A Web Designer's View – Port Elizabeth, St Francis Bay, South Africa

We went down to Oudtshoorn the weekend. Phew is it hot down there! Anyway, on Saturday night after making good with the family and a huge braai and everyone ended up in the pool we decided to head out. The first thing on everyone’s lips was, Lemon ‘n Lime.

We weren’t sure what to expect. No offence to the beautiful people from Oudtshoorn, but the town does have the reputation for being “boer country”.

We were pleasantly surpised though. The pub has been done up quite nicely. Outside is a very big garden area, which is just as well as the weather in Oudtshoorn does not allow one to break it down on the dance floor for any extended period of time.
There is also a pub outside, but this was not manned the night we were there. (more…)

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So a friend of mine told me of the Ox Braai at Bathurst near Port Alfred. I’ve heard of it before but have never been there. So we decided to take the trip and go find out what it is all about.We got there a bit late. There were people everywhere and finding parking was no easy task. People just park their cars in any gap they can find. The big worry is, will I be able to get out in the morning.
After negotiating with some really drunk people that it will be possible for me to manoeuvre my car in if they moved theirs slightly we managed to get a fairly good spot. (more…)

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Last Saturday we went to see DJ Fletcher from African Dope Records at Gondwana Cafe. Fletcher has the ability to put a crowd on the dance floor.. and to keep them there!I don’t remember leaving the dance floor once, except for getting refills on our drinks. From Drum & Bass, through to dub and funk, Fletcher does it all.

Being not only a DJ but also a producer sets Fletcher apart from the rest and he definitely sets the milestone when it comes to his genre of music.
I had a brief chat with him that evening and he said we can look out for his new album at the end of January 2009.

You can also join the group on Facebook here, African Dope Records on Facebook.

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For a long time now I have been trying to get concrete evidence on the whole dynamic vs. static URL issue. Some webmasters say, you absolutely have to have static URL’s for good ranking in Google, while others say, it is a thing of the past. Well at last I have found that concrete evidence on Google’s own Webmaster blog.

We have never really had much to go on. The problem in the past was that as soon as there are multiple queries in a URL, the search engines do not follow the links. The reason for this being out of fear that the ‘spider’ might get trapped in an infinite amount of queries as might be the case with a calendar for instance that dates into the future.

It seems that this issue has been resolved though and is no longer the case. Hoo ha! Good news for us struggling with Apache’s mod_rewrite.
You can read more on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog, here.

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So I lost my hard drive the other day. Yes the one with all my backups on! That one, that very one.
So after going through all the motions and trying all kinds of things, I found this article on Google about freezing your hard drive.
The story goes, the chips on the circuit board and the motor in the hard drive creates heat and most materials expand when heated. Freezing it causes these parts to shrink back to their normal orientation and it might just give you enough time to get that data off there. (more…)

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I was contacted by a lady to please post this on my blog. Due to the amount of hits I get for the search term, “husky”, I thought it might be a good idea. Who knows, I might even start a pet lost and found section!
Below is a photo of Julie. She went missing in the Corlett Gardens area in Gauteng on Sunday 6 July, 2008. She is black and white and both eyes are pure blue. She has been chipped with a Virbac chip and is of medium build with long straight hair. (more…)

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Cape St Francis has one of the most magnificent beaches I know of. Recently, while taking the dogs for a walk, I discovered a part of the beach I never even knew was there. It has a very alien landscape and I was just amazed at this undisturbed piece of nature right under our noses.
I posted some pics in my gallery, check them out here.

Read more about St Francis Bay and Cape St Francis at MyStFrancis – St Francis Bay community.

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On Friday night we were entertained by Draining Patience at the Full Stop pub & grill in Cape St Francis. Even though they started performing a bit later, they still rocked the place.Unfortunately our winter residency is not too great but the people that were there sure made enough noise to make up for the numbers in attendance.
I found Draining Patience to be very orignal and really enjoyed their music and style. We managed to convince them to do a cover song and they did a perfect rendition of ‘Enter Sandman’ by ‘Metalllica’.
I posted some photos I took on the night in my gallery, just follow this link.

Related Article: Draining Patience in Cape St Francis

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On 21 June I went to Cape Town to go see Howard Marks, aka Mr Nice. During the 80′s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines and 25 companies trading throughout the world.He came to South Africa to promote his latest book, titled, Senor Nice. Years ago I was introduced to Howard Marks through a friend who lent me his autobiography, Mr Nice. I was quite intrigued to see how he managed his business, even though it was illegal. He has in the meantime become an icon in ‘certain circles’.
The show was really great. Howard Marks is in actual fact quite a shy person, but his humor is really tremendous and I found his view of the world to be absolutely hilarious. We all need to see the world from a more humorous point of view.
Listening to him I got the impression that maybe it might not be such a bad idea for the governments of the world to legalise it!

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One of my clients, Pin High Group, deals solely with the marketing and sales of golf estates and golf developments. This is very unique. There are not many companies that specialise in this area. The director of the company is in his element of course because he is all about golf.With staff all over the world Pin High Group is quite a diverse agency. Being a property marketing agency that specialises in golf developments they have managed to stay ahead of the current property market crisis here in South Africa.
Recently they ran a competition on Algoa FM in Port Elizabeth giving away invites to 11 lucky winners who could each choose 3 friends to take along and play at St Francis Links in St Francis Bay.The competition was also sponsored by Fijnbosch Estate and Betterbond.
If golf is your game and you are interested in an investment that keeps on rewarding, visit Pin High and see the golf estates they have on their golfolio. While you’re there also check out the brand new Legend Golf & Safari Resort.

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