Website success story

Recently I have noticed several cases where my decision to have actual costume photos on my costume hire website was really useful to various people in the area and even outside the city. Many people also told me that they make decisions based on the photos shown. A film company rented my cosutmes for an advert after looking at my products and even people in neighbouring towns and cities used my products based on those. None of my competitors do this and hence their actual customer area is much smaller.

Trip to Robben Island

Yesterday I went on a trip to the Robben island museum by boat with my mother. The whole thing is quite well organised, including the history of the island and bus tour plus a tour through the prison by a former prisoner from the island. This also included visiting the former cell of Nelson Mandela. Quite amazing what these people had to survive for so many years. For what was offered, the trip was very cheap and enlightening.

The game Borderlands in multiplayer

Lately I have been playing the game Borderlands in multiplayer online. The whole process is quite seamless and the biggest hassle is either firewalls of other people and my slow 384kbps connection which causes me one to two seconds lag. Other than that it is quite interesting and the game actually makes the opponents harder if there are more players and rewards accordingly. The other reason to do this is to get quests done faster. The occasional car accidents and hectic shootouts with the locals are part of the fun. On LAN it works the same way but obviously with slightly less lag.

Damn Small Linux installation on a PC with issues

For two weeks as I had time, I have tried to install some operating system (Windows or Linux) on my old Pentium 3. The media restriction was CD ROM only since there is no USB booting option.

Windows XP installation bluescreened after formatting, Ubuntu Desktop could not find the live media that it just booted from, Ubuntu Server at least told me what the real problem was, GOS just froze, Mint died terribly, Damn Small Linux (DSL) twice nearly completed and once it told me that it could not read files. In the end it turned out that the CD ROM drive somehow switches off or something similar. Ubuntu Server and Damn Small Linux (DSL) essentially told me what the issue was.

After an installation without a username and password question, I had a system where I could not log in. After reading FAQs and forums, I concluded to install DSL yet again, this time with parameters to ask for those. Finally had a working system.

Clown costume fun

Recently I got various new costumes for my home based costume renting business. The problem was yet again that packaging photos promise too much and then various people are disappointed in the end. Also scanning in the packaging photo was not a great idea, the same with taking a photo of the packaging and then scaling it down for the website. Details from the packaging photo will be lost either way. The best way around this was if I wore the costume myself and took multiple photos.

As per usual, I did photos of the costume from the front, side and back. Since i did not want my face for those photos as well and my face would not have been the most ideal to go with the costume, I used a mask and some clown wig. It became at this point in time a lot of fun to do different poses and during the process, I happen to see how completely different I looked in the mirror. It was for me quite difficult to believe that the clown in the mirror was actually me in a suit. In the end I recorded a short video as well of just walking around a little bit in the room. The effect on a small video is not quite like in the mirror.

Halloween costume ideas

This year I am planning to go to one or even two Halloween costume parties. What I will dress up is still the problem since most of my costumes are booked by others. I had the following ideas for what I could wear based on what it looks like will be left and which is not an animal costume, superhero/villain or Star Wars character:

1. Ninja uniform with spiked skull mask, the spiked skull mask also has a bit of a neck and shoulder part.

2. Schoolgirl uniform with the same mask as mentioned above, the problem is that my arms would then be open which breaks the effect a bit.

3. Red devil costume with demon mask where only parts of my lower jaw shows. I can use facepaint for that section.

4. Large purple medieval dress with padding around the chest with female mask and wig.

5. Red/gold medieval dress with mask and blonde wig plus padding. More different mask face options for this costume due to being a different character. I could try and go for a freaky cute look.

6. Nun costume with padding, mask and long white gloves, the costume is a bit short for me.

7. French Maid with padding, mask and wig plus long white gloves. I have worn this before for a Halloween party which turned out to be fun.

8. Indian, either male or female costume with wig.

9. Venom, this is actually a superhero/villain, but I might wear this if I go with people I know to an event.

Several hours spent inside of a Greyland foam latex mask at an annual party

This last Saturday, I spent several hours in a foam latex mask plus costume with latex parts at the annual German Karneval Matieka in Stellenbosch. A lot of people wanted to know what I looked like underneath the mask. Some wanted to see, then they decided against it. Over the many hours, the mask got rather wet inside from perspiration due due dancing, but it was still fine for me. From the outside, the was no sign of me sweating. The mask is called GOMER (F287-7) on the Greyland Film website. Some people said it looked quite scary when I had it combined with the Clone Trooper costume from Star Wars. My original costume idea was something different, but my friend who came along wanted a sci-fi outfit. He wore some old man mask also from Greyland Film and the Anakin Skywalker costume.

