Why is it that people in South Africa still insist on using local hosting. With the inception of a hard-cap on DSL the reason that for using local hosting to cater for capped users is no longer a viable argument.

In my experience (as limited as it may be) local hosting is sub-standard in every way. It has poor service, slow response times (both technical and relational), limited offerings, and the obvious kicker is that it is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE. In terms of cost-value there is no motivating reason for one to use local hosting; the only reason that I can see for the moment is some dependency for local connectivity due to a requirement of your web site/application that is necessitated by design.

On the same track, local web design positively sucks. Our country has not yet embraced ecommerce. It’s rather unfortunate as it is an avenue that is very good for those of us that like to live in the 21st century. Many of the local websites that I’ve had the displeasure of using still use ancient static html or poorly crafted asp littered with abortive animated gifs. Many are still using a predominantly black “colour” based web site with eye-gougingly bright contrasting colours to “emphasise” everything. Let’s also not forget the tiled background images and modified cursors that is still so prevalent in South African websites.

Where are all the talented web developers and what are they doing? Clearly not building web sites for ZA companies. It really is a shame, because most companies need a lot of help. Even the big corporates in this country can’t seem to put together a well constructed site that is “intuitive”.

Vottle is a decent example of what a site should look like to an extent; elegant in its simplicity though not without its faults. I bet if you went and talked to you most internet users in ZA and asked them what Craigslist was, they’d give you a blank stare and go back to stuffing their faces while chatting on MSN. It’s really pathetic that trying to sell or buy used stuff online in South Africa is nigh on impossible. The IT industry sort of got it right; it’s pretty easy to get PC components and software via the net locally — if you ignore the exhorbitant prices that is.

This blog was spawned by my love of motorcycles and the piss poor quality of motorcycle related sites that I’ve been browsing the last few days (30~40 of them). They’re around… they just suck. Most are rarely updated and have poor content. Ironically the ones with decent content have really poor design so as to make you not want to use them, which is really great. Let’s not get started on forums; everyone knows what sort of creatures inhabit those.

A while ago I registered zabikers.co.za with the intention of adding something positive to the local motorcycling community. Unfortunately I didn’t get very far, mainly due to my lack of motivation and non-existent web development skills. I also have no draw, nothing unique or new to bring to the table that will attract people. Though I do have a few ideas they all require money, of which I have none to spare.

As an aside, I just had a mate phone me telling me that he saw my bike on the back of a trailer being towed around Cape Town. Lovely… I still haven’t received a phone call to arrange delivery.

I preach to the converted.

I never got it…

Like I mentioned yesterday, my bike is apparently ready for delivery. I was supposed to get a call today so that delivery could be arranged. It’s now 16h15, so I don’t think anything is happening today. Guess I shouldn’t bother holding out hope on having it back in time for the weekend.

This post is fueled by incompetence.

So my lawyerfied uncle tells me that the council doesn’t pay out for normal potholes. Only for potholes caused by roadworks that they’ve done and not filled in (provided there’s no signage either). We’ve still sent them a letter, but I’m not holding out hope. Guess that means I’m short R2k I didn’t have to begin with. Credit cards are a wonderful thing aren’t they?

In other news: my bike has been fixed up and is ready for delivery. Somehow I don’t believe them. Everyone who reads my blog should be able to figure out why. It’s fixed, with “one” exception… they couldn’t fix the tripmeter. Let us all keep in mind that they broke the trip meter and new (or even used) clocks are going to cost me a few grand.

It’s the responsibility of the insurance company (I have fully comprehensive insurance) and the repairers to return the bike to me so that I receive the same value that it was insured for. It’s not and I’ve lost a chunk of money on this whole fiasco; certainly enough to have bought myself another bike (an improvement on what I had) had I decided to keep the bike as is and sell it as scrap and parts. If they had written it off and paid me out in full as they should have, all this could have been avoided and I’d have been better off.

One thing I have learned from this: if you have an accident, take the vehicle home!

Not the sort of anniversary I’d like to celebrate. It was about this time 365 days ago that I was having my knee sutured after enjoying my collision with a car.

