Category: admin

Blogger’s block and smoking monkeys

Posted on

The problem with updating one’s blog every day is that sometimes one just doesn’t have the time or inclination. Either that or there’s nothing suitably interesting to write about. But it’s ok, because you can always post a quota photo – as long as you didn’t do that yesterday.
But in a worst case scenario – like today – those conditions come together in a perfect storm of blogger’s block. Oh crap.

It’s serious. The cricket is on, The Living Daylights is on, I have a billion spam comments to check through and clear (having found a terrifying large number of genuine “Ham” comments in amongst them last time), it’s getting late and I suspect that there will be some, if not more, child wakage later on this evening due to a nasty cold which is currently passing through the junior members of the household. I have done my best to relax the kids into a quiet and gentle slumber by plying the younger one with strong medicine and plying the older one with 104 pages of Curious George stories, but experience dictates that the nocturnal snot will prevail. Oh crap.

Times were evidently different when Curious George was written in the 1940’s and 50’s. When George escapes from prison by running along the telegraph wires and then floating away under a bunch of helium baloons before being rescued by his friend “The Man With The Yellow Hat” (who smuggled him into New York from Africa), he heads home. Obviously shaken from his rather traumatic day, I was horrified to turn the page and find the little simian chilling out in an armchair apparently smoking a pipe. And yes, there it was:

After a good meal and a good pipe,
George was ready for bed.

Alex looked momentarily confused. “Daddy? What’s a ‘good pipe’?”
But Daddy had brilliantly predicted that question and had already swiftly and safely moved on to the next story, all about how Curious George jumps into a lorry with two strange men who promise him that he can be part of their special circus later that night…

Oh crap.

SARS block 6000 miles… – reinstate access to 2oceansvibe in November net crackdown

Posted on

Shocking news from a regular 6000 miles… commenter:
In a heinous act of censorship, SARS – those people who very efficiently take our money off us all year and then tell us how great they are because they give us a little bit of our own money back – have blocked access to this website from their premises.

According to our source, each month, SARS “chooses” the 50 top sites “to be investigated” which essentially means “to be blocked” and 6000 miles… has found itself on the November list – probably due to its huge popularity amongst SARS employees. I’m not entirely sure that huge popularity amongst SARS employees is something to crow about, since they are presumably mainly grey tax accountants and over-zealous IT workers who apparently have nothing better to do than block decent Cape Town blogs.

Meanwhile, perhaps demonstrating a lack of huge popularity amongst SARS employees, access to Seth Rotherham’s 2oceansvibe.com has been reinstated at the revenue service. Or maybe this just indicates that there is a plan to bring in some sort of Tits & Ass tax in the next budget.

I would urge all SARS employees to access this site via mobile technology as often as possible so that they don’t miss out on the latest news and information, pictures of my kids and amusing stories from around the world.

6000 miles… is, of course, fully enabled for mobile viewing.

UPDATE: Apparently, the thousands of SARS officials surfing 6000 miles…at work was slowing down the whole eFiling process by overloading the servers with quality blog posts. Really.

Man at work

Posted on

While you and I were living it up and drinking at the weekend, The Guru was also living it up and drinking. And then coding. Some say he codes better after a bottle of red wine. Or two. Some say they have never seen him wholly sober.
All I know is that he is working damn hard to iron out the little nuances which the multitude of web browsers chuck at part-time web designers these days. The Guru is a thorough animal and is determined that this project (and therefore this blog) will be all sparkly with all its bits in the right places; whichever browser you choose to use.
Consequently, things may seem to be a little out of place from time to time when you visit here. Please feel free to mention them in a comment somewhere. Especially if you are using a mainstream browser: i.e. IE. But do make sure it’s the most recent version. The Guru doesn’t have time to go back into the annals of history just because you’re still living in 1994 and using Mosaic.
He has coding to do and red wine to drink. 

