Not a virus, but a vineyard. We had a decent time at Cape Point Vineyard this afternoon, with stunning views and a posh picnic.
That dam featured koi carp, catfish, tadpoles and a terrapin. Yes, seriously.
Then it was back home and straight into the swimming pool. The upcoming UK weather is going to be a bit of a shock to the system.
Once again, it’s dark. Well, it’s not, because it’s light, but if it were dark, it would be dark. Yes, we’re being loadshod once again.
There was plenty of warning this time around and yet some people still seem to be confused, despite the best efforts of the City Council and Eskom to keep them informed. These individuals then react with anger. It’s proof that you simply can’t legislate for stupid people, I guess.
Me? I react with creativity. It’s been a while now since I’ve written any music and I’ve decided that I’m going to write an EP with loadshedding as my muse.
It’s early days, but already, there are song titles forming in my mind. I sense that a mixture of genres will ensure mass appeal.
The folk classic: Peggy, Don’t You Open The Fridge
The rock ballad: I Never Knew I Wanted Coffee (Until The Power Went Out)
The electronic dance piece: Generator X (Dubstop Remix)
The boy band pop hit: Solar, So Good
Some hip hop: Crap Traffic – It’s A Four Way Stop Thing.
Oh, and obviously a death metal tune about Eternal Night, or something.
Like I say, this is just the bare bones. Now I’m going to hang some riffs and one (or more) soaring vocals on them.
You’re probably going to love it.
You may have read that I had issues connecting to my blog from home and from the lab yesterday. There was plenty of to’ing and fro’ing with Afrihost (who are both my ISP and hosting provider) on email and twitter, but nothing got sorted.
Many kind people made suggestions here and on twitter, but I had floppy beagle issues last night (Colin got snipped and chipped), so I didn’t get chance to do a lot of exploration.
Then, this morning, incoming email from ‘Critical Care’ at Afrihost. I had no idea I was in such a perilous state. And here’s what they had discovered:
As suspected from my side, the Netstat rules for your IPs on your public connection were on the temporary prohibit list which I have now removed and you will be able access the website from all devices from your home network.
I have investigated the reasoning behind the listing and the reason seems to be that the website was attempting to be accessed from these IPs during an update – when security becomes most strict – and rather to be safe than sorry they were listed.
These updates only happen once a year so the likely hood of this happening again is extremely minimal 🙂
Thanks, Michael.
I don’t really understand what went wrong, but to find some sort of analogy, it seems that my home and work network were being tjatjarag and the website felt threatened, probably remarked something along the lines of “So you think you are a king?”, pushed them to the floor and barred them from entering the metaphorical building.
All is sorted now.
Oh, and Colin is much recovered this morning too. Thanks for your concern.
I’m having a weird internet problem. I thought it was due to my ADSL connection at home, but now I’m having the same issue at work as well. I can’t look at my blog. “Lucky Bastard!” I hear you cry. And you could well be right, but it’s also a bit annoying.
Afrihost don’t seem to be able to explain it, so just in case you’re a internet whizz, here’s the info:
When connecting via my Afrihost ADSL, I get a connection timeout error if I try to look at 6000.co.za, or any of the back end. I noticed this yesterday evening. This was across multiple devices: 2 PCs, an iPad, an Android tablet and my Android phone. As soon as I hopped off the wifi and used my Vodacom cell connection, things were fine.
And it wasn’t just on Chrome or any other browser: the WordPress app didn’t connect either.
I could seemingly access every other site (.co.za’s, .co.uk’s and .com’s) with no problem. And other people (including those with Afrihost ADSL in Cape Town) could access 6000.co.za.
So it looked like an issue with my home ADSL, but then exactly the same thing is happening at work as well (where we also have Afrihost ADSL). I’m using TunnelBear to connect via a proxy in Sweden to write this, and that seems to be working just fine.
So, my Einsteiny little friends, what’s going on here? I’m really hoping that someone will turn round and go: “Well, obviously, that’s your QBR settings; go here and click this and it’ll all be fine,” and I will go there and click that and it will all be fine.
Anyway, if you’re still here after that admin and gobbledygook, you’re probably a dies hard reader and you know that I light lighthouses. Here’s one just down the road from us in the Isle of Man: Langness. It’s a great photo, but it was emailed to me so I don’t know who took it, but give that man (or otherwise) a Bell’s. Or even some decent whisky.
And now things are slowing up, presumably because my bear is growing tired of tunneling under Stockholm or Malmö or wherever in Sweden he is (EDIT: Just checked – he’s in Borlänge), so I’m going to end this. Hopefully by tomorrow, I’ll have some answers and will be able to give my ursine assistant some well-deserved time off.
People have a tendency to look at people’s careers through rose-tinted spectacles upon their retirement.
It’s ok though, I don’t struggle with that sort of thing:
I was at Newlands for the 2010 dangerous play incident, when 120kg Bakkies cleared his 75kg Springbok teammate Gio Aplon out of a ruck, shoulder first. [Video]
Because of his suspension for that incident, Bakkies fans had to wait a full 7 weeks for his next misdemeanor – this, a full 29 seconds into the Tri-Nations game against New Zealand:
(Which prompted this rant from JD Bryce.)
When we’re being regularly reminded how sports stars must act as role models, I can’t say that Bakkies’ retirement will be a big loss to rugby. Less of that sort of example, please.
Great player? Perhaps.
Thug? Most certainly.
And it’s that latter category that I and many others will remember him for.