archives

feb 02 2007

uuurrrgh

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!

Posted by sarah | comments (8) | bloopers, web

jan 24 2007

all the good things

well finally the weather has decided to play the game and do the winter thing! it started to snow today, something i would have liked over christmas, but hey can't always get what you want! The weather in this world is really being schitzophrenic right now, with all the tsunamis, earthquakes and even a hurricane over germany last week, which the germans are not too well equipt for, 11 people were killed! Right now i am in dresden to take the rest of my bungee equipment home to berlin, finally one last trip, i will also see what they have as insurance considering it was a work accident... but being the crusty circus people they are i see more dark clouds ahead! other than that i have been travelling the country over the last week, i drove down south on friday, let me tell you driving an oversized VW van through a hurrican is an experience!! but i got to where i was going safely and got myself a job making costumes for a... wait for it... african show! all rather well paid if i make the costumes without my usuall procrastination! So far i have 3 costume jobs lined up which is roughly 3 months salary... and less than a months work if i work hard... so no panic here about work! I guess i will leave the air steward applications alone and enjoy being creative for the time being! I hope life is treating you all well... remember to enjoy the little things in life!

Posted by Shy_adam | add a comment

jan 19 2007

y'ello mnp

i have finally ported my number and yes, i moved over to mtn. out of all the places i went to, they were the friendliest, most helpful and least fussed that am a freelancer and don't have payslips for the past 3 months. cell c wanted me to supply a ck1 form (or something similiar, ie registered business), 3 months business bank account statements aswell as the normal required documents in order to port to them. i was with vodacom, indirectly, but i wanted to port from my 3rd party provider (altech autopage) directly to them. i didn't get to ask them what they wanted from me in order to port, they were unfriendly and didn't have any deals that rang my bell. i started the process last week, it took approximately 5 business days for the change to happen. slow, but there was a delay because i supplied my cheque bank account details and wanted to get debited on my credit card, so they actually needed my credit card statements from the last 3 months. i got approved on tuesday morning and got my new sim and phone that afternoon, my port from vodacom to mtn only went through this morning - it wasn't ported by the time i went to bed last night but when i woke up i was officially an mtn subscriber! i got the imate kjam and after 2 days i know the basics. it comes with a 190 page manual that i haven't even started reading... so this w/end will be spent figuring out all the features. i must say i am impressed so far and the camera is really cool - although it has nothing on the nokia n73, which was initially my first choice - but i didn't buy it for the camera! now i need some mtn subscriber readers to drop me a line and tell me more about what i can do as a subscriber to mtn. i already know how to check my balance... and that's about it!

Posted by sarah | comments (6) | personal, tech

dec 22 2006

Merry Xmas

Hello everyone!!! Just wanna wish you all a merry xmas and the happiest of new years ahead!! Mwah! xxx To all in ZA - see you next year!

Posted by nassty | comments (12)

nov 27 2006

unbelievable

i can't believe that this guy has actually received leave to appeal to the supreme court of appeal, because of this. ridiculous!

Posted by sarah | comments (2) | debate, ranting, stoopidity

nov 26 2006

good for a laugh

Finally i am out of hospital and doing very well, on friday a friend from dresden drove me and my stuff home to berlin and now i am just chilling out and getting well... trying to avoid the temptation of going out and enjoying the berlin night life. here is a little clip from you tube that i found hysterical, Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlevdGvGcJM

Posted by Shy_adam | comments (2)

nov 14 2006

ouch!

today i found out that my brother (the one who lives in germany) is in hospital. the bungee weight came of off the rope he was attached to and he went flying into the crowd. i'm not too sure of the exact details but i think an audience member was injured (dislocated shoulder). my brother came off worse - imagine being on a bungee cord and the darn thing snapping / coming lose in mid flight. the impact would be pretty hard... he has a broken arm, one week of hospital stay to look forward to and a plate in his broken left arm! needless to say that he won't be doing that again, he'll be focussing on his comedy act when he has recovered.i hope you get better soon boetie! update: lloyd has managed to upload a few pics here!

Posted by sarah | comments (7) | personal

nov 02 2006

well, well

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?

