Ron’s Blog

Saw the trailer for this last night; needless to say I’m really intrigued by this one. I’ve embedded the YouTube version below, so you can watch it for yourselves and see what you think of it.

Right, bit of backstory here – we developed a whole website and database solution for this one big client of ours (name not revealed to protect the guilty). We are obligated to offer support for these guys, and I’m responsible for that (apart from the usual dev work that I do).

So, they decide to open a new branch – well, the guy who manages the new branch experiences an error on the website (error on our side, turns out that some of the code didn’t take new branches into account), so he calls me for help.

It turns out that this chap is not too bright…

Luser: “I’ve found an error on the website… (yadda yadda)”.
Me: “OK… can you know exactly what you did to cause the error?” [When fixing bugs, it helps if you can reproduce them, you see...]

Turns out, he doesn’t understand what I’m asking for, so I decide to take a simpler approach…

Me: “OK, this may help – next time you get the error, can you take a screenshot of your browser window showing the error, and mail it to me?”.
Luser: “What’s a screenshot?”
Me: *facepalm*

So, I search Google for a screenie-making tutorial, and mail him the first link that comes up, telling him that that’s how you take a screenshot, and that he should mail the screenshot to me when he’s taken it. The reply comes through two days later – the screenshot was of the guy’s Outlook window…

It took me several more days encountering similar stupidity to get the information I needed to find and fix the bug…

IOL has published this story:

The prankster who defaced ANC president Jacob Zuma’s poster and placed it on a pedestrian bridge near Virginia Airport, Durban, will be fined or face jail time if caught, the IEC said on Thursday

Clearly inspired by an e-mail that has been doing the rounds for the past month, someone added a mask to the poster and scrawled the word “Zumatello” alongside Zuma’s image.

The poster was then placed on the pedestrian bridge over the southbound carriageway of the M4.

The reference to Zumatello, for the uninitiated, comes from the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which featured four turtles whose names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello were borrowed from Renaissance era artists.

The Independent Electoral Commission says there is nothing funny about defacing any election posters.

Tension between rival parties was highlighted when a similar election poster of Jacob Zuma was defaced in Umlazi recently.

The ANC in KZN called on police to investigate, but no formal charges had been laid.

Just two months after that incident two men were arrested for plastering their business adverts on an ANC poster in Johannesburg’s city centre.

The men were taken to the Johannesburg Central Police Station and charged with contravening the Electoral Act, which makes it illegal to conceal or remove any voting or electoral material.

The charges included malicious damage to property and contravening the Electoral Act.

IEC spokesperson, Mawethu Mosery, who had not seen the poster in question said: “Misrepresentation of campaign posters is a matter that deeply concerns us.

“We will not tolerate such behaviour.”

Mosery went on to say that if it was concluded that another party was responsible for the defacing, the party would have to pay a fine of about R200 000.

However, if it was carried out by an individual with no political ties, there would be no option of a fine and the offender would face up to two year’s imprisonment.

Seriously – don’t people know what a sense of humour is any more?

1. Thou shalt not think thy is invincible when thy hast thou automatic shotgun, as thou knowest not when thy Tank shalt spoil thy plans of World Zombie Domination.
2. Thou shalt have one player to watch thy rear, for thy Smoker is cunning and sneaky.
3. Thou shalt not split up unless thou wantest to be ambushed by thy Hunter.
4. Thou shalt shove thy Boomer away before shooting him.
5. Thou shalt not rush thy enemy if thy hast a player with thy sniper rifle who hast clear lines of sight.
6. Thou shalt not disturb thy Witch if thou health is low.
7. Thou shalt not hoard thy health pack if thy teammate is near death, for four players killest thy Horde better than three.
8. Thou must learnest that thy sniper rifle does not helpest thy team during thy final battle.
9. Thou shalt not abandon thy teammates and quit thy game before thou hast escaped.
10. Thou shalt not fight over who playest as Zoey.

Spotted by Anahka56 in Waterfall.

Zumatello!

So, today I was at the Kingsmead scorebox for day 5 of the test between South Africa and the Aussies. We won’t mention the unfavourable result (from a South African perspective, that is), instead I’m going to draw your attention to something that one of the journalists in the press box found in the morning session, and who consequently had everyone who was in there at the time in stitches of laughter.

