Calculating the true cost of car ownership

In December 2008 I bought my 2004 model-year, 80000km Ford Fiesta 1.6i Ambiente for R72,800, freshly serviced. It now has 99,100km on the clock and went in early for the 100,000km service due to a fault that will yet cost me a couple grand more to get fixed properly.

Here are the costs so far. Maintenance includes the service, two front tyres and wheel alignment, a battery, car washing, and a couple of random repairs.

How to reduce 3G bandwidth usage, and 3G vs ADSL

My new place doesn't have ADSL yet, so I tethered my 3G iPhone to the computer. As a result, this post is about ways to make the computer sip bandwidth instead of guzzle it, and the changing break-even price between 3G and ADSL in South Africa.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ8/ZS5 "Travel Zoom" Camera

For my trip to Zurich I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5, which was released in March 2010.  Here are my Picasa albums for Zurich and my later trip to Tygerberg Zoo in Cape Town taken with the ZS5/TZ8.

Here are some of the reviews by photographyblog, dpreview and Panasonic's product page.  The product page gives a summary of the camera's vital stats and features.  Below are my findings from taking the camera on real-life overseas travel for a week.

Back up a Windows server with cwRsync and rsnapshot

Here is how to backup data from Windows servers to a Linux backup server using  rsync.  Specifically using cwRsync server (a Cygwin + rsync package) running on the Windows server, and rsnapshot running on the Linux backup server.  This was tested with rsync 3.0.7 and rsnapshot 1.3.1 on Linux (CentOS 5.4), and cwRsync 4.0.4 (includes rsync 3.0.7) on Windows (Server 2008).

Cheap Phone: The Vodafone 135

This weekend I bought a Vodafone 135 for ZAR 179 (24 USD).  The Feb 2009 press release for the 135 had this to say:

The Vodafone 135 is a candy bar style mobile designed to make mobile communications affordable in developing markets thanks to a short two line black and white display suitable for calls and texts. Its design makes it the most affordable phone of its kind on the market. It will be available in the summer in black in developing markets on pre-pay.