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 Deagle .50. I am a self proclaimed gaming God. Back up, that’s not a good way to start this off and expect positive comments. Alright, if there was a God that had played a fair number of games on most platforms during the course of his lifetime (forever) and was fairly good at them, that would be me. Fine, I’m a gaming nerd. I’m not the best gamer ever and don’t care about finishing every game on the highest difficulty with the most achievements, I just enjoy a virtual world experience every now and again (daily). See, I was born in a golden age known as 1980 when the closest thing to cutting edge technology was a 26 inch colour television that weighed more than a grown man. It wasn’t a sad time because of that, it was really exciting. For me, dropping a coin into a huge machine and being able to control a yellow ball with a mouth for thirty seconds made me feel like ground control. And it really was an adventure, I remember my brother and I practically stealing (ok we actually stole) 20c coins and running to the shops for our quick fix. The progression was fast, before we knew it there were two player battles in Street Fighter 2 depriving us of a solid education. Around that time the computer craze got us and I was peddling discs between my friends like a back street pimp. There was even a short stint were characters like Leisure Suit Larry gave us that taboo element. Computer techs were also being trained all over the world from a very young age just to get games working on their computers, an entire industry was born because of them. But by this time the market was saturated, too much to play and not enough time. There were actually genres of games and people started taking preference. There was also talk of graphics and sound quality and fps. I fell into the trap as well, and remember talks of photo realistic driving and flight simulators. Small fortunes were spent on the best computers just to get a little closer to that 16 bit dragon. And then things really changed, multi player hit us. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I installed my first network card and had my friends come to my house with their computers. We probably didn’t eat for days. My social world had changed forever, and so did my care for graphics. Jump to modern day, where I just spent $60 for possibly the best looking game ever, Killzone 2. The 3D rendering, levels as big as a real city, ambient sounds and realistic shadows blow my mind. It’s not realistic looking, but it’s not meant to be, it’s just pretty and good at being pretty. You’re expecting a complaint now aren’t you? How could I possibly complain, the pinnacle has been reached and my PS3 cell processors are finally working overtime to pump that sensual dope into my brain. But I’ll complain, because I feel like I just wasted sixty hard earned dollars when I could have rented the game for five.  Pet Shop Boys is definitely playing in the background It’s all very well having the best looking game ever, but it’s not fun. The multi player is frustrating, the menus are complicated and single player story has no substance. The end result is that I am back to Call of Duty 4. Currently the most played game in my retinue, a contender with Halo 3 and the Quake series. It looks good and sounds great, but more importantly it is simple – I have a gun, you have a gun, our guns exist in real life and when I shoot you, you die and fall over. There’s no laser weapons, sticky grenades or aliens. The single player holds up to real events and the multiplayer has modes that are just plain fun. The menus load quickly and there is hardly any delay in waiting between games. The short story is that I don’t care anymore if a game has stick men and no ambient effects, as long as it’s playable and enjoyable. So I thank you Activision, you are my heroes and I feel just a little bad that I have only spent $42 on a second hand copy of a game which has kept me busy for literally days. Thanks to looking at this site I have found a new way to play with my camera. Take a look at the photo’s below, basically in a dark room setting the shutter to over 5 seconds, I used bulb most of the time on these with my remote shutter and running around with an LED – I do need a better light source for the next one, It’s getting a little too eighties. We cheesed out after a while, I’ll try some more “artistic” shots next time. There was a very brief time in South Africa when the same feeling of hope that Barack Obama has instilled was floating around. It was, of course, marred a little by the fears of civil war and stockpiling of baked beans – but as a young schoolboy I believed in a system. Dare I say I even had respect for our leaders and the efforts and sacrifices they made to get where they were. Naivety. I have to admit that being out of the country for two years has limited my knowledge of what is going on, so much so that I have to Wikipedia news makers on a weekly basis. Case in point; Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League leader. 