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Watching Sky news and they are previewing the new PS3. It looks amazing. The word on the street is that Americans are queing up outside Toys R Us just to PRE-order these things. Apparently without a high definition TV owning a PS3 is pointless. High definition basically means looking at a plasma tv, flatron vibe. PS3 is apparently only getting to the UK in March next year.

Interesting stuff. Strange that the Xbox 360 and new Nintendo gamebox have already been released (Xbox 360 has been out for a year), while PS3 is holding out. Personally I would think that this is a mistake, but I don’t work for Sony so what do I know. But as a user and Xbox fan I would not purchase an Xbox 306 to only a year later purchase a PS3. Im an Xbox man and think I most probably always will be.

I recently (5/6 Months ago) purchased a brand-spanking-new Mecer Laptop. Top of the range, all the specs are present that any user would need (too many, too boring to go through one by one just trust me, they’re all there).

Everyone is aware of the Sony Battery debacle; explosions, fire, mini nuclear explosions just about. “Cool,” I thought, “this could never happen to me.” And it hasn’t… yet. My keypad started heating, the fan became clearly audible (not in that “is it on, can I really hear it” sort of way) to the extent that it startled me when I started up the laptop. Now this combined with heat issue have started me worrying about the state of my fairly new laptop.

I am so concerned that I will lose everything that tonight I am backing up all my usefull stuff (usefull is a loose term that is very relative at this point) to my external hard drive. Thank however is up there for these little beauts.

Then tomorrow I am off to Midrand to get my sick puppy looked at and hopefully fixed. What admin, what a mess, what fuss.

There is something that I have been meaning to blog about for a while now. I just remembered because I am going to see a friend now who has just landed at JHB int (or whatever the airport is called nowadays) from London.

London, what a great place. I love it, i visit it often. I have friends and family and currently a girlfriend living there. So I do understand the drive to get to London to “make it”, or “experience things”. I get it, I do.

(Now before I carry on I want everyone to know that this is a general rant not targeted at anyone for anything about anything)

But I need to ask: Why stay in a place that destroys you? Why choose a place where there is a psuedo-South Africa waiting for you? When you get there, why stay? When you hate, why not leave? when you are sick by the thought of the rain and cold…find sunshine. Do not stay in London town near some South Africans who eat wors and use All Gold and Mrs Balls. If you want to do those things move back to S.A. and come and join us happy people here in the land of plenty!

Ok, got carried away on that last sentence there. But You all know what I mean. S.A. is great, so is London, but they are what they are for whom they are meant to be for.

I need to confess something. I have been a bad blogger. I have tarnished my consistent loyalties to the blogosphere. I have spent almost and entire day neglecting my blog. I have spent almost an entire day on Myspace.

I know, i know it’s terrible, but it has happened. The network is just so immense. It’s a bit crazy actually. I’m not really sure if anyone really knows what they are doing on there. The design is shit, the layout is shit, the user interface is… you guessed it, shit. Nothing is really made simple in terms of customization for a user who has no coding experience whatsoever. But I digress.

I spent a say on myspace trying to make it “my” space. I tried hard. I did what I could but just couldnt get the freedom. I asked lotsa people to be my friend (I feel like im back in grade 1) and recieved a few invitations back, nice one. But all in all I think that Myspace has no personable aspects to it. It’s all generic and intrusive that allows anyone to do anything and some do nothing. Not my cup o’ tea really.

Everyone has bad days, for some people they are bad hair days, bad clothes day, bad luck days and just bad days in general. For my brother.. it was a bad golf day. There is no need to explain, the video speaks for itself.

Jen has posted about men in South Africa and some ridiculously scary stats having to do with women abuse. I am glad that she didnt get all feminist up in here cause that woulda put me in an awkward position. But I must say that she handled the issue well, got her point across and should be commended for it. “Thank You” is a post that applauds the good guys, knocks the rapist but focuses on the positives, not negative.

I am proud to say that I am one of the men that she speaks of in the post. Give it a read and be proud to be a South African Male who does not abuse women.

Going through the DSTV channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon i stumbled across The Contender. The Contender is a reality TV show based around boxing. However many fighters that couldn’t cut it on their own in the world of boxing have been thrown together in a house to train and compete against one another for a shot at some title or another. That’s not really important. At the end of each episode two boxers go head to head in a five round fight where one of them loses and is eliminated.

The shocking part of this little story is that at these fights families are present. Now I’m not talking about brother, father, mother family. The family present at the fight on this evenings show were children, the boxers children, with their mothers/grandmothers watching over them.

What message are we teaching our children by sending them to a boxing ring containing their fathers? The one little girl (maybe 10 years old) was shouting, jumping, screaming waving her arms yelling at/for/with her father to either kick the other boxers ass or for her father not to have his ass kicked. He lost, she cried, looked dissapointed and upset that her father had lost. This child had just witnessed her father take a voluntary beating in the name of money and was upset that he lost.

Look, I’ve never seen my father get a butt whoopin’ and I’m still pretty messed up. Imagine what this child is going to grow up believing in later in her life. It’s ok to solve problems through violence. Violence is ok when it’s for monetary gain. My father did it so why can’t I?

I just think that it is absolutely horrific that this is what we as viewers have become. We are willing to see people eat things, beat people, fight, scream, cheat, deface love all in the name of ratings on a TV show. It’s not for me.

