Mar 292007
 
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Bok van Blerk’s De La Rey has rapidly become one of the most popular Afrikaans songs of all time. Some fear it’s become the rallying cry for a new form of white supremacism in South Africa, others declare outright that it is much rather the rallying cry of a new generation of Afrikaners who finally found a new icon for their cultural identity without the shame of appartheid (leading to a thousand jokes about how the only leader the Afrikaans youth could find has been dead a hundred years). As for the songwriter ? He says he chose the specific general because “his name was the only one that was easy to rhyme” and the singer is blatantly honest “I’m in this for the money and I will play for anybody who pays me”.

Far be it from me to declare an opinion on so hot an issue (I have one, but I don’t want to discuss it here – the debate has been way too silly for way too long). So instead, I have decided rather to do something truly constructive.
The biggest problem I see in this debate is that a very large number of debaters don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Now I can at least help remove their excuse for not having a clue. In other words, rather than joining this debate, I wish to inform the debaters a bit. I did this by translating the song.
More specifically, I translated the video (you can see it on youtube here) and I suggest having a look at it before reading the translation. Since the purpose here is at least mostly to inform, I have also added a number of clarifications below – especially where the expressions and deeper meanings would have been lost in English.

Without further ado then:

Bok van Blerk – De La Rey

Intro screen:

By die end of the Anglo boer war only
a handfull of boers* were still holding out
against the full force of Britain

Their farms burned down, their wives and kids
dying in concentration camps

82,742 Boers
346,693 British soldiers
In times like these, legends are made…
——–
Lyrics:
On ‘n mountain in die night
we lie in the dark and wait
in the mud and the blood I lie cold
floursack and rain cling to me

And my home and my farm
burned to ashes* so that they can catch us
but those flames and fire now burn deep,
deep within me

Chorus:
De La Rey, De La Rey*
Will you come lead the boers ?
De La Rey, De La Rey
General, General
As one man we’ll fall around you
General De La Rey

Hear the khakies* that laugh
a handful of us
against ‘n huge big force
and the mountains* lie here at our backs
they think it’s over.

But the heart of ‘n boer
lie deeper and wider
they will see it yet
on a horse he is coming
the “lion of the Western Transvaal”*

Chorus X 2

Because my wife and my child
lie in a camp and “whither away”*
and the khakies’ marrow is running*
over a nation that will stand up again.

Chorus X 3
Final line:
General, General
will you come fetch the boers



*Boer is another name for the Afrikaner nation, it literally means farmer. At the time, it was the name Afrikaners preffered to refer to themselves by, “Afrikaner” though coined as early as 1658 was not in widespread use until the 1930’s.
*The orriginal word would literally mean: coals
*In case anybody DOESN’T know this part yet – a famous general of the boer forces,
especially in the second part of the anglo boer war. Afrikaners believe he invented modern guerilla warfare – this may very well be true.
*A derogatory name used by the Boers for the British forces – refers to the colour of their uniforms.
*The orriginal word would literaly mean: cliffs
*This was ‘n wellknown nickname for General De La Rey among his soldiers, the Western Transvaal refers to the region in the old ZAR republic where he came from, now largely in the North-west province of the South African republic.
*Very difficult word other possible translations could be: pining away and dying slowly.
*This is a refference to a common Afrikaans expression: “marrow” in Afrikaans has
conotations very similiar to “backbone” and “spine” for courageousness or audacity in English.

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Mar 162007
 
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It gives me great pleasure to announce the first release of OutKafe, a full-featured next generation cybercafe management suite under the GPL. OutKafe was forked from the GPL’d parts of the ZybaCafe project by the original developers with the specific intent to replace all the proprietary modules with free alternatives, thus creating a completely free suite.
This first release numbered 5.0.0 (following up to the last ZybaCafe version number) matches the full feature set of the free parts of ZybaCafe as of it’s last release, the code however has been greatly cleaned up and stabilized.
The next phase is to begin grounds-up reimplementation of the non-free parts (including the Win32 client) which will not include any code owned under proprietary licenses by any party, and can thus be released under the GPL.
Obviously, in order to prevent any conflicts of interests – I will therefore no longer be in anyway involved in the development of ZybaCafe (which still belongs to another party).

