Google+ Now Supports Google Apps

But there's no way to migrate back!

A couple months ago, when Google+ was still invite only, I got an invite from one of my colleagues. I signed up, using my Google Apps account at communicate.za.net.

A few weeks later, Google Apps "upgraded" their accounts, and we were all forced to migrate to the new account system, which would allegedly give us access to a wider range of Google's products. But Google+ wasn't available for Google Apps anymore.

I was told to create a normal Google Account (which I did, an account at gmail.com), and that I could migrate my Google+ profile from my communicate account to my gmail one. I did so. Last week, I get an e-mail from Google+, saying that Google Apps is now supported again.

But dash-nabbit, I cannot seem to find any way of migrating my Google+ data back from my gmail account to my communicate one!

Oh well, I never used Google+ much anyway. I guess I'll just delete my Google+ profile from my gmail account, and recreate it from my communicate one.

Phishermen are Stoopid

I was cleaning out my spam folder in my Gmail yesterday (I do it about once a week). One of the mails I saw as I was scanning through, was a mail from "IRS" with a subject of "Your Tax Return."

I'm not an American, so I didn't click on it. But I could see an American of slightly lower intelligence clicking on the mail to find out what it's all about.

Then I saw another mail (probably sent an hour or two earlier), from "Internal Revenue Service" with a subject of "Your Tax Return."

Hmm.... I've seen this before in my spam folder with mails trying to get me to confirm my banking details and such (by the way, in case you didn't know, you should never ever click on any links in any such e-mail!). I've often thought that phishing mails might have more success if they didn't send the exact same e-mail three different times on the same day, from three different "From" display names.

2011 South African ISP of the Year

MyBroadband just announced a poll to decide the 2011 South African Internet Service Provider of the year. The nominees are: Afrihost, Axxess, MWEB, Openweb and Web Africa.

If you are with any of these ISPs (or would like to be with any of these ISPs), then I would urge you to go here and vote. You do need an account to vote, but it's really easy (and free) to create one. MyBroadband don't ever send spam, and there are other cool incentives to keeping an account there.

My vote went to Afrihost. I guess I'm really biased, because the only other one of those ISPs I've ever belonged to was MWEB, and that was back when I was still on dial-up! Still, I have been thoroughly satisfied with Afrihost for the two years or so that I've been with them. I can't remember a time when they've experienced any downtime. I've had to deal with their call centre maybe three times (via e-mail), and each time--even over a weekend--my query was resolved in an absolute minimum of time! Plus, their CEO, Gian Visser (Follow him on Twitter here) is a great guy! He always responds to his mentions, and occasionally throws out Twitter competitions where you can win great prizes. He's always engaging with his followers.

I hope I've convinced South African ADSL users to go and vote, and I hope that I've given you some idea of who to vote for if you haven't already!

My, but people can BITCH!

I got a newsletter from Hellopeter.com yesterday. It was the first newsletter I'd received from them in a long time. Anyway, they said that they now had a Twitter account (@Hellopetercom). I thought "what the hell?" and decided to follow them...

Wow. Just... wow! They tweet every single report made on their site, as its made. Not only is this uber information-overload, it is really eye-opening. Since yesterday I've lost count of the number of reports that have come through my TweetDeck--and I think I've seen two compliments! People drone on about the most mundane, pointless things. I've used Hellopeter myself a few times to complain, I must admit, but only as a last resort. And I've logged a few compliments in my time as well. I understand it's human nature to complain, but why do people find it so difficult to say something nice every once in awhile? Obviously, any company's stats on Hellopeter will be heavily skewed, because of this phenomenon.

Honestly, I think they need to enforce some kind of ratio, where you have to write at least one compliment for five complaints or something. But then, the site will never get used.

Then of course, there's the exhorbitant fee that Hellopeter charges companies to allow them to respond to those complaints. Don't even get me started on that!

Mike's Kitchen Alberton: Nice try, guys!

My wife and I bought a Wicount for R115 off a meal at Mikes Kitchen in Alberton. It had been about three years since we'd last been. Our last visit had been really terrible, so we decided to give it a go again. Growing up, I had very fond memories of Mike's Kitchen because we used to go there every year without fail for my birthday. So, I really wanted it to go well. But it was not to be.

The Wicount said that booking was essential, so I phoned and booked. I spoke to Jean on the phone, and he sounded like a very nice man. We arrived about five minutes late, announced ourselves and were escorted to a quaint table in the smoking section. We were then greeted by a very nice lady (whose name I cannot remember), who was to be our waitress for the afternoon. She took our drinks orders and handed us two massive booklets: magazines which doubled as menus. The menu was very complete with lots of different options.

