Taking full advantage of Afrihost's FREE 1GB offer

(want to save on AFRIHOST? http://tinyurl.com/AFRIHOSTsavings)

I may be a Christian (in fact, I am a Christian), which means I am an honest guy as far as I can help it, but it doesn't stop me from still being blessed (or cursed?) with a crafty mind.

You see, free things and me go together like mustard sauce and a boerie roll. If there's a way to score free stuff, or to save, I'll figure it out.

So with the latest craze of free ADSL bandwidth being dished out by AFRIHOST, I came to realise that if you are already an AFRIHOST subscriber, you get 1GB free every month automatically now. What else I already know is if you are buying 1GB or 2GB or 5GB from AFRIHOST per month, it costs nothing different per GB. In fact, as I've always advised my customers and friends: rather just get the 1GB AFRIHOST account and opt for an auto-top-up to your preferred limit. That's the first and most honest way to save money with AFRIHOST.

The second money-saving tip is this one:

With AFRIHOST dishing out free 1GB to every existing customer, everyone already wins if they're a member of the AFRIHOST Elite. For some, like me, I happen to have TWO 1GB accounts under my name, so when this special kicked in, I scored 2 free GB of bandwidth (and I don't think it's port-locked since the contracted accounts let you have concurrent logins) - this translates to 2 * 1GB bandwidth usable ANYWHERE!

• The 1GB FREE ADSL is port-locked to a specific number so you can't use it outside of the number you registered it for
• Existing subscribers also get 1GB additional and it goes onto your existing contract which in my case is NOT port-locked and supports concurrent logins.
• If you run 2 * 1GB accounts it's the same cost as running 1 * 2GB account.
  A more extreme example,:if you run 5 * 1GB accounts it's the same cost as running 1 * 5GB account.
  
  The bonus comes in with the way this special is implemented by AFRIHOST:
• If you have 1 * 2GB account, you get 1GB free = 3GB (2+1) per month now for R58
• If you have 2 * 1GB accounts, you get 1GB free per account = 4GB (2+2) per month for R58
• If you have 1 * 5GB account, it's 6GB (5+1) for R145 per month
• If you have 5 * 1GB accounts, it's 10GB (2+2+2+2+2) for R145 per month
  
• See where I'm going?

Another interesting tidbit is you can sign up with GMAIL accounts and use your email address as with the "+" alias, for example:

• joe_soap@gmail.com
• joe_soap+2@gmail.com
• joe_soap+3@gmail.com

And so on, and earn yourself additional free accounts.

Of course, I don't condone exploiting AFRIHOST since it will only kill them and mean we don't get such favorably revolutionary deals in the future, but I do want to point out that if you're a subscriber, WHY are you paying the full amount every month when instead you could just be paying the MINIMUM amount and still not be preventing yourself from the enjoyment of the full service IF and when you use it (at which point you pay for what you use)? Likewise, if you go the economical route, you can actually double your bandwidth per month for FREE and use it concurrently anywhere you like!

Stefan Terblanche is AWESOME

Stefan Terblanche knows he can fly

Saving on monthly AFRIHOST bills

[UPDATE: The following only holds true for accounts 5GB and smaller. A 10GB account is R19 per GB, but with R29 per GB top-up after that. So this is now only really applicable for 1,2,3,4,5GB accounts]

Many people subscribe to AFRIHOST because of their (currently) competitive per GB pricing at R29 per GB.

What many subscribers don't seem to realise is that it doesn't pay to subscribe to any account over 1GB, because whether it is 2GB @ R58pm, 5GB @ R145pm, or even 20GB @ R380pm, it still works out at exactly R29 per GB.

The benefit of going the cheaper route of 1GB per month is that you're only tying yourself down to 1GB per month: that means if you don't use bandwidth (i.e. TELKOM is down [again] or you're away on holiday) you're only debited for R29 for the month. If you are doing a higher bandwidth deal, you're being charged the full amount regardless of usage, and there's absolutely no need for this!