Upon Googling it now, I found that this one has been doing the rounds on several other blogs for a while now, and I have no idea who the original source was – this blog was the first thing that came up in my Google search results, so that’s what I’m putting.

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women’s breast implants.

The iTit will cost $499 or $599 depending on speaker size.

This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.

I’m going to be in Cape Town from April 25 to May 3, on account of it being my Little Annoying Sister’s 21st birthday. For the Cape Town readers, you know what that means…

Andrew, for those readers who don’t know by now, packed his bags and emigrated to the UK at the end of last month – and is now looking for a job over there.

Hence, this immortal Google Talk conversation:

Andrew
holy shit
there’s a lot of jobs for programmers

Me
so stop being lazy and get one!

Andrew
working on embedded c/c++ systems for the freaking army

Me
oh.

Andrew
at least i’m british born and can get clearance, so I can still apply for the silly things
coz they specifically ask for that.
but there’s the question, do I want to work there? o_O
sure, if I put a bug in a website, someone gets pissed off, but an accidental bug in a rocket launcher?

I’m still wiping the tears from my eyes at the thought of Andrew putting bugs in rocket launchers – the results would be similar to the results of my lack of skill wielding banana bombs in Worms…

Those who have visited the main part of my website lately will have noticed that it’s in serious need of some love and care lately – as soon as I have a free weekend coming up, I intend to do just that. Cue shouts of glee and happiness from those who actually visit that hideous thing.

“So”, you may be asking, “what’s up with the random blog post title”? Nothing random about it – let me explain. Given that I have PHP and MySQL at my disposal as far as my web hosting goes, it makes perfect sense for me to chuck out the old static pages and go with an open-source content management system. Now, the two obvious choices are Joomla! and Drupal, and yes, it’s pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other as far as choosing between them goes. I have Joomla! experience but no Drupal experience so that may well end up being the deciding factor. If you believe that you can convince me otherwise though, leave a comment; I’d love to hear what you might have to say.

You’re probably wondering why this blog went very quiet. Here’s why.

I had a lot of issues in my personal life; a noteworthy one being a certain Office Freak – for those who post on my forum, see me personally, communicate with me over GTalk or IRC, I need say no more. For those who don’t, let’s just say that this person made every day of my job living hell. That’s all that needs to be said. Fortunately, at the end of last year, we did an office reshuffle and I got given two absolutely awesome people to share a new office with, so I’m really happy about that – I do feel sorry for the new people who have to share the office with The Freak. I do still keep a convenient stash of death metal in my office for occasions when it gets lost and wanders in; fortunately I’ve never had to use them this year as I have the impression that he’s somewhat scared of me now owing to how often I played those CDs at full blast last year. It takes a lot for me to take the trance CD out and replace it with the death metal one, so you can imagine the near constant frustration that I endured.

Well, here’s hoping that it gets fired soon enough, because it doesn’t do any work.

The other reason is one of time – between work, my church band and related activities, and looking after three forums in what spare time remains, I didn’t have much time for anything else. It’s not as bad as it was previously, but things are still pretty hectic – I really need to take time out and decide what’s important to me and what I should rather stop doing. Also, the whole mess with CTI didn’t exactly help either.

That being said, I believe that this blog of mine has been sorely neglected, and I really need to start posting more stuff on here.

So, after an extended leave of absence from blogging (work, work, and yet more work), I bring you: the ABC of photography, named because this blog post is about three people I know who are brilliant amateur photographers, and those of the initials of their first names (yes, I know, it’s a freaky coincidence).

First up is Adam Barta – a very old friend of mine from my 2003 UCT days, now globetrotting in the US. I’d got a glimpse of what he was capable of via photos that he’d occassionally stick up on his Facebook profile; I recently learned that he set up his own photography site, so I went off to check it out the other day. Words cannot describe the photos that are up there. You have to check it out for yourself.

The other two are both members of the PCFormat forums: Bertus Ras (WiK1d) and Cathy Brookes (Tribble). Bertus has his own site located here – I must say, this kid has talent. Lots of it. Take a look at the close-ups there and you’ll see what I mean. Cathy doesn’t seem to have a website of her own – to find her stuff, you’ll have to sift through this monster of a thread over at PCF, but the search is worth it – so too is the sifting, as there are many other talented photographers that lurk there; Knuckles is one that comes to mind.

