Problems

February 10th, 2008

Here’s another poem I wrote in high school. Can’t remember what it’s about, though. Lol! :) I was a weird kid once upon a time…

Problems

leeches live inside
generality
regardless of religion or race
class or culture
and form fragile
feeble
masses of monsters
that tantalise the taste
of daily difficulties
that develop
daily disasters
of troubles that torment and torture
humanity
helped only by their fingerprint solutions
to their cloned problems

Big up to DVDCrave!

February 1st, 2008

DVDCrave is an Australian online store. They sell DVDs and games. I ordered Super Mario Galaxy from them at the end of November last year, because I could not find it anywhere else. I heard about DVDCrave from the local SA gaming forums. People that have ordered from them in the past only have good things to say about them.

So I ordered my copy of Mario. And I waited. And waited. Two months later, nothing. So I email them and tell them that my copy of Mario Galaxy has not arrived, yet. They email me back asking if they should send it again or if they should refund me. Just like that! They don’t even have proof if I’ve got the game or not! They just offered to refund me or send me another copy. No questions asked!

Awesome, awesome, AWESOME service!

Mario Galaxy got released here in SA about a week ago and I bought it. So I asked DVDCrave to refund me. I got the money back in my bank, tonight!

Yay for DVDCrave! Now I know why so many South African gamers sing their praises!

We might kick the Aussies’ asses in Rugby, but they sure as heck destroy us when it comes to customer service! :)

Stuff I want for my trip

January 21st, 2008

Here are some stuff I want for my trip to Brazil…

Camera - Canon PowerShot A720 IS

Canon PowerShot A720 IS Canon PowerShot A720 IS Canon PowerShot A720 IS

MP3 Player - Creative Zen (16GB)

Creative Zen Creative Zen Creative Zen

2nd Laptop / Toy - Asus Eee PC 8G

Asus Eee Asus Eee White

Want!

A new project idea

January 17th, 2008

I have been thinking of creating an AJAX book reading application - mostly to teach myself some good AJAX design principles. These are some of the requirements I want for this project:

  • It should even work when JavaScript is turned off. This is mostly for search engines. Search engines can’t index a site when the content is delivered via JavaScript. Also, Firefox + NoScript is getting very popular nowadays. Lots of people turn JavaScript off, either because they don’t trust it or they just don’t like it. I would like to cater for these people too.
  • If a user copies and pastes the URL and sends it to his friend, that friend must see exactly the same as what the first user saw. This shouldn’t be a problem if I implement my first design requirement, above, correctly.
  • The browser’s back button must work. Example: When a user turns a page in the book and then clicks on the browser’s back button, they must return to the page they were just reading.
  • The AJAX engine must handle multiple AJAX requests with ease. I will probably get an AJAX toolkit for this. No need to reinvent the wheel.
  • It must work on all major browsers - Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE.

I’m sure there are other requirements, but those are the only ones I can think of at the moment.

I’ve got some research to do. I’ll be sure to post my findings.

Connect to SSIS Service on machine “SQLSERVER01″ failed

January 16th, 2008

It took me the whole day to troubleshoot the error in the heading.

A client contacted me, yesterday, complaining that he can’t connect remotely to SQL Server 2005 Integration Services. The important word being remotely. When he tries to connect to Integration Services locally, it works. He had this problem with all remote servers.

I thought there was something wrong with his access privileges, so I followed the steps in this article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337083.aspx. Nope. Still didn’t work.

So I followed the steps in this article: http://mohansmindstorms.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!69AE1BEA50F1D0E7!213.entry?action=post&wa=wsignin1.0. Nope.

By now I was pretty sure that there was some setting wrong on the client’s PC. The fact that I also could not connect remotely to Integration Services from his PC (even though I could from my PC) supported this claim.

So, using all the knowledge I’ve gained through the day from the hundreds of googles I did, I started comparing settings on my PC with the client’s PC. The problem? One little tick box that wasn’t ticked:

Distributed COM

The screen, above, can be found here: Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Component Services -> Expand Component Services -> Expand Computers -> Right Click on My Computer -> Properties -> Default Properties.

After ticking the ‘Enable Distributed COM on this computer’ tick box, click ‘OK’ and restart the computer.

And so, after a whole day of googling, it was only one tick box that needed a tick. 7 hours of my life wasted.

It’s official: São Paulo, here I come!

January 14th, 2008

São Paulo Business DistrictThe wait is over!

I’ve found out today that I am officially going to São Paulo, Brazil. Although this wasn’t my first choice of places where I would like to have gone, I am actually getting quite excited. There is just something exotic about Brazil. I think it’s going to be a blast!

Now all I have to do is learn to speak Portuguese.

No Super 14 for me this year :(

January 12th, 2008

Lions Super 14 2008 Schedule

I’ll only be able to watch the first 3 games :( Hopefully, if I go to London, I’ll be able to watch the other games on the television there. No hope of that happening if I go to Hong Kong or São Paulo, though.

Go Lions! :D

The suspense is killing me

January 10th, 2008

São Paulo Canay Wharf London Hong Kong

As you might or might not have known, I will be leaving the country for 3 months, soon. My company has decided to send me to one of three places. I will either be going to rainy London, sunny São Paulo or I-don’t-really-know-what-the-weather-is-like Hong Kong.

One of those three… I don’t know which one… And it’s all pretty much out of my hands…

The suspense is killing me! Just tell me already!

Ninty is live!

January 10th, 2008

As promised a few days back, here it is!

Ninty.co.za relaunching!

January 8th, 2008

MarioI have started work on my old site, www.ninty.co.za, again. It used to be a blog about Nintendo and the South African Nintendo community. But it died, because:

  1. I started working and didn’t have time to look for Nintendo news every day; and
  2. I decided to move web hosts

Well, it’s back! Well, almost… And it’s not a blog any more. It’s now just a forum, because it seems the SA gaming community love their forums :) Also, a forum is good, ’cause then I don’t need to update it every single day to keep everyone happy.

You will also notice the new section in the sidebar called ‘My Websites’. Currently, it only has ninty.co.za listed there, but I want to expand that. With my new web host I have lots of hard drive space and lots of monthly bandwidth to use! Stay tuned! :)