may 25 2010
for some odd reason the south african post office website does not work... and this isn't a new thing. i have been trying to get in for a couple of months now to track packages, upon trying to get in this morning it is yet again not loading. i did enquire about this and they shrug their shoulders, but are aware of it as are many other people... the ironic thing is that it says in their slogan on their banner (which i managed to get of google) "conveniently make online payments"! fail
Posted by sarah | add a comment | bloopers, bloopers, information, ranting, stoopidity, web
nov 15 2007
the wind is howling in cape town today, so i went online to iol weather to check what they reckon about the wind and will tomorrow (heaven forbid) be the same...?
what i got back makes me think they are getting their weather info from the wrong people... according to their website, the wind is calm today, a massive 0km/h! same wind forecast for tomorrow, hmmm?
does anyone have ideas on where to get more accurate weather info for the cape town area?
oct 17 2007
part of the new design and launch was supposed to be the rss feed for the blog.
which i subsequently forgot to add, i had it all coded and ready but never added the link at the bottom, left hand side of the page. so now i have and it's there.
use it, don't use it...
sep 08 2007
... eat with chopsticks?
... quit facebook?
well, wikiHow will help you out, if those are the 2 topics you need help with.
there are some pretty ridiculous ones though, i clicked on the 'the random article' link under 'featured articles' and got some whack results (1st five clicks):
How to Date a Hopelessly Romantic Person When You Are Not Hopelessly Romantic
How to Shuffle on Heelys
How to Say What You Mean Without Being Mean
How to Watch Tigers in a Tiger Safari
How to Draw Basic Human Figures
Posted by sarah | add a comment | information, web
jun 03 2007
it looks like the americans have caught one of the world's most wanted terrorists (imo anyway).
US prosecutors said they captured on Wednesday a nefarious Internet marketer responsible for so much junk email they called him "Spam King".this guy spammed 10's of millions of email addresses and they want to seize a mere $773,000? i know that spammers only make very small percentage on their efforts. but take 10's of millions and take a 0.1 percentage of that on an item that sells for $10... that's a lot more than $700,000!
Posted by sarah | add a comment | crime, tech, web
feb 02 2007
it seems there are some problems with my comments on the website. i have tried to see why some people are able to comment and others aren't - but i'm not finding the problem... it's really strange because tripeak wasn't able to post, but when i did a test to add his comment, it went through fine?
now, the 'quiet one' has tried to post a comment and he also got the dreaded message: "You tried to either spam the comments or enter a banned word, please try again warrenski!"
i have one request, it's simple, please post a comment here, one and all... if you get the message, let me know via this and if possible let me know exactly what you tried to post!
much appreciated!
nov 02 2006
last week i had alot of spammers attacking my comments. as most bloggers know, it sucks, big time!
when i created the back-end for the comments it was pretty standard. ie. i had basic validation on the comments - supply a name, a valid url and a comment.
the average scum-of-the-earth spammer jumped at the opportunity to nuke my comments. initially it was pretty easy to block them because they were all using one keyword that set them apart from the genuine commentor. but then (and i hate to say it) they got 'clever' and diversified their spamming. so i worked out another method to block them. this was a very impractical way of dealing with it because i had to physically update the comments web page and upload it everytime i changed it.
so, last week - after some serious spamming was hitting the comments - i decided to make a better spam blocking system. i don't use a blogging tool like wordpress or blogger, the backend is completely developed by myself, so i had to develop something to block the spammers.
so now i have a system that is practical and convenient, which i can't go into because i think the average spammer can read... but i think a week later with nothing coming through is pretty good!
what i'd really like to know though, what purpose does spamming comments fufill? is there tons of money it? do people actually see a spammed comment and click through? is it a page ranking thing on google?
oct 04 2006
i've been told this website is loading really slow. however, i am on an adsl connection and it loads as fast as i can blink my eyes. can anyone out there let me know how fast / slow it loads for yourselves?
sep 10 2006
i have been a little busy since leaving ripe design. i finally finished a freelance job and got the client up and running after transferring their hosting to hetzner. it was a great relief and i'm happy that they like the changes to their website.
on thursday, after getting this new look up and running, the adsl went down and it's been down ever since. it's obviously up again now, sunday afternoon. who knows when it'll go again, hopefully not soon. it really messes up things for ed and myself. we really rely on the connectivity...