After pouring over the menus for some time, we ordered one "Mozzarella Mushrooms" to share. These are black mushrooms covered in creamed spinach topped with melted mozzarella cheese and bacon bits. When they arrived, they were brought by a lady who was not our waitress. She had not been informed that we wanted them "to share," and so she hadn't brought an extra plate. No matter; we used the side plate that our cutlery came on and shared them out.

First of all, the spinach wasn't creamed. Secondly, instead of bacon bits as the menu had promised, there were only a few strips of streaky bacon. Still, they were quite nice, and I was surprised by the quantity of food. I felt that they could easily have served as a light to medium meal for one person!

For the main course, we picked out crumbed pork chops, served with mashed potato and gravy. I love mashed potato, and I love pork chops! I'd never had them crumbed before, so I thought it would be a nice change. When we ordered, we were each asked the standard question: "Chips, rice, baked potato or mash?"
This was a bit strange, because the menu had stipulated that they came with mash and gravy. But it didn't really bother my wife; she doesn't like mash as a rule, and only ordered them because also wanted to try the crumbed pork chops. We figured that they'd had other people in the same position, which is why they'd started offering the dish with a choice of sides instead. I ordered my mash and gravy, while my wife ordered chips. The meal took a while to arrive, but it was pork, after all.

I found the mash to be very good indeed! And I had some of my wife's chips, which weren't spectacular, but really not bad for oven bakes. It was also a lot of food! I was expecting one or two small chops. What we got were four massive hunks of meat on bones. But it was far too dry! I don't know if it's just because I'd never had crumbed pork chops, but I found myself longing for dripping, juicy, fatty meat. Oh well, it was pork, after all, and pork is notoriously dry. We each ended up each taking two chops home with us.

We ordered coffee and tea to finish off, and started chatting. We kept commenting to each other that, while we couldn't find anything specifically wrong with the place, we just weren't able to relax. Maybe it was the slightly formal upright dining chairs that we couldn't slouch down in. Maybe it was the slatted wooden place mats. We just couldn't put our finger on it.... And then, the unthinkable happened!

By that time, we were pretty much alone in the smoking section. There were a few people in the lounge on the balcony, smoking and drinking and laughing. A few waiters came in. I heard one say to the other "Jean said that all the chairs need to come out of the smoking section! No, I don't know why. Just do it!"
While they were running amok all around us, frantically trying to remove chairs, we were thinking to ourselves, "Couldn't they wait until their patrons had left?"
Then a woman came in, quite aggitated: "Excuse me!" she yelled, trying to get one of the waiter's attention, "Could we please get some service?"
One of the waiters spun around and she led him away as he asked, "Sure! Where are you guys sitting?"
My wife and I looked at each other in disbelief.

The bill came. We worked out the tip on the total amount based on the total bill, even though it had been discounted by R115 by the Wicount, and wrote the tip and total on the slip. We wish we hadn't done that. We sat for a good five minutes with the bill open on the table and the amount written on it, waiting for our waitress to come and process my card. Eventually we decided that we'd best go to the front to pay. We got up and walked to the reception desk (where we could see that they did have portable card machines, so there was no excuse for our waitress to not have come to us to receive our payment). There was nobody there. We waited and waited, and we could've easily walked out without paying. Finally our waitress appeared, but she said that her hands were full, so she couldn't process our payment, and asked if another waiter who was standing there would do it. He put my card through the machine, and handed it to me without a word, so I could punch in my pin. All the while, he was chatting away to the other waitress.

When we left, there were no smiles, no "Thank you for coming, have a nice day!" Nothing. It was as if they were happy to be rid of us.

Nice try, guys, but never again.

Music Censorship and Blasphemy

I've been noticing an alarming trend lately. Radio stations are being more and more strict with the words they censor out of songs, and are taking listener complaints and comments more seriously. I hear more songs on the radio where words like "shit" and "fuck" are blanked out, and certain high-profile artists are even releasing special "radio edits" of their songs where certain offensive words are replaced with others (Pink's "Funhouse" comes to mind, where the word "fucker" is replaced by the word "sucker" on the radio version).

But a couple weeks ago, I heard something that really and truly took the cake! Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song" was doing pretty well on Highveld at the time. One Friday, it was the uncensored version; the following Monday I heard it on the radio, they'd ripped it to shreds! Just take a look at this:

[...]
I'm gonna stick my feet up, and then stare at the fan
Turn the TV on, throw my hands in my *****
Nobody's gonna tell me I can't

[...]
Tomorrow I'll wake up, do some P90X
Find a really nice girl, have some really nice ***
And she's gonna scream out, 
This is great
(Oh my god, this is great)

[...]
I'll just strut in my birthday ****
And let everything hang loose
[...]