While we’re on admin stuff, here’s a few more bits ‘n’ pieces:

  1. Made in Oxford is an exhibition by Oxford Flickr users. I lived in Oxford for 9 years and while I constantly wax lyrical about how photogenic Cape Town is, that goes for Oxford too. The Flickr blog showcases a few great examples.
  2. I popped some new photos up onto Flickr myself. Nothing too spectacular, just point and shoot fun with the kids this weekend.
  3. And if you were wondering if you have it in you to become a fantastic photographer, you can find all the information you need here at 27/6.com. It might just be easier than you think.

Right. I must away. People to do, things to see.
Or something along those lines.

EDIT: Damn, I think my short-term memory is going. Two more bits of admin stuff that I had forgotten.

  1. Welcome Wiggy’s World to the blogroll. Probably the best blog written by a Newcastle United-supporting, football-playing marquee salesman from Mansfield that I have read this year. Or at least in the top 3.
  2. New spam technique (which had me confused for a while): Copies of existing comments from the blog (including one of mine). Presumably, the theory is that because the comment in question has made it past Akismet and moderation once, it’s regarded as clean. Clever. But it didn’t fool me. Eventually.

In other news, I think my short-term memory is going.

Eighty

Posted on

Let’s slow things down a little. 120 is fine for normal daily run-of-the-mill decisions, but it’s not always good to rush into big things. Like major changes to the appearance of your beloved blog.

While you guys have been examining my front end in minute detail, The Guru has been tinkering around behind my scenes, as it were. And The Guru, being The Guru, has come up with (as in designed himself) a new theme for this blog, which he has graciously called SixThousandMiles and which he is now not-ever-so-gently prodding me toward using.

I’m still a little unsure. Not because the theme is anything less than wonderful, because it isn’t. It’s lovely. But just because the idea of change scares me. I’m only human, after all.
The silly thing about this is that the new theme is not drastically different from the old (current) one. There’s no garish pink, no flowers and (best of all) no garish, pink flowers.
But it is a bit different. Sure, there are one or two things which need ironing out – and when the changeover occurs, we may find others – but the only real reason for my reluctance to change is… well… my reluctance to change.

So – here goes. I’m going to flick the switch… soon.

EDIT: Switch flicked. Sidebar gone. Oops!
EDIT 2: Guru steps in. Sidebar returns.

Not always what it seems…

Posted on

Look, I know that you’re all ready and waiting for something big after my refreshing break at Fancourt, but I need to let you in on a long-held secret here. The lifestyle of a top blogger isn’t always as exciting as you might imagine.
Sure, there’s the jet-setting up and down the country, the trips abroad, the glamorous wife and the copious volumes of red wine, but to balance that out, there has to be a certain degree of mundanitude as well.
For example, tonight, I’m going to be moving some furniture around so that my carpets can be cleaned tomorrow. And no, there are no euphemisms in there at all. Literally, I am moving a couple of couches so the guys can wash the floor covering underneath them. With two small kids and a whole heap of building work, they certainly need the attention.

But every cloud has its silver lining. On the plus side, I get to move into my new study too. The walls are up, the ceiling is done and the desk is there. In an amazing show of foresight, Mrs 6000 even managed to organise some of those special holes with the plastic edges so you don’t have wires hanging everywhere. True, I’d have preferred them in the desk, but it’s surely the thought that counts.

Once the “plumbing in” of all the electronica is completed, I can then get round to listening to some loud music and tonight’s offering may well be the bizarre – yet brilliant – sounds of Werk 80 II by German Goth legends, Atrocity. There’s something strangely captivating about Alexander Krull’s voice doing their industrial metal-style cover of Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.

atrocity

Rumour has it that Alexander is rather proud of his luxurious mane – and checking it out – who wouldn’t be? In the image above, he has even had a couple of saucily-clad minxes super-imposed on the picture, but you were so busy looking at his hair, you never even noticed, right?
That’s how confident he is of the enchanting, mesmerising, hypnotising effect of his hair. It’s powerful stuff.
Strong, lengthy, well-maintained Teutonic hair. Big hair.

[Hint: one of them has a bare bottom. A slightly greased bare bottom. On the left. Got it yet?]

Regular readers will probably just suggest that I threw that picture in precisely because of the saucily-clad minxes. Apparently, I have a record of occasionally publishing gratuitous saucily-clad minx pictures.

Do you have a problem with that?