There’s other talent I know of out there – if you have your own photography site and want to mention it, let me know – Palu, I’m referring to you here!

EDIT: It appears that Cathy has a deviantART page, so it’s getting a link.

So, you’re probably wondering what’s happened to me, given my recent lack of activity here. I’m still alive; just got things taking up my time (*cough* World of Warcraft).

I’m finally done with the hellhole called CTI. Not sure if I passed everything, and to be brutally honest, given the pathetic way that my course was administered I don’t really care. I’m staying well clear now – if I want some more stuff to put on the CV, I’ll look into some Microsoft certifications (someone at my chuch is a trainer, so I have a good contact in that regard).

Then, PCF has been taking a lot of my time away from me as well. I was asked to take over the management of their forums, and started this in the middle of June. Due to some pretty nasty forum issues, it was decided to switch to phpBB 3 – as their database is huge (13,000 users, 1,000,000 posts – you do the maths), it took me all of a weekend to do. The users seem to like it though – yeah, you’ll always get the odd few who bitch and moan, but in general people were happy. Ettienne gave me the best feedback.

I’m also more involved with the FRAG LAN again. You may recall me leaving entirely; however, they experienced website issues and asked me to come back to manage their website, which I agreed to. With CTI now a horrible thing of the past, I’m able to become more involved again. At the event at the beginning of September, I ended up doing the background music as Brendan (who does it normally) has matric exams to contend with. Long story short, all ~200 gamers were treated to a four hour live trance mix, which they actually quite liked. The plan now is for Brendan and myself to alternate throughout the weekend – as I do trance and Brendan does metal, that will give everyone some decent variety throughout the weekend; the problem that both of us have is that we’re too centred on one particular genre, which is fine for us, but not for the gamers.

I’m busy planning my year-end trips to other parts of the country – depending if Little Annoying Sister finds a flat to move into (aka Free Accomodation), I’ll be in Cape Town for a week in January next year. I’ll also be in CPT in May, as it’s Little Annoying Sister’s 21st birthday. So, those of you who want to catch up with me, those are your opportunities. I’m also thinking of making the effort to pop over to Johannesburg for a weekend to catch up with the PCF users in that part of the world – they’re a really great bunch of people. I just need to find someone who can let me crash over and take me around the place; kulula will do a great job of getting me there and back. (No, I can’t drive up myself – I don’t have my own car.)

OK, I think I’ve said enough. I’ll try to remember to check back in sometime soon.

Take a look at this – it takes what you write and converts it into the manner that a 12 year old AOLer would write it.

I tested it with the following post on my forum:

Ron needs an EPIC fail for his feeble attempt at camping, or what ever he wants to call it, he might as well have gone paint balling on his own, i am sure it would have been the same for him.

… and this is what I got back…

RON NEDS AN 3PIC FALE FOR HIS FEBL3 AT3MPT AT CMPNG OR WUT 3VER HE WANTS 2 CAL IT HE MIGHT AS WEL HAEV GONA PANET BALNG ON HIS OWN IM SURE IT WUD HAEV BEN DA SM3 FOR HIM!!11!1!1! OMG WTF

I now have a new favourite toy.

Here’s a cool YouTube video I found – StarCraft and StarCraft II footage set to the 300 trailer.

I think it’s really, really cool.

For those who don’t read the posts on my forum, Andrew posted his thoughts on Windows vs Linux vs Mac last night. I thought it to be a pretty good analogy, so I’m reposting what he said here.

 here’s how I understand it:

there’s three options, windows, linux, or mac.

good things:

windows: most popular, most widely used, most supported, and runs most programs.
linux: more secure, more efficient, free, some other stuph.
mac: very popular, and “it just works” is there motto.

bad things:

windows: insecure, needs a good formatting every few months, insecure, resource hog, insecure, expensive.
linux: complicated, insane learning curve, and if you’re on 56k no natural internets(see insanely complicated learning curve), need lifetime commitment to understand.
mac: doesn’t run many programs, costs more than a first class hooker in vegas, can’t be upgraded, presumably also has learning curve.

personally, I have experience with windows and a tiny little bit of linux. I would recommend windows or mac. don’t bother with linux unless you’re really interested in learning. mac is good for artsy types because “it just works” and photoshop etc etc works well.

Of course, this is entirely subjective, so leave a comment if you agree or disagree with him.