if the following is 100% true, only that it seems quite plausible. I present it for educational purposes, nothing else. It's very interesting. Again, I'm just a caveman.

A Zune Fan poked around in the source code from the vendor (Freescale Semiconductor) that made the real time clock in the Zune (The vendor's source for rtc.c is here) and with the benefit of hindsight, noted that there's the opportunity to get stuck in an infinite loop.

The Zune 30 shows the date and time, as do many devices, as the number of days and seconds since January 1st, 1980 at midnight.

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

The days variable is read out of the memory location managed by the Real Time Clock (RTC). When the value of days == 366, you break out of the inner loop, but you can never get out of the outer loop.

A number of folks have blogged about the bug, their analysis and how they'd fix it. Programming Phases has a good post and folks have twittered suggestions). The basic problem is that since there are 366 days remaining when the calculations are reached for the year 2008, there will never be another subtraction to bring the total below 365, so the loop continues. The value of days is stuck at 366. It IS a leap year, but days is not > 366, so the loop continues.

In working with banking software for years, I can tell you that dates'll get you. When dealing with dates and date math you can't underestimate the value of really good code coverage. Also, even if you have 100% coverage, as I learned in my interview with Quetzal Bradley, 100% coverage just tells you a line of code DID run, it doesn't tell you that it ran correctly.

I noticed also when I visited my Live home page on Dec-31 that it said today was Jan-1, likely a Time Zone glitch. However, when I clicked the date, I was taken to a page with historical facts about Dec-31. ;)

Dates, especially when TimeZones are added in, are notoriously hard.

To this day there are a half-dozen bugs in DasBlog where we have a devil of a time with Time Zones. Omar spent weeks fighting with them before he just gave up. We have to reconcile the local time of the visitor, the time on the server, and GMT time (the time we store everything in). It usually works, but when the Server isn't on GMT we get into all sorts of trouble. We also have problems with clients that call the XML-RPC APIs, some of which use UTC (GMT) time and some use local time. Other than keeping an internal table to wrong-headed clients, there are no good solutions.

In 2007 CNN talked to a Major General about a bug in some F-22's that caused them to malfunction when going across the international dateline. The Unofficial Apple Weblog had an interesting post on Apple Date/Time bugs through the years. If you're interested in working with and maintaining legacy code, I recommend Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code.

As a random slightly-related aside, I was over at Hollywood Video buying a used copy of Mirror's Edge yesterday and some folks were talking about the Zune problem. The manager said, wow, I'm running the music in here on a Zune right now, and produced his brown 30G Zune from behind the counter. He either hadn't turned it on today fresh or the clock was wrong so he was able to weather the whole day without an incident. He seemed pretty pleased about his "survival."

I wonder how many other less widespread devices are running this real time clock and if any of them had trouble as well.

Do you have any personal Date/Time stories, Dear Reader? Please share in the comments!

South Africa 2008 - Avoiding or Minimizing Jet Lag

Scott Hanselman — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:21:32 GMT

We're back and we've got a little problem. Part of the family has jet lag and part doesn't. It doesn't matter who does or doesn't ;) but some of us have figured out a few basic tricks when crossing more than 4 time zones. They work for us, but YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

In this case, we were travelling from GMT-8 to GMT+2, so that's 10 time zones. Right now it's 9:05pm where I am, and it's 7:05am tomorrow morning in South Africa.

It's not really possible to completely AVOID Jet Lag. It is JET-lag, and not bicycle-lag or walking-to-fast-lag. The human body just wasn't meant to cross an ocean in a few hours. It's supposed to take a few months or not happen at all. ;)

Now, as a diabetic, I have to pay more attention to Time Zones than most travelers, but this is all pretty standard jet-lag stuff but a little attention to detail and being willing to mess with oneself psychologically can cut your jet-lag recovery time in half or better.

