The Sam Fisher I knew is dead.

I just received the most dreadful sms to start my day - I'm still sick and now this terrible news!

------ SMS ------
From: +27820048640974
Sent: Apr 30, 2010 08:40
Subject: The Sam Fisher you knew is dead.

The Sam Fisher you knew is dead. Join Sam on his mission of Justice, Revenge & Conviction. Splinter Cell Conviction out now on PC.

---

I don't even think I knew Sam Fisher, which makes me feel even worse for him being dead now!

Blogs gone private

Well it's been a long time since our last post to this blog: sadly, it's been two months of silence and the main reason for this has been that a very sorry group of people have found it worth their while and  (apparently limitless time) to scour through our blogs and extract any tidbits of information that they can use to harass us and generally just cause headaches. Yes, these people are connected to our High Court case, so it's no surprise that they've resorted to this nefarious (and based on the logs indicating their time spent on the site and their browsing habits, also desperately sad) approach in order to somehow "gain the upper hand". In order to err on the side of caution, we've had to take our blogs "off the grid" for the time being, but rather than keep you all in the dark, and because of popular demand, we've opened it up to a select list of readers (you should feel honoured that you made the cut!).

Don't expect much coming from us at the moment anyway, because we've been so used to NOT posting news that it's going to require some changes of habit, and also Kat and I are both presently desperately sick, so we're not really in the mood right now :)

A lot has happened in the past two months, and hopefully over the course of the next several weeks we'll be able to catch those that care back up to speed!

Superbru week 12

Wow. This was a crazy weekend for results. Cheetahs drew in a 25-25 match against the Chiefs. 0.05% of the SuperBru community predicted that, so that meant 45 people out of 70,000!! THEN the Stormers lost to the Reds (not as surprising), and then the Crusaders were downed by the Force (THAT was surprising).

68.57% win accuracy in Super 14

Global
9,236/ 72,700

Sharks
685/ 4,476

Geel Kabouters
5/ 33
(3 points behind 2nd place, and a possibly insurmountable 9 behind 1st place)
SuperDraw2010
15/ 35
(5 points behind 2nd place, and a possibily insurmountable 10 behind 1st place)

Sport24
595/ 2,246

SuperBraai
3/ 12
(5 points behind 1st place, and 4 ahead of 4th)

Portable FLASH plugin for portable Firefox

[ update: added in the location for FIREFOX portable plugins ]

Back in June 2009 I mentioned a way to run a portable SWF player; well, another need by an academic has caused me to investigate how to run a portable FLASH plugin from a portable browser, so I don't leave a footprint on the desktop PCs.

In my case, I'm very fond of portable Firefox, so I've incorporated the solution with this browser so anyone with a copy can simply take their browser anywhere, plug in their USB to any PC, and automatically have access to FLASH without needing to install anything more or have administrator privileges on the host PC.

It's not my solution (my colleague Soren grabbed it from here), but here I repeat it for your convenience.

Installing Flash Player Plugin on Firefox without having Administrator Access or Premissions

Last updated on Tue, 2010-02-02 16:43. Originally submitted by fabio on 2007-02-19 16:32.

UPDATE: The following guide, originally written for Firefox 2, has been used successfully on Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6. Users of Firefox Portable edition (versions 3, 3.5 and 3.6) also have been successful using this guide.
The Windows computers available at my University permits login only by autenticated users (students) who don't have Administrator access and permissions.
Installing software on those PC is then not possible.
Recently they finally installed Firefox 2 but without the Flash plugins, which is absolutly useful/needed.
I then tryed to install the Flash Player using the "standard" way (click on the missing plugin link then install the plugin..). However without administrator plugins it was not possible to install.
Then I started doing some tests trying to install the plugin manually. Now I have it installed and working perfectly!
This is how I managed to install it without administrator permissions:

1. Download the XPI archive of the Flash Player Plugin to your hard disk (right click on the download link then "Save link as.."). XPI archives are only ZIP files containing the files used by the plugins.
2. So you can safely rename the file you just downloaded, called flashplayer-win.xpi, into flashplayer-win.zip (you are changing its extension from .xpi to .zip)
3. Extract the files in the archive. You can use any program capable of opening .zip files (WinZip, WinRAR or the free and great 7-zip). There are also websites which can uncompress archives: wobzip.org.
4. Copy the files flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins\
   
   
   • %APPDATA% is not a real folder. It's an alias. By inserting it in your windows explorer address bar, you'll be redirected to the real folder which holds your applications profiles and settings. The location of this folder depends on various setting that's why we need the alias and not an absolute path.
   • ...\PortableApps\FirefoxPortableTest\Data\plugins
   • You can open this folder simply choosing "Start → Run → Type in %APPDATA% → OK".
   • In case you don't have a Plugins folder you can create one and place your files there.
5. Restart Firefox
6. Enjoy your flash websites!

