Friday, April 30, 2010

Perfectly Timed Photos... Seriously funny stuff going on here!

I just cracked up when I got these in my Inbox... see for yourself :)

OMG THE OLYMPIC TORCH VIRUS... is a frikkin hoax. So please stop sending it to EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!

If I receive one more email warning me about the so-called "Olympic Torch" virus, or the "Black in the White House" virus, which miraculously "burns" your whole hard drive, and "destroys zero sector, where vital information is kept", I will personally track down the sender of the email and make them eat their computer.

How many times must this ridiculous hoax circulate and waste our time and bandwidth?
I suppose Joe Public is just being cautious, but I get tired of informing Joe Public that this threat is actually very much non-existent.

As a guideline, if you receive an email which warns of some impending Armageddon Virus which will erase your children, it will most likely try to use some big computer / company names (eg. Microsoft, Mcafee, Symantec, CNN etc.) to back up the outrageous claims that it is making...

Still don't believe me? Snopes it here:

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/invitation.asp

If you are still not sure, please comment on this post and I will check it out for you.

Survivor SA draws to a close, and Gigi takes it!

I must say that I was seriously impressed with last night's Survivor SA finale - it felt so good to get into the Survivor vibe and know that we have our very own "Jeff Probst" in Nico Panagio :)
I thought he did a fantastic job as the host of the show, without trying too hard to follow in the footsteps of the the CBS version of Survivor.

In any case, Gigi took the honours at the end and walked away as the ultimate survivor.

While I wish her well and congrats and all that, I though that Ashley was the more deserving of the 2 finalists - it goes without saying that she played a fantastic game, while Gigi flew under the radar most of the time.
I would also guess that if the votes had been re-cast at the live show (after all the contestants had cooled off!), the outcome would have been a rather different one.

Fact is, it was a great season of Survivor SA and I trust that it will set the standard for future productions of the show.

What did you think of the series?

I love the Google Earth Day logo...

Google put this one on their homepage for Earth Day... what an awesome logo!

Keep 'em coming Google...

If Chrome is made by Google, why does it suck at publishing in Blogger?

Just a simple question - Blogger is owned by Google, so one would think that their own browser Chrome would do the best possible job when working in Blogger.

Right?
Wrong - at least in my experience.

Trouble is, when I post to Blogger in Chrome, my published post never stays true to the line formatting / spacing that I used when typing the post.
For example - single line spacing in Chrome get published to Blogger as double line spacing, yet in IE8 it does not.

Blogger and Chrome - please play nice!

Techies at Google - please help?

What exactly is Nybbles and Bytes all about...?

I sometimes find myself wondering what exactly my blog is all about, as I read through my list of archived posts.

When I set out to start my blog, Nybbles and Bytes was intended as an IT-related repository of troubleshooting information and the occasional deal on computer hardware.
Blogging about technical stuff all day gets a bit boring though and can be quite a bit of brain strain, which led me onto other subjects and topics - namely stuff that I find interesting personally.

Also, blogging about a limited topic such as IT appeals to a limited audience - i.e. computer geeks and enthusiasts, and so my blog would then attract interest from only this type of internet user.

So looking back, my focus has definitely shifted from being all about IT, to topics such as Photography, World news / events, Humourous emails, South African Good News, Technology & Gadgets and a bit of Science and Earth Geography here and there... quite a far cry from my original intention and yet so much better!

What kind of stuff would you like to see posted on Nybbles and Bytes in future...?

New crime tactic...

While I don't normally like to blog about negative topics or downers, here's something I saw the other day that I felt should get a bit of exposure.

It's a new way that criminals are out to catch unsuspecting victims in JHB, and I saw this on CCTV camera footage with my own 2 eyeballs :)

Here's how it goes:

1. The specimen (a.k.a. the criminal) parks his / her vehicle (in this case a recent model executive Mercedes) in a public parking spot, perhaps somewhere close to an office (the visitors of which would use that parking area).

2. The unsuspecting victim arrives and parks their vehicle in the same parking area, and then enters the premises to go about their business. N.B. At this point (I suspect), the specimen uses some kind of jammer / scanner to interfere with the victim's remote central locking system.

3. The specimen then waits a short while to make sure that the coast is clear.

4. The (well dressed) specimen then leaves his / her vehicle, and proceeds to open (without force) the victim's vehicle, and rifle through it at will, taking anything that may be of value to him / her.

5. The specimen then departs at leisure, having loaded his / her vehicle with loot that once belonged to the victim...

So it's a pretty cowardly, yet highly effective way of doing things really.
The fact that larneys in Merc's are committing these crimes is the surprising factor for me.

So be on the lookout guys and gals - if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would have just tossed it aside as another silly urban legend. When you park your car, always make yourself aware of your surroundings...

And here we were wondering what those larneys who sit around in coffee shops all day do for a living... :)

Awesome photos of the Icelandic volcanic eruption...

It's old news by now that the volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted in Iceland last week, but aside from the huge amount of flight disruptions and international media about this event, the photos of the volcano itself need to be seen in order to appreciate the scale and ferocity of the eruption. It is a tribute to the awesome forces of nature that we as the human race have absolutely no control over...

An awesome and scary spectacle to be witness to - I love how the tourists stand around watching while the Earth just goes about its daily business of creating new land :)
If you have visited my blog before you will know that photography of Icelandic / Nordic / Scandanavian landscapes totally fascinates me - click here for previous posts on the topic.

p.s. I picked these photos up from all over the net - if you spot one that you took, please drop me a comment and I will give credit where credit is due... wish I could have been the one to take some of these!

Let's all put potholes to good use... ;)

These courtesy of FHM Calendar Girl Ana Trujic (thx Ana :)... suggesting some nice useful ways to make the most out of the potholes that we see deepening / widening everyday on our roads :)
The saying "Making the best out of a bad situation" comes to mind... go on and take a look below.

Good for a laugh!