To all my loyal readers (If there are any of you): MY BLOG HAS RELOCATED TO http://www.nicharalambous.com.

If you followed the above link and ended up here, please refresh your browser using ctrl+f5.

All comments and posts that are on this site will remain here as a point of reference. Posts have been relocated to the new blog. THERE WILL BE NO NEW POSTS ON THIS BLOG!

nicharalambous.com is moving. I am leaving, I quit, give up and am 100% over blogger. Today I battled my little tush off with blogger and in a fit of rage and a stroke of luck attributed to Mr Hartman, I am almost ready to move over to a wordpress blog. And thank goodness for that.

Unfortunately, this means that I will be going through another design change. This one will be more customized and feel a bit different but maintain some of the look from the current theme. Nothing else will change. I will still be located at nicharalambous.com so browsing will be no different.

Comments, unfortunately will be lost, unless someone knows how to move haloscan comments over to WP without paying the $12 premium fee.

Thanks and keep reading.

Nic Haralambous

Labels: Wordpress

Today Vincent announced that he has a new blog, Money Talks, and it's sponsored by Virgin Money.

The new blog is about banking and in Vincent's own words,

The basic idea is this: I have a baby (also in the pipeline har) due in two weeks now, I know i need to get my personal finances in order and Virgin Money contacted me and asked me if they can sponsor a blog about it. I said “sure, why not? As long as you don;t tell me what to write”. They agreed, so it happened.

Immediately I can hear bloggers tapping at their keys and making a fuss about the influence that a big corporate has on the blogging ethos. Rubbish I say.

First off Virgin is not sponsoring Vincent's regular blogs so there is no direct impact there. Second off, I think, as Vincent says on his new Money Talks blog,

Historically this is a moment of crystallization – all the talk about the legitimacy of blogging as a cultural explosion, and the commercial value of the blogging medium in general, seems to me to have come together. It is a sign of respect for the individuals who make up this community that it is being recognized as a powerful consumer voice and not dismissed as a morass of subjective nonsense.

Good point. Bloggers must begin to understand that money is not the root of all evil, in fact, we all spend our days wondering how we can profit from our passion for blogging. Vincent is doing just that, and good on him.

However, with all of this said, I must ask the question: What if Vince wants to bad mouth Virgin Money? Or Virgin Music, Virgin Gyms or Virgin Airways for that matter? What then? Is this sort of "freedom of speech" allowed in their deal? I wonder? Vincent must believe that it is, otherwise he wouldn't have done it but I have my doubts.

Nevertheless I am extremely excited about the prospects of this sort of deal for the blogging community here in SA. The big corporates have finally taken not of the expansive impact blogs could have on the South African Community. Good job Virgin, good work Vince.

As you might have noticed (and maybe not if you don't visit this blog) I haven't posted since Friday. I took some time off. In hindsight, time off sucks. Screw those people who say I'm addicted to my Laptop and the web, I couldn't care less that I am or if I was.

But I digress. I took the weekend off to relax with my girlfriend, have a braai, be lazy and chill. NONE of the above took place. The braai was interrupted by a monumental misunderstanding on my behalf that ended up with me standing at airport Terminal A2 for two hours waiting for no one. Really, I mean it, I stood there like a proper tit waiting for no one. But it was completely my mistake in the end. Then I return to the braai to realise that the food I cooked was so incredibly tasty that it was all gone (a mixed result in the end!).

So I sit, eat my boerie roll, take out my guitar and start to jam, then a couple of other muso's around start to play with my guitar, we're singing, it gets late, people start to leave and I am left with a mess and sore head.

We clean up that night (Saturday) and all is well in the world, until I wake up that it. My guitar is gone. My wonderfully pleasant, blond looking baby is no more. I can't tell you where it is, I dunno what happened to it, but it is gone. Nothing more to say. *weep*

So in hindsight, it is safe and secure and relaxing behind my laptop and on the web, in future no more breaks for me.

Labels: airport, Braai, guitar

Here is a Zeitgeist from Leon! Thanks man, this was a nice, neat little Amatomu cloud sentence!

Labels: Amatomu, Firemind, zeitgeist

I read the article that appeared on My Broadband and think it was a fair and equal representation of the situation of hosting in SA. SA Rocks is hosted locally but not necessarily because it is the best option. I chose to host it here because it is very tough to promote SA in the USA.

I must however comment on this situation, as the original article does. Here is my comment: "It costs me a R100 a month, at the least, to host SA Rocks locally, what a ball ache. Stupid local hosts, ripoffs, mo-fo's."