Ahead of Time: Try to work out lots, especially cardio, in the days before your trip. I'm not sure why this works, maybe circulation, maybe it makes you tired, but it helps.
Water: Drink ridiculous amounts of water. I try to do at least two liters a day while travelling and I keep drinking two liters a day when I'm recovering from the flight. (Really, just drink lots of water all the time)
Take Advantage of the Flight Time: Our total door-to-door travel time was just over 26 hours. That's 26 hours that you COULD be getting acclimated to the destination time. I move my watch, and consciously try to move my brain to the destination time as soon as I sit down in my chair. That means literally saying to yourself, "OK, it's 7am. What would I be doing at 7am?" and trying to do it. You might find yourself needing to walk briskly around the plane when everyone else is sleeping, but it's worth it. There's many travel hours that you can be using to get ready for destination time.
Don't sleep when the Clock says it's Day: Lots of folks say that "your body knows what it needs." I believe this is nonsense when travelling. I think that jet-lag is the one time when your body has NO idea what it needs. You need to override your body's ignorance with your brain. If you get in to Europe at 2pm and you are exhausted, really, wait until at least 8pm or preferably later to sleep, otherwise you're screwed. I've watched people wandering around at 2am, ready for dinner, because they've slept their "8" in the middle of the day on destination time.
Be aware of travel direction: I find that travelling West is really easy. Travelling East is the killer. An excellent explanation from Wikipedia:

There seems to be some evidence that traveling west to east is the more disruptive. This may be because most people have a circadian period which is a bit longer than 24 hours, making it easier to stay up later than to get up earlier.

It may also be that flights to the east are more likely to require people to stay awake more than one full night in order to adjust to the local time zone. For example, comparing a typical schedule for a traveler flying to the East vs a traveler flying to the West:

Westward from London to Los Angeles, VIA BA0279, Jan 29, 2008. Time zone difference 8 hours.

Westward	Biological clock	Los Angeles local
Departure	JAN 29 - 10:05	JAN 29 - 02:05
Arrival	JAN 29 - 21:10	JAN 29 - 13:10
Bedtime	JAN 30 - 06:00	JAN 29 - 22:00

Eastward from Los Angeles to London, VIA BA0278, Jan 29, 2008.

Eastward	Biological clock	London local
Departure	JAN 29 - 15:59	JAN 29 - 23:59
Arrival	JAN 30 - 02:05	JAN 30 - 10:05
Bedtime	JAN 30 - 14:00	JAN 30 - 22:00

The first scenario is equivalent to staying up all night and going to bed at 6am the next day — 9 hours later than usual. But the second scenario (eastward) is equivalent to staying up all night and going to bed at 2pm the next day — 12 hours after the time one would otherwise have gone to bed.

Use Daylight: This one is the most important. When you arrive, either home or away, be outside as long and as often as possible. We used this on the children. The more sun you get (don't get burned) the more your brain will be reminded that it's daytime and you should be awake. This works even if it's snowy or gray. Just get outside!

What works for you, Dear Reader, when trying to minimize jet-lag?

Hanselminutes Podcast 144 - Week Three in South Africa - Ntombenhle

Scott Hanselman — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:02:30 GMT

My one-hundred-and-forty-fourth podcast is up. Scott's on holiday in South Africa with his family this month. Rather than doing repeats or "best of" shows, Scott's doing man-on-the-street interviews and uploading them over cell phone. In this episode, Scott talks to his Wife, Ntombenhle, an MBA and Homemaker from Zimbabwe.

Subscribe:

Download: MP3 Full Show #144
Play in your browser.

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

Telerik is our sponsor for this show!

Building quality software is never easy. It requires skills and imagination. We cannot promise to improve your skills, but when it comes to User Interface, we can provide the building blocks to take your application a step closer to your imagination. Explore the leading UI suites for ASP.NET and Windows Forms. Enjoy the versatility of our new-generation Reporting Tool. Dive into our online community. Visit www.telerik.com.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

Technorati Tags: Africa,South Africa,Ndebele,Zimbabwe,Zulu

South Africa 2008 - For Goodness' Sake, Go to the Airport Early

Scott Hanselman — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:37:52 GMT

This trip to Africa was a reunion of sorts. My wife is the 4th of 7 kids, ranging in age from 38 to 18. This is the first time in over a decade that all seven kids have been in the same place at the same time. Folks are spread all over the world, so it's a challenge.

Our flight today was from Jo'burg to Paris, then to Amsterdam, and then on the lovely direct flight to Portland from Amsterdam. The Jo'burg flight left at 8:30pm. I really really like to not miss flights, plus I know that Murphy's Law always comes true. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.

