So much for the linux media center

After a fair amount of fiddling with different options last year I finally settled for a TwonkyMedia server running on Ubuntu on an old (and I do mean old) PC as a basic media server solution. The addition of Grip set to auto-rip inserted CDs made adding media fairly easy as well. This setup worked ok most of the time, though it had a tendency to fall apart at the seems at the precise moment I actually wanted to show guests how cool it was to have all my music served up to my '360 for easy use, and these hiccups seemed to become more and more frequent, to the point where we just started using CDs again instead.

Having recently taken the plunge and switched my home laptop entirely to the latest Ubuntu version (8.10) and tried the Xubuntu and Kubuntu flavours as well, I thought the much zippier Xubuntu would make a great choice for a reinstalled media server. The actual Xubuntu install off the Live CD went perfectly of course (if a bit slowly), but from there things pretty much went pear shaped. Xubuntu doesn't include samba sharing or a remote desktop server by default, the only two requirements I actually have for managing the server (and I don't have a decent connection at home to get these components). Twonky itself also refused to run for no apparently good reason, no matter how many times I uninstalled, reinstalled and tweaked it.

Seeing that XBMC (previously Xbox Media Center) was now available as a Live install (and as an install for Linux, Windows and Mac), I thought I'd give that a try instead. The Live CD ran, though very slowly, but once installed I ran into more problems.

I did start trying to track down solutions to some of these issues, but just can't be bothered to keep at it any more. This is why Linux still isn't ready for the average user. XBMC did really impress me though, and I decided that since Microsoft is no longer even selling games for the original Xbox (except as emulated downloads on the '360) I may as well mod my old Xbox and enjoy the swishy goodness of XBMC as it was intended to be used.

Yes, the US elections matter

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised by a comment my sister made, she said she was sick of constantly hearing about the US elections, and couldn't understand why everyone was so obsessed with it. As pointed out in one of the recent US presidential debates, international perception of America and Americans took a serious dive over the last 8 years. South Africa is no exception, and the typical opinion of South Africans about Americans is hardly positive. I believe that as a result many South Africans (my sister included) have become largely apathetic to what happens in The States. We are so tired of having American culture shoved down our throats and seeing the American government seemingly shoving around 'lesser' countries in the foreign dealings that we seem to be averse to hearing anything more about them.

The problem is, as much as we hate it, what happens in America really does have an effect on us down on Africa's southern tip. With US consumption as high as it is (despite their relatively small population considering the country's total land mass) there isn't a country in the world that doesn't depend on exports paid for in US dollars. Being such a massive consumer of every resource imaginable, the US also has the means to muscle through deals that affect smaller countries' buying and selling power in the world markets.

Most importantly in my opinion though, the US is seen as a world policy leader by many of the major developing countries. World leaders and citizens are finally waking up to the fact that climate change is a reality, that it is almost certainly caused by human activities and similarly that human activity can be changed to counteract it.

The policy choices made by the next American leadership will not only shape how that country reacts to the threat of climate change, but will influence the behaviour of developing giants India and China. Both of these countries are immensely populous and are only now going through a stage of development America and Europe had the privilege of experiencing while their populations were small enough to not massively impact the rest of the world. Asking these nations to hamper their development while America behaves responsibly to the environment will be difficult, doing so while the US continues to ignore the global consequences of it's people's wasteful lifestyles will be impossible.

I have no doubt that this is the most important election Americans have voted in for at least three decades. The economic and political instability that will forever be George W. Bush's legacy will take radical new policies to repair, and the seriously worrying state of our planet will require leadership willing to make very uncomfortable choices focused on the medium and long term instead of short term re-election goals.