OutKafe comprises several parts: a management tool, a number of platform specific user-clients, a control daemon, a postgresql database and any number of easily created extensions which can be plugged into the system at various points. The core system is entirely developed in the Lazarus RAD environment.

Unlike previously, there is no outside sponsor for the project now, instead it is being sponsored by OutKast I.T. Solutions C.C.
Since I am a 50% partner, and the CEO of this company – it is therefore within our power now to declare OutKafe a development done for joy and the benefit of the community – where every part will always be fully free, not to mention providing a wonderful piece of inspiration for the new logo, Trudie (the OutKast Mascot) sitting in a coffee cup (yes it’s a bad pun on cafe, you may groan now).

OutKafe’s homepage with all relevant links are to be found at: http://outkafe.outkastsolutions.co.za

I look forward to as much feedback from current and new users as possible to help grow OutKafe in the future.

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Mar 122007
 
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Nando’s marketed their “chicken steaks” quite vigorously – though I had never tried one. My version may or may not therefore be in any way similiar – still, I think it’s one of the nicest recipes I have thus far come up with, and it’s definitely one of the healthiest.

Ingredients:
2/3 Deboned skinless chicken breast fillets
Mielie-meal/Cornflour/Maiseflour (whatever your culture calls it)
Robertson’s Chicken spice mixture
fresh ground black pepper
Fresh garlic house

Peel the garlic and then cut the blocks into thin slices, you need about one whole garlic-block for each chicken fillet. Using a sharp thin knife (such as a fruit knife) pierce the chicken, and then push the garlic slices into the slits you cut. Sprinkle the stuffed chicken fillets lightly with salt, grind black pepper and chicken-spice on to taste. Coat in a thin layer of maize-flour.

Put a thin layer of cooking oil in a frying pan and heat up on the stove until very nearly evaporating. Toss the chicken pieces in and fry on very high heat. As always when frying on high heat it is important to turn the food almost constantly in order to prevent sticking or burning while maximizing flavor. The high heat will quickly seal the chicken on the outside and lock the juice and flavour in on the inside. The flour will gradually discolor through yellow to an eventual dark brown, once you start seeing dark brown spots, pour a cup of water onto the oil and close the pan with a lid right away to trap the steamcloud. Reduce the heat to 2 and leave to simmer for about 30mins or until chicken is cooked through.
Serve hot.

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Mar 112007
 
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“Celibacy is for people without alcohol” – Silvia Akemi Hirano Venter (my wife).

DISCLAIMER:
The fact that I am madly in love with her, is by no means dependent on this extremely true observation she made.

Mar 052007
 
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It is a fairly well known fact that characters are typically considdered to be covered under copyright and writing a story using a character from another story is generally deemed a clear case of derivative work. However it is also true that copyright only covers actual copying – if you write a book that is a word for word match of “Gone with the wind” and can prove you have never read Gone with the wind, then you are not guilty of copyright infringement.

Now I think one can make a very clear case that online nicks are characters (fictional ?) especially when they are as old and established and known to belong to a given persona as for example my own silentcoder is.
So that would make using my nick without my permission a case of copyright infringement right.

The RIAA certainly seems to think so. This of course ignores the reality that creativity is inspired by other people (which is the classic Lessig-esque and free-software complaint against RIAA-style thinking). But as it turns out … there is another whole side to the issue which is often overlooked – the unknown duplicator.
Now take the example of silentcoder.com which was registered by another person. Moreso, this person is into many of the same topics that I cover on this blog – and the site’s main feature (like mine) is a blog.
However, the person who registered it was at the time completely unaware of my existence or of this domain (as he details in this post).
He has since discovering me, and my long history with this nick (as attested by google)
offered to stop using the domain in fact if it bothered me.

My feelings ? No way dude. It wasn’t imitation, and he didn’t know about me. I wouldn’t force him to change it – though if I was in the same position I would feel awkward about continuing to use the nick – but I have no reason to expect him to feel that. If he does, it’s his concern, if he doesn’t then that too is his concern.

That is just another thing the RIAA simply doesn’t get – sometimes, great minds really do think alike.

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