Donald Norman’s “Design of Future Things”

by Gert 9:53 PM Communication

I've been reading the Ed Yourdon blog and he had a reference to the Donald Norman's book "Design of Future Things". As I think of the future of my development career it rekindled my hope of desire to apply technology to enhance peoples lives. Without reading the book I want to remember his six tenets of design in the application of technology in everyday life.

Design Rule One: Provide rich, complex, and natural signals.

Design Rule Two: Be predictable.
Design Rule Three: Provide a good conceptual model.
Design Rule Four: Make the output understandable.
Design Rule Five: Provide continual awareness, without annoyance.
Design Rule Six: Exploit natural mappings to make interactions understandable and effective.

June 25-30: Wellust family farm

by Gert 3:14 AM SA

Gert jr and myself will be traveling to the family farm for a week. Corina and Ettienne will be going back to Klerksdorp to visit with her family. The farm was purchased by my grandfather in 1938 where he retired to. It has been a favorite vacation spot for the whole Wallis family during the winter months. In South Africa there is no public hunting and it is considered a great privileged to have such a property for vacationing. It is 2000 hectares - to give a sense of perspective - it has a circumference of about 13 miles.

The farm is situated in the far Northern Transvaal close to the border with Zimbabwe and Botswana. Clicking on this link Wellust Farmhouse will take you to Google maps to give you an idea where in the world this is situated. Zoom out for a bigger view. You can see a larger round hill on the right hand side. In Afrikaans it means koppie which translates to small cup and means a small hill.

It may be an artifact of global warming but the area has become more arid over time. When my grandfather owned it, he used to run about 400 head of cattle. Due to the lack of grazing, we had to sell the 20 head of cattle in April. It has rained since and it will be restocked at some time in the future. The farm hasn't been profitable for as long as I can remember. The proceeds of the operations are predominantly used for the upkeep of the farmhouse and property. There is very little amenities and no electricity (no Internet!).

It has the best firewood (hardekool) which makes for a great barbecues. The wood comes from very slow growing and very thorny acacia trees. This creates an extremely hard and heavy firewood. When we still lived in South Africa we would fill every nook and cranny in the vehicle when we returned. There are many a junior Wallis that got poked by sharp stick crammed under the front seat of the car.

I won't be able to post for at least a week.

24 June: Barnyard Theater

by Gert 1:03 AM

Today we went to the barnyard theater. The concept is a mix between a Las Vegas lounge show and a review. Todays performance was great

June 22: Klerskdorp to Pretoria

by Gert 3:08 AM

Klerksdorp

Travelling from Klerksdorp to Pretoria you drive through the gold mines of the Western Transvaal. The countryside is littered with mine-shafts and other gold mining operations.

After 120 years of gold mining there are a lot of toxic waste dumps around. Cyaninde is one of the primary chemincals used to extract the gold ore. Technology has also improved. The old mine dumps are reworked to re-refine the old waste. Here they are washing away the ore.

Good example of an older type mine-shaft. In the 1940's they started to use concrete towers for the elevators going down. The deepest mine is 3.5 km (2 miles) deep. To get to that depth you have to stagger the elevators, as the cables will break under their own weight. At the time Corina grew up in Orkney, the local mine had 90,000 employees.

June 17 - 21: Klerksdorp

by Gert 4:06 AM

Klerksdorp
Corina's sister Reta and her husband Marius lives in Klerksdorp, a town about two hours drive east of Johannesburg. Her parents live in a small apartment on the same property. They are both medical doctors and they have their own very successful medical practice. They do work very hard. Marius is on call very regularly and it is not uncommon for him to be called out 2 - 3 times at night.

All the kids sitting around the dining room table. Colleen, Marius (jnr), Gertjie, Alma and Ettienne.

On Tuesday we visited their game farm which Marius owns with a number of his medical friends. Only going at 5mph Ettienne is helping grandpa to drive. For obvious reasons there are none of the big 5 animals (Elephant, Rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard) on the farm. There are a number of antelope species and giraffes. We saw a Giraffe, Kudu a Duiker and some blesbuck. The photo's I took are not in jpg format so I can't post to the blog. In addition we saw a lot of "meerkat" which is a type of mongoose.

Ettienne going for a walk on the street in front of Reta's house.

My father in law is a keen on lawn bowling. It is similar in scoring to curdling except it is played on grass.

The ball itself is counter-weighted and oval shaped which means that it tends to curve more as it slows down. With the right "weight" and "grass" you can position it close to the white ball called the Jack, which acts as the target.

Here Gert jnr is trying his hand showing some nice form.

This is much more difficult than it seems. This is a very popular sport for the elderly. One could we say "shuffleboard" on steroids.

Sarel (my father in law) had a pair's match on Monday evening - one of his opponents were 80 years young.

Gert watching over the head. The white ball is the target.

16 June: Randburg

by Gert 3:01 AM SA

Randburg
We spent the day in Randburg with the Wallis family. We visited with both my brothers and most of their kids.

This is Betty - my mothers life-in maid. She is carrying a log for the fireplace.

We heard the good news that Jason & Monique - on the right is expecting which will be the first great-grand children in the family.

On the left is Neil, Monique's younger brother. He is currently in his senior year at University.

Leoni with Ettiene - the youngest of Neil's children.

My mother Marlene is now 74, enjoys a beer and refuses to give up smoking.

Weather

Everybody here complains about how cold it is but you can see from the photos that everybody is short sleeved. It is very pleasant if you find a sunny spot, but as you move into the shade it becomes slightly chilly. Overnight it can get very cold - enough to frost.

June 15: Stuck At De Gaulle

by Gert 3:52 AM SA

You can plan as much as you like but when the airlines muck things up you have to just grin and bear their incompetency. Our flight landed an hour late at De Gaulle airport, it took an hour from de-planing to get to the new gate, by which time they had closed it. We missed it by less than 5 minutes. In the end we had to spend the night. We were delayed twenty four hours. All in all I think it was a blessing in disguise. It gave us a breather in travelling with Ettienne and also some time to get over some of the jet lag.

The flights with Ettienne was not the easiest. He is very busy and active and being told to sit still for 10 hours at a time is not easiest for him. From Paris to Johannesburg he started throwing some tantrums with nothing right. Corina took him into the bathroom to give him some Tylenol juice. At that time he was screaming "bloody murder" which I could hear 10 rows away from the closed bathroom door. Even in his state of stupor he still had the presence of mind to call for re-enforcement's and pressed the flight attendant button. Corina was literally caught with her "pants down".

Otherwise the flight was non-eventful and we arrived safely. Thabu (my brother Neil) and his wife Isella met us at the airport and we picked up our rental vehicle at the airport.