Posted by sarah | comments (9) | ranting, tech, web

oct 15 2006

mobile number portability

since early september i have been waiting to change my cellphone provider. i was going to wait just a few days because it was supposed to happen on the 18th september - cool, the day my contract expired! but the 18th passed and nothing happened! quite quietly the powers that be decided that it wouldn't happen on that day. i went to a few cellphone shops and no-one could give me a date. i was assured that i wouldn't have to sign on for a new contract in the meantime. meaning that i would still be connected on my number at a normal contract rate until i signed up on another contract, either with the same provider (belch) or by using mnp and using a different provider... so i have been waiting and it seems like i won't have to wait too much longer, because the 10th of november has been earmarked for this to actually start taking place, hopefully. so what's the big deal with number portability? well, basically, i don't have much choice in what i have to pay on a monthly basis regarding the type of contract i want to sign up for at my current provider. i also don't have much choice on the phone that i get with said contract. plus, there's an awful lot of providers offering all sorts of 'freebies' (laptops, hi-fi systems etc) with their contracts that my current provider doesn't offer! so, it seems like my provider doesn't have alot to offer me does it? that's what i thought and that's why i'm waiting for the mnp to kick in. what i did discover throughout all of this was that if i am on a vodacom contract but with a preferred vodacom provider (like altech autopage), i couldn't move directly to vodacom. so it's not even about moving from mtn to cell c at all, it's simply about being able to move freely between any provider that is out there! here's a pretty good faq on mobile number portability.

Posted by sarah | comments (12) | information, tech

oct 09 2006

p a r t y

this past saturday we had a 5 piece party at the house in honor of kaptain karina being down from london - dude, it's such a pity you had to leave early by the way! i know i had a good time! i also know i was one of the last people still standing in the wee hours of sunday morning... i'm also pretty sure i was still drunk when i woke up a couple of hours later! i just want to thank everybody who managed to get theirs arses to our spot. i hope you guys had a good time? my pics are here. here are some items that have lost their owners, please drop a comment if any of them belong to you and i'll make a plan to reunite you with them...

Posted by sarah | comments (5) | personal

oct 06 2006

ward023

i voted in the past municpal elections. yeah, so what? well, a couple of days ago i was searching the web for a map of duynefontein and came across this census report of ward023. this didn't make sense to me though, because on the iec website, ward023 is in drakenstein (paarl). so where are the results for my supposed ward023 in the municipal elections? digging a little deeper, i discovered that my voting district no. is 97120302 and that has been grouped together with the city of cape town. are the census people creating their own wards, independant of the iec? or vice-versa? and why? why does my voting district fall under the city of cape town? if you would want to project a way a ward would go according to the census you would be in for a great surprise. discovering (as i did) that your ward isn't infact the same ward that the iec refers to...

Posted by sarah | add a comment | debate, politics

oct 04 2006

crawling?

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?

Posted by sarah | comments (10) | web

sep 21 2006

when are things going to change?

i got a call from the bank this afternoon. not just any call, it's one of those marketing calls that i normally don't take... but i took this one. it turns out it was more of a 'we'd like to know what you think of this service' call. ahhh, excellent... so i let rip. now i have mentioned the bank charges before and how much i am not impressed with the banks. to actually speak with a live person from the bank about this, wow! i let sandra* know that i think absa thinks i'm a stoopid customer. stoooopid... if they think that i would rather use their credit card than fnb's. why she wanted to know? well, you guys charge me 19.75% debit interest if i spend less than 10,000. if i spend more than 10,000, you charge me 16.25% - effectively encouraging me to get more in debt (quite honestly who can afford to pay back more than 10,000 on a cc every month?). at fnb (and standard bank) the credit card debit interest rate is a flat 17%, no 'rewards' for spending more or less than a certain amount every month... i couldn't find the cc interest rates on nedbank, page not found error! having said all that i needed to, sandra said she would talk to her manager about this and get back to me. i must admit, i don't know what i expected - it wasn't much though. about 30 min later sandra phones back and says her manager wants to waiver all cc charges this month in a gesture of good faith... i'm like well thanks, but you still don't get it do you? you charge me more than double the interest rate set by the reserve bank and give me less than a quarter (on average) back if i 'save' my money! it's just so mad because most of the banks services just don't warrant these ridiculous amounts of money they are taking from us. seriously, i'd love to know when this investigation into the high bank charges is going to yield positive results for the consumers? * not her real name

