Tick ,tock... tick, tock

If you wanna know when your sorry ass is gonna visit the six foot beyond, go to the link below.

Apparently I'm going to die in August, 2032. That's just way to much time to live. So I'll be there for the first Mars landing. Time travel? Or perhaps visiting aliens.

The King, of Crap Blog servers. Mweb South Africa

When I first ventured onto the blog scene, I was looking for a place to vent my anger on everything from people to politics, and everything else.

I stumbled upon Blogger, and after a few tentative steps, took the plunge and haven’t looked back. I’m no Computer programmer and my technical skills are sufficient to get things done. I liked the clean-cut pages and enjoyed the fact that No-one had access unless I said so. That was particularly relevant with advertising
(my pet hate). Should I wish to clutter my pages with crap or sell something that was my prerogative to do so.

What I enjoyed most was being able to post photos. I’ve been a keen amateur photographer for my entire life so putting it ‘out there’ was a personal pleasure for me. No more boxes full of photos and shopping for albums. The digital age was here and I was ready to embrace it with both arms and legs.

******

During December of last year I wanted to have a blog with access to local readership in South Africa and opened a blog at Mweb.co.za. You cannot for one moment imagine what hell that was. The fuckin thing hardly ever works.

They have no system to block unwanted anonymous comments and have a ‘most recently updated’ list, which leads to the most incredible phenomenon, bloggers continuously repost articles just so they can remain up top to get readership. Changing simple things like commas and full stop’s just to be able to remain on top of the list for as long as possible. Further to this they have counters, and some bloggers are so obsessed with having the highest count, they do their utmost to blog as much as possible, mostly cut and paste rubbish like jokes and poems.

Posting photos is a fuckin nightmare, the fuckin photo’s take bloody ages to load and even when they do, you’re not guaranteed they’re gonna stay on your blog for any amount of time. They keep appearing and disappearing at the will of some spiteful shit at Mweb, who clearly has no fuckin clue how to run a Blog server. Mweb also only allow the minimal amount of editing and no editing of the html at all!

On top of that they clutter ‘your’ blog with so much advertising, it totally fucks up the page diameters. And to add salt to the wound bloggers are not allowed to put advertising of their choice, or advertise anything on their blogs.

A few bloggers at Mweb really don’t deserve this kind of treatment as they run interesting blogs with good subject matter and minimal use of weird colour text or cut and paste rubbish. They’re the ones complaining the most. The rest are either ignorant or too busy pasting to notice.

Want to see what a really crap blog server is like? Go visit www.mweb.co.za and go to the Blog pages.

Technology Kills

Twice over this weekend I was witness to head-on collisions on the road to and from home. In both instances it was a luxury vehicle and a low end of the market commute.

Admittedly one accident involved a mini bus taxi, and we all know the fuckers drive like fuckin lunatics. But, it had me thinking about the safety features built in to the latest model cars and how it improves a driver’s chances of survival in an accident.

Even new cars at the lower end of the market have, at the very least, driver and passenger airbags, and crumple zones up front. Move higher up the market and you have added airbags in the doors and window frames with perhaps side impact protection. At the top of the range you have all the interior protection plus driver aids like anti skid ABS brake systems, impact sensitive Head Restraints, Impact absorbing interiors, Traction control, Electronic Stability systems, and some, even Night Vision with Heads up Display.

Top end cars also have the latest Xenon headlights that follow the curve of the road, allowing you to anticipate upcoming obstructions at the peripheral of your line-of-sight.

Not to mention those annoying fog lights that especially the BMW drivers are so fond of, even on clear evenings.

All of this makes your chance of surviving in almost any type of accident, including head-on’s, much better than the poor fucker in the Beetle you just T-boned. And that is exactly the point I’m trying to make. If you can afford it, you’re fine and dandy, but those of us who drive around in our affordable runabouts don’t stand a fucking chance, do we now?

On top of that, the fuckers that drive their expensive NHTSA-Approved Mercs and BM’s at excessive speeds, flashing their Xenon’s at unsuspecting nerve-wracked commuters, who’s only ambition is to get home to spend a few hours with their kids and make supper before passing out from exhaustion, I have this to say; Fuck you!

Carry on blaming the Taxi’s and un-roadworthy vehicles for as long as your speed control remains at 140km/h, but hear this; one day you’re going to be the cause of an accident, and although you’ll be a bit shaken and annoyed at your insurance excess, the family in the fully paid-up Corolla, on their way to the coast for holiday are not going to be so lucky.

Think about that, and if you have even the slightest feeling for your fellow man, keep your new toy in line and take it easy with the headlights. I know they’re nice and shiny and make you see the Polar Regions on Mars, but it makes it impossible for an approaching vehicle to see the road.

In my experience you can’t even see the yellow emergency lines, as a last resort to keep your car on the road.

Your luxury vehicle has a ton of added features, they just don't all have to be on at the same time.

Enjoy your 650 iesxtdi, but keep it humble.

Demons Day Jol

Fuck, but it’s been so long since I’ve been able to go to a Biker jol, never mind a Rally. So me and the missus leathered up and made a turn at the Demon’s day jol in Florida two weekends ago.

To hook up with old friends again and rub shoulders with the West Rand bikers was befuck, and well worth the effort. Since the Buffalo Rally, money has been a bit on the short side, and we’ve had to make do with the occasional venture to the local for some well deserved socialising.

The jol itself was no better or worse than any other I’ve been to, but the fact that all my buddies were present made for a great day. It was time to sit back, talk shit and down a few cold Black’s. Herbie supplied the music, and he hardly ever disappoints, with a good mix of Rock and mellow chick music. One thing can be said for us bikers. No matter how time marches on, the personalities stay the same and you never have to feel uncomfortable if you haven’t seen someone for a while. Conversation just carries on as if you last saw each other only yesterday.

Being hooked up with a girlfriend has paid due to my wild, free roaming days, but hell, I miss it so much I’m prepared to take the odd rap over the knuckles if I could do it more often.

See you at the next one. Red knuckles and all.