Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Three Rhodes Students Die
I just heard that three Rhodes students have passed away in a car accident on the N2 between Grahamstown and P.E.I think that this is so unbelievably sad. It has happened since my first year at Rhodes. I have lost mates on that road, I have lost mates to suicide at Rhodes and many more people have lost many more people. What the hell is up with the world and the bubble that is Rhodes? Just a short post to offer my condolences to the families of those who passes away.
Socially Acceptable Behaviour
There are certain things that people do, that people know to do and not to do in public and in places of social interaction. However, there are certain people who forget about these social norms when they are intoxicated and make everyone else feel very awkward and leave the party area.I was at a mates annual house party (thanks bud, what a ripper!) minding my own business being all chilled out on a comfy chair with some close friends when El Doos (I shall name him) stumbles along and sits next to us. We are smoking the hubbling and meeting one another and I'm still chilled and not saying much as I am in a bit of a spaced place. Cool, I thought. Not so much:El Doos: I don't know you, introduce yourself. (I know the host, strange that HE doesn't know ME).Who asks you to introduce yourself to them? Don't you just introduce yourself in that case?Nic: -stands up- Hi, I'm Nic, nice to meet you bud.El Doos: -shakes hand-Nic: -sits down, spaces-Five minutes pass and I think I have ridden over this little social speed bump, apparently I was sorely mistaken.El Doos: OK, it's official, I've made up my mind, I hate you -looking at me-.Nic: -spaced-El Doos: Ja, look I'm just honest, so when I don't like you I'll tell you, so that's what I'm doing.Ok, now I need to interject here; This moron has just told a table of 10 people that he hates me. Someone tell me what the normal response to this would be. There is no such thing. So what followed led to awkwardness and us leaving the hubbly... Dammit. Nic: OK, that's perfect with me, but if you don't like me do me a favour and leave me the fuck alone. If you don't like me, stop talking to me, get up and walk off bud -not so spaced anymore-.El Doos: Why you getting so angry?Nic: Well you know, I love it when a strange guy that no one knows tells me that he hates me and then expects me to be his best mate. There are things called social norms, some of us don't like them, some of us hate them in fact, but in certain contexts you need to fucking use them or you put yourself and others in situations just like this little gem right here. Got me?We all (the nine other people at the table) stand up and walk off leaving El Doos to his own device. What a wanker.
Subscribe to Search Results
I recently discovered that it is possible to subscribe to search results as an RSS feed. I think this is a brilliant concept. Try it with Google's Blog Search. Search for a topic, click on the "sort by date" option and then simply copy the RSS or ATOM feeds available. Copy the URL in to your feed reader and you have subscribed to your first Search result.There are many reasons that I think this is nifty. Firstly, you can subscribe to the latest content from a variety of blogs relating to search criteria. It saves you the time of searching for the same topic every time you want new info. If your blog is a blog about cultivating chickens, then simply search the blog search for those criteria and wait for the results to pop up in your feed reader. You will have your finger on the pulse of the chicken cultivating industry without even trying!!
Big Blog Directory
The Big Blog Directory (BBD) is an idea that I think is fantastic. It's simple and its viral or some degree of viral I think. It is an idea that I personally have had for a while but just couldn't get it to work in my head or justify the effort it would take to put together. Luckily some people aren't as lazy as I sometimes am.What the BBD is, is pretty simple; it's a directory of blogs that the author is building. I can't recall how I stumbled across the BBD but I thought that it was worth a shot. So I sent in my blog and bam I started receiving hits and at least one dedicated reader (I know, one reader, but hey they all add up in the end). So I would like to thank Leon from BBD for his efforts and maintained support of this blog and others within his directory. Good work.
