How can the organisors of an international rugby test match allow for a stoned reggae singer to completely disrespect the South African national anthem? Surely when you select a person to sing the anthem you need to have seen them sing it before or at least let them rehearse it for you.

I am a huge rugby fan – a 100% fan of the Sprinboks, but I must say with a rendition of the anthem that was turned into a laughing stock, I can hardly blame them for playing so poorly on Friday evening in Toulouse.

What confuses me is that this reggae dude is from South Africa. I don’t know a South African that is able to stuff up the national anthem that badly – it is a true disgrace!

For those that did miss the messed up national anthem you can view it below:

Apparantly the name of the stoned rasta dude is Ras Dumisani, a reggae singer from Durban, Kwazulu-Natal, in South Africa. Ok that is even more scary – I never thought that any self-respecting South African could do that to the national anthem.

Sources later revealed that he had actually did have a rehearsal before the match that was fine – so “pot,” I mean what went wrong? Something seriously changed between the rehearsal and the actual rendition – I suspect it was a banned green substance that was the  culprit.

Ras, along with the French have issued apologies to South Africa, but fans and citizens alike still have a bad taste in their mouth.

Ras has now become the butt of many jokes, one shown below is based on the classic Windhoek Lager adverts.

For those who don’t know the words to the South African national anthem, Ras you’re included, here they are:

Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika
Maluphakanyisw’ uphondo lwayo,
Yizwa imithandazo yethu,
Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo.

Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso,
O fedise dintwa la matshwenyeho,
O se boloke, O se boloke setjhaba sa heso,
Setjhaba sa South Afrika

South Afrika.

Uit die blou van onse hemel,
Uit die diepte van ons see,
Oor ons ewige gebergtes,
Waar die kranse antwoord gee,

Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom,
In South Africa our land.

Here the phoentetic version to help you to learn it:

Some more jokes related to the butchered South African national anthem:

Email Subject: Notice of Underreported Income

Email Body:

Taxpayer ID: graham-00000174073547US
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on the link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: graham-00000174073547US

Internal Revenue Service

My Comments:

Firstly, I am not a US citizen, neither reside in the US nor have a job or business in the US, so that pretty much rules me out from being a tax payer to the IRS.

Secondly examining the link more closely (I have deactivated it in this post for safety), the link actually goes to some spoof domain that looks kind of legit to untrained users. I wonder how many people these guys will doop?

This might sound a little “out there” but I think there is a serious misconception among the general public & small businesses.

For years people have been playing around with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors and claim that they are web designers – sorry to break it to you, but they are NOT web designers, they are novices. I can personally recall occasions where potential clients have grumbled about the amount I have quoted them. Their response is often: “But my 16 year old nephew can put together a site for a fraction of that cost – why should I pay so much to you?” Or “I have quotes from other companies that are charging half of what you are – if you lower your quote we’ll give you the business.” In the beginning I found comments like these rather intimidating and I would try and accommodate these new clients even if it meant slashing my prices beyond it being worth my while. Mistakes I will not readily make again.

What I discovered is that clients that are not willing to pay you adequately for your services are usually the ones that will have the least amount of respect for you as well. These clients will probably expect you to leap through hoops of fire and give you completely unreasonable deadlines. They don’t respect your time and will most times make you change things over and over again.

The professional web design process is a lot more involved than most people realize. Again I say PROFESSIONAL web design process. The steps to designing a website that works great, looks great and attracts a great amount of traffic is both time consuming and skill intensive. From obtaining a proper brief to conceptualizing and designing an accurate visual proof – there is just something different about the way a professional works. Obviously the result achieved when the project is completed speaks volumes in itself, but most don’t understand the processes in between.

A professional web designer has to understand the principles that make up a great website. These include: aesthetics, content, structure, usability, relevance, technology & optimization.

Aesthetics:
There is nothing worse than a website that just looks bad. A poorly designed website is off-putting and reflects negatively on the company it represents. It gives the appearance that the company is unprofessional and the content contained within the site cannot be taken seriously. However a well designed website gives you the feeling that you are dealing with a professional & credible company who knows what they are talking about.

Content:
Granted having a great looking site does a lot for your business image, but if the shell is empty visitors will leave fast and probably never return. Your website content should be relevant to your industry sector and relevant to what you say you’re all about. Your content may be relevant, but id it is poorly written or has countless spelling errors, again the impression created is poor. Content should be well written, aimed at web users who are not interested in long winded stories, but who are looking for headlines and condensed paragraphs. Users want to find relevant information quickly and easily – the more you make them work to find information, the faster you will lose them.

