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I feel like Rip Van Winkle

Posted by Dan WebNutritionist/Motivator on May 11, 2012 at 5:15am

One of the most memorable works of fiction I read as a pre-teen is a children’s story by Washington 12166327681?profile=originalIrving titled Rip Van Winkle. I still remember my excitement watching the cartoon version of the story on Lagos Weekend Television (LTV) in the 80’s. Seeing one of my favorite tales come to life before my eyes was a joy unparalleled! For those of you who’ve never heard of this classic fiction, I’ll do you the honour of summarizing the tale:


The story is set in the pre- American Revolution War. Its central character is a man, Rip Van Winkle, who lives in a village at the foot of the Kaatskill Mountains along with his kids and nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle). He is well loved by the kids in the village because he often gives toys and entertains them with stories. He enjoys solitude and has a penchant for idleness which often incurs the wrath of his nagging wife. She complains incessantly about his lack of industry and neglect for his farm land which is constantly in disarray.


On one fateful autumn day, Rip escapes into the mountains with his dog, Wolf, to escape a barrage of nagging from his wife. As he wanders along he hears someone calling his name. On proceeding towards the direction of the voice, he comes in contact with a man dressed in old fashioned Dutch clothing. The man asks Rip for help and without hesitation, he assists the stranger in carrying a keg of rum all the way into a hollow-like Amphitheatre in the mountain. There he meets other men similarly dressed like the stranger, playing ninepins and drinking rum boisterously. He soon joins them in their drinking and revelry and before long, falls into a deep sleep.


He awakens and it is morning. He skin is wrinkled, his beard is long, his gun is old and rusted and Wolf is nowhere to be found. He returns to the village to find out that he has been asleep for 20 long years; his wife is now late, the American Revolution has taken place and his close friends have all died in the war. Someone calls out to a man called Rip Van Winkle who turns out to be his son, now a grown man. He is eventually taken in by his daughter who’s also now a full grown adult.

Such was Rip Van Winkle’s fate; missed out on every detail of life for 2 decades. The last he remembered, he was a young man wandering into the mountains. And now he awakens an old man unable to account for the past 20 years of his life.

I can relate to Rip Van Winkles experience because I too feel like I have been in a coma for that long; I can’t really account for the past 20 years of my life. The last I remembered I was an enthusiastic youth looking forward to an exciting future, but I am now in a future far different from what I had anticipated. There are lot of things I ought to have accomplished by now which just didn’t matter to me. Why didn’t they matter until now? Why has my mind been oblivious to the opportunities of the day? What did I do with all that time? How did the grey hairs sneak up on me undetected? Why did I never have a strong desire to get married until now? Why am I living far less than my potential while others who had far less potential at the beginning have gone far ahead? Why was I so comfortable with my self-imposed limitations? What was it that put me to sleep? Why am I suddenly waking up to the harsh reality that the time is short? Why now and not earlier? Just wondering if I am the reincarnated Rip Van Winkle.


This reminds me of Sharru Nada’s account in the all-time classic, The Richest man in Babylon. 40 years ago he arrived at Babylon a slave, and saw some labourers toiling by the gateway leading into the city. 40 years later he returns to Babylon a wealthy free man and notices the same men still toiling by the same spot; they’d had made no progress for 40 years.  God forbid that should be my testimony!


I talked this over with a friend and told him of my painful awakening and he said to me, “anytime a man wakes up, that is morning for him. No need to wallow in regrets. Forge ahead! I have decided from this point on not to allow the latter part of my life become a reflection of my past.


I am going to redeem the time!


(For other inspiring articles on my blog you can visit: http://nigerianphilosopher.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/i-feel-like-rip-van-winkle/ )

 

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Wikileaks 'hacked ahead of secret US document release'

Posted by Paul "EFCC" Hawk Adams on November 28, 2010 at 9:59am

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says it has come under attack from a computer-hacking operation, ahead of a release of secret US documents.

"We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," it said on its Twitter feed earlier.

