Category Archives: Rant

How could our calendar be better?

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We have a very set calendar. The whole world works on it. There’s not much we can do about this now, but what if we wanted to, what if we wanted to structure it better? I got into a conversation recently, and I noted how convenient it was discussing dates in March, while in February, ’cause February is a beautiful 28 days long this year, 28 days = 4 weeks, which means that if the 11th of February is a Tuesday, the 11th of March will be one too, this can be convenient. The conversation progressed and a new calendar was born.

Our current Gregorian calendar has pretty much been in place since the 1500s,  based on the rotation of the Earth around the sun and some historical factors. The Gregorian calendar had but a few minor alterations on the Julian calendar which had been in force since BC times. I would never suggest changing too much, start small, but don’t try break everything at once.

A year is 365 days long 3/4 times, roughly. We keep the leap system, it’s a great approximation, doesn’t need any messing with and the year numbering system won’t be of any concern for us for a very long time. Months however, that’s where things start getting annoying. They’re all different lengths. But why. Some people give offhand comments to the Lunar cycles, I don’t really care.

365 is an awkward number, however, take a day off and you get 364. Know what 364 factors into nicely? 7. That’s right. How convenient is that. So my proposition is  52 weeks of 7 days with an extra day. That’s not really at all different to how we currently function though. My first goal is to take that extra day, and instead of designating it Monday or Tuesday, it will be called New Years Day. Some people will recognise it as a holiday, others not, either way, it won’t be a day in the week, it will just be a day. That way you can have the start of each year starting on the same day. 31 December is a Sunday, then we have new years day, then we have 1 January which is a Monday.

But this doesn’t help that much; now we have 52 weeks. Know what 52 divides into nicely? That’s right, 4. Exactly 4 weeks per month. I propose 13 months of 4 weeks each. This means that every month, if the 1st is a Monday, the 1st of the next month will be one too. How cool is that. No more hassles about figuring out what the date of the weekend in May is, it’s the same date as the one in April. So this is easy enough, all you need is to think up the name of our new 13th month and chuck it in somewhere.

One thing I’ve neglected is our balancing leap years. To solve this problem without stuffing up our calendars, I propose a 2nd New Year’s day. It can either be placed directly after our current New Year’s day, or we can place it at an arbitrary point in the year, where ever we want.

Now as great as my idea is, it does have some downfalls/drawbacks. The biggest of which is the honouring of birthdays or other significant dates. But this isn’t too much of an issue. For most events, it’s the date itself that is important, not where it falls in the year. various countries days’ of independence, the 27th of April is the date that is important, not that it falls 117 days into the year. Events where the time of year is important, such as Easter, are anyway calculated anew each year.

The only major impact comes in the form of dates which will no longer exist. The 29th of April for example. There best way to handle this in my opinion is to move all of these dates to the new month, as it will be bare and boring. So anything (this includes birthdays (may affect ID numbers)) occurring on 29-31 Jan will now occur on 1-3 <insert awesome new month name here>, 29-31 March will become 4-6 of the same month. Easy, besides some historically important dates, but if we have a look at the following xkcd, we can see that in general earlier dates are more interesting:

http://xkcd.com/1140/

http://xkcd.com/1140/

So to summarise.

  • Year begins on New Year’s Day, which is not part of the week.
  • After New Year’s Day is the 1st of January
  • The year is made up of 13 months of 28 days each.
  • During Leap years an additional ‘New Year’s Day’ is added to the calendar

I propose that we start this new calendar at the beginning of 2018. This will be a Monday, and although it’s the second day of the year, will follow on from Sunday 31 Dec 2017. This gives us plenty of time to sort out all the niggles, print the new calendars and start teaching our children the better way. It will make our lives easier I’m sure :)

Once we get this right maybe we can get a start on decimalising time.

EDIT: Apparently I’m not the first to consider this. Roman Mars of 99% Invisible did a podcast about the calendar recently discussing some of the early proposers of such a calender. Give it a listen here.