Now, I'm sure you can figure out what words the stars are meant to cut out. And to me, none of them are particularly offensive! I mean, when I'm sitting in front of the TV, I stick my hands down my pants sometimes, too. And everyone knows what sex is. Not to mention, what's wrong with being in your birthday suit?!

None of this would really bother me, but they left in the most offensive lyric in the entire song, to me! As a Christian, I find taking the Lord's name in vain way more offensive than talking about sex, your pants, or your birthday suit!

It's not just this song. Plenty of censored songs are like this. An unprovoked meaningless reference to the God we love and adore above all others is perfectly acceptable, but words like fuck and shit are not! This is not to even mention TV programmes!

I would like to propose that every Christian who gives a fuck start complaining, loud and constant, at the wanton and disgusting use of our Lord's name! Surely if this blasphemy is proved offensive and unacceptable to enough people, we can make a difference?

It is finished... No, wait! Just ONE more thing....

I was saying to a friend today that I always have such mixed feelings when a long-running project I've been working on comes to an end. On the one hand, I'm happy that it's finally over and I get to see it being used in a real world scenario (what every artist wants is to see his creation used and enjoyed). On the other hand, I feel sad because the project is over, and there's nothing more to do on it. There are no more features to add, there's nothing more to tweak, etc.

She said I was mad. That I should be happy that the project is over, forget about it, and move on to the next one. That comment took me aback slightly, because I'd always thought that everybody felt the same way I did about the subject.

But then I got to thinking about my general inability to finish things. All my life I've been this way. This is why I have so many unfinished, "shelved" personal projects at home. I work on them until I get bored or run out of ideas, and then they just sit there. Forever. I can't bring myself to just finish them off, already! It's also the reason I was never really any good at art in school. My teachers would always tell me how beautiful my drawings were, but they were never good enough for me. There was always one more little detail I wanted to put on, until eventually it degenerates into one big busy mess.

I've also been asked before if I'd ever tried to write a book. The truth is, I have, many times. They're all still unfinished. I guess subconciously I'd rather leave them unfinished and hanging in the air forever than face the eventuality of them being finished, and not being able to work on them any more.

So what's the verdict? Am I crazy? Who else feels the same way I do?

Amy Winehouse: A Bit of a eulogy and prayer

Amy Winehouse was found dead in her North London apartment on Saturday, 23 July 2011. Authorities suspect her death was a drug overdose, but nobody knows for sure, yet. Apparently police were alerted by emergency services, but I'm still unsure how emergency services came upon her body in the first place.

Obviously, I never knew the woman, and I was never a particular fan of her music. But I do remember hearing her a few weeks ago talking about how proud she was of herself for staying clean for so long. If it was a drug overdose, then unfortunately, it happens. People relapse, and Winehouse has definitely relapsed her fair share of times.

Nonetheless, lying in bed last night (Saturday 23 July), my mind started to wonder. I don't know if she knew God. Only God and her really know that for sure. If she didn't, then I am certain (as with any non-believer that passes away) that He must be deeply saddened by her passing. I cannot imagine the depth of His pain, but I'd like to try and acknowledge it. There's nothing special about Amy Winehouse as opposed to any other person. It's only that I heard of her specifically.

If she did know God, then I can only assume that her death was God's will. In this case, Heaven is rejoicing as another angel joins their ranks. I cannot imagine the heights of that celebration, but I'd like to acknowledge that, too!

Please keep her and her family and friends in your prayers.

Airport Restaurants Are Supposed to be FAST....

My wife's brother was in Kroonstad for a few days. He flew to Johannesburg from Cape Town on Thursday (14 July), and hired a car to drive to Kroonstad, for a meeting. We didn't get to see him before he left O.R. Tambo. This morning, he had to fly out at 09:25. This meant he had to go through the boarding gates at 08:55.

So that my wife could see him, we made arrangements to meet at the Wimpy at the airport. We sat down at around 07:30, thinking we'd have plenty of time to have a quick meal and a catch-up. The three of us each had a cup of coffee, breakfast, and a cold drink, and we were there for just over an hour!

I didn't catch the waitress' name, but honestly, this woman has got to be about the slowest server on the face of the earth! We ordered coffees as we sat down, and got them 15 minutes later. We had been done with our coffees for at least another five minutes before she took our breakfast order... Which could have easily taken 20 minutes to arrive! It was just fried eggs, bacon and toast, for Pete's sake! It took another 20 minutes before she arrived to clear our plates, and then easily half an hour to return with our drinks orders. When we had finished our drinks, she was nowhere to be seen, and my wife had to get up and call her loudly to come and bring us our bill.