It added that several newspapers will go ahead and publish the documents released to them by Wikileaks even if the site goes down.

The US state department has said the release will put many lives at risk.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said the US authorities are afraid of being held to account.

Wikileaks has said the release of classified messages sent by US embassies will be bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The newspapers set to publish details of the US embassy cables include Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, Germany's Speigel, the UK's Guardian and the New York Times.

The latest leak is expected to include documents covering US dealings and diplomats' confidential views of countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, Russia and Turkey.

"The material that we are about to release covers essentially every major issue in every country in the world," Mr Assange told reporters by video link on Sunday. ..

A journalist with Britain's Guardian newspaper said the files include an unflattering US assessment of UK PM David Cameron.

Simon Hoggart told the BBC: "There is going to be some embarrassment certainly for Gordon Brown but even more so for David Cameron who was not very highly regarded by the Obama administration or by the US ambassador here."

No-one has been charged with passing the diplomatic files to the website but suspicion has fallen on US Army private Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak of classified US documents to Mr Assange's organisation.

'Illegally obtained'

The US government has written to Mr Assange, urging him not release the documents.

The letter from the US state department's legal adviser Harold Koh said the release of classified state department documents was against US law and would put "countless" lives at risk.

Mr Assange is said to have asked which individuals would be put at risk by the leak and offered to negotiate over limited redactions.

In response, Mr Koh demanded that Wikileaks return official documents to the US government.

"We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained US government classified materials," he said in the letter.

Mr Koh's letter adds that the publication of the documents would endanger the lives of "countless" individuals - from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers - and put US military operations at risk.

Wikileaks earlier this week said that its next release of documents would be nearly seven times larger than the nearly 400,000 Pentagon documents relating to the Iraq war it published in October.

Wikileaks argues that the site's previous releases shed light on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They included allegations of torture by Iraqi forces and reports that suggested 15,000 additional civilian deaths in Iraq.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858637
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Facebook VS Googleme as Google presses ahead with social networking plans

Posted by technology on July 12, 2010 at 10:29pm

by @gordonmacmillan, posted on 13 July, 2010 at 8:56 am, filed under Search Engines, Social Media, Social Networkingand tagged Facebook, Friendster, Google, Google Me, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Twitter, Zynga. Bookmark thepermalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

More details are emerging that point to Google launching a social media website, called Google Me, to rival Facebook as it emerges the web giant is looking for web users to take part in a “usability study”.

According to Techcrunch, Google is asking people to take a short survey to qualify for the study, which is taking place in Dublin with the likely hood that it is also conducting similar studies in other markets.

The study also suggests that Google has a working demo site of what could be Google Me (although that’s almost certainly a working name — good as it is) that it wants to let users loose on.

The questions focus around on and offline social networking looking at how people are making their connection days to day; their social habits (do they play sport, meet friends for drinks?); and which methods they use most frequently to communicate with friends and family..

Other questions ask which social networking sites users regularly visit from a list topped by Facebook followed by Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster and Orkut. It then asks about how many times they are accessing their “primary” social networking website (if they have one).

Another question asks about content habits and whether users have shared photos, video, reviews and blog posts.

The Google social networking site story kicked off at the tail end of June when Digg founder Kevin Rose tweeted that Google Me was a real project. This was followed by D’Angelo, the former Facebook’s CTO and founder of Q&A service Quora, who added more meat to the rumour when he posted that there were a large number of people at Google working on it.

Yesterday in a possibly related move Google invested as much as $200m in social gaming business Zynga. That expanded its social media footprint and possibly giving it access to a wealth of social media gaming for its planned site launch.

It is extremely exciting development and a necessary one. At the moment Facebook looks almost unassailable even with its tribulations around privacy. Those issues, and Facebook’s attitude to them, clearly make people uneasy, but there seems a widespread reluctance to leave it. I think part of that is ground in the idea that at the moment there is no widespread alternative to Facebook. Google could change that and offer a viable alternative and give Mark Zuckerberg and company a run for their money.