One wouldn’t expect this to be worthy of a blog entry; the only reason I’m really posting this it to say that I still don’t have my bike. I’ve had it back a few times in a completely unsatisfactory and unroadworthy condition — so I’ve had quite a ride (excuse the pun) regarding this bike.

I did get my wheel sorted out beginning of last week.

Fortunately it only cost me about R2k. As I’m going to be claiming this from the council it is my obligation to minimise the cost for them, otherwise they won’t pay out. As a result I had to get the wheel fixed instead of replaced (R650 vs R2222). My father somehow managed to organise a matching tyre from the last container in the country — so if I break a tyre in the future I’m definately going to have to replace 2 at a time.

The tyre that was replaced had 7mm tread; new tyres of the same type also have 7mm. So I basically toasted a tyre that had no wear. This is good for me as now the council can’t give me a discounted payout. Generally they will deduct the amount of wear on the old tyre from the price they pay you, which means I’d have been out of pocket for the difference.

My father also managed to get a 30% discount on the tyre. Don’t know how, but it appears to be standard on some tyres. It cost ~R1300 originally — expensive low profiles :(.

This post is sponsored by the Cape Town City Council.

Imagine this: it’s a dark, rainy Friday night and I’m calmly driving home enjoying my music when suddenly my car lurches and there’s a sickening crunch as metal comes into contact with tar, separated only by a thin strip of rubber. Accompanied by this of course is having everything that isn’t bolted down getting flung around the interior of my car (myself included) and my music skipping quite wildly (go CD!).
Yep, you better believe it; a really nasty pothole swallowed my front left wheel. I won’t bore you with pictures of the damage, however, here’s a lovely scenic photo of the beast that claimed both my tyre and my rim: Pothole of Doom.

The damage:

My front left tyre is finished; it has bubbles on both sides and is clearly unsafe to drive on. The rim is warped and has a pretty large dent in the exact same place as where the tyre bubbled. Fortunately the back wheel on the same side came through unscathed even though it too went through the pothole. I guess my front wheel absorbed enough of the energy. For safety reasons my front and back wheels have been swapped as a temporary solution. There doesn’t appear to be any further damage than that done to the front wheel, though it’s certainly going to cost me enough to repair what “little� damage there is.

The result:

My existing tyres have been discontinued apparently. This means that I can’t replace just the damaged one, but I now have to replace a pair. Damn… So the tyres are going to cost me about R1330 a pop at my current quote. Damn… Add to this R2222 for a new rim and things start getting *really* pricey. Of course there’s also the obligatory balancing and alignment. That will only set me back about R250 combined, which is pretty much peanuts in comparison to the rest.

The alternative:

Get two cheaper tyres and fix the rim. I have low profile tyres, so even the cheap ones aren’t that cheap. I have official Ford rims, which I quite like, so it’s either fix it, replace the broken one, or replace all four. I’m not replacing them, as I mentioned that I quite like them and I’m not sure about repairing it, I’ve had bad experiences with “repaired� wheels as most would know if they’ve read some of my bike posts.

Well either way, it’s going to cost me a fair amount, which is the last thing I needed after just buying the thing. Oh well…

At least I know I’m not the only one going through the same thing. With camera in hand, I went back on Saturday to find and photograph this devilish pothole. I wasn’t there for more than a minute when a car went through this pothole. *Crunch* It sounds even worse being outside the car and just listening to the pothole cost people thousands in damage.

I didn’t bother counting, but in the short time I was there I’d say somewhere in the region of 10 people will be requiring new tyres and possibly rims. This was in the daytime, so the pothole was in plain sight, though you can’t really tell how deep it is (roughly 3�) from a driving position. I also watched 2 cars gutter their wheels trying to straddle the pothole, and plenty more swerve into the oncoming lane trying to go around it. Too many people have no idea where their tyres sit on the road in relation to them, nor how wide/long their cars really are (how often do you find someone parked off centre?).

