What is microblogging? I think Wikipedia says it best:

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog due to the limited space per message. Many micro-blogs provide short messages about personal matters, commentary on a person-to-person level, or a link dump.

The most popular service is Twitter, which was launched in July 2006 and won the Web Award in the blog category at the 2007 South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. The main competitor to Twitter has been Jaiku (although this has since been acquired by Google and closed public registrations).

Recently, however, new services with the feature of micro-blogging have been born. Digg founder Kevin Rose, together with three other developers recently launched a service called Pownce, which integrates micro-blogging with file-sharing and event invitations.

Microblogging services which seek to add to the minimalism of raw microblogging include Spoink, Plurk and Rakawa. Spoink released a multimedia micro-blogging service that integrates blogging, podcasting, telephony and SMS texting and supports all major mobile audio, video and picture formats. Plurk utilizes a rich interface and horizontal time-line to add a spatial dimension to microblogging. Rakawa.net documents and informs about daily accomplishments of the users based on the question “What have you achieved today?”

The popular social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, Xing and LinkedIn also have a micro-blogging feature, called “status update”.

The question is, what makes Hello TXT (hellotxt.com) stand out amongst the hordes of other microblogging services? Let’s assume you have a MySpace and Facebook account as well as a Plaxo, Twitter, Pownce and maybe some other social networking accounts. The biggest schlep with having so many social networking accounts, is updating your status on all of them the whole time. Hello TXT does just that (and a little more), you can link your Hello TXT account to a wide variety of other social networking services and  update your status on all of them at the same time by only updating it through Hello TXT’s webpage (hellotxt.com) or mobile page (m.hellotxt.com), IM Robot, SMS or Email.

Hello TXT currently supports Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Pownce, Jaiku, blinko, Bebo, Linkedin, Hi5, Tumblr, Identica, Plurk, Yammer, Jisko, YouAre, Hictu, Gozub, BeeMood, Meemi, Fanfou, Feecle, Mexicodiario, Numpa, Frazr, Brightkite, Rejaw and more services are being added all the time.

Happy Microblogging!!

Discovered a blog entry on Google Chrome and after reading it, immediately decided to give it a shot … actually it was the comic strip that made me install it:

So far I’m loving it, since it’s a multithreaded browser, WEB2 pages load in parallel making it extremely responsive (WEB1 also loads faster as images and multimedia content loads in parallel), a proper garbage collection system making its memory management system one of the best I’ve seen so far, Firefox used to crash my PC when I leave GMail open over night, otherwise my PC just became horribly slow with Firefox’s memory usage going into excess of 3GB (Internet Explorer is a lot worse, not even going to mention it here)

They’ve made it geek friendly by adding a feature where you can monitor its memory usage per page, per plugin, to access this page, just go to “about:memory“, it’ll show memory usage of Google Chrome as well as any other browser you have open. JavaScript / AJAX is extremely stable in Google Chrome, guess their V8 virtual machine they’ve developed for JavaScript is doing a good job.

I can go on all day about Google Chrome, do yourself a favour, read the comics and install it.

Just hoping they’ll hurry up with the native Linux version, sign up here for updates on the Linux version of Google Chrome.

PS, does this thing have a spellcheck?

Eventually you finish high school and start with college or varsity where you once again postpone life to prepare for life. You finish college or varsity and start working, pretty soon you’ll get entangled in the work life again and forget to live, again preparing for the day when you retire.

Retire, to do what? To prepare for death?

The Tibetan monks have a very simple, yet profound way of thinking about life, if the path you’re walking doesn’t lead to the goal you’re aiming for, then it’s most likely the wrong path. If your goal in life is to be happy, then you should be happy right now, planning to be happy tomorrow while doing something that doesn’t make you happy will not lead to happiness tomorrow. Having a goal to live a peaceful, stress free life of relaxation, you’ll need to live that kind of lifestyle right now to achieve that kind of lifestyle in the future, preparing to relax is not the way to do it. If you keep on preparing to relax, eventually the Grim Reaper will come along and force you to relax.

The businessman and the fisherman story is a prime example of this scenario …

A few years ago, a very rich businessman decides to take a vacation to a small tropical island in the South Pacific. He has worked hard all his life and has decided that now is the time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He is excited about visiting the island because he’s heard that there is incredible fishing there. He loved fishing as a young boy, but hasn’t gone in years because he has been so busy working to save for his retirement.