Tech Attach #7 - Google Reader
This Tech Attack will also serve as a brief overview of tools that Shutterview has recently added to its repertoire.To begin, above the Shutterview header I have placed a blog search option. You can now search for any post that Shutterview has published. The search engine is powered by Freefind.com and is one of the most effective personal blog searches I have come across. Use it, get it. The I have added a Flecking tool to the site at the bottom of the Sidebar. Make use of this tool to make comments on Shutterview about design, content, genre, me, you or anything that your heart desires. These comments will then be sent to Fleck for anyone to see and make use of in the future. I will also be able to use these comments to keep in touch with your opinions of my blog. And finally I have added my Google Reader favourites to my topnav above the Shutterview header. Follow the link to see what RSS feeds I am viewing and loving. You can also add my Google Reader shared pages to your Google homepage if you so choose.Google Reader:On to the Google Reader. I have mentioned on my "Coming soon" feature that I would be comparing Google Reader with Bloglines. I have decided against that. Google reader has taken me. Bloglines is cool and all, but I just found it to be somewhat temperamental occasionally and very difficult to add RSS feeds to your list and manage the list.
Then I discovered Google Reader. Simply put Google Reader is an RSS feed reader. There are many of them out there on your desktop in your mail or a separate website (bloglines and Google Reader). What you do is find a blog with an RSS feed that you like and stick that feed in to the Google Reader and hey-presto you have an easy to view blog, no frills, no fuss and all your favourites on one page telling you when they are being updated. This not only saves time but is a lot less effort for people who read various blogs throughout the day.What a joy. It is the first page that I look at when I wake up. It is easy to manage and simple to add new feeds in to. Simply download the "subscribe" tool that is offered and subscribe to feeds as you surf. It's now a matter of clicking subscribe, adding a tag and watching the feed update. 1-2-3 and done.I have tags extended from News to blogs to international blogs and technology. The reader updates as often as updates are available and has yet to let me down.Check it out today and change the way you blog-surf.
Flossing in Public
I was just in Sandton City Mall. Walking along, minding my own business when I literally ran in to a woman who was flossing. Yes, I am being serious. She was walking through Sandton City flossing her teeth. Maybe she had just enjoyed a magnificent meal that required her teeth to be cleaned immediately. Or maybe she was some Neanderthal without any freakin' manners or concern for anyone else in the shopping centre. I hate selfish people, keep your grooming habits to yourself and at home.
Spam Update
My Spam inbox is now up to 508 emails in 15 days. The average has dropped from the last post. It was at 35.2 per day and now sits at 33.86 spam emails per day. So at least the average has gone down. Interesting to see how it goes if I leave it for longer. Let's do that.
I Love You
Virgin Response
I flew Virgin Airways about a month ago and it was hell. Read the "Virgin Screw-up" post here. Anyways, I made use of hellopeter.com to complain and also emailed the Virgin offices. I assumed that they had forgotten about me and the little guy. I was wrong.
I have been checking the incorrect mail box lately and was made aware of this fact tonight when I received four Edgars overdue warnings and a lovely letter from Virgin. Click the image to the right and then check out the whole thing. It's very interesting. Excuses are rampant but that's cool with me. I get a free bump up to "Premium Economy Class" (PEC), whatever the hell that is anyways according to the Virgin site PEC is Virgin's Premium Economy cabin is wonderfully better than coach class, and in most respects clearly superior to BA's competing product. I wonder if I could get another ticket upgrade if I make enough of a hoot about it (I hate travelling alone). I guess that at the end of the day something is better than nothing, even if it is a kick to the groin.I would like to take this opportunity to thank Virgin for their efforts. I applaud the service and will not let a single crummy flight tarnish a long standing relationship with my favourite airline.
Minki's Bubble Bath
I have a question: Do I publish?I have received the Minki photos. The ones where she is naked in a bubble bath. I don't know her, her friends, her mother, her sister (though I wouldn't mind) or any of the rest of her clan... so unlike 2oceansvibe I have no attachment. My question is this: should I publish those photos on Shutterview?? I am going to go ahead and give you all a bit of a taster, but not the whole thing. If the requests come back positive then it might have to be done. We shall see in the end shan't we?