28 years old is a little old to me to be president of a youth league, but considering that he “passed” high school at the age of 21, what’s a few years. That’s if you believe he went from the “fake” grades of 33% for English where writing your name on your exams is usually enough to at least get that far. If those qualifications don’t help, the military training at age 13 surely give him some good skills. This guy really is a piece of work, slinging insults at his peers and competitors as if he was still on the playground. I spent a good half an hour googling news stories trying to find one positive thing the guy has said, so such quotes. But he is smart, in a very dangerous way – rallying the youth by appearing at junior and high schools – not exactly the kind of role model you want your kids looking up to. Bring in the DA and you’ll find another child who just loves bickering with Mr Malema. Watching the repertoire between Helen Zille and Malema, you may be reminded of the fights you used to have with your little brother over who was going to get the last piece of cake from the fridge, except that these two aren’t that mature. Calling each other names, that’s the way – make me proud to be South African. How about telling me for a change what your policies are, or have you all forgotten about why you want to be in office, servants to the public?  I hope this didn't cost too much I took a look at the ANC and DA websites looking for their actual policies. The DA has a pretty website, a logo copied straight from Mr Obama and … no really, policies written by 12 year old girls dreaming of Knights in Shining Armour.. Ok I’ll give them a few points, they have a lot of information, idealistic, but there’s something. The ANC takes the cake, their policy site was last updated in 2009, confident, arrogant or apathetic? So after getting really depressed I looked for hope, or is that COPE. The new opposition party made up of ANC defectors that seems quite outspoken against the ANC, but at the same time are way too diplomatic. Their manifesto, too, is weak and cute. “protect the environment and our natural resources for future generations” – I think I wrote that in an school essay when I was 16. The clincher for me this week was when the ANC was charged with impersonation for distributing fake DA pamphlets, making the party look racist claiming that they want to bring back the days of “permits”, with the final line on the pamphlet saying “‘Warning: Do not show this pamphlet to your maids and garden boys… we need their votes”. The worst of all is that these were given to kids at schools as well. Propaganda in an act of desperation, good job guys, we’ve come so far – I hope the fight was worth it. I have never been one for eating breakfast (unless of course it’s at 4am and I don’t know what my name is). The reason is simply because I have always had trouble waking up in the morning. Since my very first schooldays, even though my mother tried her hardest to get me out of bed at least ten minutes before having to leave for school she quickly learned to not even bother making me food.  This will take three days to come out Of course my metabolism was slower than the signing in of a much needed stimulus bill but when you have yet to hit puberty it doesn’t really matter. Until very recently, I have kept up the tradition and have sustained myself by eating late at night and eating snacks an hour or two before lunch. This is mainly because as I get older the lack of food in the morning has become affecting my mood and weight, and theres nothing worse than me having a fat day AND feeling sorry for myself. And while I have become hungrier in the mornings there are still some days when eating before noon just makes me feel ill. Which is where we start. Picture it, a Saturday morning, waking up bright and early at 9:30am and getting ready to meet a realtor to look at some houses. I wasn’t in the mood to eat, anytime before noon on weekends may as well be before sunrise. But seeing as we were meeting at a breakfast restaurant we went a little early so my wife could get something to eat. Now if there’s one thing I dislike more than the concept of breakfast, it’s restaurants that specialise in serving breakfast. Overcooked eggs, hollandaise sauce without enough vinegar or lemon juice and warm orange juice made from concentrate the previous morning. And I can’t leave out the lack of fiber – there is nothing like starting your day by clogging your bowels. And while the food tastes mass-prepared with no love put into it at all, it’s really people that get to me. Inevitably there are three groups of people:
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Sunday was one of the best mornings and meals. My wonderful wife went to get breakfast, this time a little later in the morning, and brought it home to bed where we sat in comfort watching DIY shows. Breakfast, bed and TV; that I can live with. My wife asked me an interesting question a few days ago. She wanted to know if I would ever add someone that I bullied at school as a friend on Facebook. Something about being mature and all adult like.  No really, I did I said no, mainly because she had already started making cracks about the person in question and how her friend and her wanted to see what she looked like in all of her new pictures. I was also never a bully at school so I can’t really relate to the question. I was a more on-the-fence, Switzerland-neutral guy at school and didn’t get involved in many altercations. But it did make me wonder about my friends list in general. Facebook has really helped me keep in touch with a lot of friends after being away from South Africa for almost two years. But right now my friends list is 340 long, and that’s not bragging, I’m actually a little embarrassed that I have people on my list that I don’t care about. There’s also just no way I can have any kind of relationship with that many people – which makes me wonder about the people who have 1500 friends. Anyway….