Structure:
A website with no structure just seems to fall apart at the seams! A good structure affects your appearance, navigation, sitemap, and usability. Professional web designers don’t rely on WYSIWYG editors to put a website together, but rather have the ability to hand code every element involved in building a great site. Having complete control over the code helps one to ensure that the structure of the backend code stays intact and that it is clean. A good structure will ensure that there is a certain uniformity in the way a website looks & works.

Usability:
A sure way to lose visitors quickly is to have a site that is not user-friendly. If your navigation is hidden or so unconventional that users are unable to get to pages easily, they will leave and not return. Naming of your pages and titles of your links should also be as common as possible. It does feel good to get creative and break the mould sometimes, but people feel comfortable with what they know – they have a certain sense of security in knowing what to expect. For example: A much wider audience will respond to a button called “About Us” than would respond to “Get the low down.” The latter may seem more creative or informal, but will prove to be a lot less effective. Another important aspect to ensure is that your website works across browser platforms – a professional web designer always has this in the back of their mind, amateurs probably don’t even understand what this means.

Relevance:
Why has a visitor come to your site? How have they found you? Most would have come via a search engine after looking for something specific. If your website content is not relevant to what the user searched for, they will simply get irritated and leave your site immediately. There are a lot of tricksters on the internet and experienced users have become wise to their ploys. One of these being attracting visitors under false pretense or directing users to their website using keywords not relevant to their site’s content. If you have quality content that is relevant and well structured, you are almost guaranteed to keep visitors on your website longer and have a greater chance of them bookmarking your site for future reference. They may even be inclined to share your site with their friends.

Technology:
Today the web is alive with technology! It is a nice touch to harness some of this and incorporate it into your website. Professional web designers should have their fingers on the pulse and have a good understanding of all of the latest technology offerings. If there is a better way to do something, it should be done. Especially if it assists in aiding usability and simplicity. Amateurs will most likely be ignorant to new technologies and if they have some form of understanding, will most likely not be able to implement it correctly.

Optimization:
This is the last point, but is one of the most important. Optimization is a key factor in your website getting found by search engines, which in turn drives free traffic to your site on a daily basis. I have dealt with companies that have spent vast amounts of money promoting their website, but have missed huge quantities of free traffic simply because their website was poorly optimized. A professional designer will always develop a site that is optimized for search engines. They will understand what is needed by large search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN, but also what is needed by the lesser search meta search engines. I can use our own website as an example of this: http://www.freedomstudios.co.za relies completely on web traffic to generate new business. Freedom Studios spends absolutely no money on conventional advertising and constantly attracts quality clients who find us via search engines or directories.
Some of our clients also enjoy top rankings in Google simply because their sites are correctly optimized, relevant and have a lot of quality content.

An amateur may charge you a lot less to create a website, but the potential loss for your business is unimaginable. While hiring a professional web designer may be a slightly higher initial investment, your returns will most likely be worth a whole lot more.

According to my email I am rich!

Don’t you just hate getting those totally irritating spam emails claiming that you have been drawn from some or other lottery and have won countless numbers of dollars.

Or how about your long lost relative, who you have never met, or even heard of, has suddenly died and left you with an inheritance that Bill Gates will be proud of. My favorite is when these so called relatives are not only a different nationality, but a different ethnic group – wow how did that happen?

Who is actually stupid enough to fall for this stuff?

Well apparently lots of very naive Internet users fall prey to these schmucks! The messages usually tell you about all the money that is due to you ad all you need to do is send them your name, surname, address, contact numbers, email addresses, identity number and more.

Surely if you had won or had been entitled to an inheritance you wouldn’t need to give them your name and ID number! These scam artists prey on ignorant people and actually steal their identities. What happens next is you suddenly find your credit card maxed out or your bank account dried up. Or perhaps a warrant for your arrest.

Identity theft is a real thing that happens every day. Many, many people are suffering because of it. So the next time you get an email from the Microsoft lottery, delete it immediately!

Another common scam is the “business opportunity” type email. This is where you get asked to transfer money into your country on behalf of another individual and you’ll get a cut. The last time I checked, money laundering was illegal, so who in their right mind would actually do this?

I know that times are tough and that we all need a few extra bucks at the end of the month, but please don’t be stupid!

Another thing that ticks me off are these get rich quick schemes and these amazing new multi-level marketing opportunities – but I’ll leave that rant for another post.

A useful tip to avoid ID theft and protect yourself on line…

Always keep your important user names and passwords safe. For example if you use Internet banking keep your login credentials safe and only use them for the banking login.

For all the other sites that you need to register for choose another user name and different password. I always use a user name and password for all my daily site registrations. If these happen to leak out by some chance – oh well at least it’s not going to cost me anything.

Stay safe! Be free! Klap life! (For non South Africans this means grab life by the balls!)