Buy An Island
I have a new obsession in my life (yes yes, other than blogging), I want to buy an island. Nothing big, just something that I can vacate to with my girl. Nice and simply. Something with running water, not even electricity, I don't mind giving that up. As long as I can take a dump and flush that shit then I'll be happy!So I stumbled upon this magic site called private islands online. You can search for islands by region or price or something. I looked for region first, Brazil:
| Isla Bonita | 17 acres | US $1 650 000 |
Now that's the shit right there. Buy your own island near Brazil for just under $2mill. Nice one.However still somewhat out of my current price range I feel. So I searched for price < $250K and came up with: 
| Davis Island | 0.8 acres | CAD $27,900 |
Now that is what I call a freakin' deal right there. Ok so who's got +- R225 000??
Blink 182 - Where are they now?
I know this is a random post, but hell, this is a random blog and I think that's why you keep coming back (unless I'm talking to myself). So I was listening to Blink 182 today through my Itunes random play when I thought about the offshoot bands. I know that Angels and Airwaves is and offshoot band. I recently heard about +44 and then I know for a fact that Boxcar Racers is also a band from the origins of Blink. Still though it unnerved me that I didn't know how they all fit in. So guess what I did? I found out.
Tom, Travis and MarkThe story goes something like this (adaptions made for comedic license):Mark Hoppus (vocals and bass), Tom DeLonge (vocals and guitar) formed Blink 182 in '92 without drummer Travis. He replaced drummer Scott Raynor in '98. Blink then went on to have a string of geeky punk pop song hits. But things got tedious (as things get when one is stinking rich and a teenage punk star at the age 30) so a side project was created.
Boxcar Racer was born in (my personal favourite) but died in infancy. The had some great tunes such as "I feel so", "Letters to god" and "Sorrow". Emotions were high and the end was sniffed I reckon, that's why they finally made some meaningful music. Boxcar featured Tom DeLonge and soon featured Travis too, seems as though Mark didn't crack the nod for the line up but did feature occasionally. They ended the project in 2003. Sad day.That then meant that more bands and money could flow the way of the three mega rich super punked up guitar drumming freaks. Aren't we glad? I am.
Tom DeLonge left blink-182 in 2005 and formed his own group Angels & Airwaves. Somewhat similar to Boxcar, but very opened ended and free spirited music. Lost the Punk vibe and went more mainstream emo rock.
Then finally Travis and Mark silenced by a vow (very difficult to create music under a vow of silence I might add) have finally spoken out about their new project, +44. This band seems to have a very Blink touch to it with the sounds of the last Blink album predominant (in my mind and ear at least).And that is the Blink story in a nutshell. Random piece of information for you to fill your head for no apparent reason!
TechAttack #6 - Google's Picasa Web Albums
I have recently been viewing alot of my photos through Google's Picasa. This program is great and adds photo's to itself by searching your hard drive for the photos. This is all well and good and I love making use of Picasa and have in the past. But for Picasa to read your photos they need to exist somewhere on your hard drive. This is where my concern kicks in. I have many, many photos that span many trips, jobs, times and places in my life. I don't want to lose any of the photos to a corrupt hard drive, lightning or an external hard drive melt down.So I was viewing some photos today through Picasa when I noticed the "web albums" option on Picasa. The web album allows you to upload folders of photos to your own personal Picasa page where you can store, view and if you want share your photos with others.I am personally not interested at the moment in sharing my photos with the world. I am merely looking for a third backup of photos that I really, really don't want to lose. Very useful tool I think.
Bronchial Spasms
I love being sick. I really do. Not only does being sick mean that you are sick, but it also means that everything is a mission. Everything becomes an effort. Work becomes more hard work than it's worth and things are just dull. I hate being sick. Am i contradicting myself? Ah, I'm sick, its excusable. I love being sick, you get to use that stupid excuse as if being sick makes you stupid. You already are stupid, you moron, being sick doesn't make you more stupid!Anyways, I have bronchitis (Acute bronchitis is an infection of the bronchial (say: “brawn-kee-ullâ€) tree) which has not been cured and has now turned in to Bronchial Spasms. That means that my back is in spasm, unbelievable pain, excruciating and unbearable muscle irritation which makes me very, very unhappy.Now one can only imagine that being this sick means that work stops. It doesn't. Life is grand. Sickness or health and I'm not even married!