AFRIHOST offers an automatic top-up facility (interestingly, this was implemented 3 days after I emailed them about putting this feature in, so they took my comments seriously and responded - another big feather in their cap from my perspective) which enables you to set the limit (and size of your top-up increments) up to 20GB for recaps every month, and this method of, for example, 1GB plus 19*1GB top-ups achieves the same net effect (and total cost) as buying a full 20GB account up front but without the committed cost implications at the beginning of the month JUST IN CASE you don't use it all.

Let me simplify this:

• Buying 20GB @ R380pm means you are committing the R380 to AFRIHOST every month REGARDLESS of what amount of the 20GB you use - 0.1GB, 2GB, 5GB, 9.3GB will all end up costing you R380 for the month and there is no carry-over of your bandwidth so what you don't use is thrown away completely.
  
• Buying 1GB @ R29pm means you are only committing to R29 to AFRIHOST every month REGARDLESS of whether you use 0.1GB, 0.5GB, or 0.9999GB.
• The real savings come in when you employ the AUTO-TOP-UP feature on the 1GB account, and set the top-up to do 1GB at R29 each time, up to a number of times that you specify (for example, if you are a 5GB subscriber, you'd set it to automatically top-up only four more times at 1GB a time).

This allows you to still get up to the total bandwidth you want every month without any interruptions to your browsing, but with the luxury of knowing that if you don't use it, you don't pay for it (in the 5GB example above, if you used 2.8GB you'd save R29*2 for that month because you wouldn't buy the 4th or 5th GB).

So what are all of you 2GB and higher AFRIHOST subscribers waiting for? Go and downgrade your contract and enable automatic top-ups instead! You'll save yourself money in the long run and it won't possibly cost you anything more than your current bills are DEFINITELY costing you every month!

Stefan Terblanche is still so fit

[ UPDATED with more entries at the bottom ]


Following on from the mad craze that hit the world a year ago, and in honour of the Sharks impending victory over Western Province tomorrow in the final of the ABSA Currie Cup, comes the next iteration in Stefan Terblanche idioms (* The whole collection is now available from http://tinyurl.com/STisfit):


A friend's offering

• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ...Stefan Terblanche went for a run with Chuck Norris and made him sweat for the first time.
• This subsequently lead to Chuck Norris shedding his first tear.
• Which lead to excessive flooding in America
• Which lead to the start of global cooling

My version of his offering:

• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ...
  He goes for a relaxing stroll alongside Chuck Norris on Chuck's daily run.
• This is the only time Chuck Norris has ever sweat.
• This is also the first time Chuck Norris has ever cried.
• Chuck's tears led to excessive flooding across the world
• Which resulted in the beginning of global cooling.
• So
  Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... That he cools the earth down.

---

Other offerings:

Stefan Terblanche is so fit ...

• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... he can pop a wheelie on a unicycle.
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... if you call them, Stefan will come.
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... if you pass it, Stefan will score.
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... every street in the WORLD has been named after him ("St.").
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... light wishes it could go at the speed of Terblanche.
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... he already knows what the result will be (for tomorrow's final), but he's not telling
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... he's hot, so HE is the reason the global temperature raised in the first place
  ... but realising that no-one else can live at his level of hotness, Stefan fixed the problem just by being amazing.
  "Wasn't Stefan the reason the global temperature was raised in the first place? So ... He caused the problem, and fixed the problem just by being amazing? Amazing..."
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... Stefan Terblanche IS the Force!
• Stefan Terblanche is so fit ... his future is bright. So bright in fact that he doesn't need sunglasses - the sun needs STEFANglasses.

FREE 1GB from AFRIHOST again!

http://www.afrihost.com/secret-early-bird

Get your chance to win 1 million Rand

I want everyone to have a good shot at winning a million bucks. Here's how to do it:

Send UPICK to 32082 to get a random entry for the next 4 consecutive draws.

Remember you get 2 free SMS every week to play!

