Archive for September, 2009

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

England, thanks for ruining cricket for my son

First let me state that Luke, my 5 year-old, is a cricket fanatic. If we’re not watching cricket he’s bowling balls down the passage or setting his imaginary field and he’s driving me nuts with wanting me to purchase every piece of cricket equipment that has ever been made. It’s turning into a costly passion.

Over the last two days I’ve witnessed two jaw dropping incidents in the ICC Champions Trophy, both of which involved England, and these have had a serious impact on Luke. The first and most controversial was an incident involving Graham Smith and Andrew Strauss during the SA vs. England game on Monday evening.

Smith was on 124 runs with South Africa needing another 69 from 36 balls to stay in the ICC Champions Trophy and requested for a runner yet Strauss declined it. After the match Strauss explained that “He asked for a runner and the umpires took the view that cramp is a symptom of fatigue. Being tired does not qualify batsmen for a runner under the laws of the game”.

It is my belief that this decision by Strauss was a defining moment in the match and was a major contributing factor to our loss. After Strauss turned him down you could see Smith’s whole demeanor change. Couple that with the fact that he could barely walk and Smith was now forced to look for boundaries to try and steer our team to victory which ultimately lead to the fall of his wicket at 141.

If you asked me Strauss knew that Smith could win the game for South Africa and he wanted him off the field as his bowlers were pretty much ineffective against him. I believe that Strauss broke the rules of the gentleman’s game in a display of the worst sportsmanship I’ve ever seen in cricket in recent times.

The impact this had on Luke astounded me. He was in Graham Smith mode at the time, with pads on and bat in hand, trying to win the game and when he saw how upset Smith was he went from excitement to total disappointment. He got furiously angry with England and accused them on cheating and not being fair and this frustration ultimately brought him to tears. It took a long time to console him and explain to him that sometimes things happen in sport that prevent you from winning but he struggled to comprehend it all.

This was the first time that he’s ever understood and been exposed to injustice in sport and he didn’t like it one bit. When he went to bed he told us he’s never playing cricket again – a truly shattering moment for a child who just wants to be the next AB De Villiers. As parents this was a difficult moment for us and I’m not convinced we handled it as well as we could have. Be that as it may, Luke agreed to take up cricket again the next morning.

The second incident I witnessed was during the England vs. New Zealand match yesterday evening. Paul Collingwood, who had been declared run out after wandering out of his crease, went up to New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori and had a mini-conference with him. Soon after they shook hands and Vettori decided not to uphold the appeal and Collingwood was allowed to continue his innings.

To be honest I’m shocked that England expect every other team to honour the Spirit of Cricket ethos while they only really do so when the pressure is not on them.

It is true that Andrew Strauss had made a similar decision in England’s opening match against Sri Lanka by recalling Angelo Mathews however there wasn’t the same sense of pressure or intensity during that match. The truth is, when England are on the ropes they are simply bad sports.

If you don’t believe me then lets look at last year when Collingwood was captaining England when New Zealand’s Grant Elliott had been run out after a mid-pitch collision with Ryan Sidebottom. The umpires were obliged to rule him out, but Collingwood’s refusal to withdraw the appeal had infuriated Vettori and invited widespread criticism from the media.

Vettori’s decision yesterday was more significant as there was no case of obstruction in this instance, and Collingwood had no one to blame but himself for venturing out his crease. In addition, it was a do-or-die match for New Zealand yet despite this Vettori still showed outstanding sportsmanship at the time.

You make your own decisions around this but I for one am disgusted by England’s tactics and the fact that the ICC continue to back this team and the decisions taken by them on the field. What example are we setting to the youth who idolize these players and the game?

 

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Why are Clocks so prominent in my life right now?

I’m struggling to find the meaning behind this but for some reason children’s clocks are featuring very prominently in my life right now.

Two days ago Colette and I went to see a psychologist about our eldest son Luke. There’s nothing wrong with him but we were asked by the pre-school to put him through a series of tests to see if he is ready for big school (i.e. Grade 1) next year. The meeting was essentially a report-back on her findings.

While the results of the tests were very interesting (more about this in a later post) the strangest thing emerged. One of the questions asked to him was if he had three wishes what would he wish for. His first answer was… a clock. Colette and I were both taken aback as was the psychologist. None of us could figure out why a five year old would wish for a clock.

During the session we also realised that we don’t have a single clock in our house. Not only that but neither of us own watches either so there is nothing apart from computers and mobile phones indicating the time. Maybe this is the only meaning around this but then some more random events happened.

Last night I received a phone call from my late best friend’s mother. We haven’t spoken in over two years and I think it’s mostly due to the fact that the context of our relationship was connected through my friend and with him not being there it was difficult to maintain the relationship when we both reminded each other of him. So, needless to say it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise to hear her voice again.