Fresh Faced Comic - Joey Voices
You will soon understand why this guy is known as Joey Voices. His real name is Joey Noone. It's a bit of a pity about the last song that he does. Can't Americans just let it go?
Home Made Chili Sauce
I am not sure if I have mentioned this on Shutterview before so it is necessary for the purposes of this post to state that I am a South African Greek.This has become a necessary piece of information because if I was to omit this fact everyone would think that I was a bit strange and lived in some sort of gypsy household.It's Sunday. Sundays generally mean family lunch in a Greek household. Today is no different. Lunch today consisted of me (hung over), my Mom, her boyfriend and my Pappou (Pappou is the Greek word for Grandfather). My Pappou makes the most unbelievably incredible chili sauce. I have used this sauce for as long as I can remember eating and before that I was eating it without my mother telling me. So this sauce is a large part of my life because I eat everyday.The thing is, my Pappou has been very lax in getting his secret recipe to me for the famous sauce. Now one can speculate that his reasons are traditionally Greek in that the recipe is his and I need to learn my own recipe, but I think that he is just so involved in the recipe and making it that he has really never gotten round to giving it to me. That and the fact that he has never written down a recipe for this sauce, it's all in his head. That is 35 years of recipe, trial and error and sweat and tears (Chilli's are hot, they cause tears).All of this has now changed. My mother and I sat at lunch today and sneakily went about squeezing little tidbits of information out of my Pappou until we had it all: methodology, ingredients, quantities (kind of) and all the rest of the stuff.I can now go on happily living with the knowledge that in 35 years my sauce will be as good as my Pappou's, even though I have the recipe!
Toilet Paper, Old Flags and Security Systems
It has been one hell of a weekend I must admit. I am still sick. That sucks but it didn't stop the weekends events from unfolding. What it did stop me doing for some reason was sleeping, again.Toilet Paper and DreamsFriday night I was at "The Hat" (Manhatten in Rivonia) with the boys (yes, I just said "the boys"). Everything was going well until we received a very serious phone call from one of our mates, let's call him Shitbreak1 (SB1). SB1 phones his brother Shitbreak2 (SB2) to ask him to leave the club and walk to an adjacent shopping centre (Mall) to get him some Toilet Paper(TP). Our man, SB1, had walked all the way to the shopping centre went in to the toilets, in to the cubicle and not noticed that there wasn't any TP. WHO DOES THAT? How is it actually possible, in a public toilet, to forget to check for TP? Well Shitbreak 2 stylishly leaves the club with none of us knowing, until his girlfriend comes in to the club... He had bumped in to her as he was sneaky out to make is own "deposit" at the shopping centre and was forced to tell her the whole story. So close to the perfect getaway, so very close!Hang-overs, Shopping, Old Flags, Hansa and RugbySaturday proved to be a long, long day. I woke up at 8:30am with my body tell me to go F*ck itself in a big way. I felt like Shitbreaks 1 & 2 the whole day. Nice start. Then went to Sandton where I had a business meeting (I sound so professional). Still hanging like the devils tail and missioning on I went to see my Mom and her boyfriend for lunch. I didn't eat. Then went shopping with my mom. Two pairs of shoes, shorts, T-shirts and a belt as well as finishings for my toilet. Awesome. Still hanging. Go To Shitbreaks 1 & 2 for a Braai (Barbecue) to watch the South African rugby team play England at Twickenham.
This started well, kicked straight in to the Brandy and coke, no Hansa. Everyone else drank Hansa till it seemed as if Hansa was sponsoring the 'event'. I stuck with Brandy. Rugby kicked off at 4:30pm, great, game going well we are winning then it's even, then we score a try. I am not sure exactly how many people noticed what happened next but I did: Some moronic amoral low-life fool started waving the OLD South African flag.