We left Wimpy at around 08:35.

Surely restaurants situated in airports are used to serving people who want a quick bite to eat before catching their flights? They don't have time to sit and chat.

Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you?

Google+ First Impressions: Circles

I was invited to Google+ this morning. After playing with it for a little while (not long; I had actual work to do!), I have to say I think I'm going to like it. To me, it really has more in common with Twitter than with Facebook.

If you're interested in Google+, then you've probably already read at least a dozen explanations of how Circles work. Well, I'm going to try and explain it from my perspective.

When you sign in as a new user, Google+ gives you a couple of predefined Circles in which to place people you want to follow (Not "friend" as in Facebook, but "follow" as in Twitter). Let's think of an example:

Let's say I find you on Google+, and click on your profile page. We don't yet have a connection on the website. I see any posts you've made or things that you've shared, and marked as "Public" (As does everyone else on the Internet). I decide to add you to my "Friends" circle. You get an e-mail that I've added you, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's done. You don't have to accept or confirm anything (although I'm sure you could decide to block me, if you so wished).

Now, on my main feed, I will begin to see anything that you've posted or shared and marked as "Public". I will not see anything that you've contributed and marked for any of your circles, because I'm not in any of your circles yet. Furthermore, if you were to browse to my profile page, you would see things that I'm contributed and marked as "Public" or for my "Friends" circle (because you're in that circle on my profile), but not (for example) my "Co-workers" circle. You would not see any content from me on your main feed, because you haven't added me yet.

Let's assume, for a moment, that in response to your e-mail that I've added you, you decide to add me to your "Acquaintances" circle. I get the same e-mail that you did. Now, you will see anything that I share to "Public" or my "Friends" on your main feed. Similarly, I will continue to see anything you've shared as "Public", but now (Because I'm in your "Acquaintances" circle), I will also see anything that you've marked for "Acquaintances" as well.

I think this is a great concept, and I really hope it takes off! I think that the deciding factor though, is going to come when we see how many application developers jump on the bandwagon and start writing client applications for Google+. Almost nobody uses Twitter from the actual Twitter website, and Facebook is quickly following suite.

The Parlotones...

The Parlotones...

• Only eat KFC
• ...Except on Meat Free Mondays, when I guess they don't eat anything
• Support the Carbon Free Initiative
• ...But only drive Volkswagen, a car not known for being particularly environmentally friendly, and it doesn't have a hybrid model out
• ...And only watch DStv, despite the Carbon Free Campaign in South Africa being exclusively supported by the SABC, and finally
• Only use Microsoft software

Is it just me or is this band the most over-sold band in the history of bands? And they're not particularly picky about where their money comes from, either. Does this band actually stand for anything at all?!

Ooh, and look what else I found, while we're about it (I can't show the photo here as the owner has curiously disabled sharing).

Winter in Johannesburg

I must admit, I've never understood all the bitching and moaning South Africans do in winter. I was born here and have never been to Europe (so my opinions might change if I ever go through a European winter), but I love winter!! Any day of the week I'd rather be cold than hot. Oh, I do get cold, but I love it! First off it's the ultimate excuse to layer on clothes, and I do love my suits, ties, scarves and coats. When I'm cold, I feel alive! And I'm tonnes more productive in the cold weather--I guess it has something to do with constantly moving around to keep warm. In summer I'm a sloth. It's too hot to so much as move my pinky toe, and the sweat pours out of every pore in my body. I sweat from places I didn't know had sweat glands (gross, I know)! :-P

Besides, as I've always said: When you're cold, it's perfectly acceptable, socially, to throw on another layer of clothes. It is not socially acceptable (in most circles) to walk around naked--and even if it were, being naked doesn't really help, now does it?! ;-)

I just took The Nerd Test

Privatising the Traffic Department?

Think about the recent developments with traffic in Johannesburg. First we got the 702/Outsurance pointspeople to man intersections where robots are out of order (ok, that happened a while ago). Then we got the Dial Direct Pothole Brigade to fix potholes reported by citizens. Pretty soon we'll have private companies coming in to fix those robots.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for privatisation. If I had my way, everything would be privatised because government just can't cope. But I would think this would be upsetting the unions more. Not to mention the honourable head of the ANC Youth League, Mr Julius Malema. He wants to nationalise everything.

Like I said, I'm happy for the developments, and I'm kind of happy that there isn't an uproar. But it does seem a little hyppocritical from unions, the ANCYL, and other interested parties.