I suspected that the call was in relation to the sixth anniversary of his death (September 15th) but this wasn’t the case at all. She contacted me to tell me that she’d started making, wait for it…, children’s clocks in her spare time and wanted to know if I can help her market the kids clocks online.

Soon after the phone call I put Luke to bed. Every night Colette reads him a story before bedtime but last night I decided that I should do story-time instead. As is customary Luke choses a book and tonight was a rather large Dr. Seuss collection of five stories.

Luke opened up the book and said to me that he wants to show me his best part. He continued to page through to a particular page in the book and said look Dad, this is it. I took the book from him and asked him why this page was his best and he said, because the long hand is hanging off looking all squiggly and he was referring to the rather comical looking clock on the page.

Maybe I’m being nuts but these three, seemingly random events around clocks, kids clocks in particular have me wondering if there’s not something there. I don’t believe in co-incidence, I believe in things happening for a reason and everything has meaning but I can’t find anything online that can help me understand this better.

Hopefully you have more insight into the random events of the last two days.

 

Posted on September 22, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Our experience of sending bulk emails to users

Let me start by saying that Mailchimp is an amazing company and their bulk email service is worth every penny. They deliver a punchy service and their UI is awesome however we no longer use them as our account has now been deleted.

I certainly can see the value in newsletters but from experience our newsletters were more often than not perceived as spam and I think, ultimately, this has hurt our brand. Added to the fact that many of our @afrigator.com email addresses now end up in people’s spam/junk folder and I think you’ll see why we’ve ultimately decided to drop our newsletter service all together.

Maybe our execution was poor, maybe we’re just not experts at doing this but I can tell you in future I’ll be hesitant to send out any emails to users. It’s a tough one for a small online business as email is, fundamentally, your only communication tool with your clients and this tool needs to be used very wisely…….. or else.

I can in all honesty tell you that we’ve learned more than we’d have liked to (mostly painful stuff) and if I had to do it all again I would have never started email newsletters in the first place. We had all these grandiose ideas about how we could leverage off email to our users but in the end I think we failed.

 

Posted on September 17, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

The Parlotones make a Giant Mistake

If you haven’t heard the news yet then let me tell you that The Parlotones are now wine makers and last night we were privileged to attend a private, intimate launch party for their new red wine called Giant Mistake.

It is no secret that I’m a Parlotones fan-boy (as is evidenced by this post) and this once in a life time opportunity event was certainly not going to be missed by me and trust me, I had a fantastic time.

If you know me well enough then you’ll know that I am often mature beyond my years but last night I was like a teenager again. Singing, jumping, irritating Mark Bayly, asking the band for special requests, pestering Kahn for signatures and photos and just generally being an absolute nuisance. I had a blast and now have some cool signed memorabilia including a signed bottle of Giant Mistake by all the band members. Check out some of the pics from the night.

But this post isn’t all about the fun. As I mentioned on the Afrigator blog we actually got involved with The Parlotones on this and did some work with them on their new website and there’s some more exciting stuff in the pipeline.

As for the wine? Well if the crowd last night at the event are anything to go by then Giant Mistake is going to be a massive success. There wasn’t a single person who said they didn’t love the wine and if you’re a sceptic then I guess the proof will have to be in the pudding. I mean we are just human after all…

 

Posted on September 4, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic iSync Plugin

Last night I decided to hook up the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic which I received from Nokia. Unfortunately for me this phone is not supported on Apple Mac – at all!

When I say at all I mean at all. For example, Nokia Software Updater isn’t compatible, Nokia PC Suite isn’t compatible, there is only limited Mac compatibility (i.e. GPRS & Bluetooth), Nokia Music isn’t supported so you can’t download songs to your Mac and finally, there is no iSync plugin for the 5530 XpressMusic either.

While I respect that Nokia are still in development with their Mac version of the Nokia Music app I am perplexed that there is no plugin for iSync. With no other access to Nokia applications, using iSync is the only way you can get contacts and calendar items to the phone and without the plugin the phone is pretty much useless.

I didn’t like this ofcourse so I’ve created a 5530 XpressMusic iSync plugin that any Mac user with this phone can happily download. Here’s what you need to do:

• Download the 5530 XpressMusic iSync plugin here
• Double-click the downloaded ZIP file and it will expand and leave you with a file called Nokia_5530_XpressMusic_isync_plugin_2v0.phoneplugin
• Now you need to move this file to the following location on your Mac: /Library/PhonePlugins/. You may need to create the PhonePlugins folder because mine didn’t exist when I did this.
• When you’re done, open up iSync and click on Add Device – it should pick up your 5530 and you can then double-click it to add it to iSync.

When this is all done, you should see the following screenshot and voila – you can now sync contacts and calendars with the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic on your Mac.