Colin Seymour

Kulula Does Flying 101

2010-02-08T09:12:30+00:00

Claire and I flew with Kulula - a low cost South African airline - on one of our trips to South Africa and we were really impressed with the whole ethos of the company. This is a company that seems to emphasize the "cheerful" part of the old adage: "cheap and cheerful" .

At the time of our flight, Kulula were going for superheroes in a big way: to Kulula, ALL of their passengers are superheroes. At the time all their advertising was pushing this and even the flights we were on had a little "dooo da dooo" announced over the speaker system on take off (just superheroes always do when they take off ;-) ).

Well, it looks like Kulula have another brilliant idea: Flying 101. Check out the new paint job:

So now you know exactly what goes where and what all those little things were for.

Bucket Rattling Chuggers

2010-02-05T15:23:46+00:00

Picture this: it's a lovely cool, clear crisp day. You're walking along the high street enjoying yourself when you hear it: the sound of buckets full of change rattling. You look up and very quickly spot the source of the sound: several people are ahead of you waving buckets and banners purporting to be collecting for charity XYZ. What do you do?

Well, if you're like me, you very quickly change direction or cross to the other side of the street to try and avoid these bucket-rattling "chuggers". Whilst they're not chuggers by the Wikipedia definition, I still refer to them as chuggers as they're still trying to guilt you into making a donation to their cause.

Chuggers have got to be very high up on the list of things I detest most in life. It's not that I'm a scrooge, tightwad or a heartless bast*rd, it's I just object to their methods of raising money for charity in this very anti-social and quite un-charitable manner. The primary reasons I detest this form of raising money for charity are...

Charity is all about giving out of the goodness of your heart, not being forced into donating by someone sending you on a guilt trip or pressuring you into it. As my mum always said: if you're not going to do something with a good grace, don't do it at all.
These chuggers assume you don't already make regular donations to one or more charities of your own choice, either in your own time or directly from your salary. Of course they could just be ignoring this fact.
These chuggers assume you actually agree with their cause. Now I believe charities are needed for some major causes, but some of the charities out there are almost charities for the sake of being charities. I'm not going to name them, but I'm sure you all know of at least one charity that falls in this category.
They're missing the biggest gift-horse and aid to their charity that there is in the UK - the lovely tax feature that is gift aid. If your charity is that important to you, surely you'd prefer your charity received at least £1.25 for every £1 donated. You can't get gift aid on bucket collections.
This method of raising money is so easy to fake and hard to verify that it can easily be used rip off a lot of people under the guise of "collecting for a charitable cause".

Now with an understanding of my dislike for these bucket-rattlers, imagine my chagrin when I arrived at work on Wednesday morning to be confronted by 3 bucket-rattlers in the office foyer collecting for the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal. Yes; this was a terrible event. Yes; all those people in Haiti need all the help they can get. But NO; this is not the way to do it, especially 3 weeks after the event, after everyone has already been bombarded with requests to donate many many times before for the same appeal when it first happened.

Not one to back down on my principles, I greeted all 3 with a very cheery "Good morning" and walked right past them. One of them called out after me: "Shall we come see you later then?" to which I replied "No thank-you" and I went on my way. My opinion of bucket-rattling chuggers was further affirmed when three more people took their place right in front of restaurant doors at lunch time, in our CASHLESS office.

So my message to all those collecting for charity: please please please don't become a bucket-rattling chugger. There are much better and more rewarding methods of collecting for your chosen cause: run the London Marathon, come up with some obscure and courageous challenge or donate some of your time to help the charity directly and increase people's awareness of your charity, just don't resort to using buckets.

Die Antwoord - What An Intro To South African Music

2010-02-02T08:54:06+00:00

As a regular reader of BoingBoing, I was quite surprised and pleased (at first) to see a South African group, Die Antwoord (means The Answer), being mentioned in a post yesterday. I'm always pleased to see South African musicians getting an international mention - they don't get anywhere near the international exposure they deserve - but I'm a little unsure with this group.

This is the first video, a bit of an interview with a song at the end. If you lived in South Africa in the 80's and 90's, you'll recognise a little portion of the music from morning TV. Oh yes and if you're in the office or in front of children, you'll want to crank the volume right up, the profanities are hardly noticeable ;-) ...

Interesting and certainly a little glimpse into the culture of the poorer white communities in South Africa.

The next video, whilst not lyrically brilliant (once again, crank up the volume) is actually a pretty good, except for the girls thick Saffer accent - I'm sure she's over emphasising. The videography is pretty well done and the story, coupled with the story told in "Rich Bitch" sums up their rise from the poorer neck of the woods.

This is certainly not my cup of tea and I doubt it gets very much radio air time but credit to them for embracing the power of the internet and actually making a name for themselves, and probably a fair bit of cash too.