Trains in Cape Town seriously messed up today

The trains today in Cape Town seem to be very messed up. I was trying to reach the 8:10AM train at Monte Vista station. I was about one minute away when it arrived at 8:04AM. According to official documentation, passengers should try and be there five minutes before a train is scheduled to arrive in case it arrives early. Up to five minutes before or after the scheduled time is considered on time because of delays and catching up.

After that issue, I decided that I have time to walk the 25 minutes to reach the 8:30AM train at Vasco station and with that I would get to Salt River station which is one station away from Observatory station which is where I need to go. I got to Vasco station at 8:24AM, a train only came at 8:45AM.

At Salt River station there was already a big crowd waiting for the train. A bit more than ten minutes later a train came past and did not stop. Normally the intervals that time of the morning are fifteen minutes between trains. More or less fifteen minutes later another one came past that did not stop. After that I decided to walk the fifteen minutes to my work in Mowbray.

Trains are messed up again

Yet again I heard several announcements this morning at Woodstock station in Cape Town about trains being delayed or even cancelled. The time table at the moment is not ideal at all for those who get off at Esplanade station and walk the one block to Woodstock station to avoid the chaos and the masses of people at Cape Town station.

I finished the game Split/Second

This last weekend I finally managed to finish the PC game called Split/Second, which is a racing game with explosive surroundings.. Some reviewers might complain about there not being enough tracks, which is partially true, but there are multiple variants of the existing tracks and many of them have route changes or nasty accidents that cause track differences. The multiplayer part is very easy to get started for LAN. Initially it looks like the game only supports two players, but as players connect, new slot appear. Most likely the game seems to support eight players. Some people complained about the 30 frames per second, which in my opinion is more than enough. There is no need to slow down the game by doubling the processing intensive rendering when going to 60 frames per second. Getting first in some of those races can be a mission. Being in front is a risk because of everyone trying to take a shot at whoever is in front of them. A small accident or delay can easily cause position changing.

Costume ideas for a future costume party, part 2

In my search to find a great costume for an upcoming costume party, I made some progress. With the new masks that I got yesterday from Greyland Film, I have more character options due to having more faces that would look good with different costumes.

Now I have an option to go as Mr. Spock (Star Trek) if I can at least get a proper Star Trek shirt or similar to the costume. Another choice is Ironman without the helmet and the head of Tony Stark. Another option are two different medieval dresses with some extra padding and a choice of a few different female masks and wigs. I could be boring and be yet again in a superhero costume like so many years before. I could also be the nun again, but this time with a different face, the alternative option to that would be the French maid. There are other ideas, but I am not so keen on them right now.

Watching someone trying on a foam latex mask

During the last weekend I had a lot of people coming who were looking for costumes. One party had a requirement for having the face covered. One lady rented a witch costume from me and was trying on different masks to see which one fits the costume and is the most comfortable to wear. Amongst my witch masks is also a foam latex based mask which is very soft. She did try that as well but took it off fairly fast due to heat apparently. foam latex masks generally do not get anywhere near as hot as normal latex masks. I have worn that particular mask briefly before and found it was spacious inside and because of its size, my eyesight was limited. It is not very common for female masks to be requested. Often men want masks with their costumes. Women sometimes want extra eyemasks, but rarely full masks.

It was qutie amazing to see how different she looked with the mask on when she moved around a bit. Unfortunately the mouth of the mask hardly moved when she spoke. Other people were watching as well and gave comments and advice.

Windows 7 partition issues with reboot loop

This last weekend I had some Windows 7 installation issues when I got myself a new HDD. The plan was to do dual booting like I had on my previous drive which was busy failing.

The initial Windows 7 installatino took long as usual with long waiting for the wallpaper with the mouse pointer. Why there is not anything more informative at that stage is a mystery to me. Some people might think that their PC has frozen. Once the Windows 7 installation was completed, I installed the latest LTS version of Ubuntu. Once that was done, I booted into Windows 7 and formatted the new drive. For some strange reason, the disk management tool was insisting that I had to make the partition dynamic. I might have read wrong and it was for the whole disk. Since I already had the other primary partitions and just needed a data partition, I thought it might just be another "user friendly" term for extended or logical partition.