The especially amusing thing were the people who clearly aren’t concentrating, namely the ones that drove straight through the pothole as if it didn’t exist even though the car in front of them just wildly swerved out the way not even second before. Granted some people have slow reactions… but seriously? This is a high-trafficked road and the cars don’t travel all that fast. Anyways, I did get to see one guy almost lose his wheel. It was looking pretty dodgy as I watched him drive off.

Pothole Location:

In Hout Bay on the section of road between the turning-circle that goes off to Constantia and Chapman’s Peak (M63 — Hout Bay Road), and the robots the head up over the mountain to Camps bay, or down to the harbour (Victoria Ave). It’s situated about 3 meters ahead of the bus stop in the turning circle direction (near Valley Road). If you don’t know where this is, just look up Valley Road in a map book.

Just a quick update.

You can just edit the URL if you feel like viewing the rest of the pictures (car01.jpg -> car06.jpg).

I will eventually get a gallery running so I can embed pictures into posts; but that’s a mission for another day.

 

New:

Yes, I edited this post to embed a thumbnail. It will probably change from time to time as I test my gallery, and start embedding pictures into posts instead of links. I also lightboxed the full size image, so click on the thumbnail and see what happens.

I made a few subtle changes to the theme again, and where I couldn’t change the theme to do what I wanted it to, I had to go and modify some Wordpress code.

I don’t know how people can code in PHP and enjoy it :/. Well I guess it’s not all that bad, but deciphering some of the code that is Wordpress is really good way to waste time.

Speaking of time, why is that Wordpress gives the user the option to specify their date and timestamp formats how they would like it — and then turns around and disregards the setting?! I don’t get it, it’s completely illogical to me. This is mostly the fault of the people who design these themes and want to use their own fancy date/time format, but it’s really annoying.

I code C++, and I don’t particularly enjoy it.

Well Virgin Money is still not accepting applications. Monday saw the same message as what is being displayed today. Yesterday on the other hand the site was just broken.

It appears that like me the rest of South Africa knows how badly we’re being shafted by the big four and sees Virgin Money as a positive step in the right direction.

I just want them to hurry up so I can register. I want my petrol cards. I need two of them, so going with any other bank will end up costing me a few hundred extra PA just to link them. With Virgin it’ll be free and unless my maths is horribly wrong, free wins every time.

Unless you fell down and got stuck in a crevasse in the middle of nowhere you should have noticed that Virgin is attempting to enter two “fiercly competitive�? (*laugh*) markets, namely those of cellular operators and banking.

Virgin’s recently launched credit card offering (Virgin Money) is actually pretty competitive, at least for their intended target market from what I understand. Obviously they can’t beat the platinum card offerings for those of you who earn in excess of R400kpa?

On the other hand, I’m not so sure about their cellphone offering (Virgin Mobile). Sure, having a fourth network operator should improve competition and (hopefully) drive down prices in the long-term, if not the immediate short-term, but right now their prices don’t appear to be that much better than the competition.

I can’t quote any statistics or numbers, but I’d be willing to bet that a large amount of the people who would switch to Virgin Mobile are locked into these ridiculous 24 month contracts (16 months left on mine). This, in my opinion, is one of the major stumbling blocks and a serious problem that inhibits proper competition in South Africa. Big companies just want to lock you into contracts, with ridiculous penalty clauses for exiting early if you choose to go that route (most people I would guess just get other people to take over their contract).

Half the problem is that the actual cellphones are too expensive. It generally works out cheaper to buy a contract than to buy the cellphone up front and use prepaid. It might not be significantly cheaper, but when you throw in the “free�? minutes, you can’t argue that it’s not a better deal. When you think about it like this, it’s not really surprising that there’s so much cellphone theft.

Personally, I will be applying for a credit card from Virgin (if their site ever starts working for me) seeing as there don’t seem to be any lame charges to have one, whether it gets used or not. Their mobile offering is obviously a non-issue for me seeing as I’m locked into my existing contract with MTN. It’s a pity they haven’t launched into the market with some really competitive vehicle finance offering, as by the looks of things I’m going to get crucified by the climbing interest rates.