Hello Darkness my old friend...

Ok, so the blackout did not last that long (for me) today, only 1.5 hours, which is good, since I can work on this blog some more then.

For those readers in South Africa, here is a list of web sites you can go to that has information on load shedding schedules:

• Main Eskom site : At this site you can search by suburb or by time of day. Problem is, the way Eskom has indexed suburbs and the way in which the local municipalities has done it are totally different, so you might not find your suburb in the list. :(
• City of Tshwane : For Pretoria and surrounding areas. Very nice map of which places will be blocked out at which time. Only one problem: you would have to know where geographically you live to read the map, because the map itself is very general, it only shows general areas.
• City Power : More information for people living in Johannesburg. No schedules are given on which areas are going to be without power, so it is a bit of a wild goose chase this one.
• City of Cape Town : Hmm, this one just points you to the City of Cape Town Web site. Fat lot of good that does you.
• eThekwini Metro : For people living in Durban and surrounding areas. This one at least gives you an idea of which areas will be affected and at what times the blackouts are likely to occur.
• Centlec : For Bloemfontein and surrounding areas covered by the Mangaung municipality. Same sort of thing, schedules, time slots, groups and User information are available.

From all the above resources the one that looks to me if it has the most information in the most user friendly way is the City of Tshwane one. Why could not all the municipalities have followed their model I wonder?