the past week has been pretty cool. i've spent time setting up myself for freelance work, now i just need to sell myself. the coming week will be spent following up on leads from some friends. i've read up on how to run your business and i've also tried to setup a system to follow finances and budgets, so come the end of the month i'm not in for a nasty surprise!
hope you guys like the new look?
oh, i finally added the pics of ed opening his b-day pressie...
aug 08 2006
i don't know why i don't visit iafrica's portal more often. anyway, their front page seems to always offer some pretty nice reads. like this article on how good tv shows are compared to hollywood blockbusters.
then i spotted this article on how windows vista (which isn't even commercially released and has been called the most secure version of windows os to date) has already been hacked. so? as far as i understand it, everything is hackable, just takes a little longer and more effort sometimes.
it's not like mac's are totally secure, they get viruses and hacked too. it's just because windows is the 'big evil corporate'... arggh, it just seems so childish sometimes.
Posted by sarah | add a comment | tech, web
apr 05 2006
i don't normally 'duplicate' info that i saw on another blog but i have do have a different angle...
the pic is of a guy on a sea kayak with a 4 metre shark following far too closely for my liking. it surfaced on the net and made the rounds. eventually some people wanted some answers, surfski.info gladly obliged and according to them alot of people thought the photo was faked.
it turns out it wasn't though!
and, i actually know the crazy guy who is pictured in the photo, it's tracey's ex-hubby. he's being living and breathing sharks for ever and has been based in gansbaai for a while now. he actually took me out to dyer island to do some shark watching a few years back - nope, no cage diving for me.
anyway, i think it takes alot of guts to kayak around the ocean with 4 metre sharks lurking around!
Posted by sarah | comments (3) | information, photography, web
mar 27 2006
i developed a cms for my brothers website... um, for both actually. but more recently for my older brother, so he could upload pics from his wedding. all his friends and family all over the world could then check them out, yay!
it's based on the gallery that i have made for my website but has yet to be implemented because i'm working on a ton of stuff for the cms. hopefully i'll get my ducks in a row and get this huge monster up and running soon!
feb 23 2006
so phunkd got nominated for a sa blog award, in the best group blog category. if only the group would actually blog, phunkd might just qualify for the category it has been nominated in!
anyway, the reason for the post is because somehow phunkd became punk'd.
mistake! this site has nothing to do with the ashton kutcher punk'd show. there's nothing really 'punky' about the site either. it's a non-word so to speak and i came up with the brilliant name years ago (2000), before punk'd was on the air...
i would add more links to the famous person's website but our internets is really crap because the power is very erratic here in the western cape at the moment. i can't even upload tiny little pictures. and how i want to...
so just to clarify:
it's phunkd as is funked...
Posted by sarah | add a comment | ranting, web
Jan 13 2006
yup, somehow i stumbled onto the 'smack the penguin' link, again and i managed to smack it around a few times, again... far less than the last time i tried this. which was way back when?
smack or don't. try and beat your high score - if you have the patience or time. my high score last time was less than 316!
nov 10 2005
since the start of november i have had 23 spam comment attempts, none of them successful. that's 2.3 spam attempts a day! i am well chuffed that i built and implemented my own system to keep them from plugging their crap on this website.
out of the 23 attempts, 14 were for gambling / debt / loan related 'products' and 9 were for some sort of medicine / pills...
i just hope they don't cotton onto the one thing that they do, that i use to keep their spam at bay.
oct 26 2005
this is a seriously wicked shockwave media app, make sure your speakers aren't on too loud when you go to get changed!
oct 18 2005
i have figured it out and i bet everyone else out there has figured out the bots / people who spam your comments... but you can't tell me, just like i can't tell you because then they would change their modus operandi!
i tried blocking ip addresses, insane, because they can chop 'n change them as they see fit. i tried blocking anything with a list a keywords (holdem, poker, etc). but then i got tons of other keywords, i would spend a good 10 - 20 minutes a day updating my files for getting rid of these very unwanted spam comments. it's utter madness!
upon closer inspection of the file i create when one comments on the site, i noticed one thing they all seem to do, it's lame and stupid (yes, you f*^&ing spammers, you're stupid!). i have one way to block and the exact same way to delete anything posted by the scoundrels.
it's heaven, so until they figure out that they're all being stupid, i'm as happy as pig in s*#t!