1GB Free ADSL EVERY MONTH

There have been others to offer free bandwidth before, but this I believe is the first service to offer 1GB free and it's tied into your existing contract (ie. Free bandwidth as a reward for staying loyal), or 1GB free overall, so that's a sweet deal in the context of South African bandwidth right now!

Afrihost is sure doing their brand promotion right (first R29/GB and then BOGOF top-ups and now free ADSL).

Grab it while you can!

http://www.afrihost.com/site/page/free_1gb_adsl_account

Google multiple sessions

One thing that's become a necessity for me is the ability to connect to multiple Google sessions at the same time. Initially I could check my multiple GMAIL accounts (I have one for business, one for personal, one for my Body Corporate affairs) through something like Thunderbird, which does the trick for email, but when I need to access multiple online documents (each account has their own list of appropriate documents online) it becomes a little trickier.

A simple way to access multiple documents is to employ multiple browsers - I use CHROME for one, FIREFOX for another, and IE for the third. This is helpful to quickly identify which account is being used for whatever purpose and you can be online with all three accounts at the same time but for obvious reasons it becomes a schlepp and is pointless if you're using a machine which isn't installed with all the browsers.

Google's obviously become aware of multiple account users and they've introduced Google's Multiple Sessions. At the moment this isn't a complete solution to the dilemma of multiple GOOGLE DOCS accounts, but there are ways around most niggles (like sharing without notifying etc. so one logged in account can do the manipulation of multiple accounts' documents, but that is also a hack).

For now Google's Multiple Sessions is not going to revolutionise my ultra-busy and complex life, but it certainly is a feature to keep an eye on: you can access multiple GMAIL and CALENDAR accounts at once which is certainly very helpful. One anticipates that this feature will be refined over time and eventually replace the little hacks the rest of us employ to achieve multiple access on one PC. Let's wait and see!

Miniature personalised URLs

This isn't a new secret, but it's worth mentioning anyway.

Miniaturising and customising your own URLs is easy and free (at least for now). Check out these sites to get started:

• http://tiny.cc/
• http://tinyurl.com/
• http://microurl.info/

I've already created a short URL to a published GOOGLE DOC which hosts my current curriculum vitae.

http://tiny.cc/bjcv

http://tinyurl.com/BrattexCV

A miniaturised URL is a handy piece of information to add to the end of an email and is also easy to remember in a conversation.

Free legal docs

I've certainly had my fair share of legal wranglings in the past few years, and it pretty much all started when I decided to marry Katherine*!

One thing I've grown to appreciate from my legal experiences is how useful it is to have access to free legal documents with a South African flavour, and finally I think I've found a site that offers this!

http://www.freelegaldocs.co.za/ seems to have no strings attached and provides - at the very least - useful templates to work from for matters ranging from Company documents (CM9, CM22) to Home Affairs documents (Applications for Birth Certificates, VISA) through to Property documents (Commercial / Residential leases, Power of Attorney in Respect of Property). I am very satisfied that there is enough here to play around with for me, starting with Birth Certificates and my Last Will and Testament.

* It must be noted that Katherine is not the cause of the legal wranglings, but marriage was just the start of our dealings with lawyers.

Blackberry Messenger

‎​There should be a law against idiots using BlackBerry phones. Sadly, as the BB community grows, the old grizzled veterans like me start realising more and more how people are grabbing BB handsets for toys and they're totally oblivious to the BB's actual power. I beseech thee, if you aren't running the latest BBM, upgrade NOW! http://www.blackberry.com/messenger

Quick! While stocks last!

TILE SENSATIONS stock a wide range of imported "mosiacs"!

It's X days until ...

If you need to know how many days it is until ... whenever, then you can count the days yourself with a calendar, try to work it out yourself, or cheat and use this handy little tool grabbed from http://www.jarusa.com/daysuntil.htm.

How Many Days Until How many days until an event?            Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 2041 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048 2049 2050

There are some other handy calculators there too, one of which I've just used work out that I'm 11,555 days old and my 12,000th birth-DAY will be 9 January 2012!