Islands In Lakes In Islands In Lakes In Islands

2010-01-29T19:50:13+00:00

Everyone knows that Greenland is the world's largest island and the Caspsian Sea is actually the world's largest lake, and not a sea as it's name suggests, but what about the world's largest island on a lake, on an island, on a lake, on an island?

That title goes to Vulcan Point (see it on Google Maps) in the Philippines. Treehugger has a great series of zoom-in photos that show you how that complicated geological title actually makes sense and how it's possible.

For those that couldn't be bothered, it's Vulcan Point within Crater Lake, on Taal Island within Lake Taal, on the island of Luzon.

Pretty amazing place this earth we live on. I think NASA are wasting their time on Mars. Earth is way cooler.

Modern Prejudice

2010-01-26T08:55:02+00:00

It's quite interesting how we have different prejudices for different people, doing the same thing, in modern society.

Case in point, on Sunday whilst Claire and I were driving up to Oxford, we were very quickly approached and passed by a little red VW Polo which proceeded to race off ahead of us. It soon encountered a relatively slow moving truck. As the road was a single carriage way and very windy, there was no way the little Polo could pass the truck, so instead it tailgated the truck for several miles.

When the little Polo shot passed us, I noticed there was a little old dear driving it and I commented to Claire: "Now that's what I like to see, an old dear who knows her time is limited so has chosen to do things in a hurry."

When we saw the little Polo tailgating the truck, Claire and I both started egging the old dear on, encouraging her to pressure the truck to speed up or move over, or take a risky move herself and overtake him - her time is limited after all.

And then the penny dropped: our attitudes were being heavily influenced by the age and, to a lesser degree, sex of the driver, though not my driving - I still kept my distance. Had that old dear actually been a youngster, particularly a young man, we would have called him every arse under the sun for his stupid, dangerous and reckless driving, but here we have an old dear and we're somehow accepting and even encouraging her dangerous driving.

We soon turned to each other and corrected ourselves and in a joking manner told off the old dear for her dangerous driving.

Introducing Lara Nieve Seymour

2010-01-15T12:11:29+00:00

[ drum roll ] Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to the newest member of our family: Lara Nieve Seymour

Lara was born at 13:08 at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford on 14 January 2010 and weighed in at a very petite 1.806kg / 3.98lbs.

Aliens WILL Eat The Fatties First!!!

2010-01-09T08:59:02+00:00

In an attempt to encourage people to join up and lose those excess pounds put on over Christmas, a very large independent health club in Bristol displayed great big banners on the side of the road bearing a little green man and declared:

I think this is a brilliant bit of advertising. A little bit of science fiction, light humour and a subtle message all in the name of encouraging people in through the doors to burn off some of those excess kilos. Sadly, this is Britain after all, and someone didn't see it for what it is and took offence and complained. Apparently it's offensive (to fatties of course) and conveys a negative message (yup, the aliens ARE coming ;-) ) which "will not encourage people to join the gym".

Come on people. Get over yourselves. See this for what it is: a clever bit of advertising and haul your fat arses into the gym. Quickly, before the aliens pop by and gobble you all up.

Now I've got that off my chest, I'm heading down to the gym - I don't want to be alien dinner.

Britain's Big Freeze

2010-01-07T20:30:42+00:00

If you're not in Britain, and just a little curious about what we're all winging about these past few days, check out this fantastic satellite photo taken by NASA this morning:

Yes, folks it's snow, and lots of it. We in Britain don't "do" snow at all, especially down in the south of the country. It also certainly doesn't help things when Mother Nature decides to dump nearly 1½ feet of it across most of the country, including our front lawn, only a few weeks after handing us a couple of inches. This really doesn't play well with our country's current "snow plan" which involves throwing a bit of grit over the roads and maybe, if your lucky, sending out a truck to plough the snow out of the way on the main roads.

That said, it has been a gorgeous day today. Clear blue skies and sunshine glistening off the snow blanket. Very pretty indeed. Looks like tomorrow will be clear and sunny too, so I'll be heading out with my camera to get some shots.

Update: Apparently all the snow is thanks to the Gulf Stream. Instead of spending winter in Britain, it's popped over to Greenland for it's winter jolly. How inconsiderate.

I Don't Want a Google Nexus One Phone

2010-01-07T10:48:02+00:00

I don't want a Google Nexus One Phone. Look how big it is. That'll never fit in my pocket ;-) ...

Jokes aside, from the rest of the pictures and the product description, it looks like any other HPC phone that provides way more functionality than I need or want in a phone.

Snowing Bubbles

2010-01-05T20:10:31+00:00

I've just got home after driving home from work in probably the heaviest snow fall I've ever seen. It was very pretty and looked like it was snowing clumps of bubbles, like those that spew out of a bubble machine at a foam party. Sadly, it was super slippy too, so uber concentration was needed. Won't be going anywhere in the car tomorrow. We're expecting in the region of 40cm in some areas.