This process ended up causing a reboot loop because all existing primary partitions suddenly ended up also being dynamic. This was a bulk change and I was really impressed by the reboot loop.

The next step was to start fresh with a new Windows 7 installation, just to find that I had to wait much longer than before and that the partition editor that came on the Windows 7 DVD was useless and could not even delete the partitions. I ended up having to clean up the mess running Ubuntu from the DVD which has a desktop and various tools that can be used while installating Ubuntu Linux onto the drive. Any owner of only Windows 7 would be helpless if that dynamic disk thing hits.

Heavy Cape Town traffic due to railway strike

The nationwide railway strike this week has been causing some heavy traffic in the morning and evening here in Cape Town. All of the train commuters had to find alternative modes of transport. I came with my car this week and it turns out to be rather expensive what petrol concerns. Sitting in traffic double the time than it should take is also no fun. I am at this point in time considering getting a bicycle and ride to work while getting some much needed cardio done. In the evenings the trains are also sometimes unreliable by not always showing up. In the evenings it would probably be a little bit faster to get home by bicycle than train due to the 25 minute walk in the evening if I do not manage to catch the 18:15 train leaving Cape Town.

Costume ideas for a future costume party

1. Power Rangers
2. Superheroes
2.1. Batman and Robin
2.2. Batman and Superman
2.3. The Flash and Superman
3. Star Wars
3.1. Darth Vader and the emperor
3.2. Darth Vader and a Clonetrooper/Stormtrooper
3.3. Jedi Knight and Queen Amidala
3.4. Jedi Knight and Padme Amidala
3.5. Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Knight
3.6. Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala
4. Dinosaurs

Looking for new ideas for my home business

Lately I have been wondering how I can improve my home business. I know what people are looking for, but getting that takes time and is expensive. Opening hours are an issue for many because it is weekdays in the evenings. Adding more photos of products to my website will help, especially if I do not have any. Somebody mentioned to me to do more marketing, but that is expensive as well. My website also needs to get a cancellation and review system.

Countrywide train strike on Monday

This coming Monday (10 May 2010) is going to be a countrywide train strike. There will be thick traffic on the roads for days. It will be expensive for petrol. Metrorail was already refunding all of the monthly train tickets. At least two unions are striking over a wage dispute.

New kitchen floor due to pipe leak

I had a water pipe leak in the kitchen last week and the kitchen floor had to be redone after fixing the pipe which was making the cement weak. It cost me quite a bit but it was worth it because the kitchen floor looks really great now.

Windows 7 64 bit patch stopped Windows from starting

Last night I had the fun of having to reinstall Windows 7 64 bit edition:

Some or other patch came with the security updates that prevented startup. There was only the initial grey/white progress bar at the bottom and then the PC went into a reboot. This happened several times. The progress bar was usually part of the Windows Startup Repair process which had obviously failed at this point in time.

Safe mode resulted in the same kind of issue including a blue screen. I ended up getting my original DVD out to use the repair tool. The repair tool could not fix Windows either. Using the last known good startup did not work and system recovery failed as well. The repair tool took a while, but at the bottom of the report it finally said that the startup was prevented by a patch. In the end I had to format and start from scratch. That installation also botched up with a restart and a partial repeat of the installation which included having to create users twice as well as having to put in my product key twice. On the second time having to add users, I had to create a different user. In the end, Windows was starting again.

Got off at the wrong train station last night

I took the train to Vasco railway station as usual last night which would have been followed by a 2.6km walk. I remember stopping at Goodwood railway station which would have been followed by Vasco railway station. The next thing I knew, the doors of the train were closing at Elsiesrivier railway station which comes after Vasco. That meant that I had to get off at Parow railway station and walk, or wait for a really long time for a train in the other direction. In the end I walked and ran 5.4km to get home.

Game comments: Supreme Commander 2

I really love this new Supreme commander 2 game. It has many improvements over the predecessors while keeping the style of construction, epic large scale battles with long range artillery and the same well known factions.