I suggested we leave for the airport at 3pm, which was heresy to the family, truly. Five hours early, are you insane?

I'm not sure what it was, but something felt wrong and I tried to find a balance between getting to the airport with some buffer and spending as much time with the family as possible. Certainly one doesn't want to break up a reunion by stressing about time.

We ended up getting to the airport at 5pm, which was nothing short of a miracle. It took about an hour to drive to the airport, plus the Jo'burg airport has a fairly complex parking structure, and there's some construction. It took another 20 minutes to load the bags and get to International Departures.

We were flying Air France this time (KLM before) and we knew that bags need to weigh less than 23kg/50lbs leaving the US, and 32kg/70lbs on the way back into the US. When we arrived at the Air France counter there was large sign that said just that - 32kg. Turns out that this weight limit changed in January, it's 20kg/44lbs for economy. Only Business Class gets 32kg. Everyone was having a problem with this today, and the guy in front of us was going insane. Like "I'll never fly Air France again" insane.

Weight is always a tough thing when travelling, and my wife and I always go back and forth about it. I tend to travel obscenely light. She wants to get her money's worth and bring everything and more, pushing to exactly whatever the limit is. However, airlines aren't giving folks any quarter these days, and I so people a few kgs over getting nailed with $50 per bag fees. We try to find a balance as a team.

We usually weigh our bags with a scale, and I highly recommend you to also, and give yourself 5 pounds of wiggle room. The Jo'burg airport is interesting because it has a scale before you check in and they are strict. We had no trouble this time because we were prepared, but it was close.

The real trouble happened when we tried to check in. On the way to South Africa we had had a little problem with my infant son. He has my last name while my wife kept her name. However, apparently most airlines put a "lap child" record under the mother's ticket record. Suffice to say, someone got confused, and confused people usually mean confused computer records. They ended up putting in two infants. One with my last name and one with my wife's. When they asked if six folks were travelling, I said, no, five "souls" in four seats. (They say "souls" in the airline industry.)

The first guy deleted the baby doppelganger and we travelled fine. This was over three weeks ago. Fast forward to today and when we go to the airport, the baby is gone. They'd deleted his record and ticket completely. But, he was still in there, floating around Tron-style in the system. The guy was doing his best, it was clear, but some foreign-key relationship was definitely not working. He spend literally 90 minutes working on this, going back and forth to ticketing, management, and IT. He ended up deleting our entire ticket completely and starting over issuing new tickets to get us boarding passes.

For me, in these situations, I seem to have infinite patience. For the most part these folks are doing their jobs, and announcing "I'll never fly Air France again" does zero good. I just kept thanking him for his patience, and for sticking with me. In the end, he fixed us, but also ensured us the baby bulkhead row as well. Thank goodness we showed up 3+ hour early or we would have been screwed, and the guy said as much.

The family was getting worried and stressed out, but we just keep reminding ourselves that this is all part of the fun. Everything is fun on vacation, and that is what we tell the kids. Sure we waited for and hour and a half at the Air France counter, but we did it together.

We had a final meal as a group at Nando's outside security then headed in to Passport Control. This was tricky also because after waiting for a useless 90 minutes, folks figured that any urgency had passed. However, outbound Passport Control at Jo'burg is always busy and there's usually very few agents working. I knew we could spend, easily, another hour waiting for our outbound stamp. The flight boarded at 7:55pm, and I was only able to get folks to say their good byes and start walking at 7:15pm. I didn't even bother mentioning that it was a full 2 kilometers between Passport Control and gate A17.

We played our trump card. We had a 3 year old and a 1 year old, so we went to the assisted passenger lane at Passport Control. This allowed us to avoid a line of over 300 people. However, we got stuck behind some UN guy whose papers weren't in order. Remember what I said about Murphy's Law? It gets better.

After another 20 minutes as the next folks in line at Passport Control we moved up to talk to the agent. I remembered my trouble from before with my Passport at the Jo'burg airport and I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. Whatever trouble was coming, I was ready to be submissive and beg for assistance.

