Chris Meistre

I’ve been wanting to start playing around with video editing.  So at our last EC Offroad Adventures trip I decided to take some videos with our small camera and play around with it.  I first wanted to see if it’s possible for me to produce the type of videos I want before I go out and buy a video camera.  The quality wasn’t great, but it came out relatively good if you consider the camera I was using.

Here’s my first attempt:

This is my second attempt:

All editing has been done with Kdenlive on Ubuntu Linux.

I tried a number of open source video editing suites available for Linux, but in the end Kdenlive provides me with the most flexibility and the most user friendly approach.

I’ll be happy to get any feedback on the videos, good or bad!

I hope that people have learned from the last year or so that banks are definitely Evil.  Not only do they want to suck us dry whenever they can, but they were almost single handedly responsible for the world wide recession we find ourselves in.  The consumers shouldn’t have asked for credit when they weren’t credit worthy obviously, but the banks should’ve helped the ignorant.

Now that things seem to be becoming a bit more stable, they’re at it again.  I get a letter from ABSA yesterday telling me that if I want to extend my house bond loan with them I must just give them a call.  I can borrow a certain amount and they can just add it to my current home loan.  Sure I can do it, but it will obviously increase the monthly payment I make or increase the number of months I’ll be paying off on it.  It pisses me off that other people are going to use this recklessly again and end up in deeper shit than they were before.

I ignored the letter and was just wondering how many people are going to take them up on that offer.  They’ll get more money from them, increase their house bonds, and 3-5 months down the line struggle to pay back the additional amount on their monthly payment.  Sounds familiar?

Then this morning someone from ABSA phones me offering me the same thing.  Not only are they trying to lure in people to have more debt, they are quite persistent at it as well.

Be warned, the bank has never and will never be your friend.  There is always an agenda!

Each of us lives with our own version of a Rulebook for Life.  Herein are the standards and the rules we have set out for ourselves that we adhere to when making decisions or react to situations.

When you are born, your rulebook is pretty empty.  As you grow up your rulebook is written in by all the people around you.  Your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, preachers and so on.  The rules includes things like being polite, having good manners, respecting elders, and so on.

By the time you’re a teenager you start testing these rules one by one.

It is during this time that we find ourselves and figure out what we want to do with our lives.  The rules you agree with you start writing in your own Rulebook of Life.  This will become the book that you life by for the rest of your life.

Sometimes the rules we write down are very rigid, and this sets us up for disappointment.  If you were taught that someone will always excuse themselves after burping and all of a sudden you find a person that burps without excusing themselves, you’ll go into panic mode not knowing what to do.  This person has broken _THE_ rules, how dare they?  It’s easier if your rule was that it would be good if a person excuses themselves after burping.  That way, if a person doesn’t do it you’re not too worried about it.

Once you’ve been living with a rule in your life for quite some time, it’s going to take a lot from you to change it.  But if you believe you need to change it and once you change it, you will be better of for it!

So… what does your Rulebook say?

What’s the reason for us being in relationships?

I was recently asked this question, after I answered what I thought it was, I was given another perspective on it.  It really got me to think about the way we approach life.

Whether you are in a business-, friendship-, love- or any other relationship, you are in it for one reason: To add value to the other person’s life. It’s as easy as that. If you’re in a love relationship, you are in it to add value to your wife’s life. If you’re in a business relationship with a client, you are in it to add value to their lives. If you’re in a friendship relationship, you’re in it to add value to their lives.

And what do you get out of it?

Well, you get value added to your life! Think about it, why else would you spend time with someone? If you weren’t getting anything out of it, you’d be wasting your time. To be able to get the real value out of it, you shouldn’t concentrate on what you’re getting out of it though. That is where the problem lies in with the way people think today. It’s always about what YOU (or I) can GET out of it, and not about what YOU (or I) can DO.

Advise that will help you relationship

Next time you’re about to do or say anything just think for 1 second if what you’re about to do or say will add value to the other person’s life.  Remember, you are there to add value to the other person’s life!

I don’t know why, but when I came and sat in front of my computer this morning I decided to look up some statistics about South Africa.  I came across Stats SA.  I don’t know why I completely forgot about them while I was searching for some statistics, they are after all THE people in South Africa when it comes to statistics about our country.

I downloaded a document dated July 2009, which is the latest version I could find.  Let’s see what interesting stuff about South Africa’s population we can find in it.

Male / Female Ratio

Gender Split

Male by Race

Male by Race

Female by Race

Female by Race

Population by Province

Population by Province

There is a lot more information in the document about HIV/AIDS and life expectancy. You can download the document from Stats SA