I never thought I’d see the day where I’d become a total PC idiot, but yesterday was such a day. Intent on grabbing a photo off my memory stick I deftly inserted it into my PC’s memory card reader only to discover that I could not remove it at all. My attempts at creating a home made tweezer failed miserably and only made me even more anxious to get it fixed.
Thankfully I managed to go through to Bayside’s Incredible Connection where they quickly removed the memory card with no ill side effects and informed me that I had inserted the wrong size memory stick. Did I ever look the fool! Thankfully I’ll remember that next time 
Now only if my in built cup holder would not snap off so easily!
Published on
24 February 2008 in
My Life.
This past Saturday I was fortunate enough to attend one of the regular breakfast meetings of the Wii Players as I shall call them. Comprising out of Chantal, Michael, Roger, Shereen and Kirsten, I met them at the Driftwood Cafe in Parklands for a refreshing bite to eat and to chat the morning away about anything and everything. The meeting got off to a good start with me managing to surprise Roger who didn’t know I’d even be there. To add insult to injury I managed to tbag him for real by giving him a teabag from Newlande 
The look on his face was priceless!
Chantal had told me wonderful things about Driftwood Cafe and I can say that she definitely wasn’t wrong at all. The food and atmosphere was excellent and at a good price too. The only factor to spoil the experience was when a wedding party arrived. There is nothing more embarrassing than trying to eat breakfast while romantic pop drivel is spewing out the speakers and people are constantly taking photos. Luckily we were just finishing off our meal, so we decided to hop on out and make our way to the Hut. For those of you who don’t know, the Hut is a clothing / general craziness store in Parklands that just so happens to sell some of the most kickass metal band t-shirts known to man and at a damn good price too. Curse my good fortune if I didn’t also spot 3 Tool shirts that I just had to have. Having only enough money to purchase one I made my choice and asked them to hold the other two for me till after pay day this coming Wednesday. Chantal managed to grab too hilariously cute but violent Happy Tree Friends shirts, while Roger opted for a great looking A Perfect Circle shirt that I’ll be sure to get for myself as well some time in the near future.
Once we’d pillaged the Hut it was time for me to say bye to Chantal, Shereen and Michael before making my way to Stu’s flat in the company of Roger and Kirsten. Stu was kind enough to put up with Roger’s craziness and while there I managed to see Devil May Cry 4 in action for the first time. My resistance really is at a crumbling point. While I was pathetic in Devil May Cry 3 it looks as though this one is significantly easier to play meaning even I should be able to finish it Newlande has also been constantly haranguing me to get it so I think I’ll probably end up getting it at some point if my darn car service isn’t too expensive. I also had my first proper taste of playing on the Wii with a brief session on Super Mario Galaxy and I must say, the rave reviews aren’t far off, Super Mario Galaxy is one of the most amazing and FUN games I’ve ever played. I really will look seriously into getting a Wii within the next few months if my finances allow it. Its really scary to think that this generation of gaming is so excellent that every single one of the consoles out their has become a must buy. My only consolation with regards to the Wii is that it doesn’t need an awesome HDTV to look good like the PS3 (which will also become a must have once Metal Gear Solid 4 releases).
After Roger had gotten all his apps and programs burnt at Stu’s place we bade our exit as Stu was engrossed in some freelance web design he was currently busy with. Once outside it was also time for me to say my goodbyes to Roger and Kirsten who had to leave. So with that I too made my long way home after a most scrumptious breakfast and caught a quick afternoon nap before I embarked upon a hectic session of gaming but that’s a story for another time. 
Finally Mozilla Thunderbird has found a home. Several months ago Mozilla decided to focus all its efforts on improving Firefox and effectively abandon further work on Thunderbird, its email client. i’ve been an avid user of Thunderbird at both home and work for several years now so this was devastating news for me. Thankfully now with the founding of Mozilla Messaging it would seem as though Thunderbird will be with us for a while longer.
