29 April 2011

The only thing ROYAL about this wedding is the royalties!

What's the big hullabaloo about this wedding?

First of all what's the point? They've been living together already so it means very little apart from securing the throne (can't have a "fornicator" as King, although that's never stopped royalty before!). Also the costs for this wedding could have fed the entire starving nation of Zimbabwe AND THEN SOME. Total gluttony if you ask me - and no-one asked me :)

It's obvious the Queen pressured them to marry because it was the "proper" thing to do and I'm not surprised they agreed: think about all the expensive wedding gifts they'll receive from the Commonwealth states, not to mention the sycophants' efforts to get a photo with the couple and then of course all the memorabilia royalties (sic).

One third of the globe will be watching today's event, and I'd wager that's the entire female population. For Bill & Kate it's just a money-spinner - they could have just as easily lived together for the rest of their lives so please people, stop feeding the piggies!

And before I stop, just remember there will be plenty more of these royal weddings: William's second (possibly third) and a few others, so don't use up all your enthusiasm for this one!

Women: remember this feeling for every day that your man wants to watch rugby, and you'll be in a better place to empathise and not criticise...

* I give the marriage seven years before it starts to crumble.

18 April 2011

Charlie Sheen: Bi-Winning

By now most people have heard about Charlie Sheen's recent escapades both on and off camera. A good proportion of you have also seen the Charlie Sheen interview online, but to my amazement, it seems very few of you have actually seen the Charlie Sheen Songify video! Basically, some dude(s) makes songs out of whatever people ask and in this case someone must have said "Charlie Sheen's interview" and the result is this really hilarious (IMHO) music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QS0q3mGPGg

17 April 2011

Win a LEGO Death Star

GAME is doing an awesome competition at the moment: win a LEGO Death Star! All you have to do is sign up here: http://www.game.co.za/Competition.aspx ... it's a pretty simple competition with one of the most AWESOME prizes EVER!

15 April 2011

BEWARE counterfeit Transcend JetFlash USB drives!

Earlier this week my friend Oltman and I were on our way to a DELL conference in Umhlanga Ridge area when we spotted some guys selling 32GB Transcend USB flashdrives at the side of the road while we waited at the robots. We asked how much they were and they said R150. This is a tremendous bargain. I was immediately tempted but more than that suspicious. I contacted RECTRON and asked them about this (Rectron is currently selling the same product for R599+VAT) and requested some documentation on the counterfeit flashdrives.

For your benefit, and so you can warn your colleagues, here it is in its entirety:
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddj7mhbd_18gt8hjbdp

Or click to read more and see the embedded slideshow...

14 April 2011

My blog is ... useful?

(Random rambling mode on...)

Some may argue that having a visit counter on a blog is an obvious confession that the blog owner wants their ego boosted. My response to that is that one's ego is only boosted if the visit counter actually has a significant number on it and only then if it's not counting local or repeat visits within a specified time period. Well, my blog isn't tracking repeat visits within a specific time period (not sure about the local) and I've been amazed that I've almost hit 10,000 hits on this site. That's a lot of time wasted for you folk out there :)

Out of curiosity (and because I wanted to allow my ego to be boosted) I did some delving deeper to find out where the visits were coming from and I picked up some interesting (and ego boosting) information - my blog is being referenced!!

Check this out - I've been referenced just over a week ago on STACKOVERFLOW as an answer to a problem (pretty cool), and I've even been referenced as the third spot on an unofficial FAQ for the DSTV Drifta. It would appear that those 10,000 hits weren't just my mom and my wife after all :) Further digging included a google search for "Super 15 rugby fixtures" and my blog was in second place, just above www.superxv.com. That's pretty darn cool, people!!

If you want to, please feel free to leave a comment about what works (and what doesn't) about my blog so I can be sure to get that magical number of 1,000,000 and start to monetize! Your comments may one day pay for my daughter's education! Do it - think of the children...

Windows Live Essentials offline installer

I've been toying a bit with the (new) Windows Live Essentials pack that you can use on Windows 7 and I'm readily impressed with the few features I've used so far. Especially handy is the Windows Live Photo's stuff, which makes importing and basic editing of photographs a whole lot better, if not necessarily always easier (too many options!!!).