Unsolicited SMSs

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The other day I received, what I consider, a spam SMS. Generally I would have just ignored it and carried on my with life, but not now. Not during exams, when I have time to do something about it.

The message was a general SMS here to receive XYZ, SMS stop to unsubscribe.

So I searched a bit for the numbers in the SMS but never came up with anything. Further searches relating to spam messages returned information on WASPA (Wireless Application Service Provider’s Association). They’re kind of like the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of bulk mail. But apart from a list of registered and affiliated parties, didn’t help much.

waspa.org.za

I also came across DMASA (Direct Marketing Association of South Africa). They have an opt-out service which requires all DMASA members to check through this list before contacting you with messages (register here). If your names on the list, they won’t contact you [1]. This is great, but not what I wanted. I wanted to know who had contacted me and why they thought they could. So I searched further.

Eventually I came across this website. It’s linked to WASPA and allows you to search a number in their database. Searching for SMS number returned Cael Media. A bulk-sms service company. I sent them a message requesting information on where they got my number.

I received a very fast reply from an employee asking for my phone number and assuring me I’ll be removed from their database and that I’d be provided with the information I requested the following day.

The one great thing is that WASPA take their job very seriously, and it appears that most bulk messaging companies are scared of stepping out of the WASPA code of conduct.

I got a heartfelt reply from Cael indicating that they’ve actually only just been WASPA accredited and are having some technical issues with their application. They offered me a refund on any expenses I may have incurred to settle the issue. I hadn’t incurred any costs, thanked them for the offer but re-stated that all I wanted was to know how they got my number.

A few days went by without any reply, so I sent an other email to them. I got a reply telling me they had got my details from Blackmoon Investments which allowed them to market to my mobile number. I haven’t been able to find out anything about Blackmoon investments, and further enquiries with Cael Media have been fruitless.

I also spoke with a friend about the situation and he showed me some communication relating to a similar issue he had had. After investigation and laying a complaint with WASPA, the company eventually revealed where they got his information. It had been bought from an overseas company. The cost of 5 million active emails and 6 million contact numbers came to $1000. Effectively R0.0007 per detail.

While I was busy on my mini-crusade, I figured I’d give Agrimark a piece of my mind as well. Since Christmas last year I had been receiving promotional SMSs from a British telephone number with specials at Agrimark. This makes matters slightly difficult, as the foreign number indicates that they are most likely not WASPA affiliated. The only email addresses I could find on their website were their branch managers, so I typed up an email to Agrimark Stellenbosch’s branch manager, basically asking to be removed from the list, and also enquiring where they got my info.

I received a very prompt, and very curt reply the next day telling me I’d been removed from the mailing list.

I replied thanking him for removing me, but that I still wanted to know where they got my number or who manages their bulk mail service. I never received a further reply.

[1] Note on the opt-out list. It’s managed by the DMASA. Some people don’t like the idea of giving their details to the very organisation which effectively manages direct marketing. Furthermore, adding your details to the list entails ID numbers, residential addresses, telephone numbers the whole lot. As a friend pointed out, you could have some fun at the bank with these details. And the big issue here is that the database was allegedly leaked, putting 39 000 people at risk of identity theft.

Face of Squash in SA

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This has nothing to do with squash as such, just the way it is managed, and the way I want it to be managed, mainly with regards to access to information.

squashracketinfo.com

I happen to be in East London at the moment, and coincidentally the 2011 Jarvis & Kaplan tournaments were being held here too. These are basically the men’s and women’s inter-provincial tournaments. It’s a fairly large event as far as squash tournaments go, but do you think I could find any information about it?

Searching the internet found a very nice article on Gauteng Squash’s website that gave a brief history and explained a bit about the tournament in general but nothing specific to this year’s tournament.

Going to Squash SA’s website also provided some information but not much. It had two letters sent out by Border’s organising committee, but again no fixtures or locations. I did then decide to try Border Squash’s website.

A quick search revealed that they did in fact have one, and there was a nice link for the Jarvis/Kaplan cups. Clicking on it gave a page with a list of fixtures, exactly what I had been looking for, apart from one thing. These were dates and results for 2004.