On an interesting side not, the ZDNet post above also makes mention of the fact that Mozilla Messaging will be trying to look at ways of entering the instant messaging (IM) arena in a similar way to Google when they launched their Google Talk service. The past year of two has seen an upsurge in the email battle with Yahoo, Microsoft and Google all making significant improvements to their email services. This has meant that desktop clients such as Thunderbird are becoming more and more obsolete by the day. So its no real surprise that Mozilla Messaging will be looking to expand the scope of operations. They are also looking at making significant improvements to Thunderbird 3:
The third iteration of Thunderbird will include an integrated calendar, improved search capabilities, easier configuration, and a variety of user interface improvements that will support a better RSS feed reading experience, for example.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing how Thunderbird will evolve into an even more open platform to facilitate communication. With Mozilla Messaging striving to change the way users perceive and use email, we the consumer are in for a great ride.
Published on
22 February 2008 in
My Life.
After a short two months in my new position at work I’m pleasantly surprised by how I’ve managed to adjust to the additional strain and responsibilities that have come with it. Especially at this time of year when individual taxes are due and our workload is exponentially increased. This past week I managed to finally finalise my largest client that usually causes a large bottle neck every month and also moved on to polishing off review work for all the other work that had come in. All this I did without having to put in any additional overtime. This I can clearly attribute to my good organisational skills as I always ensure that I’ve planned far in advance and that the work that is currently lying in front of me is handled off in a efficient, professional manner. Needless to say this is the accountant’s greatest weapon in fighting off hordes of paper piles!
The nice reward for having planned my work so well is that I can take the weekend off and not have to worry or stress about the upcoming deadlines. I might have to work an hour or two in next week for a few clients taxes but I’ll be safe and secure in the knowledge that the majority of my work will have been finished off in time. So here’s to my excellent geek skills!
Published on
22 February 2008 in
Gaming.
Wednesday night saw the release of Halo 3 version 1.1 and thank goodness, finally Bungie has seen fit to fix the annoying hassle with melee attacks! Previously melee attacks would usually favour our overseas US and UK cousins with their lower latency and cause me to lose numerous games merely because I am stuck on good old Telkom’s broadband. Now though it has been improved so that the outcome is usually more fair. The immediate effects of this were evident last night when I won every single ranked match I played with Graeme and Newlande. We were a veritable machine of death, mowing our way through all comers and emerging unscathed at the end of the day.
The night was also combined with a fun session of co op multiplayer of legendary difficulty. While the initial going was tough, we eventually managed to settle into our routine and soon we were slicing through our enemies like a hot knife through butter. To top it all off we even managed to grab one of the silver skulls that we needed. Monday night we’d spent an hour or so just jumping through Halo rings to try and get the same skull with no luck. This time it finally worked on the second go. We had to postpone the rest of the co op gaming as the next few stages are going to be long and hard. Hopefully we’ll get around to finishing off Halo this weekend and get a nice heap of gamerscore for completing it on legendary difficulty. If we manage this I can then finally move onto finishing off Gears of War with Graeme. Just in time too, as Gears of War 2 was just announced at GDC this week for a November release this year. Thanks to Graeme and Newlande for a really awesome Halo session last night. Kudos to you two!
No worries Grey, I’ll be downloading the Heroic Map Pack just as soon as my cap refreshes on the first of the new month!
Published on
21 February 2008 in
My Life.
Sometimes I’m amazed at the total lack of decency some people have. The way they can ingratiate themselves into your life under false pretences really does hurt me deeply. It happened recently that somebody I knew for a few months showed his true colours by attacking me in a public forum. Its not that this person attacked me, but that they attacked my character when I was not at fault. Yeah, I’m well aware that forums and the internet are hotbeds of flaming and insults, but this was a personal attack with a lot more below the surface that leads me to believe it was meant to go deeper than mere words.
I will not bother going into the background details that surround this sordid tale of intrigue and bore you all to death. The one thing that I must make clear from the outset is that I will never take kindly to personal and unjustified attacks on my character that come from someone else. In this case I was attacked merely because of my relationship with a mutual acquaintance of ours. I did nothing wrong other than playful gaming banter. Yet here this person goes out of their way to hurt me in front of everyone. At that point I made a concious decision that I would cut them off. I don’t care what their reasons were for doing what they did and I will not bother myself trying to find out. Sometimes the best thing to do is to amputate a dying limb to save the rest of the body and in this case that is precisely what I did. I know some of you that read this might view my response as cruel, but when a person does nothing other than trying to kill you bit by bit you are left with no choice. They have constantly made it their business to throw every kindness I or other people have shown them back in our faces. How can we be expected to react in any different manner then?