The agent started processing our passports. This consists of typing in the Trip Numbers from our South African Visas to show we departed. She typed with one finger like a slow tempo metronome. My passport was fourth and when she hit it, she couldn't make out the numbers because the original guy who got me out of the incoming trouble signed his name over the Trip Number. The agent went looking for help, and wouldn't you know it, she went and found the same guy from before. This is the guy who argued with the young girl about whether or not we were allowed to put Visas on the amendments pages of American Passports. He totally remembered us and said that he'd doubled checked after the unfortunate trouble before, and that yes, you can put Visas on the amendments page via a special memo from the US Embassy.

Anyway, at this point, it's 7:45pm and we're really pushing it. We take off speed walking with the 4 bags, and two kids, which isn't really speed walking at all. It was easily 2km to the gate, and they were boarding when we got there.

It's always amazing to me when I'm walking onto a plane literally within minutes of missing it that things work out at all. I mean, we started packing at 9am, we left the house (late, I thought) at 4pm, for an 8:30 flight and we needed every minute.

Any additional hiccup, any bathroom break or trouble over this day-long process would have caused us to miss the plane. I am sad that we've left South Africa this year, but I am glad that we didn't miss our flight. I believe we didn't because we went to the airport early. I will always show up for international flights at least three hours early and now I've got a fun story.

South Africa 2008 - Make Your Own Dual 1/8" Airplane Headphone Adapter

Scott Hanselman — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:36:57 GMT

We are heading back home after our holiday in South Africa. A couple things didn't go as planned, and I was only able to get two podcasts done as two other interview subjects had scheduling issues. I think I'll interview my Wife and get her take on it.

Anyway, I was sitting here on the plane using my favorite Etymotics Research ER-6i headphones (LOVE these. Seriously, been all over the world with them) to watch Wall-E on the tiny TV they've got here on Air France. I was lamenting the fact the I was only able to listen to one channel of sound. I was only hearing sound of the left ear, since these silly planes often have that dual 1/8" headphone thing. I assume it was either just stupidity on the part of the airlines, or it was to support them charging us $5 back in the day for their crappy headphones.

You can buy dual 1/8" to single 1/8" headphone adapters, and in fact, my older pair of Bose Headphones came with this adapter. However, it was lost a year or so ago, so bummer for me.

Air France gave use these crappy headphones with the dual headphone jack at the end. I used my teeth to cut it and strip the wires about 6" back from the end. Then I asked the flight attendant for some kind of tape or stickers. He gave me some white Avery labels they use for some paperwork.

Remember that a regular headphone has three wires, two that hold sound and a neutral/ground (I think...need to look this up). Basically, there's two colored wires and a white one. The wires inside the dual headphones had two white and two colored.

The male end of my headphones has three bands. Using trial and error via my ears, I wrapped the stripped wires around the bands until I heard stereo sound. Then I covered the whole thing in the stickers,

Fortunately the flight attendant was cool and didn't mind be rewiring the plane, but your mileage may vary. I could envision a scenario where this activity would freak out a "lesser" flight attendant.

Or, just buy an adapter. You tend to look for things to do when you've got 26 hours of flying ahead of you.

South Africa 2008 - African Math and CP Time

Scott Hanselman — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:42:18 GMT

I've decided the one thing I just will never get used to is the (relative) inaccuracy used in numbers around here. This is likely because I'm an American, but more likely that I'm a socially backward asshole programmer. Could be a little of both.

There's the lateness thing, first. The level of relaxation, nay, apathy, around being somewhere on time is driving me batsh*t crazy. Seriously. If someone says to be out the door at 10am, and 2:30pm finds you getting into your car, you've got a problem. How hard is it to stand up, pick up your keys, get in your car and drive away.

I can get up from a dead sleep, shower and be in the car in 15 minutes. I'm lucky if this house is out the door by 1 or 2 in the afternoon. I was up at 8am this morning. These people didn't get in the car until 3:15pm to do the day's errands. Really.

At first I thought it was just basic CP Time (and no, Dear Reader, you're very likely not allowed to use or say that term. ;) ) as many folks around here talk about African Time. Actually, most non-Western, even non-American groups, I have found to be really chill about time. But around here, it's out of control.

And not just time. All numbers. Here's some actual examples just from today.

How far is it?

Maybe 15 minutes. Like 7k.

Actual Time/Distance: 65 minutes and 50k.

How long will it take?

Really, 2 hours tops.

Actual Time: 4.5 hours.

When will he be waiting?

11 sharp.

