And the war drum beat again!

In the past, military conflicts have been preceded by acts of aggression involving the occupation of land or resources, ethnic violence or stealing Helen away from her domineering husband. But today, the precursor of an armed invasion is often a concerted campaign of mis-information and a body of evidence that substantiates the eventual decision to take action against “the evil ones”.

Past experiences have included testimony to a US congressional committee that Kuwaiti children were tipped out of their incubators by Iraqi soldiers and left to die on the floor. It was this testimony, of a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl that tugged at the heartstrings of the American public and was the public relations coup that effectively sanctioned the US led 1990-1991 invasion of Iraq ( click here for a full account of this story). It was subsequently discovered that the girl was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had never been to Kuwait during the period in question.

The Dark Knight Rises

The web has been buzzing this week with the launch of the teaser trailer for next years blockbuster "The Dark Knight Rises". The final chapter in Christopher Nolan's trilogy promises to be as epic as the initial two installments and what I loved most about the trailer was that it gave nothing substantial about the movie away. The trailer has just broken an all time iTunes download record, 12,5 million views to the iTunes Movie Trailers site in just 24 hours! This is notwithstanding the fact that the trailer, initially an iTunes exclusive is now available on youtube and other sharing sites. Refreshing (actually more reassuring), to see that I am not alone in my excitement. Ironically, the previous record was held by Marvel's The Avengers trailer (10.5 million views in a 24 hour period), my second most anticipated movie for 2012. Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" would have to settle for third spot in this list.

Rather leave the window bare!

In less than a month, leaders and policy makers from around the world will descend on Durban for COP 17 to debate  how much time humanity has left on earth before the dolphins declare, "Goodbye and thanks for all the fish". Any outcome is bound to be a success if measured against the Kyoto Protocol, because let's face it , there will be no meaningful change unless America and China agree to any emission targets. As a South African I should ashamedly be the last to throw stones because we are ranked amongst the highest polluting countries per capita. We talk the talk but when push came to load shedding, we opted for our old familiar friend, Mr Coal. But I am certain our leaders will take to the podium at the conference and talk about how conserving the environment is "enshrined in our constitution" and how we "intend" building a 100 MW concentrated solar plant to offset the two massive new coal fired power stations that we are building. Seems a bit like killing off an entire family, but offering to pay the funeral expenses!

A year has come and gone

It has been a year since I posted the first entry on knightlynotes and even "half full" me ( in reference to my optimism) could not have guessed at the kind of impact it would have had. I had been writing freelance articles in Watt Now, the official publication for the SA institute of Electrical Engineers but I had opinions on many issues unrelated to engineering. Opinions on technology, movies, politics, society... to be honest, on just about anything. I had often thought of concentrating on just one genre or registering multiple blogs for the different topics but I knew that I would have never had the time to devote enough time to them. I actually expected to only have just enough time to possibly add one, maybe two entries a month. With 72 published posts in the last year, it would be fair to assume that that was an under-estimation!

Today, I would like to step back and review the year that passed with special mentions and updates on some of my favorite posts and the many doors that knightlynotes had inevitably opened.

New 7 Wonders of Nature: Vote Table Mountain!

I must be honest. When I first heard about the online voting campaign to vote for the “New 7 Wonders of Nature”, I though, “What a load of bullshit!” (Yes, I always think in inverted Comma’s). After numerous “Idols” disappointments and coping with the knowledge that the candidate I believed to be the best representative for our ward, losing the recent municipal elections, let’s just say, my faith in any voting process could do with a coat of Micatex. Because, all it boils down to, in the end, is a popularity contest. People will vote along national, ethnic and egotistical (I went there, so it deserves to be on the list) lines. If you are hoping for the sweeping phrase that tells you how I now refute all that I wrote before, don’t hold your breath! I still think that capitalism and ‘popularity contests’ are beneath the surface of this campaign, but that does not mean that I believe it has nothing to offer.

Would the I/O port of the future please stand up!

Over the last week I have written two new posts for Bandwidth Blog on the future of I/O. My first article focused on the emergence of USB 3.0 (or Superspeed USB).

Bandwidth Blog article on USB.3.0

My primary intention for writing this post was to just make more people realise that this was out there and that you could get a USB 3.0 portable HDD on sale for the same price as one that is only USB 2 enabled. Furthermore, USB 2 HDD is bound to start dropping in price considerably, so if you were toying with the idea of getting an additional one perhaps get one that is USB 3.0 compatible or pick up a USB 2 drive at a reduced price.

The really awesome thing about this post however was that it was the lead story on NEWS 24's tech page for almost 2 whole hours. This was completely unexpected but extremely satisfying. It unfortunately brought out the "Grammar Nazi's" from their bunkers (Thanks for teaching me a  cool new word @yuvaan_gugrajah), but perhaps I should stop writing articles at 2 in the morning and pay more attention to grammar. Although I am making light of this, I was grateful for the corrections. I much prefer being corrected than to allow an error to remain on a post.

At the request of my editor at BandwidthBlog, I then set out to write an article on the "other" superfast I/O Port, Thunderbolt.

Bandwidth Blog article on Thunderbolt

Why Apple does not support Flash (and why I support Apple)?

My latest article on Bandwidth Blog discussed the fallacy that using an iPad does not expose you to the "Full web" as due to Apple not supporting Flash on iOS, you would be unable to view over 70% of the video content on the web. I agree that Apple try and direct most things via the iTunes store and although I wish it were otherwise, one has to accept that they are a business and this is what makes them money. However, the support of flash, in my opinion, has little to  with iTunes as we are primarily talking about content on the internet.

My BandwidthBlog article