ps. happy happy birthday damien
oct 18 2005
ripe design won two awards at the loeries this past weekend.
i'm well stoked to be apart of such a creative team!
having said that sasi swimwear 2005 launched yesterday. look out for some easter eggs in the form of the motorola logos (batwings), hidden throughout the site (there's 4). for every easter egg you collect you get a 'hidden' movie, upon collecting all 4 easter eggs you get a 5th highlights package movie, enjoy!
okay, here's a little more info...
batwing one: movie of kim smith
batwing two: movie of tanit phoenix
batwing three: two movies of roxy ingram
batwing four: three movies of tanit phoenix
and that's all i'm saying, search the site and find those movies!
aug 01 2005
i have been getting comment spam, some of you might have noticed the poker, pills and texas poker spam in the comments...
the nerve! but i was a little prepared for it, even though i didn't have the time to do it when i noticed it on the w/end, but i did sort it out it this morning.
it's a 'manual' thing though, so i guess i should maybe investigate making it more dynamic? here is the code i insert at the top of my page and then add the ip's that i capture from the comments posted on the site. it's not full proof because they chop and change their ip addresses as easy i say 'piss off mo-fo's'...
<?phpi've been thinking of changing the echo, to just redirect to somewhere, but i've got to find something extremely nasty... ie. a page that just produces insane amounts of popups? anyone got any ideas?
// ban ip code
$banned_ip = array();
$banned_ip[] = '00.00.00.00'; // first IP
$banned_ip[] = '00.00.00.00'; // second IP
$banned_ip[] = '00.00.00.00'; // third IP, just add more if you need
foreach($banned_ip as $banned) {
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if($ip == $banned) {
echo "You have been banned! It's probably because you spammed the comments or crawled for questionable content, if you think a mistake has been made contact someone@somewhere.com";
exit();
}
}
?>
jun 03 2005
i wanted to blog first thing this morning, mainly because it feels quite dull / dead on the blog, but our web connection was down until about a few minutes ago...
so here goes...
winter has kicked in and it's been raining alot, it's good, real good. i believe the dam levels in the western cape are rising but not as fast as i would've guessed. they were at about 27% and now they're at about 35%. i reckon the "collection" of water in our dams is not very effective because it's been raining alot, i would've expected levels to be somewhere near the 50% mark. maybe after this weekend it'll be a little closer to my guesstimate?
i've been busy updating ed's website with new pictures and implementing a better way of filing all the pics of their work.
for my b'day i got a bass guitar from ed and i've been practising on that when i get home in the evenings, it's quite simple and hard at the same time... i have yet to acquire a tutor and am currently learning the basics from a book that ed also got me for my birthday.
i've got to finish ed's web pages, so i'm going to dash...
may 11 2005
lately the terrible casino ads on iol have been driving me nuts, as much as i tried to zone out the constantly, annoying flashing text in those ads i couldn't. so i would resort to quickly scanning the top section of the article and then quickly scroll past the ad to continue reading the rest of the article. if it was a long article, i would be able to scroll the ad out of eyesight in the browser window.
but now i have aardvark and i don't see those annoying ads anymore, just a white space where they used to be. yay!
this is how my iol now looks:
apr 15 2005
there is abit of a war going on at the moment, at times it's capetonians vs jo'burgers. it all seems rather silly to me, because part of the debate is about whether or not a website is a blog or not (go read it, i'm not going to go into it)
anyway, it got me thinking about my own website and whether or not it's a blog (a real live one). because some of the comments i read over at jo'blog made me think otherwise. i do think that part of this site is a blog, some of it is a portpholio and another bit of it is a photo gallery.
i don't have permalinks, rss feeds, trackbacks... i never thought about it when i made this dynamic though. not having these elements just means i'm less accessible than others right? so that shouldn't make my website a partial non-blog?
do i have to post everyday? do i have to use some other software to update, rather than my own cms? do i have to have rss feeds? do i have to have links in my posts? can some-one please send me the link to the rule book (for all the internets please) because i'm not quite clear on this.
at the moment it seems that everybody has their own opinion and the one who launches the best-selling book first will be the leader of all.