Superbru Week 11

BRATTEX
69.84% win accuracy in Super 14

Global
11,648 / 72,572

Sharks
787 / 4,469

Geel Kabouters
7 / 33

SuperDraw2010
15 / 35

Sport24
716 / 2,236

SuperBraai
3 / 12

I'm sucking it up now :( although having said that, it's very tight in the positions I'm in, so a small shift could see my fortunes change! Biggest disappointment is that I'm in 7th in one money league so I'm dragging behind, although again there's less than 3 points between my spot and 3rd (which is a purse)! In SuperDraw there's 5 points between my place and 3rd (this pool is winner-takes-all I think).

Superbru Week 10

BRATTEX
70.18% win accuracy in Super 14

Global 
12,060 / 72,249

Sharks 
825 / 4,451

Geel Kabouters 
7 / 33

SuperDraw2010 
15 / 35

Sport24 
691 / 2,192

SuperBraai 
3 / 12

Superbru Week 9

Brattex

72.55% win accuracy in Super 14

Global 

7,397/ 72,149 

Sharks 

525/ 4,448 

Geel Kabouters 

5/ 33 

SuperDraw2010 

12/ 35 

Sport24 

459/ 2,185 

SuperBraai 

2/ 12 

Getting closer to prize money and top of the bru's table!

Superbru week 7.5

Well it's been a long while since I've reported anything about Superbru, and that's partly because I doubt most anyone cares, but also because I've not had much to report about :)

It's now almost halfway through the tournament (technically it is pretty much halfway for the round-robins) and I am blogging on my 15-match winning streak and my resurgence to the top half of the SuperBry (AKA SuperBraai) pool from pretty much dead-last at the start. Ironically, I have the most WP predictions, most GSP scores, but this time around I have very few MP and few BP, which counts heavily against me in this sort of competition. In fact, only one person has fewer BP and MP than me in this season, and he's coming last! I also have the second worst TDM too, but interestingly, I'm topping the global standings out of everyone in my pool!

The Sharks have just beaten the Hurricanes by 3 points after a magnificent 50m penalty kick on the hooter by Ruan Pienaar, and before I get into that result, I am sitting happily on 2nd spot of the SuperBraai pool (that's quite an achievement considering I've been sucking it up badly this year so far and pretty much came up from bottom; much like MrP, although he came from halfway to top), 15 wins in a row, and in line for my 3rd GSP in a row (that's something awesome).

To put it into perspective, my current stats for 2010 are as follows:

Bad advertising

It still astounds me how often I see really badly designed adverts or signboards. In this particular case I guess the designers thought it would be cool to have a frog exploding as an advert for loads of awesome books... Even though I think I get it, I must be missing something here when showing exploding frogs is a good advert for kids.

Mugg&Bean MUSGRAVE is at it again!

Check it out:

------ SMS ------
From: +278200703320477
Sent: Mar 4, 2010 12:24
Subject: Mugg&Bean MUSGRAVE - Enjoy a...

Mugg&Bean MUSGRAVE - Enjoy a complimentary meal of your choice from the dinner time menu with every item ordered. Offer valid MON Till SUN from 5pm till close.

Julius and me...

How ironic.

Julis Malema was born 3 March 1981...

I was born 4 March 1979 ...

That's it. I have nothing more to say on the matter.

Eeek! Water intoxication!! Beware the H2O!

Man, this sort of information can freak a guy out.

After doing some random searches for something that wasn't quite as random (I just can't remember what my initial search was for), I stumbled upon this bit of wiki-information regarding WATER INTOXICATION. It would appear that drinking too much water can actually lead to DEATH.

Yow. Now I'm going to think twice about drinking water while running - my whole life could be affected by this. Ayish!

Yummy new sandwich!

Look! It's a sand cheese and tomato sandwich!

Yum!

Super 14 2010 rugby calendar

For those that care, the latest Super 14 (2010) rugby calendar is available online. What makes this really handy is you can add it to your GOOGLE CALENDAR and set it to send you reminder SMSes of the games, etc.

Furthermore, the guy that manages this, updates the calendar with the results. Handy :)

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=u13c9qsp5ov55ljsep9novo1qs%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Africa/Johannesburg

[update 17 Feb-10: the old calendar seems to be active again too, and I think it may be a better option since it has been a rolling calendar since 2006... for those that can't remember the link, check out my previous post or go here http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=9svcgt47p03abujji4rsv9cccigacidt%40import.calendar.google.com&ctz=Africa/Johannesburg, or with the webcal link here: webcal://ical.me.com/benfrost/Super%2014.ics]

Will wonders never cease!!

Well, I never!

Go check out http://www.ukzn.ac.za/UKZNonline/V4/02/Issue02.html and navigate down to the second story entitled "PRESTIGIOUS PLANT SCIENCE PRIZE FOR UKZN PHD GRADUATE" and look at who it is!


Hahaha. Congrats dude - never thought I'd see you working with flowers :) ... looks like life in a 1st-world country is treating you well! 

Love the grin!