FIFA World Cup Demotivationals

In keeping with the spirit of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, here's a motivational for you:

Superbru Week 15

I couldn't have asked for a better way to end the final round of the round-robin stages than with a GRANDSLAM. Just such a pity that I didn't get anything more than a GSP and failed to score any BP or MP which meant my achievement was somewhat tempered by other people's blind luck :)

Brattex


71.43% win accuracy in Super 14



Global 4,613/ 73,131

Sharks 331/ 4,487

Geel Kabouters 4/ 33

SuperDraw2010 7/ 35

Sport24 334/ 2,271

SuperBraai 3/ 12
 

Photobomb

Everyone knows what a photobomb is, right?

If you don't, it won't take you long to figure them out after you've seen a few - and to get you started, here are a few oh-so-cute animal photobombs for your pleasure :)

Where NOT to travel

I've been doing some random reading lately, and came across this interesting list of "top ten most dangerous places on earth" and I'm proud to say that South Africa is on the top ten! Not sure how recent this article is, but since it mentions RSA as being the 2010 World Cup host nation it must be fairly recent at least.

What's most interesting for me is that my point about ABSOLUTE crime in USA being worse than RSA has now finally been proven correct, and the rest of those dissenters against my comments can now finally eat their words and offer me an apology I am long overdue :)

http://listverse.com/2008/04/08/top-10-most-dangerous-places-on-earth/

Superbru Week 14

Wow. What a tight race and what a mini-comeback for me this last weekend. Made it all the way through with a grandslam bonus AND I bet on my home team and they pulled through. If I had gone with my "head" and picked the Stormers I would not only have not enjoyed the match, but would have regretted not getting the GSP and not betting on the winning team. Thankfully everything worked out great for my SuperBru. What's more exciting is that I'm still very much in the running to pull out some $$$ this year!

69.05% win accuracy in Super 14

Global 5,461 / 72,923
Last week: Global 15,026 / 72,864

Sharks 382 / 4,480
Last week: Sharks 973 / 4,481

Geel Kabouters 2 / 33
Last week: Geel Kabouters 10 / 33

SuperDraw2010 9 / 35
Last week: SuperDraw2010 17 / 35

Sport24 386 / 2,262
Last week: Sport24 867 / 2,253

SuperBraai 3 / 12
Last week: SuperBraai 3 / 12

It's tight near the top! The only hope I have of securing $$$ is to win another GSP this weekend! Check out the leaderboards below:

Software: Backup and restore

I was recently on the lookout for decent backup and restore software which is - ideally - FREE for both commercial and personal use and allows simple scheduled backup jobs. The final determining factor amongst the host of options was the user-friendly interface: this backup software was to be used by relative IT-peons, so it needed to be user-friendly and functional rather than flashy and complicated.

After sifting through a few of the more appealing candidates, I have settled on a backup solution that seems to fit the bill as far as basic requirements go: it's free for all use, it's very user-friendly, and it can perform scheduled backups. It is designed on the four principles of WHERE, WHAT, HOW, WHEN - WHERE do you want to store the backup (destination), WHAT do you want to backup (source), HOW do you want to run the backup (FULL backup or MIRROR backup), WHEN do you want to run the backup (schedule or manual).

Welcome to the latest entry into 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. I was very impressed from the get-go and hopefully I didn't relax too much as I delved deeper into the program, but from my first run it looks very user-friendly, so even grandma can use it! I haven't classified this as an ESSENTIAL tool at the time of posting this, but perhaps will revisit this later on if I find it does the job well enough to become part of the furniture...

The other candidates are as follows (and for the record I didn't experiment with all of them, since FBackup v4.4 was the second package I tested and I liked it enough to keep using it - I'll have to review the rest of these when I get some time):

• http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml - great resource that pointed me in the right direction
• http://www.areca-backup.org/
• http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html
• http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
• http://backup.comodo.com/
• http://www.nchsoftware.com/backup/index.html
• http://www.freebyte.com/fbbackup/download/

Superbru Week 13

Ouch. Things are getting suckier for me as we near the end of the competition. My devout loyalties to the Sharks hurt me this weekend when it was an effective "no-brainer" that the Bulls would win. After the Hurricanes game, though, I can't possibly bet against the Sharks. When they are winning I start wishing my superbru will kick in. And besides, it's obvious EVERYONE will pick Stormers this weekend so it would be even more gut-wrenchingly sickening if the Sharks pulled it off. Unlikely, but I'm going to back my side anyway.


66.23% win accuracy in Super 14

Global 15,026 / 72,864

Sharks 973 / 4,481

Geel Kabouters 10 / 33
I'm on 69.25, and 2nd is 74.58 and 1st is 80.58 - not out of the money just yet :(

SuperDraw2010 17 / 35
I'm on 66.50 and 2nd is 73.83 and 1st is 78.67 so again there's hope for 2nd at least... :(

Sport24 867 / 2,253

SuperBraai 3 / 12
I'm on 71.50 and 2nd is 76.75 and 1st is 81.33 - it's those damned BP... check it out:

			Pts	BP	Tot
1		mRp	66.5	14.83	81.33
2		Al	69.5	7.25	76.75
3		Brattex	65.5	6.00	71.50
4		Graeme	62.5	6.25	68.75
5		baas oltman	60.0	7.83	67.83
6		JRC	62.0	5.83	67.83
7		Jonny G	63.0	4.50	67.50
8		Slimon	63.5	3.00	66.50
9		Lili	58.5	4.00	62.50
10		wezflash	56.0	5.50	61.50
11		Bri	56.0	3.75	59.75
12		faulty	36.0	0.50	36.50

It's obvious that mRp's BP is stealing the show... I'm now also down to 3rd on the global standings because of my dull performances. Two weekends to go and I need to snatch up some more GSP :)

brattex.blogspot.com is worth $4,000!

I recently googled for brattex.blogspot.com (not in a vane ego-stroking venture, but to see if the site was still blocked from dodgy people) and discovered this as one of the links:

Site Analysis of brattex.blogspot.com



Estimated value: $4,392

http://www.strategicfirst.com/brattex.blogspot.com/

Really quite flattering, and probably inaccurate too ... I think it's probably based on $1 per visitor. Here's another valuation for my website (http://www.serpanalytics.com/sites/brattex.blogspot.com):

Approx. monthly SE traffic cost equivalent: $101.06
And apparently the post on "most expensive laptop" is worth about $97.69 in advertising?? Seems maybe I should consider becoming a google advertisement associate...

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!