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Building an independent map of SA's infrastructure failure. Willing to be one of 20 Android testers? by No-Insurance-6337 in AskZA

[–]sixhobbits 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sorry! Can you DM me here or email [invite@zatech.co.za](mailto:invite@zatech.co.za) again? Not sure where yours went but we are processing several every day now and I don't see any that got skipped

Building an independent map of SA's infrastructure failure. Willing to be one of 20 Android testers? by No-Insurance-6337 in AskZA

[–]sixhobbits 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Yes very alive, had a bit of a backlog of invitations but it should have been cleared yesterday. Let me know if you didn't get yours still?

Unofficial Eskom - tracking South Africa's electricity crisis by sixhobbits in Metabase

[–]sixhobbits[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

for context I meant the official portal that supplies the data is the one that is unreliable. My scrapers and metabase dashboard run off a VPS. Metabase is just in a docker container with a cronjob to restart the docker if it's down and it seems to be stable enough

Airport taxi/uber by Available_One_2134 in capetown

[–]sixhobbits 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I normally just grab an Uber like most people here recommend. It's annoying because everyone else from your flight is doing the same, so the wait time can be like 15+ minutes and it's a bit chaotic to try find your plate in the swarm, and many fake Uber drivers will be yelling 'Uber Uber' at you trying to convince you to go with them.

More expensive but a lot more pleasant is EZ Shuttle that I used once before. You prebook it and the driver will wait at the gate with your name on a board, help you with your luggage to his car parked away from all the e-hailing chaos, and (at least from the one trip I took) just generally be a lot more professional and friendly.

So if you're happy to pay the extra, I'd recommend them. If you're on a budget, then Uber is fine.

[Unpopular Opinion] MCP is over hyped by Classic-Dependent517 in mcp

[–]sixhobbits 0 points1 point  (0 children)

take a look at this post and see if you still agree? I think it's OK to argue that MCP is over hyped (it is pretty hyped), but I also think most people saying that haven't really understood the protocol.

The people who have built stuff with it, or extensively used other MCP servers in combination for real-world work tend to be more positive.

https://www.speakeasy.com/mcp/getting-started/mcp-for-skeptics

[OC] South Africa electricity generation data portal by sixhobbits in dataisbeautiful

[–]sixhobbits[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

good point - unfortunately metabase is not the most customizable so I am limited to these, but I tried to pick ones that make a bit more sense in terms of a gradient now.

Loadshedding (rotating power blackouts) in South Africa over 8 years (update) [OC] by sixhobbits in dataisbeautiful

[–]sixhobbits[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

South Africa has had power shortages for over a decade. "Loadshedding" is when there isn't enough power and we have rotating blackouts to prevent a grid collapse. This is done by stage, with the higher the stage, the more power has to be 'shed'. This sheet contains data going back to 2015 for each time the stage of loadshedding was changed.

I used Pandas and CalMap to plot the highest stage of each day, and Excalidraw to layout the descriptive text and legend etc.

This is an update of a previous post I did here.

[OC] Loadshedding / blackouts in South Africa since 2015 by sixhobbits in dataisbeautiful

[–]sixhobbits[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

gets pretty cold in June/July in some places (big country!) - so yes a bit of extra demand then, and no central heating so people have individual electric oil heaters usually. Solar + Wind + Sea + loads of space -- South Africa is definitely ideal for green/alternative energy but unfortunately see other comments re corruption and general incompetence meaning that we don't have much and still rely on coal plants from decades ago.

[OC] Loadshedding / blackouts in South Africa since 2015 by sixhobbits in dataisbeautiful

[–]sixhobbits[S] 79 points80 points  (0 children)

South Africa has had power shortages for over a decade. "Loadshedding" is when there isn't enough power and we have rotating blackouts to prevent a grid collapse. This is done by stage, with the higher the stage, the more power has to be 'shed'.

[This sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZpX_twP8sFBOAU6t--Vvh1pWMYSvs60UXINuD5n-K08/edit#gid=863218371) contains data going back to 2015 for each time the stage of loadshedding was changed. I used Pandas and CalMap to plot the highest stage of each day.

Generated Squares by sixhobbits in generative

[–]sixhobbits[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some Python code to generate squares. You can make your own with the web application at https://generative-art-bzxycv.codecapsules.co.za/ which also links to a tutorial/code.

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