Days Old Calculator How many days old are you?            Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Year 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

It's all in the Genes this Friday

Wednesday 20 October was National Down Syndrome Day, and the theme this year was "It's all in the Genes".

Down Syndrome is the largest single cause of intellectual disabilities affecting one in every 650 children born each year, and it is vital to raise awareness and make a difference to change society's preconceived ideas and prejudices on Down Syndrome.

Support the Down Syndrome Association of South Africa this Friday 22 October by wearing jeans and paying a 'fine' of R5 to DSA KZN for doing so. There are also skin mark tattoos available at R5 each. Let's help and raise awareness and assist in this important initiative. 

You can call the DSA on 031-464-2055 to get involved.

For those that know Kat and I personally, you know that our whole perspective on Down Syndrome has recently been shifted quite dramatically, so we are passionate about this sort of awareness drive, and also speak from experience when we say that it's as far from your mind as everything else until it's thrust into your lives. Regardless of other factors, I can confidently say that my understanding and appreciation for how Down Syndrome affects lives has changed completely recently - and I am pleased to say that my change has been for the better! Please, consider the simple action of wearing jeans this Friday and show your support for raising awareness. It's very unlikely that you will choose to think about this genetic disorder unless / until it becomes a very real aspect of your lives, but I encourage you to not wait for something to happen before your prejudices and ideas are transformed! There's so much that can be improved in society if ordinary people just take the time to sincerely think about others and work at understanding the mysterious, usually unthinkable, sides of human life.

Below is a photo of the article in this week's Highway Mail.

Tonight, at 8:10pm, brace yourselves!

At 8:10pm tonight, 20 October 2010, it will be:

2010 20/10 20:10.

Remember to record WHAT YOU ARE DOING at this momentus moment (because it will last only one minute of your life, ever, finished and klaar - never ever to be repeated on the Roman calendar, ever).

Software: FBACKUP 4.4

In May I mentioned a software solution for easy backup-and-restore operations, entitled FBACKUP.

Well, I've decided to flesh it out a bit and offer a little bit more of a detailed review about it:

Welcome to a detailed view into an entry on my essential and useful software list, FBackup v4.4!

You can go to the homepage here. It is relatively basic but it does the job it sets out to do and is a great tool for people that aren't that comfortable with computers. 

What I like about this software:

• User-friendly (big buttons to click)
• Can create a shortcut to the desktop to automate a backup (ideal for novice users once you've set them up with the software)
• Supports all sorts of locations (you can hard-code in a network backup point)
• Supports encryption and also basic mirror transfers (so you don't copy the same data over and over again)
• Schedule integrates into MS Windows SCHEDULED TASKS
• Supports plug-ins for the typical MS Windows packages that require frequent backups
• It's FREE
• SIMPLE and QUICK to set up a job
• I can't get over how straightforward it is to use!

Get ready for Sunday!

Don't forget to set your alarms for 10:10:10am and 10:10:10pm on Sunday the 10th of the 10th month in 2010 (i.e. 10:10:10 on 10/10/10). Two moments in time that will never be repeated, and they last for a second each!

Sweet tasting Saturdays!

I have to confess, Saturdays in Westville shopping centres are a boon for the financially astute - so many food chains offer free tasters of a marvellous variety, and despite the financial outlay, their strategy works - I'm a fan!

A few months ago I enjoyed free samples of "My Diner"'s curries which has led me to eat there and enjoy their hottest Pakistani curry: and I'd do it again!

This afternoon Megan and I sampled Woolworths steaks with sweet sticky sauce and as an added extra I got two hefty chunks because they hadn't sliced them properly. Next stop was a delightful Zanzibar taste tester (see picture). Really delicious - and expect a blogpost from bratandkat about our Zanzibar dinner experience.

I don't want to let the secret out, but Westwood is a great mellow shopping experience with many of the desired mainstream stores. Customer shopping experiences are much better too. They're not too busy to brush you aside and very conveniently located next to my current employer.