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In Knysna, Helen and I say that we don’t have seasons, we just have weather. By that we mean that it can be 29 degrees in the middle of winter and 15 degrees in the middle of summer. The hot winter days are caused by berg winds, and then a…

Let’s talk about triangulation in the sense that I became familiar with it – As keen birders, we would often hear a bird calling from a tree, but try as we might we couldn’t get our binoculars onto it. We would then separate and each point to the source of…

Let’s have a look at some of them – Oximoron – a self conflicting term Honest liar Pretty ugly Only choice Same difference Onomatopoeia – A word that sounds like what it describes Buzz Sizzle Snap Hiss Alliteration – words close together, starting with the same consonant, usually to create…

Way back in 1965, when transistors were just graduating from things that looked like 6mm diameter top hats, Gordon Moore noticed that the number of transistors on a microchip was doubling every 2 years. He predicted that this trend would continue for the coming 10 years. He later revised…

When we moved to Knysna just over a year ago, we found a lot of differences between Jo’burg and our new home town. The weather is very different to that in Johannesburg (which is amongst the best in the world). It can be very cold in summer and 29 degrees…

There are those who say that it is pointless worrying, and I largely agree. But worry, like pain is an important survival mechanism. Let’s say that your business has taken an unexplained downward turn. Cash is drying up and you wake up in the night and worry about the cash…

In Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare wrote “A Rose by any other name will smell as sweet”. But what about a Stinking Corpse Lily (see image)? If you call it a rose, will it still stink? I guess Eskom thinks it would actually smell like a rose? As in “These…

An opportunity cost is the cost of choosing not to do something. Here’s an example. You are self employed and have booked a holiday overseas at a cost of R90 000 plus airfare of R20 000. Just before your holiday is about to start, you get an offer to present…

Three years ago, I wrote an article titled In search of the quickest way to solve Sudoku puzzles. Oh my! How embarrassing. At that stage, I was doing “Expert” Sudokus and thought that was the end of the road. All I could do from there on out was to…

I’ve recently taken up coloured pencils and attempted to learn to use them. I find that I am drawn to portraiture and that I like to use only three coloured pencils – red, yellow and blue. When my daughter and son-in-law visited us recently, we took them to a beach…

If A gets bigger whenever B gets bigger, did A cause B or did B cause A? This correlation is so often misinterpreted that it probably led to the expression “Lies, damned lies and statistics” Correlation can be positive (both things increase together) or negative (when one goes up, the other…

You run your own company. It’s doing well, so you have been able to book and pay for a two week cruise at a cost of R80 000 plus airfare of R10 000. Just before your holiday is about to start, you get an offer to present a series of…

I was brought up to believe that “and” was never preceded by a comma. My daughter said it always is (she loves her commas). Seems we were both wrong. Evidently, these are the rules – You can list A, B, and C as in James, Thabo, and Rista had a…

No, I didn’t catch Covid, at least, not yet. But it’s interesting to look back on these past two years and see the effect of the pandemic on my life and that of many like me. Enter Covid. Enter Zoom. Exit Derek. Before Covid came onto the scene, most of…

We can only guess what the future holds. Technology is changing the way things are done and the pace of change is accelerating dramatically. So, what is the likelihood that a particular career path will be irrelevant in, say, 20 years’ time? Let’s take a look at which ones I…

We both did it! I’m terrified of heights, so I had to rehearse the dive over and over in my mind for about three nights beforehand. I was ready. We drove to the bridge, paid the fee and put on a harness. Then we walked down to the start point.

Those of us whose home language is English find it easy to criticise others for spelling, pronunciation, grammar and meaning. But hang on! Can you speak the other person’s home language? Are you, like most of our population, forced to speak a second language most of the time when away…

So, the Department is finally waking up! Or are they just talking about waking up? Two years ago, I stood in front of our parents and apologised. I said “We, as a school, have the audacity to tell you that we are preparing your children for their future careers, yet…

Here’s the next level of the game – Level 3 Same as Level 2 except that when a player lays down a domino that brings the total of the two ends to a multiple of 5, they add that total to their score. This player scored 6 + 4…

You see it so often on your news feed. A headline something like this – Researchers have found that 70% of road accidents happen within 5km of the drivers home. “It appears that as drivers leave or approach their home they pay less attention to their driving. Perhaps because they…