So I figure that it’s time to start weeding some of them out. The bulk will come out of the acquaintances category. It’s going to work like this, people who I really don’t like are out first. I have that list ready as they are already in a specific group who can’t see my personal info due to wonderfully precise privacy settings. So if you can’t see my cellphone number or email address on my profile, you know how I feel about you now. Kidding, but you will wonder now won’t you? Next are people who irritate me. If your status messages don’t make me laugh ever, you’re out. This is important, it shows me you are worth having as a friend. Finally, if you don’t bother reading this site (I shamelessly advertise it a few times a week), you’re definitely out – and that goes for my brother, wife and everyone else less important. And probably better than you know yourself. As you very well know, Google is the supreme being who knows the answer to any question you have ever had. Surveys show that the average Internet user visits the single fielded site and asks a question no less than five times a day. I don’t have to verify that stat, just look it up and you’ll find it somewhere. All very well, you rub the search lamp and you get your answer. But there is a darker secret. Everything you do is tracker, maybe not personally to your name but at least to a digital ID that can be tracked back to you. It’s the equivalent of writing your thoughts on little post-it-notes and sticking them on walls all over town. So why does it even matter? Unfortunately you eventually begin to rely on the webs for answers to everything from work to health to that strange itch you’ve been having in your bathing suit area. Technically, if I could see every search you have ever made over the past few years I could tell a lot about you – your goals, your problems and your progression over time. Match that up to your Facebook account and I can even draw a timeline with pictures and commentary from your friends – don’t forget that Facebook now owns your content for life (and beyond). Your footprint is large, very large. But forget about that, nothing we can do about it right now – just don’t implicate yourself in any crimes – yes online searches are now being used in court cases as evidence, in particular don’t look for methods about the crime you want to commit. There’s a taste of whats to come, on Google’s main page, just type in a search query and it begins to complete the phrase for you based on the most popular searches. For a more detailed look, try this version Ok, so I played around with it a bit, here we go:
So based on this first one, a lot of people are worried about the world ending – although not as many as when the World Series Starts, I’ll take that as good news.
This one got me, a little bit worrying. You do know there is a clock on the computer you are using to type this right now? Apparently there were 7 billion times when people did not know this.
Ok, ok, Google knows a lot – and probably helped the 700 thousand odd people who wanted to know when they will feel their baby move, however the level of personalization is not there yet to satisy the billion people worried about the day they will die.
Jesus Saves, and is still beating the fight against diabetes. Ok, you get the idea, be careful out there especially when trying to figure out which STD you’ve picked up. Update: If any of this has happened to you, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page and let me know which state you live in, this seems to be happening especially to people who have paid traffic fines in NYC. I had the unfortunate experience of having a fraudulent transaction posted to my Visa Debit Card this week. To make a very long story very short, someone, somehow gathered my details, including my credit card number, expiry etc and my billing address. They then used this information to purchase a software license online. Luckily I pay close attention to my bank statements and picked this up while the amount was still “pending”. Unfortunately at this stage banks can’t do anything about the payments. But I did contact the merchant directly. DRI*ELEMENT5.COM was the indicator on my account, and having visited their website it was apparent that they get a lot of queries such as mine, considering that their customer service page is entirely a form to look up orders (with email address and last 5 digits of the credit card used). I checked just in case, with multiple email addresses as I have a tendency to do a lot of online shopping. It turns out that Element5.com is part of Digital River. They are essentially providers of e-commerce to various clients, predominantly software developers. While I cannot and do not blame the merchant at all, it does seem that they fall into one of those categories where a lot of fraud could occur due to the intangible product that does not need to be physically delivered. If by chance you need to contact them, ELEMENT5.com’s phone number is 1800 406 4966. They were friendly about it all, confirmed that it definitely was not me that made the purchase and reversed the charges. What is interesting is that whoever used my card also created an email address with my name in it. They would not tell me what that email was, but just that it contained my full name – so they really tried to make the best of it. So my card has been cancelled and I now have to visit a branch with ID’s and all the fun procedures just to draw cash, but at least they can’t use that number anymore. It does worry me that they managed to gather all of my information, though. Three possible scenarios so far: 1) Someone, maybe at a restaurant who physically had my card tracked down my address somehow and used my details. But this is unlikely. 