So on the first day, he has his breakfast and heads to the beach. It’s around 9:30 am. There he spots a fisherman coming in with a large bucket full of fish!

“How long did you fish for?” he asks. The fisherman looks at the businessman with a wide grin across his face and explains that the fishes for about three hours every day. The businessman then asks him why he returned so quickly.

“Don’t worry”, says the fisherman, “There’s still plenty of fish out there.”

Dumbfounded, the businessman asks the fisherman why he didn’t continue catching more fish. The fisherman patiently explains that what he caught is all he needs. “I’ll spend the rest of the day playing with my family, talking with my friends and maybe drinking a little wine. After that I’ll relax on the beach.”

Now the rich businessman figures he needs to teach this peasant fisherman a thing or two. So he explains to him that he should stay out all day and catch more fish. Then he could save up the extra money he makes and buy an even bigger boat to catch even more fish. Then he could keep reinvesting his profits in even more boats and hire many other fisherman to work for him. If he works really hard, in 20 or 30 years he’ll be a very rich man indeed.

The businessman feels pleased that he’s helped teach this simple fellow how to become rich. Then the fisherman looks at the businessman with a puzzled look on his face and asks what he’ll do after he becomes very rich.

The businessman responds quickly “You can spend time with your family, talk with your friends, and maybe drink a little wine. Or you could just relax on the beach.”

1. Everybody lies.
2. I don’t ask why patients lie, I just assume they all do.
3. It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.
4. Truth begins in lies.
5. I’ve found that when you want to know the truth about someone that someone is probably the last person you should ask.
6. The most successful marriages are based on lies.
7. You want to know how two chemicals interact, do you ask them? No, they’re going to lie through their lying little chemical teeth. Throw them in a beaker and apply heat.

Major LOL for number seven!!!

Back on topic, what is truth, how does one define truth? Back at Earthdance, one of the DJ’s opening sets started with a voice saying 99.9999999999999…% of everything you know is WRONG! The timing was perfect, for the rest of the weekend while dancing like Robocop™ (my new trademark at trance parties), my mind was working overtime trying to find a definition for truth and what constitutes a lie.

One person might say, the light is red when the light is in fact red relative to his perception, to a colourblind person, the light might not be red, relative to the colourblind person, the person seeing the red light is lying as he is probably seeing it as grey (does perception make them both liars?) or maybe somebody told him that the colour he is seeing is in fact red in which case he is believing what the mass is believing. Is what the mass believe the truth? Is conformity to fact or actuality truth?

The earth is flat, that lunatic scientist saying it’s not must be stoned to death … sounds familiar? Does that mean we should take the word of one scientist or person ranked higher than oneself in the system as truth?

Einstein was smart enough to understand the principles of relativity, everything is relative except for relatives, putting that into context means the scientist making the claims about something might be wrong as well as his claims are only true relative to his perception and maybe his measuring instruments. Maybe his believes had an influence on his perception, something which plays a major role in the investigation of paranormal activities. Quote from Richard Rosen: Are you going out after the truth, or are you going out after something you believe?

What fascinates me is how elusive the definition of truth can be, every time you nail it down, another end comes loose requiring some more definitions which all requires some more definitions to back up the true definition of the definition under the spotlight.

You get a chainletter in your mailbox telling you a soppy story about some little girl who’s about to die if you don’t forward it, is there any truth in it? Maybe there is, the probability is leaning heavier towards it being a hoax, only the original source will truly know if it’s a hoax or in fact the truth. Should we discredit sources claiming to be true when one of the facts in the text doesn’t add up or when the general trend of a certain series of events doesn’t seem true? The general reaction is: “What else are they lying about?”

Depending on how strict your definition of truth is, in general, something is either true or it is false, when it is partly true, it is not true and according to the dictionary, when something is not true, it is false. The conclusion is that the only truth is that everything is a lie as it can not be true. Building on this loosely proven assumption and putting it back into the context of what society believes is true, since society in general believes that everything they know is true, I conclude that the truth is in fact a lie and that all lies are truth. If all lies are true, then that means there can be many truths all equally true and untrue at the same time.

Fascinating quote from Hieros Gamos which voids most of the above: The truth lies behind our eyelids, in and beyond our minds, at the tips of our fingers. It comes to us before we seek it, and once found, unfolds itself in its entirety. The implications of this we are learning to comprehend. A million realities superimposed over one another, anchored in the concept of phenomenon. The only One Truth is the universal Every Truth, and because one thing is true, does not make the other interpretations less true.

