You think the lion is the King of the jungle? Well not when the buffalo is around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
This is the most amazing wildlife video I have ever seen. It has over 20 million views on Youtube. Watch it and you’ll see why.
(excuse some of the American accents in the video. Bleh.)
I have had quite a roller coaster ride the last month or so. And absolutely everything has been for the good! Well except the small car troubles I had. ;-)
I now work for Equilogic, a software development house, in Kenilworth. It is a small company that has only been going for a couple of years, but has some serious potential in the travel and tourism industry. I now no longer use Clarion – which I am very glad about. All our applications are written in C#, and next year, there are a couple of really cool projects already lined up that will push my boundaries onto the web, and that I am very excited about.
I have only been working at Equilogic for a month, and already I have learnt so much about how employers should treat their employees. Also, no matter how small, (or big!) a company is, having proper polices and procedures for the simple things, makes the world of difference.
I proposed to my girlfriend of almost-5-years on her birthday. It happened on a champagne cruise at the Waterfront, me being the romantic and all. ;-) We now have the task of organising a massive Portuguese wedding for December next year, which is going to be a complete roller coaster of a ride. I will be also be designing a website that will detail most of next year on it as well. That should be fun too!
(Oh, she said yes, of course!)
I cannot stand the Opel garage in Somerset West – Auto West. They are useless. They misdiagnosed the overheating of my Corsa, which led to my top gasket blowing which equated to R3000 for me to get fixed. Anyway, I got that fixed at Shell Autoserv, as Opel quoted me over R5000 to fix it. When I picked up my car, I took the packet of parts that had come off my car to the Opel dealership, and asked for a full refund with regards to the misdiagnosed overheating repairs they did on the car. They agreed to pay it, but it took them over 1 month to actually pay me, as their service manager lost my fax, then lost my invoice, then lost my bank details etc. Not surprising since his desk is such a freaking mess. BTW, Opel charge R320 per hour excluding Vat for labour. Seems like I’m in the wrong profession hey?
Anyway, I then lodged a claim from Motorite, for the top gasket replacement. They too, have the worst customer service I have ever come across, not to mention call centre, management, and their pathetic cover (so much fine print, that you aren’t actually covered). Anyway, after fighting with them for a few weeks, they will be covering R1500 of the top gasket replacement. So in the end, I would’ve paid just over R700 for a top gasket replacement, which seems to have smoothed out a few other niggles my car was having. ;-) Oh, I am going to be selling it in the new year anyway. Time to scale down slightly in terms of engine and tyre size. The petrol price is killing me!
This is supposed to be a secret, but I am in the process of redesigning my blog for the 3rd time. I have a couple of plans on where I want to take this blog, and with that, it needs a new coat of paint. So on the right is a small sneak preview just in case you are slightly interested, which I am sure you probably not!
Change is what you make of it. Change is inevitable, and as long as you embrace change when it comes, I can guarantee you will be happy and successful. Booyah!
I’m a huge fan of Stormhoek wine – especially the way they market their wine and the whole Web 2.0 angle they add to it (Who would’ve thought a wine would embrace the web as much as they do!). The only problem is trying to find a bottle of it!
Anyway, you now will be able to get your favourite Stormhoek wine at Checkers. ;-) I did find their rose at Pick ‘n Pay a while back, but I’m not much of a fan of rose, so never bought a bottle.
As you can see, I still have the first bottle of the Pre-Release Sauvignon Blanc 2007 – courtesy of CherryPicka.
Oh, the 1st 20 bloggers to blog about it, also get a bottle – hence the reason for this post! ;-)
What an amazing book Eyes over Africa
This not only would make for a great coffee table book, but is a brilliant birthday, Christmas or even wedding gift.
In 2006, to fulfill a long-held dream, widely acclaimed photographer Michael Poliza and friend Stefan Breuer undertook a helicopter journey across Africa. Skimming close to the ground, they flew over 19 countries. Poliza’s alluring–and often surprising–photographs share this exceptional journey with the world. With a bird’s-eye view, we witness the astounding beauty, scale and diversity of this imposing continent. The accompanying texts give a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the photographs, and brief background to some of the most fascinating subject matters.
Anyway, for those of you that want a copy, hold your breath. At Exclusive Books, it retails for R1200! So I did some digging and found it at Amazon for $79 which is around R513! Add shipping and import duties and you are getting at least R500 off the retail price here in South Africa. Our local “Amazon”, Kalahari.net, doesn’t even sell the book, but they do sell one of Michael Poliza’s other books, The Essential Africa, for R290. I haven’t seen his other books, so I can’t comment on them, but I am almost certain they are just as good.
There are also 2000 limited edition Eyes over Africa books
After my post about how badly designed and updated the Top Billing website is, I eventually have a reply from them. Well it isn’t a direct reply, I was actually CC’ed in the mail. One of their journalists came across the post, and forwarded the link until eventually “Philip Copeman” – the designer / webmaster of the site responded. Phillip does their website for free, which now makes perfect sense why the site is in the state it is in. Here is the email response I got.
From: Philip Copeman [mailto:*******pinksoft.co.za]
Sent: 12 November 2007 04:56 PM
To: Patience
Cc: Selwyn from TurboCASH; *****topbilling.com; ******@jasonbagley.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Bad crit about TB websiteYes I liked this one :
“Would you believe me if I told you that it used to be EVEN WORSE? I used to be a subscriber to their newsletter, and that was hideous too. It took about 6 months for me to actually succeed in unsubscribing (I tried, oh how I tried), and I had occasion to visit their site a couple of times in my seemingly never-ending quest to unsubscribe. I can’t even remember the specifics (I may have blocked it out due to it being so utterly horrible), but it was very ugly indeed. If I recall correctly, none of the links worked in Firefox (but we’re used to that, aren’t we?) and there was even less information than there is now.”
Imagine getting a comment like considering what you were previosuly paying!
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These comments are people crying out to contribute to the site. It is always terrible watching someone elses design, I also always think I could do better myself. Let us let them contribute. The typos and the spelling mistakes are part and parcel of Web 2.0 We shdou ldefinitely put back the user generatesd content. Thsi si the only ay to get really big on a community.I could certainly help Jason with his Alexa rating of 1555000, he is so enthusiatic and looks really committed to it, but noone goes there. Its a simple fix to get the traffic Jason. Start with this – lets give Jason a chance to Blog on www.topbilling.com and link back to his site to show us how it should be done. Inbound links is the first step to getting traffic rankings. Good content is the second.
Patience wrote:
Remember how I felt about the website when I saw it before Liza’s improvements – here is an unbiased comment.
Liza – please can you make sure that production supply you with contact details for everything features on the programme – and please can you load these details – and please can you ask someone in production to email this guy the details of how to buy the waterpump.
I responded to the email by thanking them for actually getting back to me, and then I directed a few comments to Phillip. I rounded off my reply by offering Top Billing the opportunity to get in touch with some of SA’s top new media companies / consultants – us SA bloggers know who they are – and hopefully get Top Billing’s brand on the web to the same heights as their magazine and TV show.
Oh, the moral of the entire story is that I eventually got the contact details for the company that manufactures the waterpump that my Dad is looking for. So he is happy, and I’m on the floor laughing.
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