2) Someone who I have bought with in the past had their data compromised and they had stupidly stored all my details. 3) The most likely is that a recent transaction was handled insecurely and someone along the way had picked up my details. In fact, I paid that parking ticket just a few hours before the fraudulent transaction and they had picked a product which was a very similar price ($2 difference). Either way, I feel highly violated. Update: A lot of people have been mentioning that they are contacting their credit card company, while I went the route of contacting the biller. Here’s the difference. If you contact your credit card company they will open a case of fraud. You will probably never hear anything back from them but they will reverse your charges. If you contact the company directly, they will refund you almost immediately but you NOT be able to file for fraud with your credit card company as well. So the choice is yours.  Not an original sign Ah Las Vegas, Sin City and the Entertainment Capital Of The World. It is the iconic city of debauchery, nudity and gambling. Supposedly where everything and anything goes, which is partly true – if you can afford it. To be fair to the countless people that have been to the city before me and spent some real time as drunken tourists, I’m not going to go too much into what you can expect from the city itself. You’ve seen the movies and heard the stories, so you know that you are going to be staying in a luxurious yet cheesy hotel, drinking on the streets 24 hours a day and gambling your balls off. Gambling being the top priority of course, as is evident when you first step off the plane only to be greeted by dozens of rows of slot machines. It all begins and ends right there, with a flashing light and ringing bell. Las Vegas (The Meadows in Spanish for you intellectual types) really is a city like no other in the United States. The only purpose of it being there at all is to provide entertainment and a surreal getaway from regular life.  Valley of Fire My trip was just under a week, flying a one stopper from Orlando. I have this (dis)advantage in that my wife lived in the city for eight years and pretty knows it inside and out, and more importantly still has friends there who gave us a room to stay. Imagine the anti-climax of being whisked away to a magical place that I’ve seen on the silver screen my whole life, and staying in an apartment in the suburbs. That was the downside, the upside was that if you work in Vegas, you apparently know everyone or at least know their friends. So we ate for free, drank for free and walked past lines at every club we visited – viva las suburbs. I can’t describe the city as anything but Vegas. It’s not beautiful or particularly well kept. There’s a lot of lights of course which adds to a vibe that really cannot be explained, it’s just…a vibe. Being older and more sophisticated we both opted for some cultural outdoor activities for the majority of our trip. Number one on the agenda was the Valley of Fire. This is a state park probably about a thirty minute drive from the Strip and exists within an Indian reservation. Extremely beautiful, ancient rock formations and most importantly peaceful and quiet. Apparently most locals haven’t been there or even know about it – nature isn’t exactly a big reason for people moving to Vegas in the first place.  Grand Canyon Our second trip was to the Grand Canyon. This is definitely only recommended if you have a lot of time, it’s not doable if you are just in Vegas for a weekend. First things first, rent a car with unlimited mileage as it’s about a four hour drive into Arizona. The drive is beautiful in an unconventional way. Within the first hour you get to drive over Hoover Dam, and that is really a great spot to stop and just take in the view. Some great photo opportunities and even a tour if you want. The Mojave desert was a unique experience for me, small diners popped up along the route that looked as if they had not been updated since the 40’s or 50’s. There was also the opportunity to drive along Route 66 (what’s left of it) for a few miles. We arrived at our hotel (5 miles from the canyon) late at night, but were up early in the morning to take in the view. The time of year was perfect, a little chilly but at least no sweltering heat. There are no words to describe the canyon itself, just look at the pictures. The rest of our trip was typical Vegas, we gambled a little (only lost $50), ate a lot and drank significantly.