I feel like a Ho, I feel like I am being used and abused, but instead of them paying me, I am forking out the cash. I want to know, more substantially than an a single article, why it costs me, as a blogger, R100 to host here in SA? It is cheaper for me to be hosting 3 sites abroad than it is to host one blog.

Surely there is some sort of intelligent life out there in the world of hosts and service providers that can see the blogging boom occurring here in SA? Surely they can figure that quantity is massive and thus if the hosting price is dropped it might be beneficial in the long run? having 10 bloggers at R50 a month is better than one at R100 a month. Half those exorbitant price for a while, do a test and see what happens. In that test period, make it known to bloggers and webdesigners that this offer is on. Go on, I dare you, take a leap of faith and see what happens?

It takes on company to break the mold. The article at My Broadband sites a vicious circle of selfishness (in my opinion) that perpetuates this situation. Why doesn't one hosting company/service provided try something new and see what happens, you can afford it, I'm sure!

Labels: Hosting, My Broadband, SA Rocks, South Africa

Ruda Landman is leaving Carte Blanche according to an Iol story. I am not saddened by this. She is an incredible investigative journalist and business woman, but it has been 19 years that she has been a part of the show. Hopefully the show will not suffer but will carry on with some fresh blood.

Carte Blanche needs to take this opportunity to redesign, re-align and refocus their goals and ambitions for the next 19 years without Ruda.

I hope that wherever Ruda goes she goes well and is successful, but thank goodness she is leaving Carte Blanche. Now, anyone got any ideas for Derek?

Labels: Carte Blanche, Ruda Landman

I love checking out tag clouds. I try to decipher obscure sentences out of them. I do this extremely often and find some hilarious stuff. Occasionally sentences are glaringly obvious and occasional they are somewhat obscure. I've been waiting for the right time to start this thread of posts. Recently my tag cloud perusing has been focused on Amatomu so I am sticking with that. The perfect time and sentence didn't really show itself so I have chosen the first semi sort of sentence to kick off this thread!




I threw in a comma in this sentence to make it slightly more clear.

If you stumble across any tag cloud sentences from Amatomu please send them through to me (nharalambous@gmail.com)! Thanks!

Labels: Amatomu, tag clouds, zeitgeist

Now maybe I am making a bigger deal out of this than I should. But imagine you went to register one of your sites on MyBlogLog and you were told the following:



This Hecubus freakin' dude is starting to really piss on my battery. I have now emailed the MyBlogLog people twice and am awaiting a response. Let's hope this gets sorted out fast.

Any advice from anywhere would be welcome. Chillibean, got anything?

Labels: MyBlogLog, Rants

The 27 Dinner

I love the 27 Dinners. The most spoken words of the evening must be "I need to talk to you," or "We should really talk."

I am not going to post in detail about things as I am sure many other bloggers are planning it, when that happens I will point my readers to their posts and everyone will be happy.

Update: There are other bloggers who have said it better than I could've: Carly, Tyler, Matt, Groogle, Vincent, Chillibean and just for sympathy read Mike's post 27 post.

My speech apparently went well, people cheered, some laughed with me, others cried but all in all a good response!

The Police

I ended up leaving the dinner at about 1 am last night. That was fine, but then as I turn left on to the highway to get to rivonia, BAM, the cops. Now I honestly did not think that I was over the limit in any way shape or form. Alas, apparently I was. Here is my list of things to do when being stopped by the cops:

• Be Sober (no shit)
• Don't be drunk (no shit)
• Don't talk too much, they'll know you're covering it up
• Don't talk too little, they'll know you're covering it up
• Have your license ready.
• After breathaliser test, ask to see the reading yourself (I did not)
  
• Make sure your ID disk on the car is dated correctly
• MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AT LEAST R40 IN YOUR POCKET

Now, that last point might be incredibly strange to overseas people, but last night it save my butt. After a serious amount of persuasion attempts and offers to get the cop AWAY from a "spot fine" I gave up, there was no way he was taking me to jail, there was no way he was writing me a ticket and there was no way that he was letting me go without some compensation for his hard work.

Lets just say the rest worked itself out, he gave me some drinking advice, "You must eat while you drinking, its much safer like that," said the wonderful cop. Thanks Mr. Cop-man you're a gem.

Next 27 Dinner, lets leave before 1am and miss the cops. It'll save me a lot of trauma.

Labels: 27 Dinner, Police, traffic fines