It has reached that time of year once again, I like to call it The Irritation season (Summer). All the bugs come out and play while leaving me with a sense of fear for the next four or five months. I really dont mind Summer at all, in fact I think that its a nice break from Winter. But that’s all that I really wish Summer was, a break from Winter. I am a big fan of Winter. It’s too cold for the ants, mosquitos and parktown prawns to come out and that’s just the way I like it.

Summer however, you do get to go out in shorts, swim and enjoy the sun and blue skies that South Africa allows.

The whole reason for me writing about Summer is actually this: I have recieved my first Mosquito bite for the season. I really, really hate those little bastards, I do. This dude bit my on my wrist, in the perfect spot to grate up against my watch everytime I move my wrist. Smart little mothers they are.

Enjoy the South Africa Sun this lazy Sunday afternoon.

It’s 8am, it’s Saturday, I went out last night but I am awake. Why you may ask, am I awake? Well the answer is simple, I live in a Town-house complex and apparently they don’t like people sleeping in town-house complexes.

You see the joy of living in a town-house complex such as mine is that you share a wall with your neighbour. I am not talking about a perimeter wall, I’m talking about a shared living room, bedroom, bathroom wall. My moronic neighbour seems to dislike me because at 7:30am this morning he decided it was a good time to start drilling and grinding and hammering on this shared wall. I am sure that he loves the fact that his Saturday has started out being productive. But how about being silently productive? Pray, walk around the house, use the internet, phone, radio, cook, clean, wash, have sex, noisy sex if you like, JUST DON’T FUCKING DRILL AND GRIND AT 8AM IN THE MORNING!

Chatting to a mate of mine about sports while watching the Proteas whop Pakistan today, we decided that it’s pretty sweet to live in the Southern Hemisphere. We both decided that the Southern Hemisphere (SH) dominates the world of sports in many areas.

I decided that I should do some research in to this, and guess what I found? I found a lot of tables by alot of sources, took me a few minutes to find some reliable ranking pages but it has been done. Below you will see the tables for Rugby, Football, Hockey, Cricket and Netball.

RED teams are Southern Hemisphere

		1	Australia	128
		2	South Africa	123
		3	New Zealand	114
		4	Pakistan	111
		5	India	111
		6	Sri Lanka	108
		7	West Indies	106
		8	England	97
		9	Bangladesh	34
		10	Zimbabwe	30
		11	Kenya	0

		1	Australia	130
		2	England	119
		3	Pakistan	112
		4	India	111
		5	Sri Lanka	103
		6	South Africa	94
		7	New Zealand	92
		8	West Indies	72
		9	Zimbabwe	28
		10	Bangladesh	2

So there they are… and I think I was wrong… SH is not the place to be in terms of sports. We (when I say we I include all nations, continents and states in the SH for a full list visit Wikipedia) need to do some work, hit the streets, crack the gyms, pump the iron and inject… no wait, thats illegal!!

Australia

New Zealand

South Africa

Brazil

Without these four countries, we would have no teams in any of the rankings in the top 5.

I have officially hit my first deadline. All stories are in and the necessary people (some of them were unnecessary) have called me back. I managed to get all the interviews done and am happy with the results. Welcome to the world of Journalism… I think

To put this simply: It pisses me off that no one answers their damn phones. Do people think that they are too important to answer calls? Are they so damn popular that they are nagged by their phone that they feel the need to ignore it for some peace of mind? Well you know what… it’s a weekday, you own a cellphone, you are a business person so ANSWER YOUR PHONE when I call you. I am doing you  a favour when I call you, not because I am me and I am fantastic (which is true) but because I am working for a big newspaper who will give your business a boost in clientele once I am finished writing about you. Do me and yourself a favour and step in to 2006, check your mailbox for my email and check your voice message for my calls…better still, answer your phone.

Google Co-Op allows any user with a google account to create and customize their very own search engine. I have created “Find a view” that is visible in my sidebar. Give it a go, see if its worth anything, let me know what you think. Can’t promise anything, will try to a more detailed one as time goes on.

The interesting thing about this tool is that you have the option to allow any user to update the search engine, or you can simply allow invited guests to help you develop your own search engine. Lets see how it goes!

I have just downloaded a couple of Flock extensions that have made me very happy. One is the international weather forecaster, the best one I’ve used yet. The other is a built in media player controller so I never have to leave the browser, even to change music. Then I have the “Performancing” tool, which is a pop-up tool at the footer of the browser that you click and it opens up your regular looking blogger interface for posting. It looks, feels and works just like blogger and hopefully will continue to do so.

Loving Flock inspite of trying Firefox 2.0. For some reason FF2 or any FF for that matter stalls a heck of a lot on my laptop. Not blaming FF at all, its probably something stupid I did, but the other browsers (Opera, IE7 and Flock) that I have tried work fine.

powered by performancing firefox

A school in the North-West Province is said to still be flying the old South African Flag on its masts. I found this story on the Citizens news page.

How sad is that? What is wrong with people (that’s the second time today that i’ve asked that question)? Can these fools not see what they are doing to the children at that school?

The Christelike Volksonderwys (CVO) School is apparently still singing Die Stem at school assemblies instead of the new national anthem (I say new as if it was implemented a week ago… IT’S BEEN OVER 10 YEARS!!!!).

School management claims that the old anthem and flag are cultural expression. What the hell does cultural expression have to do with representing the new and ‘non-racial’ world of South Africa today? These people are morons and I don’t feel bad saying that. Wake up and smell 2006 you idiots.