This might not seem like a big deal to most and many of the guys joked about it. But seriously, I am all for learning about our past, I agree with knowing about what the flags looked like, the people wore etc etc, but keep that shit at home in your fucked up life. Apartheid ended 12 years ago, it's time to let it go you Afrikaans White freak.We lost the rugby 21-23. Sad, sad day.Security SystemsSo the rugby ended, we lost and shit happens, cool. But why do days like this one have to go on? Why can't we just let it go when the rugby finishes and a few people leave? Why? As you can only guess by now I wasn't one of the people who left the braai. I stayed, I pushed on and we drank on (Shitbreaks 1 & 2 more so than me) till the early hours. Now the funniest thing about South Africa is that we all love the joys of Summer, we do. We love the fact that we can sit on a deck till 11pm in the evening and feel great.But don't let an alarm go off, don't let a dog bark and be sure not to walk past a house where there is a braai happening after dark. We were all sitting on the deck quietly involved in some heavy debate about life, suicide, friends, death, money, rugby, ladies (not chicks) and everything else when, all of a sudden the dog started barking and the next door neighbours alarm was activated. I have never seen for men jump up quicker in my life. Arms tensed, legs locked and eyes focused. We all quietly picked up the nearest blunt object and headed to the walls and gate to see what was going on. I find this incredible. At the drop of a hat we were sober as a nun (hate that metaphor) and ready to defend our land, or anothers' land from the enemy. I still don't know who the enemy was but I am sure glad that they didn't attack!Now it is Sunday and I have finally had my due sleep. Take it eash.
TechAttack #5 - Fleck, not Flock, Fleck
I have just picked up this interesting little social site that allows you to make notes and bullets on any website. So now, through Fleck you can not only consume information, but you can give it back. Simply leave a note, share it, blog it and let people know what you think of the site you are visiting.Currently Fleck is not supported on IE, the makers suggest Firefox and are in the process of developing an IE version soon.I am still in the process of familiarising myself with this tool but I think it sounds interesting. A little bar at the bottom of your screen pops up with various options available including bullet, note, share, blog and others. Below is a screen shot.
The other joy of this little tool is that there is no need to sign-up or register. You can do so if you wish, but it isn't necessary. I have a registration addiction so I tend to register with every site that I stumble across.
Greenday and U2 Hook Up
Could this be? Could it actually be possible that the two biggest bands in the world have joined forces to create a single like the world has never before heard? I hear you scoff, I see you snicker but it is true.U2 and Greenday have come together to create a single for the world to hear and see. It is political, it is raw, it is motivated and it is a collaboration that needed to be done and hopefully will make people stand up and take notice (in case you hadn't noticed I am a massive fan of both bands and the messages they put out)!
The track is called "The Saints Are Coming". It also features parts of "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. I absolutely love it."I cried to my daddy on the telephone, how long now? Till the clouds unroll and you come home..." Bono's first lines in the song. The music video features Iraqi troops moving in to New Orleans, soldiers returning from Afghanistan to help the Katrina sufferers (none of these things have happened).
"I say no matter how I try, I realise there's no replyThe saints are coming, the saints are coming."I think the saints have arrived and they go by the names U2 and Greenday.
"Web-Rage" = Two and a Half Years in Jail
A man in South London has been jailed for two and half years after assaulting another man. The argument arose online. Comments were exchanged and *BAM* someone got hurt real bad!Apparently lunatic 1 tracked down lunatic 2 through personal details on the net. Nice one. Two lessons to be learnt here:
- Don't piss anyone off on the net...ever...at all (as if)
- Don't put anything personal on the net...ever...at all (as if)
Three men, a pickax handle, a machete and a knife. This is the situation. Lunatic 2 apparently threatened Lunatic 1 to come over to his house and be met by a weapon. Well Lunatic 1 couldn't say no to such a pleasant offer and brought with him a friend and a pickax. That's what you get for your troubles. A leisurely afternoon chat online ended in a cut neck, blood and a generally mad situation!*Pic and info courtesay of BBC.*Picutred above: Lunatic 1