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Colombian football team robbed in South Africa two weeks ahead of the World Cup

Posted by Choochoo Sports Book on May 29, 2010 at 10:03pm
Colombian football team robbed in South Africa two weeks ahead of the World Cup..

The Colombian football team has been robbed in South Africa two weeks before the start of the World Cup.
The team lost £1,800 pounds worth of U.S. dollars and euros on Tuesday after players were targeted at their hotel in Johannesburg.
Two female workers at the five star Hyde Park Southern Sun were arrested for allegedly taking the cash from the players' suitcases after they arrived to play an international friendly against South Africa.

Police spokesman Eugene Opperman said the pair had been charged with theft and appeared in court.
He said: 'They are accused of taking the money after going through suitcases and bags in several rooms on May 25.


'We were informed about the theft the following day and officers investigated. The suspects were cleaners at the hotel. They were arrested at the hotel and are being held in custody.
'It appears it was an inside job.'
The theft allegation is likely to be seen as a major embarrassment to South Africa so close to the start of the tournament.
South Africa's Times newspaper named the pair as Lucky Mahlatsi, 25, and Jeanet Mashimbyi, 29, from neighbouring Lesotho.
They will reappear in court next week.
Charges against a third woman were dropped because of lack of evidence.
The Colombian national team, who did not qualify to play in the World Cup, arrived in South Africa on Monday.
Last night they lost 2 - 1 in a friendly against the tournament hosts at the flagship Soccer City stadium.
The Hyde Park Southern Sun will host England's group stage rivals Slovenia during the tournament.
The eastern European squad is expected to arrive in South Africa on June 7.
Some of the 31 visiting nations have already arrived in Johannesburg and other teams are expected over the weekend..
Organisers have repeatedly stated their confidence in the ability of the police to protect players' and fans during the tournament.
But last year officers were called to investigate theft charges against the Egyptian national team during their stay in South Africa.
The players lost around £1,600 in U.S. dollars after being targeted at their Johannesburg hotel during the Confederations Cup.
Today a Fifa spokesman declined to comment on the robbery but said the security arrangements in place for the Colombian team's visit were not the same as those that had been arranged for World Cup teams.

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SollyWood South African Animation Safari one step ahead of nollywood

Posted by NollywoodMohits on June 15, 2009 at 10:41pm

Zambezia from Triggerfish Animation on Vimeo.