My one sadness is how they are still going out of their way to ruin one of my dearest friend’s lives. I have told myself though that I will no longer remain ignorant of their actions. If they continue to do what they are currently doing then I will have no other recourse than to get tough with them and take it a step further. I refuse to let my friends be hurt by someone like that. I may appear the meek and shy guy in real life, but if push comes to shove then I will show my true colours. I hope and pray that the day never comes where I will have to confront this person to get them to stop the hate they are spreading. I really and sincerely hope that they manage to reassemble some part of their lives. I would wish nothing better for them. Pessimism continues to dog me though. I believe that in a case like this a person cannot change their ways. These behaviour patterns they exhibit are so deeply ingrained in their psyche that they will always show through no matter how hard that person tries to hide them and cover them up with useless platitudes and fake smiles. While I’m willing to help people around me I’m also aware of not following lost causes. In this case that is more than true. I hold loyalty above all other character traits. This person has shown me that they cannot be trusted and that they are the furthest thing from loyalty. What use is a friendship with such a person then? They will only continue to suck my life blood away.
Imagine my surprise today when I got an sms informing me that a certain KittiWithKatana was currently in the process of trying to contain several youthful toddlers. Nothing out of the ordinary you might think. Other than the fact that she is a cold blooded killer of renown in the Natal Midlands. The most amazing thing of all was that she as revelling in it and enjoying every moment of taking care of the toddlers. I suppose with most girls there is a motherhood gene that shows itself and this was Kitti’s chance to shine. She told me that she was loving every second of it and commented on the utter cuteness of the babies under her watchful gaze.
The combination of cute babies and girls is a sight to behold to the average guy. I suppose its all in how we see the babies. Men see small people with a tendency to chew expensive things and throw up suddenly and without warning whereas women see babies as utterly cute bundles of joy that can do no wrong. Now I will not debate who is right in this age old debate other than to say that as a guy you should know on which side I will land. (Let’s just not mention how scared us guys are when it comes to changing diapers!)
So I wish you well Kitti! Who knows, you may even have found your calling 
After all, babies are young so you can indoctrinate them from an early age into your way of thinking. * Cue evil laughter *
Of course I’m well aware that Kitti is probably doing a bang up job of taking care of the babies. I really couldn’t think of a better person.
I had the opportunity this weekend to make a trip through to Readers’ Den in Cape Town and while deciding on what to go for I chanced upon the first hard cover collection of the Dark Tower series. I’ve been a huge fan of the books by Stephen King so I was most interested to see how much the comic would add to the back story of Roland’s world.
my first impressions are very favourable. The Gunslinger Born details Roland’s beginnings as a gunslinger and his first mission in the town of Hambry. I won’t say much more about the story as I really can’t do it enough justice here. If you have read Wizard and Glass then you’ll be more than familiar with the story as it is a retelling of the books events. The artwork on the other hand is amazing and at some points really took my breath away. Mid World has always been a place confined to my imagination so the creation of Roland’s world in pictures had a lot to live up to. So it was great to see how the artwork really managed to capture the vision I had in my head.
This is the first of 5 arcs that will take place in the Dark Tower universe and I’m really looking forward to seeing where Roland will go from here. While I might be aware of the story’s conclusion from having read the books, Stephen King left plenty of room for the world to be fleshed out. That is probably the greatest thing about the books and I’d really recommend that you read them if you get the chance.
I never thought I’d see the day where I’d become a total PC idiot, but yesterday was such a day. Intent on grabbing a photo off my memory stick I deftly inserted it into my PC’s memory card reader only to discover that I could not remove it at all. My attempts at creating a home made tweezer failed miserably and only made me even more anxious to get it fixed.
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