The game itself had many things simplified and automated, like the automatic repairs done by engineers as well as automatic nearest placement of buildings when trying to put them onto an area that is not meant for construction, like being too close to an edge for example.

The single player campaign is not impossible and there is an exact roadmap laid out to see how far there is still to go in a campaign. Multiplayer is unfortunately internet only, but it automatically uses the friends list from Steam, which gets rid of that problem. For me that is a really nice way of doing it instead of having to add the friends all over again like other games do. The building and unit parts flying off when attacked is also a nice twist as well as getting mass resources back from the wreckages as it has been tradition since Total Annihilation.

Some people were of course complaining about this game, but the reality was that it took far too long to build the big things in the previous games or to get started in a good battle. Supreme Commander 2 simplified all of this and made the existing system far better in my opinion. The game is now more fun than the previous games used to be. Long battles can still be fought.

Metrorail Cape Town prices going up in April 2010

The Metrorail prices in Cape Town are going up in April 2010. This is probably because of the electricity price increase from Eskom.

Comments about the movie: How to train your dragon

Last night I went to the local cinema to watch the movie called "How to train your dragon". It was for me better than I had anticipated. The movie was not quite like all those other computer rendered "talker" movies where there is always one evil person plotting against the underling hero of the movie. This movie was for a change about the survival of the entire village. The story was as a result different and in my opinion and bit better than the usual "talker" movies. The characters were also recognisable by how they looked to get an idea of their personality. A lot of the area and flight scenes really looked beautiful. This one is a movie that I would want to have in my DVD collection.

Mixed comments about the new Command and Conquer 4 game

I have started on the new Command and Conquer 4 (C&C4) game shortly after it came out and have the following comments:

1. The game is a little bit unstable and crashes occasionally, especially when accessing the menu items too shortly after the main menu has appeared for the first time.

2. Always having to be on the internet is an annoyance because of connection lost during a solo mission does not allow continuing and ends up with having to replay the mission. This was particularly annoying on the last Nod mission. An offline mode for playing the game on a LAN would be great, especially when there is no internet connection nearby. The fact that some people consider a disconnect as cheating is stupid. I understand why they don't like it if someone disconnects after getting annoyed, but they would never know if it was just a bad connection.

3. Some of the missions are yet again impossible odds and having to be everywhere at the same time. How some of the missions are supposed to be completed in Medium or Hard difficulty is beyond me. Many of them can be done on Medium difficulty, but not all. i am not a hardcore gamer who plays games every days for at least six hours or more.

4. The multiplayer is not bad actually because there is no long base building, the action starts immediately. It is more about micromanagement now. The players in multiplayer stay in the game instead of whoever is eliminated first has to watch for the next 30 minutes to one hour until the game is done.

Windows 7 network neighborhood PCs not showing

Recently I have been at a LAN where only one PC was consistently showing on the list of computers instead of all six. All but one PC on the network were running various incarnations of Windows 7. Some were home edition, some were Enterprise edition and some were Professional. Some editions of Windows 7 were 64 bit. One of the 64 bit PCs was always showing in the network.

Last weekend I went to my weekly LAN where I meet with friends to talk rubbish and play network games like the previous bigger LAN where I went to.

At this weekly LAN we investigated the matter and found that Windows 7 Network Sharing Center has a setting far down on the list which is not set by default and that was preventing computers from showing on the network. It was somewhere below the 128 bit encryption. The public settings did not help, this setting had to be used as well. This setting has nothing to do with the homegroup. Once I am on my home PC again, I will check what exactly it was called and will ad a mention here.

Steam update getting killed by internet cap stops gaming

A friend of mine had the bad luck yesterday (Sunday, 14 March 2010) that his monthly international internet banwidth usage cap was used up while the Steam game client was doing updates. Steam was refusing to start properly because it wanted to finish the update. This meant that he could not play any games in Steam. No software is made to handle partial updates like this and be happy about it. Either it is a matter of being offline or a matter of being online and not some inbetween state. The matter was resolved by him having to take his PC to me to use my internet connection for teh remaining 2MB. Telkom used to throttle the international internet traffic down to about 800 bytes persecond, but not anymore.

A visit to Mike's nightclub

The visit to my local gym was rather late last night. The gym normally has music playing at all times. A lot of those songs would also be ideal for a nightclub. At that hour there are only very few lost souls still training. Mike is the person who happens to be weekdays at the reception desk. Because of electricity saving, he has to switch off most lights from a certain time onwards, which makes the place look even more like a nightclub. All that is missing are strobe lights and lasers.