If you want to download it you can either go the online download route which can be a pain and really slow if you're in South Africa on 384kbps (sigh - does anyone else besides me think this is far far far way behind the times?) and / or have to do it to multiple household machines. The best route is to grab the offline installer, which can be found here.

Alternatively, you can start the online download from the Live Essentials download page and then cancel it, which will then give you more options to download again - one of which should be an offline installer option.

Information obtained for this post was from here and here.

[ UPDATE 2013-05-26: doesn't look like the original link works any more. Found a pointer to these links, from this page ]


Windows Live Essentials 2011 Offline Installer [English]

To verify the validity of these links above, you can go to this official Microsoft page, which points to the same files (from what I can tell) ...


[ END OF UPDATE ]



11 April 2011

Download Internet Explorer 9 offline installer

IE9 is out. It looks kinda cool too. I haven't played around with it extensively, but from what I've seen, I like. Time will tell whether it is better than Firefox 4, the latest Opera, or Chrome. I should probably put up a head-to-head-to-head-to-head sometime, just for interest's sake.

For now, though, if you want to do an offline install of IE9 it's quite a mission to find the files, so here's a link for your convenience:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-9/worldwide-languages

New Layout

Times change. So too does BLOGGER and, along with it, my blog.

I am moving with the changing times. Kind of. I decided to embrace the new template designer offered by BLOGGER after months of resisting (and also since my old template doesn't always integrate so nicely without me having to hack some CSS or HTML). This is the result. Do you like it? Please vote on the poll ... I don't expect too many responses but hopefully at least one vote will indicate if it's considered an improvement or not :)

* I am not very artistically inclined so if there are horrible clashing colours then vote NO!

To see what my old BLOG looked like, click here:

Blog This! extension for GOOGLE CHROME

Blog This! : Communicate - Google Chrome Help:

"Post to Blogger with just one click

This extension adds a Blog This! button to the toolbar that you can click to create a new Blogger post. The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you're on, as well as any text you've highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog! Learn more about Blogger

To learn more about the extension, visit its homepage in the Extensions Gallery. You can discover even more extensions in the gallery."

The problem I have with the Blog This! extension is that it's quite a bit watered down when compared to the usual BLOGGER interface. Obviously it's meant to be a quick "click and post" solution but I really don't have a problem with having a tab opened with BLOGGER sitting there ready to go. Well, as far as useful tools go, it's there or thereabouts, I suppose. Time will tell if I actually put it to use.

One problem I've already picked up is the lack of labels support, so that's an annoyance.

PS: I made this post with Blog This!


VODACOM reduced 2GB Broadband pricing

For those that don't follow mybroadband.co.za, VODACOM isn't just giving South Africans a new logo but also new product offerings. Announced recently was VODACOM's 2GB+2GB special which brings broadband pricing to an  "as low as" 3.6c per MB. That's quite a big deal for South Africa because only recently it was still R2 per MB on some data packages so this is a 98% reduction in costs.

Basically if you sign up with VODACOM between 1 May and 31 July 2011 you'll be able to secure this deal, including 7.2Mbps modem at R149 per month for 12 months. There is a catch: you get 2GB for use any time and another 2GB for use from midnight to 5am a month. If you don't intend to use the second 2GB batch, then this pricing is "as good as" the CELL C offering, so you can't really lose anyway.

If I've ever been an advocate recommending to you the Cell C 2GB deal, well now you can scratch that and go for the VODACOM deal instead!

A breakdown for the various competitors, courtesy of mybroadband.co.za's news post is below. I can't help but notice the "competitive Telkom pricing" ;-)


2GB Mobile Data Contracts
 Standard dataExtra data (after 00:00)ModemPrice (p/m)Cost/MB
Vodacom 2GB + 2GB2GB2GB7.2MbpsR149R0.036 - R0.073
Cell C 2GB2GB--7.2MbpsR149R0.073
8ta 2GB1.5GB--7.2MbpsR280R0.19
MTN 2GB2GB--7.2MbpsR389R0.19