It’s time for the big review. This one is going to crush your dreams I’m afraid, but at least I’ll save you some money. To start off with a disclaimer, I want to stress that I am not a video/sound professional, I have never worked during my high school holidays at an electronics store and have no will or want to climb into an attic to install cables. Alright, so let’s start off with my equipment:
 One day Not the best equipment, my Achilles heal is definitely the TV which supports 720p at it’s highest resolution. A fairly big jump from 1080p outputted by the BluRay. The sounds system is simple, but effective. It supports 5.1, Dolby and all of those things I don’t understand. To put it simply, it has surround sound and it’s loud enough for the room. And speaking of the room, it’s probably a little over 3m by 3m (15ft by 15ft) and doubles up as a games/movie room and my home office. Everything is connected with expensive cables, HDMI for the video and optical for the audio. So last night my wife and I sat down to watch a movie. Vicky Christina Barcelona. It’s a pretty good movie, I recommend it and I specifically wanted something low key for my first test. The reason being is that action movies which are always shown in demos look good and sounds good purely because of everything going on at once, and I always find that loud takes over surround sound, so I wanted something .. quiet. The video quality was very good, crisp and smooth. The downfall of rear projection is the that black is not really black, always a slight grey (I’m not sure of the technical reasons, but an LCD would take care of that). The sounds was very precise. My rear speakers are mounted just behind the viewing area and I took quite a bit of time playing around with the settings to get the distances and heights just right. I was very happy with the quality. I defintely achieved a “theater” setting. So far so good. Except that I wasn’t overwhelmed and amazed that I was watching a movie on BluRay. I mean I knew it wasn’t VHS, but I couldn’t tell if it was simply DVD or not. After that I popped in Spiderman 3, as it came free with the PS3 and tried that on for size. As expected and mentioned, much louder, much more action. Definitely a big difference, but again nothing that I hadn’t experienced before. So I’m scratching it all down to the fact that to really appreciate the full effect you need to spend the money on all aspects of the system. 1080p is a must, as is a 7.1 channel receiver which BluRay outputs to. It just wouldn’t make sense spending the money on one piece of hardware without the others. PS3 games still look and sound amazing however, going to kill some zombies. So here’s my second attempt. One of my gifts from my wife on my birthday was a night in a really beautiful bed and breakfast. We had a room looking over the courtyard and there happened to be a wedding reception going on. 200 frames (0.8″ exposure, f/3.5), played back at 15fps. I stopped just before they announced the buffet and everyone walked down through the courtyard, would’ve looked good but just bad timing. I somehow captured some flashed from the photographers on the ground. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdy14PUR_YA I have heard from more than one person that my mother raised a very well mannered young man and that she should be proud of how I have grown up. They’re probably all right in saying that, I do have impeccable table  Is that a Rubiks cube? manners, I hold doors open for ladies and can hold quite good conversations with different types of people – at least during my sober hours, I do tend to become a very personal broken record on most Friday nights. There is one thing that never stuck, though, even though I have tried my best, I cannot overcome finding other people’s misfortune funny. Calm down, I’m not sadistic and really do have empathy for most people and I’m even thinking about sponsoring a Somalian kid – what’s $10 a month to me anyway. The types of things I’m talking about are the cellphones falling into swimming pools, unibrows, British teeth, and my favourite for 2009 – cankles in heels (look out for my upcoming photo gallery). However, there is one thing that stands the test of time – people falling. It’s comedy in it’s purest form, simple, spontaneous and always unexpected. I can remember literally dozens throughout my life. One of my favourites was the smug geek (the worst kind) at my school going up to the front of the auditorium to receive what was probably his tenth award for the year. A barrel roll down a few steps just before he got there took the smile off his face, and left me with a memory for life. You’ve seen the curb and carpet trips, always different but with one thing in common, the victim always tries to play it off as if nothing has happened. A quick spin around and walking back out the door, or dropping something ten seconds too late and pretending to pick it up. It might make them feel better, but everyone knows better. My personal story had all of the typical elements, and then some. I was in my early twenties, full of arrogance and simulated confidence – with a shiny Kawasaki motorbike that you could hear from three blocks away. I was also really proud