mar 03 2005
i posted something on monday afternoon and then on monday evening when showing lauren the site and getting her sign up to blog i accidentally deleted the post. i struggled for abit trying to remember what i posted and eventually i remembered it was about the very entertaining new link i have added to my links on the right hand side called "query letters i love". i particularly like this one...
and then i went on to mention that really funny heineken ad (with jennifer aniston trying to get to the last six pack on the top shelve, know what i'm talking about?). anyway, i've been asking people about it on some social occassions. i seem to like it more than others! i don't deny that it did make me smile and wonder why all ads aren't so funny and well made?
so, yeah, i've gotten lauren to sign up. but will she blog? will she post pics? i don't know, time will tell. i sure as hell hope she posts pics because she's seeing the most awesome spots in the world.
other than that i am bruised and battered from doing 4 and a half pdf to html conversions in 3 days. now i'm gonna try and remove a very stubborn virus from the accountant's pc. one last thing, if you haven't done so yet, do it now! surf the web with mozilla firefox (it's way safer than internet explorer)
Posted by sarah | add a comment | humour, web
feb 25 2005
we won an award last night for the online (functional) category for our development of the sasi swimwear 2004 website at the construction awards. and we were a finalist in the offline (corporate) category for the sasi swimwear 2004 cd-rom... very cool!
feb 23 2005
yesterday and today i worked on getting the last big section here on phunkd dynamic. that section would be the portpholio section.
today it is dynamic. meaning i don't have to copy and paste from the previous update of a page or add additional lines of code to the old static portpholio holding page. checking all the links between the pages and adding the new page link to the other pages, then uploading only to see i've made a mistake with some link or text. no ways... i have a whole admin system for that now. it's faster and simpler. i really should've done this a long time ago.
i'm not sure about the layout of the page for viewing a specific portpholio but i'll have to sleep on that for a bit.
aswell as the portpholio section being dynamic it is searchable now too!
Posted by sarah | add a comment | tech, web
feb 18 2005
i have added a search facility to the website. unfortunately not all the content is dynamic yet. it searches blog posts, comments and the descriptions of the bloggers. results are shown for the different sections that are searched. i will be having a look at making it better, but at the moment i am quite chuffed.
try it out and let me know what you think?
Posted by sarah | add a comment | tech, web
feb 11 2005
i finally got my java applet working with all the functionality i envisioned... but it's not web friendly at all. what's the point then heh? well, i just don't know...
i'm presenting the assignment tomorrow morning at 11am and i doubt it's got to work in a web page, i flippin hope not. i'll have to check the assignment document when i get home. then i'll start pooping, or not. i've searched and scoured the web for a solution to this but there doesn't seem to be. i compiled the app in WebStart and that didn't help. i created a policy file and that didn't help. i have figured out that it's probably because of the layout...
so do i undo tons and tons of code and basically start from the beginning to get it right? well, yes if i only knew how... i guess, now is a good time to start.
but before i go i need to mention the wind. the-super-gale-force-wind-that-almost-blew-me-off-the-balcony-when-i-opened-the-door... go away, i've had enough
Posted by sarah | add a comment | ranting, tech, web
feb 10 2005
last night was good, but today i feel a little rough around the edges...
after slogging away at work on the java app and not making a tremendous amount of progress, i decided to sit down in the front of the laptop at home and for change not play hereos but rather try and get around the one last bit of functionality i needed to finish the app! although i was distracted, i managed to get it done... yes, i finally got it! now i just have to put all the other things in, but the functionality is there and i am going to make my deadline. yay!
so, we celebrated. we grabbed 2 pommies and headed to buckley's to play some pool and watch england try and reach 312. they did pretty well in the end, but not enough. it's a pity that we don't have pietersen on our side... 100 of 69 balls, way to go!
anyway, we got the pommies horribly drunk, showed them a good time and fed them before we got home this morning at 1am. all on a week night! although i didn't drink a ton, it doesn't take much for me to get drunk nowadays and the consequences the next are always horrible. my head's not pounding but even after a juicy salad i still feel yuk!
can some-one please turn the brightness down?
