kruger park visit 2008
During November, I took my yearly leave and set off for a week long chill session at the Kruger Park with one of my friends. The Kruger has got to be my favourite holiday destination; It is cheap, close to Pretoria and a damn cool place in general.
We left Pretoria on a Monday morning early, by which time it was already pretty hot and humid. A sign of things to come no doubt. Arriving at the Malelane gate at about 9 AM, we already knew. It was going to be a hot day. A very hot day. On the way to Berg-en-Dal, we spotted 4 of the big 5, missing only the Leopard. Not a bad tally for a 10 km stretch of road. But then again, the Berg-en-Dal area is always a brilliant place to see loads of animals. If you ever go to the Kruger I would highly recommend this camp. It has won Best Camp for numerous years running for a good reason.
But back to the heat. The Monday was a scorcher. It touched on 43C in the shade with 80% humidity - or that is what the fancy weather thingy said, but it could not have been far off. Not fun at all. The only respite from the heat was driving around in my car, because it has air-con. Normally I take heat well - not that kind of heat though. We reached a silent agreement that, was it as hot the next day, we would head out to Badplaas, a resort close by, on Tuesday afternoon. Luckily by late Monday afternoon cloud cover came to our rescue and a quick shower during the night cooled everything down. The rest of the week, we had perfect weather! Partly cloudy with light rain late at night.
tree plant session
Over the weekend, we went tree planting in Furrow Road, close to Equestria in Pretoria East. It was the first “operation” by the newly formed Pretoria East Tree Huggers group. It was only a small start to get the ball rolling, but hopefully future tree planting sessions will be better supported.
The wetland area in Furrow Road, has been pretty solidly messed up by developers 
and residents alike. Used condoms, building rubble and general rubbish, makes it a bit of an eyesore. It is a pity, because it really is such a beautiful small piece of land, with the potential to be an urban animal haven. Between all the rubble and rubbish, I found this toad hiding.
People tend to miss the small things. Nature will always find a way as the saying goes.
Justin Bradfield - creator of the group on Facebook and the main driving force behind the tree planting initiative - has already planted about 55 trees in the area. Well done man! Recently Tshwane Metro also agreed to plant 21 more trees in the area. Once again thanks Justin!
If we can get people to just take some ownership of the areas they stay in, such a big difference can be made. Plant just one indigenous tree per month, pick up litter in your neigbourhood for just 5 minutes a week and you will be suprised at the improvement you will start seeing after a while.
some cool free tools
A short list of some of the free applications that I use on a daily basis;
- ImgBurn - a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application. Very handy if you don’t have commercial software installed or simply as a no frills alternative to the normal bulky apps. Plus it plays a very cool jingle when a disk has been successfully created, making you feel victorious.
- FireFox 3 - Need I say more. If you don’t have it yet, get with the program mmmkay?
- Filezilla - Brilliant in both its guises as client and server. Why people still use anything else is unclear. The de facto standard FTP client/server in my opinion.
- Twirl - For Twitter. Needs Adobe Air.
- RescueTime - “…the neatest, sweetest application I’ve ever seen. This is exactly what I need. It’s free, it’s functional, and I can forget about it. Perfect.” Nuff said.
- nLite - If you install Windows a lot, this is for you. If you work with Virtual Machines, this is for you. If you basically work in IT, this is a very handy application and a must have.
- Zenmap (Nmap) - Free security scanner, handy to quickly test firewalls and general security on networks and servers
- K-Lite Codec Pack - Never worry about annoying codecs/funny video formats again. This plays them all. Well almost.
- WinRAR - Free compression tool, supports most common formats.
rain spider
Catching it and taking it outside was quite the ordeal;
- They are really aggressive as can be seen in the photo. No trying to run away, these things come right at you.
- They are really fast… it almost got to my hand a few times. I took it out in a 5l ice cream container but it tends to not sit still as other spiders usually do.
- Have a look at the fangs…
- It freaken jumps at you.
But luckily I eventually got it outside and safely released in a far corner of the garden, where it now feeds on neighbourhood cats. And who says spiders are not usefull? Damn noisy parrot eating cats.
See here for a bigger version of the above photo.
registering your .co.za domain name
(This is for .co.za domains only)
The first step in setting up email or a website for your company/private use, is getting your own domain name.
A domain name is basically the yourdomainname.co.za part that makes the whole thing work. For a more in detail description about how DNS (the domain name system) works, this is a pretty good article, on Wikipedia. It does not have to be .co.za extension, it could be anything from .net, .com to .org etc. I am doing .co.za because it is the most widely used in South Africa and if you can register a .co.za domain the other types will be pretty easy thereafter.
Why would you want to register and administer a domain name yourself instead of letting an ISP take care of it for you?
- You always maintain full control over your domain, so you are never at the mercy of any provider. Much like Open Source software. But different in the sense that it is DNS.
- You can make changes to your DNS as you wish and at any time without all the jazz that surrounds getting your ISP to make changes for you. Ever tried getting large ISPs in SA to alter your DNS? Case in point.
- You will save some money.
- It is really not as hard to do as you might think it is, especially if you have the basics down
- It is cool