Actual Time: 1:30pm

How many people are coming?

Like, maybe 20.

Actual Count: 55 and uncounted children.

How much petrol (gas) do we have?

We're totally cool. Piles. Really.

Actual Gas: Turns out "E" doesn't mean enough.

When do they close?

They're always open. Maybe they close at 8 or 9. It varies, they are flexible.

Actual Closing Time: 6pm sharp. Doors close, and metal walls slam shut hiding the building.

It's so bad it's comical. I can't write this stuff. It'll be a sweet wondrous miracle if we don't miss our plane home. The scary part is that I had to lie and say it's an hour earlier than it is, and that still might not be enough. I may need to say it's another day.

(Yes, I realize I'm in another country, Yes, I realize I'm time obsessed, Yes, I know I need to be tolerate, yada yada yada. Still, I reserve the right to ridicule the culture I've married into and I reserve the right to tell my wife things like "and this is why your continent is screwed up." It's all in good fun, so poop on you. ;P )

South Africa 2008 - Christmas Eve Eve Lightning Storm

Scott Hanselman — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:57:15 GMT

In Oregon where I am from, the weather tends to be very mild. It's basically meh and 60F/15C most of the year. It's NOT a place of extreme anything. Except maybe hayfever/allergies.

Down here in Africa, it's extreme. It's as if God himself is showing off. It was very hot today, but tonight it's rained and thundered and lightening like someone was pissed. Here's a few shots with a super slow super cheap Casio Exilim Z750 out the window:

I took 150 shots of blackness, one after the other, before I got these. I still don't feel like I nailed it, but the first one is pretty sweet.

South Africa 2008 - Johannesburg Zoo

Scott Hanselman — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:56:07 GMT

We drove to the Joburg Zoo today. I had VERY low expectations for a couple of reasons, most of which were not rational in retrospect. My mom was a zookeeper at the Washington Park Zoo for years, working with elephants and birds of prey. We are members to the zoo and we go all the time. We also visit zoos when we go to other cities.

We've also been to Chipangali in Zimbabwe and it was really run down. One of the mistakes I've made on this trip is assuming that things in Zim relate in any way to things in South Africa. Zim as I know it is gone, and South Africa is more developed every time I visit. I won't underestimate this country again.

This is a REALLY cool zoo. I'd say even the best zoo I've ever visited, including the San Diego zoo. It's massive beyond reason for a city zoo. You can even rent a little cart and drive around as walking will take all day. We spent 5 hours there and didn't scratch the surface. The size of the fences are really small, which is a treat as you can get REALLY close to the animals. We were all of ten feet from a giraffe.

I'd really recommend you not miss it if you are in Joburg.

Hanselminutes Podcast 143 - Week Two in South Africa - Victor

Scott Hanselman — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:52:59 GMT

My one-hundred-and-forty-third podcast is up. Scott's on holiday in South Africa with his family this month. Rather than doing repeats or "best of" shows, Scott's doing man-on-the-street interviews and uploading them over cell phone. In this episode, Scott talks to Victor, a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Lesotho with a specialization in Women's legal issues.

NOTE: I had a heck of a time uploading this episode over the 3G cell phone so that it why it's late, but it was still recorded earlier this month, hence "week two."

Subscribe:

Download: MP3 Full Show #143
Play in your browser.

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

Telerik is our sponsor for this show!

South Africa 2008 - Relative Fakery

Scott Hanselman — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:59:27 GMT

I wasn't going to write about this but my brother-in-law suggested it. This is likely less about Africa and more about life. I have a fatal flaw, my wife says, and that is that I am the same person everywhere. South Africa or Malaysia or Europe, I'm the same dude. Different language or accent, but the same general idiocy reigns.

My wife, on the other hand, has good sense and, what's it called, social abilities? I assume everyone is my friend and shake hands and kiss babies all day. Ignorance is bliss, it seems.

On the trip there's an endless supply of not just cousins, but third cousins, and "are you my cousins" and even a few "who are you exactly?" I love a parade. However, I also smile and wave like it's a parade. I assume since they all came over to see us that they are genuinely interested in how we are. I also tend to assume that they are also happy, healthy and content people like us.