Is choice a lie? Is choice the truth? Choice is relative to whatever you want it to be.

Ignorance can only be bliss for so long, unless you have no conscience.

It looks like Kader Asmal was right, Zapiro always has the last say, this time his satirical controversial comics made headlines all over the world.

BBC: SA rape cartoon is ‘derogatory’

The Independant: Zuma camp vents fury over rape cartoon

Newsweek: Zuma’s Cartoon Character

Volkskrantblog: Vrouwe justitia verkracht in Zuid-Afrika

Rue89: Afrique du Sud : un caricaturiste déclenche la colère de l’ANC

Actually all I wanted to say is, congratulations Zapiro!

A picture says a thousand words, but a well designed comic has the world on fire when the underlying message conveys the truth. If the ANC wants to sue Zapiro for his satirical masterpieces, they will be fighting against the very thing that they were fighting for back in the days when they were labeled the outcasts. Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro) told the BBC that it was defendable if he so happens to face legal action from high above.

Time to go sanitize myself as I’ve defiled myself with politics disguised as a circus (For those of you that don’t know, I hate politics and I hate clowns!)

[1.] Stop being offended. The behavior of others isn’t a reason
to be immobilized. That which offends you only weakens you. If
you’re looking for occasions to be offended, you’ll find
them at every turn. This is your ego at work convincing you that
the world shouldn’t be the way it is. But you can become an
appreciator of life and match up with the universal Spirit of
Creation. You can’t reach the power of intention by being
offended. By all means, act to eradicate the horrors of the
world, which emanate from massive ego identification, but stay in
peace. As A Course in Miracles reminds us: Peace is of God, you
who are part of God are not at home except in his peace. Being is
of God, you who are part of God are not at home except in his
peace. Being offended creates the same destructive energy that
offended you in the first place and leads to attack,
counterattack, and war.

[2.] Let go of your need to win. Ego loves to divide us up into
winners and losers. The pursuit of winning is a surefire means to
avoid conscious contact with intention. Why? Because ultimately,
winning is impossible all of the time. Someone out there will be
faster, luckier, younger, stronger, and smarter-and back
you’ll go to feeling worthless and insignificant.

You’re not your winnings or your victories. You may enjoy
competing, and have fun in a world where winning is everything,
but you don’t have to be there in your thoughts. There are no
losers in a world where we all share the same energy source. All
you can say on a given day is that you performed at a certain
level in comparison to the levels of others on that day. But
today is another day, with other competitors and new
circumstances to consider. You’re still the infinite
presence in a body that’s another day (or decade) older. Let
go of needing to win by not agreeing that the opposite of winning
is losing. That’s ego’s fear. If your body isn’t
performing in a winning fashion on this day, it simply
doesn’t matter when you aren’t identifying exclusively
with your ego. Be the observer, noticing and enjoying it all
without needing to win a trophy. Be at peace, and match up with
the energy of intention. And ironically, although you’ll
hardly notice it, more of those victories will show up in your
life as you pursue them less.

[3.] Let go of your need to be right. Ego is the source of a lot of
conflict and dissension because it pushes you in the direction of
making other people wrong. When you’re hostile, you’ve
disconnected from the power of intention. The creative Spirit is
kind, loving, and receptive; and free of anger, resentment, or
bitterness. Letting go of your need to be right in your
discussions and relationships is like saying to ego, I’m not
a slave to you. I want to embrace kindness, and I reject your
need to be right. In fact, I’m going to offer this person a
chance to feel better by saying that she’s right, and thank
her for pointing me in the direction of truth.

When you let go of the need to be right, you’re able to
strengthen your connection to the power of intention. But keep in
mind that ego is a determined combatant. I’ve seen people
end otherwise beautiful relationships by sticking to their need
to be right. I urge you to let go of this ego-driven need to be
right by stopping yourself in the middle of an argument and
asking yourself, Do I want to be right or be happy? When you
choose the happy, loving, spiritual mood, your connection to
intention is strengthened. These moments ultimately expand your
new connection to the power of intention. The universal Source
will begin to collaborate with you in creating the life you were
intended to live.

