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

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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It seems like just the other day that I was wondering when AVG will be upgrading their old logo. Now with Vista and all the other new software and their new looks, AVG’s little icon in my system tray looked pretty dull.
So to my surprise it was not long afterwards that a notifcation came through asking me if I’d like to upgrade.
There must be millions of people out there using AVG’s free version. After all these years it has never let me down, so I do not see the need to pay for an anti-virus that just hogs my system resources. AVG is quiet, sits in your system tray and only bothers you when you really need to know about something. And most importantly, it just works.
They have now incorporated their anti-spyware into the free version. A while back AVG took over the well known Ewido anti-spyware which worked really well.

One very annoying thing I have found in the new version is the LinkScanner component. When you do a search on the search engines, it checks all the results and displays a little icon next to each link telling you whether the site is safe and free from malicious software.
This slows down the whole process and in general is just very annoying. So I eventually found the following instructions on their website on how to install without this component:

If you wish to install AVG 8.0 Free Edition without the LinkScanner component, or uninstall this component from your program, please proceed as follows:

* Download the AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation package from our website.
* Run the installation with the parameters /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch. One way to achieve this is to:
o save the AVG Free installation file directly to disk C:
o open menu Start -> Run
o type
c:avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
* The installation will be started, and AVG will be installed without the LinkScanner component.

Replace the * with whichever version it is you downloaded. Also make sure you get the path to the file right, easiest way is to just stick it directly in the root of your C:/ drive, that way you can just copy and paste the command above (remember to replace the *).

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Local comedian, Barry Hilton, has taken the initiative and started an online DVD portal here in Port Elizabeth. Now I don’t know about you but I think this is the next best thing since sliced bread.
We tend to lag behind a bit here in PE so it is great to see a new innovation like this in our little town.The site is called, Cousin’s DVD and you can select from a whole range of titles from latest releases to older movies. You can even purchase a contract online.
It’s not obvious what the charge is for delivery or whether there is in fact a charge, I guess that will become obvious once you checkout. Whatever it is it is sure to beat paying those fines for late returns!
Now I just need to convince Barry to do delivery way out here in Cape St Francis!

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Today the 15th of May bloggers all over the world have been challenged by Bloggers Unite to speak up on human rights.
Here in South Africa human rights is still an ongoing battle. It seems the weight just gets shifted around instead of the problem getting solved.
Fine a lot of people are doing a lot of things to help relieve the situation, but the majority of people seem to not want to let go of past injustice.
Everyone knows about South Africa’s apartheid struggle. It is nothing to be proud of, yet we have overcome it and have been trying our best to put it behind us. The thing is it seems that the majority of people like to not forget about it as it lends them a kind of ‘comfort zone’ for lack of a better term.
It’s easy to say, yes because of what you did in the past, I deserve to have this and that and with that attitude the problem will never go away.

Fair is not fair anymore. what was fair in the past to try and fix the problem was to give certain individuals the opportunity to rise to the top while holding others back in order to reset the balance. Now however the system is being abused as it is so easy to get what you want if you keep the other party feeling guilty all the time.

If you had to hurt someone, whether by accident or on purpose or even ignorance and later you feel bad about it and apologise, isn’t it unfair of that person to keep taking advantage of you by referring to the incident over and over again?
Isn’t this an infringement on your human rights? You’ve paid your dues, you’ve apologised, now let it go. LET IT GO!
What makes it worse is when that person keeps on taking advantage of the situation even after you have left the earthly abode by referring the generation after you to the injustice which was caused by you. Now that is major infringement on your human rights.

South Africa has a long way to go. Until certain parties can’t let go of their grievances or even better, until such a time as everyone are treated equally (meaning no special favours based on the colour of your skin or the language you speak) the issue will never be resolved. We’ll carry on going in circles. Round and round and round.

Related article on MyPE: Are You Guilty of Human Rights Abuse in PE?

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Having been a big aquarium enthusiast in earlier days, I could really appreciate this new invention when my friend mentioned it to me. I was very impressed when a couple of months down the line he is making huge success with this invention.
3 dimensional rock inserts for exotic pet habitats.This is not only restricted to fish, but can also be used for reptiles, amphibians, arachnophibia and whatever else you can come up with.

This is quoted from their website, NinjaKidsRock.co.za:

“In a nutshell, we design and manufacture 3 dimensional “rock”
inserts for spicing up exotic pet habitats. These inserts are placed
against the back wall or glass in an aquarium, terrarium or vivarium
and held in place with a dab of silicone sealer. Very quick, easy to
install, and a whole lot of fun to customise!

Our inserts are manufactured from non-toxic medical grade concrete,
silica and all natural additives. We hand paint each insert in a
variety of rock colour styles with a non-toxic colour coating.”

He says he is not interested in flooding the market with cheap and nasty and and is more than willing to cater to a client’s specific needs and suggestions as to any customisations he might require.

Find out more on their site: Exotic Pet Habitats.

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Save-a-pet recently had to make home for 120 huskies and wolves at their haven in PE (Port Elizabeth).
This animal shelter is urgently in need of help of any kind. If anyone could make a donation in either money form or food it would be greatly appreciated. (more…)

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I just had to let everybody know about this cool desktop application I discovered that helps you keep up to date with Eskom’s load shedding schedules. If you are from South Africa, this might just be the thing you were looking for.
The application is very small and sits in your system tray once installed. You can add your location (plus many others) and it will automatically keep track of the scheduled load shedding times for your area directly from the Eskom website.

It will give you notifications and you can even set it up to shut down your pc just before a scheduled downtime.

Thanks to the guys from myenergy.co.za some of us that can’t afford a UPS might be able to get away with it now with this nice application doing the monitoring for us.
Visit their site to download the application, www.myenergy.co.za.

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After staying out in St Francis for a while, it’s quite weird driving back into PE (Port Elizabeth) again. Even though PE is not considered a city by most, it sure is a bustling place.Traffic in PE in the last few years have just increased to such a point that you just do not want to drive around town at all. That’s the nice thing about being out here in St Francis, the roads just never get busy. I mean, like what was peak hour traffic again?

The worst thing here is, tourists. Everyone here drives like they’re on holiday. ‘Hallo, not everyone here is on holiday!!’

Yes, we do miss PE a bit, but I would not trade the quiet out here for anything. There are enough people in St Francis from Port Elizabeth to make us feel at home and besides, PE is just an hours’ drive away!

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