LAN computer gaming session in Kuilrivier

This last weekend was one of those infamous LAN gaming sessinos in Kuilsrivier again. We were six people for a change. It is difficult to get more than six people to show up due to various issues and excuses. The purpose of these sessions is to play computer games for fun. Often we end up having a braai as well.

We ended up playing Need for Speed Shift, Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) and Call of Duty - World at War. There were several issues because Need for Speed is buggy as every version. World at War was a similar issue. Someone have UT3 dying during a game. I have doubts that the heat outside had much to do with this. Overall it was a fun weekend.

Google chart tools

Lately I have been eying the chart tools that Google has on the code website. I am considering using those charts to see if visualising bookings for selected date ranges will be useful. I cannot find exactly the chart that I am looking for, but there are similar charts that might be useful. Getting time to play around with this is another matter.

Barefoot running on tar road in Cape Town

Yesterday evening I decided to run to the train station from work. I ended up running barefoot (no shoes on). The idea was to see what the difference was compared to having shoes on that can slow me down due to weight. The other plan was to also get my feet used to that kind of thing for excercise reasons. On fairly smooth road surfaces this works fine, but I do not want to do this on a rough road surface.

The detour from work to the train station due to locked gate, ended up being my new best time for that route and I managed to get to the train on time. Then I switched over to another train. Once I got off there, I started doing the same running again because of clients and I had to cover 2.6 kilometers. After a big more than 1 kilometer, my feet started complaining a bit.

Birthday party in dinosaur costume

This last weekend on the Saturday morning I was inside a really hot dinosaur costume for a children's birthday party. Being in the suit was a lot of fun to perform for the kids, but it got extremely hot in there and I was sweating a lot.

Running from Mowbray to Salt River station again

For two weeks I have been working rather late. As a result of this, I was always trying to catch the 19:30 train at Salt River station, because the next one is a long wait. My work is in the suburb of Mowbray and there is the entire Observatory suburb between my work and Salt River station. Over time, I have been getting better in regards to running the entire trip. It is a lot of effort and the ground to run on is not smooth and it has some slopes.

Frustration Company of Heroes

For once I tried to play Company of Heroes with a friend of mine who normally plays that game with another friend of ours on expert difficulty. My friend set the game to easy difficulty and yet we were beaten by a huge number of tanks. Afterwards he said that the computer players behaved like they do on expert and not not have behaved like that. For me it means that this is yet another bad balancing case that Relic is so famous for from the first Dawn of War game with its numerous incremental patches and expansions that always ruined the game because nothing was properly balanced.

My first Windows 7 bluescreen

Everything is right now, I finally got a bluescreen in the 64 bit version of WIndows 7. I was busy watching an AVI file with structure problems and played a game at the same time.

Metrorail annoyances

The last couple of days have not been a great experiences for Metrorail customers in the Cape Town area.

There have been several cancellation announcement in the morning while people need to get to work as well as announcements of delays. Often the delays are caused due to signal power failure. After all of these years of that, I would expect engineering to come up with a way to make these more robust that a slight drizzle doesn't kill the entire system.

Yesterday morning was another great example where trains were just standing on the tracks two sides of a station. I know that they were not waiting for a line change due to construction work going on. Yesterday evening was a case of an announcement of a delay of 8 minutes and about 13 minutes later when the next train was scheduled to show up, there was an announcement of a delay of 12 minutes. This morning was at least nothing happening for 20 minutes.

Sore muscles and injured foot

Due to training at the gym with a trainer on Monday, I have several sore muscles, in particular my left arm. I am right handed and that makes my left arm the weaker arm. My foot is injured on a joint, but I have no idea how that happened. The training last night did not help either against sore muscles.

Back from vacation in Namibia

On Monday, 4 January 2010, I came back from my trip to Namibia. It was quite hot there, especially in Etosha.

Trip to Etosha in Namibia

In December 2009, I was with a friend and both our mothers in the Etosha National Park in Namibia for five days. We saw at least 23 different types of animals. Lions, elephants and rhinos were rare, but we managed to take photos of them. Huge fires caused a lot of animals to migrate which left most other areas and waterholes empty.