[4.] Let go of your need to be superior. True nobility isn’t
about being better than someone else. It’s about being better
than you used to be. Stay focused on your growth, with a constant
awareness that no one on this planet is any better than anyone
else. We all emanate from the same creative life force. We all
have a mission to realize our intended essence; all that we need
to fulfill our destiny is available to us. None of this is
possible when you see yourself as superior to others. It’s an
old saw, but nonetheless true: we are all equal in the eyes of
God. Let go of your need to feel superior by seeing the unfolding
of God in everyone. Don’t assess others on the basis of their
appearance, achievements, possessions, and other indices of ego.
When you project feelings of superiority that’s what you get
back, leading to resentments and ultimately hostile feelings.
These feelings become the vehicle that takes you farther away
from intention. A Course in Miracles addresses this need to be
special and superior: Special ness always makes comparisons. It
is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by
searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can
perceive.

[5.] Let go of your need to have more. The mantra of ego is more.
It’s never satisfied. No matter how much you achieve or
acquire, your ego will insist that it isn’t enough.
You’ll find yourself in a perpetual state of striving, and
eliminate the possibility of ever arriving. Yet in reality
you’ve already arrived, and how you choose to use this
present moment of your life is your choice. Ironically, when you
stop needing more, more of what you desire seems to arrive in
your life. Since you’re detached from the need for it, you
find it easier to pass it along to others, because you realize
how little you need in order to be satisfied and at peace.

The universal Source is content with itself, constantly expanding
and creating new life, never trying to hold on to its creations
for its own selfish means. It creates and lets go. As you let go
of ego’s need to have more, you unify with that Source. You
create, attract to yourself, and let it go, never demanding that
more come your way. As an appreciator of all that shows up, you
learn the powerful lesson St.Francis of Assisi taught:”…it
is in giving that we receive.” By allowing abundance to flow
to and through you, you match up with your Source and guarantee
that this energy will continue to flow.

[6.] Let go of identifying yourself on the basis of your
achievements. This may be a difficult concept if you think you
are your achievements. God writes all the music, God sings all
the songs, God builds all the buildings, God is the source of all
your achievements. I can hear your ego loudly protesting.
Nevertheless, stay tuned to this idea. All emanates from Source!
You and that Source are one! You’re not this body and its
accomplishments. You are the observer. Notice it all; and be
grateful for the abilities you’ve accumulated. But give all
the credit to the power of intention, which brought you into
existence and which you’re a materialized part of. The less
you need to take credit for your achievements and the more
connected you stay to the seven faces of intention, the more
you’re free to achieve, and the more will show up for you.
It’s when you attach yourself to those achievements and
believe that you alone are doing all of those things that you
leave the peace and the gratitude of your Source.

[7.] Let go of your reputation. Your reputation is not located in
you. It resides in the minds of others. Therefore, you have no
control over it at all. If you speak to 30 people, you will have
30 reputations. Connecting to intention means listening to your
heart and conducting yourself based on what your inner voice
tells you is your purpose here. If you’re overly concerned
with how you’re going to be perceived by everyone, then
you’ve disconnected yourself from intention and allowed the
opinions of others to guide you. This is your ego at work.
It’s an illusion that stands between you and the power of
intention. There’s nothing you can’t do, unless you
disconnect from the power source and become convinced that your
purpose is to prove to others how masterful and superior you are
and spend your energy attempting to win a giant reputation among
other egos. Do what you do because your inner voice always
connected to and grateful to your Source-so directs you. Stay on
purpose, detach from outcome, and take responsibility for what
does reside in you: your character. Leave your reputation for
others to debate; it has nothing to do with you. Or as a book
title says: What You Think of Me Is None of My Business!

– Dr. Wayne Dyer –

The theme for this year’s Earthdance is Honoring the Earth with the focus on saving the forests and the preservation of pristine wilderness zones, something which is really close to my heart while combining it with my favorite genres of music. A prayer for peace will be done at all three parties, the Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg event, all at the same time. Besides the creating awareness of our destructive influence on mother earth, the event is about the music after all, here’s the lineup for Earthdance Cape Town:

TRANCE FLOOR - Saturday > Sunday

13h00 Danalog
14h30 Jan
16h00 Richard
17h30 Craigus
19h00 Corona
20h00 Gandolf
21h30 Fuel
11h00 Tuneraider
1 AM LINK UP/Prayer for Peace
01h15 Zion Linguist
02h15 Xatrik
03h15 EMP
04h15 Bretheren
05h15 Shift
06h15 Slug
07h15 Bruce
08h45 Broken Toy
09h45 The Commercial Hippies
10h45 Headroom
12h15 Regan
14h00 Cooks
16h00 close

For more information, go to: http://www.earthdancecapetown.co.za