Turns out that all relatives are not created equal. Wish I'd gotten the memo. There is apparently theses things called envy and posturing I am not familiar with. Some couples come in two cars, for example. I, of course, notice this, but meh, right? They probably came from work. Oh no, we are meant to see that they have two cars.

Watches are dusted off and worn, diamond rings are polished, shirts are ironed. They've come to see mkhwenyana, the white American son-in-law and their long lost sister/cousin/auntie who is, it seams, a hybrid freakish part-African, part-American.

Again, I can't stress my level of cluelessness. There's apathy, and then there's profound ignorance. I have the ignorance level of a 2-dimensional being on a plane in 3-D space. I am not just missing dimensions, but I'm having trouble conceiving of them.

Why haven't you called? Why don't you write or email? What a bad son in law you are!

Um, because we've only just met?

What is America like?

Pretty much like this, except you're not basting and there's fewer electric razor fences.

No, really, I hear America is the land of opportunity.

I think the world is the land of opportunity, myself. You guys have the same stuff we do. Honest.

Listen to mkwenyanna! He says South Africa has the same stuff the states does. Nonsense. Let me see your digital camera. Is that an iPhone?

My wife is able to navigate this conversational minefield while not only staying classy, but also acting as a balm on decade-old sore egos. She also reminds people that it is possible to be from America and still be broke. And we are. We DID fly here, you know?

Turns out "our presence is your gift" doesn't translate well into my broken-Zulu. ;P

I'll remember that next time. Going on 10 years of marriage, and I'll figure all this out if it kills me.

South Africa 2008 - Being Away from Home for a Long Time

Scott Hanselman — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:34:06 GMT

Here in Joburg it is the holiday season and it is body temperature outside. By that I mean it's 37C/98.6F. That's insane. And it's wet sticky can't sleep no AC and there's bugs hot, not just regular hot. I recommend everyone experience it.

Back home in Oregon, there is two FEET of snow in my front year and it's a balmy -5C/23F, just like I like it. Shorts weather, you know. ;) Apparently the PDX airport is utter chaos, totally frozen. The flight we are taking from Amsterdam has been cancelled or rerouted for days. Should be worked out by the time we get back and we'll literally miss all the excitement as if it didn't happen.

However, we've been away so long (almost a month) that I am starting to forget stuff about home. Sounds silly, but it's true. I hate the heat, but I am getting used to it. I'm drinking water from the tap. I'm driving around Joburg at 1am on the left side of the road and not finding it odd. I bought 20R worth of coat hangers while waiting at a red robot and didn't giggle when folks rolled their R's while saying red robot. I'm asking for brown bread rather than wheat, and amanzi still, rather than bottled water. We're eating sadza or pap and not complaining.

It's nice to visit somewhere for a week or five days, but let me tell you as someone who's done it many times, somewhere around a month your brain starts to say "Hm, maybe this guy isn't going home. Maybe he is home."

You start to figure out where to buy bread and milk, you get connected, you fill up your tank, you learn the footpath shortcuts, you walk home from the mall in the dark. You're not a native by any stretch, but you've found direction and momentum.

You start to figure, "ok, I guess folks CAN live like this."

Now, to be clear, this is the same when going from Oregon to South Africa as it is going from Oregon to, say, California, or from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Moving is moving and everyone has a tushy, as I tell my son. Folks aren't THAT different. This experience is the very essence of travel.

It's an important reminder to be and my family that, (from an American point of view) that there are people in the world that will never come to the US, don't want to come to the US, don't live like folks in the US and aren't interested in the US. Everyone has a different way of doing things and if it works for them, good for them. Seems obvious, but it is surprisingly un-obvious for folks. (This of course, also works if you replace American/US with your country. ;) ) Get your kids out of town, in a tent, at a boma, on a camel and eating tripe. Have them walk 3km barefoot at noon without complaint. Put them in a situation where they are the only white/black/brown/yellow person in a room of folks that aren't. Now, do that for more than a month if you can. South Africa is a nice place to start and I recommend you travel here and check it out. We have a blast every time we go. I wouldn't be out of passport pages if it wasn't true. I am just bummed with didn't make it to Lesotho this time.

Anyway, just as I get start getting used to things, it's time to go. Just another week or so and we'll be packing up.

I want to say Thanks Again to Mario and Tina for loaning me this modem and showing me how to buy minutes/megabytes.