Digsby gets even better

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across Digsby while looking for an app to roll together IM and twitter usage. This awesome app quickly won me over. Besides the expected basic IM support (all major protocols except Skype), it offers:

• A clean, customisable interface. It doesn't go quite as minimal as what I achieved in Miranda, but the tabbed interface and wide selection of skins make for a huge improvement on many other IM clients. The fact that the skins are all script based makes it fairly easy to get your hands dirty and customise the app even more if you are that way inclined.
• Contact merging. Joining contacts across multiple networks is as easy as dragging them onto one another and deciding on a name for the merged contact. There are some small quirks with different statuses across networks, but nothing serious.
• GMAIL, Yahoo, Hotmail, POP, IMAP and  AIM mail support. Each added account has a simple window which shows new mails, with inline options to delete, archive or mark them read to name a few. This great functionality is great for those of us that don't want to keep an email client open and only want to open it when absolutely necessary-but still like to keep on top of things.
• Integration with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and now even LinkedIn. A summary window is available for each of these services, with current status, updates from friends and notifications of important events. It's easy to update your status on each of them straight from Digsby too.

The one major gripe I would have had with Digsby in the past was it's rather large memory footprint. As of this week's release however, Digsby now runs fairly lean and mean. All that's missing now is a portable version :)

SA Medical 'care' has hit rock bottom

(My apologies for the long down time, between the hectic deadline at work recently and all Natz' medical woes, it was unavoidable)

As a chronic disorder sufferer I am something of a hospital and surgery veteran. I have 'fond' memories of these institutions reaching back to the days when our government hospitals were some of the best in the world and medical aid administrators wouldn't dream of paying for private hospital care. Of course it has been well over a decade since government medical care deteriorated to the point where those patients with medical aid would rather opt for private care.

As a fallback, for many years the private hospitals in South Africa offered those fortunate enough to afford their services excellent care. It seems though that the golden age of private medical care is over as well.

Over the last four months my wife, sister and law and nephew have each unfortunately had need of hospital care. Between them they spent time in hospitals belonging to both of the major private groups in SA (Life and Netcare) and had absolutely terrible experiences.

The horror starts with the admission process. In this age of online convenience and practically unlimited storage, the mind boggles at supposedly modern companies that require their clients to provide the same volumes of information (which are already maintained by their medical aid) every single time they visit. What is even worse is that in Life's case the patient must undergo preadmission. This means that a patient is expected to take additional time to get to the hospital before actually coming in for the procedure, just to fill out these forms to provide information the hospital already has from previous visits. One would think this preadmission process would mean on the day of the procedure itself, the patient would be able to walk in and be led to a hospital bed. Au countraire, it is still necessary to wait in reception for admin staff to approve the paperwork. On one occasion we waited in reception for 45 minutes until Natalie was finally allowed to continue to the ward.

Arriving at the ward, memories of friendly nurses eager to help are spoiled by the reality of nursing staff who insist on finishing whatever important private conversation they are engaged in before acknowledging the patient's existence. The nursing care itself leaves much to be desired as well. The nurses 'caring' for Natalie ignored her pleas for something to soothe a headache for well over five hours, Vanessa's were oblivious to her drip having missed the vein and causing swelling and those looking after baby Dayle missed the fact that he had become dehydrated while under their care.

The surgical success rate instills no more confidence. A routine wisdom teeth extraction resulted in months of pain and discomfort as well as three follow-up procedures for Natalie. To top it all off, she ended up coming out of the last procedure (which had nothing to do with her mouth) with a chipped tooth.

To add insult to injury, as a combined result of the miniscule dental limits imposed by medical aids and the need for those follow up procedures, we also sit with sizeable medical bills.

A quick visit to consumer feedback site HelloPeter.com shows that our experiences are by no means an exception to the rule, and the templated response to complaints on the site is yet another example of the shortcut approach which seems to be becoming the industry norm. To be fair, the administrative staff at the hospital I complained at has been helpful, but this is after the fact and doesn't help solve any of the problems.

I honestly don't know whether the sudden and massive decline in treatment of patients has to do with massive greed and cost cutting in the industry, lack of training or just staff apathy, but whatever it is needs to be sorted out. We are rapidly approaching a point where our expensive private hospitals are becoming little more than extremely expensive hotels with really big first aid cabinets.