Today I went to one of the clubs and managed to catch the last of the WP vs Border match. There were no boards up with results or fixtures. I eventually found an office where a lady was kind enough to photo copy me some of the fixtures, but this is all information that should be readily available.

How can they have had daily scores available on their website in 2004, and now they don’t even have extra fixture books to give spectators. I e-mailed an address for Border Squash that was on one of the information letter’s they sent out earlier this year asking for information or fixtures relating to the tournament but have still not received any reply. (update: received an email today from Border telling me they don’t have anything to email me but that fixtures are available at the courts, I visited Buffalo Park’s courts but couldn’t locate any fixture lists)

I don’t think I’m unfounded in my disappointment. Sure we’ve been spoilt in the last years, the internet making information available to us whenever we want, but that’s the norm, that’s the way it should be. If people want to build up a sport or event, the internet is where to do it. Everyone has access to it, and it’s easy.

The South African Post Office is Terrible.

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I’ve never previously had anything major against the SAPO. Sure they’re expensive and the service isn’t amazing, but it’s not that bad. It’s just recently now that I’m getting annoyed.

Firstly my PO Box is up for renewal, and on the little letter I got in my post it very nicely told me that I can pay in one of 3 ways, either in person in cash (pass), online on the SAPO website or online with Kalahari.net (win!). So obviously a few days after I got the invoice I hopped onto Kalahari.net and spent 20min searching for a link to pay for my PO Box, eventually googling the term, and being linked to a Kalahari.net page which said payments are closed and would reopen on 1 October (it was now the 15th). So I did the logical thing and sent an email off to Kalahari.net who told me the service was not available this year and I’d have to make other arrangements.

Fine, so I went onto the SAPO website to pay there, but it required signing up for an account and some other PT which I wasn’t lus for at the time, so I passed it off till this last weekend when I found the invoice sitting in my draw. So I hop online go to the SAPO website which has a link to www.epostal.co.za which I click and the website is offline, not responding… So I leave it and Monday morning they must have restarted the website, cause the website is running again.

So Monday when I get home from work I go to the website and create an account, then they send you an activation e-mail. So I wait a bit for the email to arrive, but it doesn’t. Activation e-mails are generally instantaneous, this one took 12 hours. So I get home today and I login and create a new password, now to renew my postbox! Or not. It seems you have to link your post box to your account (sure makes sense) so they ask you for your account number. I have searched all my paperwork relating to my PO Box that I have ever received and nowhere does it indicate an account number. They very nicely offer you the alternative to input your PO Box number, ZIP code and ID which I do, and apparently it can’t find my account, so they give a number to phone. But it’s 18:30 and the office hours only stretch till 17:30 apparently, so I am left stranded until tomorrow.

The second axe I have to grind is the their website stability. As I mentioned early their epostal website wasn’t running this weekend, and this has been the norm throughout this year. I visit the SAPO and SpeedServices websites on a fairly regular basis and at least half the time the websites are down/out of order or respond painfully slowly, so that my tracking number look up times out.

Postage fees. I’ve received quite a few packages from Hong Kong, via ebay, and I always have a look at the stamps on the items, and not once has the postage exceeded the equivalent of R10. So then why, for me to return a product to Hong Kong does it cost me a flat rate of R90 + a cost per weight amount?

I’ve also just received a letter from CapeMail, supposedly all post to and from the Cape goes through that office in the GoodWood area. Anyway, the letter mentions something about a package that they have their waiting for me to make a payment to cover import duties or something. Now I’ve been waiting for a package for almost 2 months now, which I believe to be this package. The letter gives the instructions that I can go collect the package there, or pay the amount (without any banking details given) and fax through proof and they will send the package to my local post office.

So I look to see how much I have to pay, and no where is there written an amount, however someone has crossed out “R0.00” with a permanent marker for some reason. Again I have to wait till tomorrow to phone and figure this out. To go and fetch this item in Goodwood will cost me more in time and money than the R10 I paid for the product in the first place.