Posted by sarah | comments (1) | debate, personal, ranting

sep 18 2006

pool

this past w/end ed and i went to buckleys for the 8 ball pool competition we had entered during the week. we got there at 10am for registration... about 2 hrs before anything started happening! we played our first games just after midday and waited another hour for the next draw and then played quite a few games one after another. there were only 3 ladies that entered and pitched on saturday so my round-robin knock-outs went very quickly. ed did well and we eventually left at around 4pm. on sunday we resumed our competing, but only arrived at about 2pm, as there were new competitors who had to make it through the round-robin to take on the previous days 'winners'. i was in a different groove to the previous day and kicked ass. i did accidentally sink the white ball on one game (after sinking the black), which - if i hadn't - would've given me 1st place in the women's competition. then i had to start playing the men and i dissappointingly went out in my first encounter... all in all i was suprised by my 'skills' ;) alas, i did not win anything as there wasn't a very good turnout... i do want to mention that i was extremely dissappointed in the organisation of the event, i seriously doubt that anyone who attended this event organised rather shoudily by funscapes will consider attending another one, if there is ever another one.

Posted by sarah | comments (1) | chillin', ranting, sport

sep 10 2006

up and running (kind of)

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...

Posted by sarah | comments (12) | personal, web

aug 21 2006

delusional

"Judging by the number of people who came to our exhibitions and the comments that we have recorded, I think South Africa did very well. I think the TAC was such a disgrace, a disgrace not only to the department but a disgrace to the whole country. But I think as South Africa we really demonstrated that we're doing pretty well in this regard," she told SABC news. [source] god help the people of south africa, please!

Posted by sarah | comments (3) | stoopidity

aug 19 2006

Just Jinger

Hey guys. Hope everyone is well down in CPT or where ever you are.... I went to a Just Jinger gig here in London at the Shephards Bush (She Bu) Walkabout last thursday and wow they were awesome. I had seen them in CPT ages ago before they were big and I liked them then, but I am impressed of how they have improved since. Great live band to watch and even got a signed album at the end. :) So I thought I would share that with everyone as it brought on a wave of nostalgia.... Missing CPT and the gang...xxxx

Posted by nassty | comments (2)

aug 15 2006

conspiracy?

i'm of the opinion that the 1969 moon landing by the americans was all fabrication. there's no way with the technology available in the 60's that they were able to do it, safely, without a hitch... since then they've had numerous problems simply just launching a spacecraft never mind launching, navigating, landing, taking off again, re-entering the earth's atmosphere etc. all without any major problems... i saw 'footage' of this supposed moon landing the other day on the discovery channel. the funniest thing was that when they left the surface of the moon, they seemed to have left some-one behind to film it! so when i read this story today, i think that they'll never find this footage. i'm also wondering why they don't seem to be bothered by not having found it for a year already? is it because it never existed? plus, if they did find the footage, it'll probably not work because it has degraded over the years. how convenient. "Because Nasa's equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast."

Posted by sarah | comments (1) | ranting

aug 08 2006

a good read

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

aug 07 2006

some words

last week i came down with a cold. coughing all night long and getting no rest at all. so i went to my friendly, expensive doctor and got some pills. they worked and i slept right through friday into saturday. he gave me a course of pills, which i hate... and by sunday my body was screaming for me to stop the chemical, anti-biotic inbalance. now i know it's not good to stop through a course of anti-biotics but when you're throwing up and have constant heart-burn it's just not worth it anymore. so, yeah, i put a stop to that! other exciting news is that on friday when i attempted to switch on my laptop, the hard drive wasn't there anymore... after attempting, unsuccessfully, to start the damn thing i gave up and resigned myself to having lost quite abit of data. maybe not though, hopefully the young guy who's now got the drive can recover some of the data! and last but not least... i resigned from my job. the 31st of august is my last day at ripe design. i have no concrete plans of yet. i plan on doing the odd job from home, gotta pay the rent you know, but i haven't looked very actively for another job just yet. i feel like i need abit of time to make the right decision in my career path from here on out.