Posted by sarah | add a comment | sport, web
Jan 06 2005
so there i was, cruising along beach road in table view on my way to work. minding my own business, checking out stuff... everything but the road in front of me and not a second too early (or is it late?) either. the kind driver in front of me had stopped at a pedestrian crossing and i was about to say howzit to the rear end of her car.
screeeeech, a little sideways on the road (and off the road) plus alot of smoke from the burning rubber of my tyres.
the pedestrian gave me the evil eye and the kind driver sped away. i turned back onto the road, hoping that i'd pay more attention since i was wide awake now!
other road news: it happened awhile ago but it's been bugging me. who is the feather-plucker that decided that the 'slow' lane from table view to milnerton needed all that patch work? i think they've actually made the road worse and since i don't like to get speeding fines, i find i drive in the slow lane quite abit. it's just completely doff and bumpy, what a waste of our taxes!
thanks to coda for pointing out the dubious going-on's at musica digital. i'll wait for the mozilla friendly version...
Posted by sarah | add a comment | music, personal, tech, web
sep 15 2004
my colleagues and i received some shifty unsolicted bulk email last week. the dodgy people went to our website and grabbed our details from there and then sent an email to each of us requesting some more information.
it pissed me off so much i did some research.
i found that the email wasn't even sent from the companies that are mentioned in the email, Interactive Direct and Decision Makers (dot coza). it was infact sent from another company called analogue dot coza. salama at analogue dot coza to be exact. i have no doubt that this person doesn't even exist!
what i did find interesting was that my favourite web hosting company (webonline) hosts analogue dot coza. so i sent a mail to them (accounts) and the ispa.
updated 13 oct 2004
on friday stewart from webonline got back to me and told me that they have received other complaints and are following it up, can i please send him the original email? sure. wow, i didn't really expect to hear much from anybody.
i feel like this is unresolved... i have a list of names of the people that own all the domains i mentioned, plus their contact details (address, phone and email). i don't know what to do with all this info though? anybody have any ideas?
sep 03 2004
i've spent the past 2 days editing, changing and securing phunkd in order to have some friends and family become regular bloggers here, hopefully they are interested.
so far so good. i just need to get them to register, get some dodgy pics of them (and myself) and then we're ready to rock 'n roll.
i will be trying my damndest to get baby pics of all the registered bloggers, including myself. you'll notice that the author of a blog post (currently only mine is there) is clickable now, this will take you to a page with a run down on that blogger, with links to all the other bloggers.
tonight we'll be having some fun as we are hosting a farewell party for lauren (hopefully a future blogger here) at our place. chicken / beef stir-fry, a film preview and lots of loud music. it should be pretty good!
Posted by sarah | add a comment | personal, social networks, tech, web
jul 23 2004
[whispers] web standards [/whispers]. i'm afraid to mention it too loudly... damien and charl have been having quite a debate about it recently.
so anyway, being curious as to how phunkd ranked, i ran it through a standard validator, the result:
this page is not valid html 4.01 transitional!
the initial result was a pretty sloppy page. i quickly fixed all that i could with the exception of some dodgy labels on the poll include. now i must say i am happy with 8 errors rather than 61 (ouch!). geez, i think i better start getting better at web standards if i wanna call myself a good web developer!
update: after some tweaking, my site is valid html 4.01 transitional now. yippee! i can put a button somewhere... double yippee!
jul 15 2004
found on upsaid.com:
"This change will not only be a releaf for the server, but it will also give us the chance..."have you seen any simple, bad spelling mistakes?
Posted by sarah | add a comment | bloopers, personal, web
jun 15 2004
ok so i've added a comments thing for these posts. but... hmm, i really don't get it. i try to format the date on the comments page to read like on the home page and in the left hand navigation, but when i do that i get "thu, 1 jan 1970". i have the following code:
$formatdate = date("D, d M Y", $timestamp);if i don't format it doesn't look like the rest of the site but it shows the right date... how can i format it without losing the data?
echo "$formatdate º $author";
jun 11 2004
well finally... the redesign i've been mumbling about. still lots to do in the background though.
the nice thing is that finally got off me lazy butt and got this site to be a lot more dynamic and i updated the portpholio page. whew. all in a couple of days!
i still have to escape single quotes and double quotes in the blog tool, will get there, more importantly it took ages to just move the gallery across, i think i did something wrong along the way because i ended up having to start all over when i got no database connection. it was really strange because all i changed was a 'cosmetic' thing and it shouldn't have buggered it all up?
i hope you all like the new look, i still have to make the random pic actually random and add a comments tool for this blog... bear with me, should be done by the end of the year!
Posted by sarah | add a comment | personal, web