While Nollywood can boast the largest output of films (albeit on video) after Bollywood, it seems South Africa is making serious money-making strides of more universal appeal. Whilst browsing the Screen Africa website I came across a recruitment ad placed this week for a wide variety of positions available due to the expansion of the team behind the production of Zambezia, “a pioneering CG animation feature to be produced in Africa.”Intrigued, my mind went to the only other animation film from Africa I could think of, a 1977 Nigerian film (pre-Nollywood) called Bisi, Daughter of The River co-directed by Jab Adu and Ladi Ladebo. If memory serves me correctly, it was actually live action combined with animation and, while I have lingering images of a young woman (played by British-Nigerian actress, Patti Boulaye) wading into a river in the ethereal surroundings of animated landscape and creatures, I’ve tried, and failed, over the years, to find out what became of that film as I only ever saw clips/trailers of it on Nigerian television in the 70s – no doubt part of the promotions for FESTAC ‘77 (the 2nd World Black & African Festival of Arts & Culture).According to Mohamed Ghazala of the Fine Arts Faculty, Minia University, Egypt, African animation started about 70 years ago in Egypt and was founded by the Frenkel brothers who were not professional artists or animators, but Jewish carpenters who immigrated to Egypt from Russia in search of freedom and work and achieved the unexpected; the first African animated cartoon throughout Africa.Ghazala, in his blog post, The History of African Animation, writes that the hero of the 10 minute film, In Vain (Mafish fayda), was Mish Mish Effendi, who, he says, was the prototype of Disney’s well-known Mickey Mouse. Unfortunately this film was lost when Cairo burned in 1951. However, The Frenkel brothers’ second film, National Defense, is still preserved.Currently, African animation only exists in Egypt and South Africa, with about 50 animation studios producing animation commercially for Egypt and other African and Middle Eastern countries.So, back to Zambezia which, sure enough, is from a South African animation studio, Triggerfish. According to a September ‘08 article in Screen Daily, Cinema Management Group (CMG) president, Edward Noeltner, picked up international rights for the 3D animated feature ahead of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.According to the Screen Daily article:“This an exciting and visually exhilarating story with wonderful moral values which, much like Disney’s Lion King, will appeal to audiences of all ages in every corner of the globe,” Noeltner said. “We are very excited to be offering Zambezia for the very first time in Toronto where we have footage from the film to screen along with a full plate of new projects to offer.”And from the blurb on CMG’s website:On the edge of an enormous waterfall, in the heart of Africa, lies the bird city of Zambezia. Famous for its impregnable defenses against egg predators, it has become the breeding sanctuary for birds from throughout the river valley. With half of its massive Baobab shell gone, Zambezia City is the ultimate tree house, humming with birds on every level, from its roots at the base, to the platforms high in the leafy tops.Aero, a young Taita Falcon from a remote outpost, is the protagonist of the story. He dreams of flying on the prestigious River Watch. When Aero’s father is captured by the treacherous Marabous, he is forced to abandon his outpost and flee to Zambezia. However, Aero soon finds himself at the centre of a deadly plot concocted by the Marabous – who have joined forces with giant, egg-eating lizards – to overthrow Zambezia and return things back to “every bird for himself”. If Aero is to save Zambezia, he will have to learn that not all battles are won with fast and fancy flying.Set in the spectacular Zambezi River Valley, the film draws on this unique natural environment as its inspiration – an inspiration which can be seen in the beautiful, quintessentially African elements of the film.But it would seem that CMG (who also hold the international sales rights to the recent dramatic feature, African Violet) also snapped up another Triggerfish project because they also own rights to Khumba, “the story of a half-striped zebra, born into an insular, isolated herd obsessed with stripes. Rumors that the strange foal is cursed spread and, before long, he is blamed for the drought that sets in. When his father, the leader of the herd, blames him for the lack of rain and the subsequent death of his mother, the outcast zebra leaves the confines of his home knowing that he cannot survive in the herd without all his stripes.” Both Zambezia and Khumba are due for release in 2011.Another South African animation, which is slated for international release this year, is Kalahari, the story of Crash, a cheetah who is the fastest cat in Africa, but who has the inability to corner. When his mother is lost in a brush fire, he is adopted by a family of meerkats who try to teach him how to be a cheetah, and help him find his “chee” (inner spirit) in order to corner. According to Wikipedia, “Hollywood producer Laszlo Bene assembled the film’s crew, which fully comprises personnel from the local entertainment industry. The film’s $23 million budget was financed by offshore funds and Johannesburg investors. Its production details were kept secret during its development, which took place throughout most of 2006.”Kalahari is reported be released in the United States by a major distribution company and will be South Africa’s second animated film after the 2007 film Tengers, a full-length claymation satirical black comedy about life in post-Apartheid South Africa.Maybe it’s because most of the animators, from the Frenkel brothers to the Triggerfish team, aren’t indigenous Africans but, apart from Bisi, Daughter of the River and Tengers, animals seem to feature predominantly in most of these films, seemingly raising the profile of Africa for international audiences without actually featuring indigenous African people. To be fair, Triggerfish’s 2009 show reel does have several black characters featured, but I’m guessing these are for local South African TV consumption, and that they’re going with the Lion King and Madagascar -type models where it would seem that epic or romanticised visions of Africa are considered more palatable to mainstream international audiences when presented with adorable four-legged or winged creatures. Given their varied stock of characters, I wonder if Triggerfish will one day break that mold and give international audiences some loveable, entertaining African characters that are actually human… or maybe even be beaten to it by one of the other 49 African animation studios!Zambezia Trailer
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