that in my small group of friends I was the only one to still have an unscathed paint job, not so much as a mirror scrape. Until of course, I performed the simplest of manoeuvres. A group of us arrived back at the house where we started our run and for some reason I decided to turn into a driveway over the road, do a u-turn and rejoin the pack. Now imagine, full leathers, designer helmet and a freshly polished bike – all doing a u-turn on a gravel driveway. And that was it, my first and only biking accident, at walking speed. Something strange happens at those speeds, gravity increases and reactions disappear. So before I could even react I was pinned between a thousand sharp stones and a 200kg (freshly scratched) racing machine. My visor was also down, which didn’t help my cause, because if you have ever worn a helmet you will know that they fog up very quickly once the airflow from movement stops. So there I was, lying on the ground trying to blindly lift way more than my bodyweight off me while shouting at the top of my voice (conveniently muffled by the foam surrounding my chin). Sometimes there is no playing it off, especially when the will to survive overcomes the ego. Humbling? Maybe. Did it stop my enjoyment of the same thing happening to others? No. Categorically no. To whom it may concern, I have just returned to Florida from New York City. This was my fourth trip to the wonderful city that I have grown to love as a tourist. As we have previously, my wife and I stayed with her brother in his house in Queens and even though the weather was way colder than we are used to, we had a really good time. Most of the time at least. You see, one of the reasons for this trip was to meet up with a friend who was staying in the city from abroad for a business engagement. Luckily for me, through the kindness of my brother-in-law, he let me use his car for the day on Saturday 31st January. Coming from the wide open roads of Orlando (read no potholes) I was a little nervous to be taking on the less than polite cab drivers, jay walkers and mounds of slushy snow pushed up against the curbs. But I managed, slowly, and with the aid of a GPS to get to my friends hotel and make our way a few extra blocks to the statue of liberty. Of course, I had heard all about the difficulty in parking, so I paid very careful attention to where the no-parking signs were and more importantly where I saw other citizens being towed away. And after a reasonably short half an hour, I found a great spot right next to a parking meter – what are the odds! $5 for two hours and a very cold view on the 86th floor I made it back to where I had parked.  NYPD Tow Truck But by now, you will guess that the car was no longer there. A very kind gentleman who was unloading his truck told me that I had been towed and that I shouldn’t park in commercial parking on Saturday mornings. If only he had told me when I arrived and parked right behind him earlier that day. So frantically I looked for evidence that I was not wrong. Of course there was none, because the parking ticket I had printed from the meter was still in the car. There was, however, a sign half a block away with a note about “no commercial” parking except on Sundays, tied up with the other guy’s story. Question 1. Why is the sign so far away from the meter? Question 2. Why does the meter even work, and not have a note on it letting me know I should not be wasting my money? So after a few phone calls and advice from cab drivers, I made my way down to the impound lot. Interesting place you have there, one information window and one cashier – but at least 20 cars on the back of tow trucks waiting to get inside the garage. The queue to get inside was longer than the queue to get to the observation deck at the Empire State building, and being 20F in the sun I was becoming quite upset. You know the procedure from here, one and a half hours and $185 later (plus a $115 fine) I drove out with a car, luckily, intact. Question 3. Is it a coincidence that over 75% of the people in the impound lot waiting for their cars were not from New York at all and a large majority of them had rental cars? Question 4. Is $115 a reasonable fine for a Saturday morning when there are no other cars on the road and I am not blocking traffic, nor business entrances? At this stage, you are probably getting ready to deny my request to have the fine reduced or squashed altogether, but I don’t want that. I made my decision to visit a complicated city and I am prepared to pay for my mistake. Ignorance of the law is no excuse! But what I would like back is a refund for the $5 I put into the parking meter. Considering that fact that I have admitted and paid for my mistakes already, and that I was not supposed to put any money in the meter in the first place, I think it’s the least you could do. On Friday night, (30th Jan 2009) three of us went to a Trapeze school in New York for our birthdays. It was a complicated gift giving between my wife, her brother and me. There’s not much to say, other than after 2 hours we slightly looked like we knew what we were doing. No injuries, just a few sore muscles. Video’s tell the story. |
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