Blog of Batman

Trevor Immelman from South Africa led from the front under trying conditions to win his first major, the Masters played at Augusta National on Sunday. He shot a solid 75 in windy conditions while all around him were faltering, to lead Tiger home by 3 shots.

In doing so he denied Tiger Woods a shot at a calendar Grand Slam to follow up on his Tiger Slam of a few years ago. Tiger earlier reported that he felt that “winning all four major championships in 2008 was easily within reason.” However this statement has caused such media frenzy that he has since expressed regrets about making statements like this.

Trevor is the first player from the shores of South Africa to bring home the coveted green jacket since Gary Player won it 30 years ago. In recent years Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Tim Clark and Rory Sabbatini have all come close, but have all had to be satisfied with the consolation prize.

“Here I am, after missing the cut last week, the Masters champion,” Immelman said. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Trevor has been experiencing a roller-coaster ride with his health. Last year he suffered severe weight-loss due to an intestinal parasite, and struggled to regain lost form. He returned to form with a spectacular victory at the Nedbank Million Dollar at Sun City last year, only to have to undergo surgery a few days later to have a benign tumour removed. He must have entered the Masters with very little hope of achieving anything, having yet to regain any form.

Well done Trevor, we’re all so proud of you. You’ve held our flag high, and you’ve conducted yourself with dignity and grace.

Enjoy your jacket!

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Introduction

There are literally hundreds of ways of doing this, with many offerings and services. I’m not claiming any of them to be the best – merely sharing the specific route that I followed – what worked for me, and what didn’t.

Register a domain

I used GoDaddy to register my domain (www.brucewaynehart.com). I paid 9.99 USD, which is annually renewable.

Hosting

I used Servage to host my domains. I paid 6.49 USD per month (I opted for the 6 month option, but will definitely renew after that). This includes 510GB of diskspace, 5010GB of data transfer per month, unlimited domains, virtual hosting, FTP, several useful automated installer scripts e.g. wordpress, mediawiki, openbook, etc.. and their response times are very good.

You will need to bring your domain across to your hosting provider – they will provide you with DNS settings (Name Servers) – that you will need to take back to the place where you registered your domain. You can also register a domain with servage, altho i only found that out later…

Site Statistics

I used StatCounter to monitor the traffic on my site. Its free, but offers a professional and really comprehensive service. Features include number of visits, number of distinct visitors, maps of visitors, statistics per site per day,week, month, etc.. It really provides all that I need.

Start a Blog

I uploaded the latest WordPress 2.5 to my servage host (you can use one of their existing installers, but they do not as yet provide the latest wordpress). Its very easy to upload a few themes and plugins, and you can be blogging away in minutes.

Content Duplication

Tempting though it may be to copy, or “steal content from other sites, don’t do it. The SEO’s are wise to it, and there are some very smart tools out there that can detect duplication in a whisker. They will penalise your site because of this which will harm your page rank, and ultimately affect the traffic to your site. Look at CopyScape as an example. Even changing words in a block of text doesn’t help – they’ve got really advanced tools out there.

Increase Traffic

• submit your site to the search engines e.g. Google, Yahoo or Ask.com
• submit your blog to a few of the blog directories out there Technorati, Blogging Fusion or Blog Catalog, or 20 Essential Blog Dirs,
• provide as many links TO your site as possible e.g. from other blogs, social networks e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn. And the higher ranked they are, the better.
• leave comments on other blog articles, making sure to leave a link back to your blog. please ensure that your comments are legit and sincere – no blogger likes a spammer leaving his trail of trash at the end of any of his articles…
• advertise your blog – if you can make a mention in your company’s newsletter, the signature at the end of your emails, messages to user groups and forums, messages sent to your contacts in social networks, etc…
• BUT PLEASE DON’T BECOME A SPAMMER!!!!!!!

Making Money

Googles Adsense is one of the leading ads programs out there. How does it work? Well first of all people will pay Google money to advertise their products. What Adsense does is to display relevant ads on your site, and Google will pay you for displaying these ads, or for when people click on ads on your site. Simple really. Admittedly its not that easy to make serious amounts of money – but you have to start somewhere.

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I’ve read all seven of the Harry Potter books – twice! And loved them! But I still don’t “get” what the deal with Severus Snape is. OK – I get that he loved Lily Potter, and was pretty cut up when Voldemort killed her having received the information of the prophecy from Snape. But is that it – is that really all there is to it?

What makes Harry name his son after Severus, referring to him as the “bravest man he knew”? Yes, he lived a dual life, being Dumbledores right-hand man, but also Voldemorts. But is that the “bravery” he refers to – pretending to be a Death Eater?

I guess I was just expecting something infinitely more concrete, more sinister perhaps, something that one would discover with a shock. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t prove, really prove beyond all doubt – why Dumbledore had such an absolute trust in him.

Perhaps there’s someone out there that can help me understand what i’m missing?

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Enough already!!!

If Tiger wins, then he’s on track for the Grand Slam. If someone else wins, then it’ll be all about how Tiger isn’t going to win the Grand Slam!!!

Do the American commentators/producers realise that there are others on the course as well – literally hundreds of professional golf players. Yet somehow they focus on Tiger walking down the fairway, or Tiger waiting patiently – instead of showing us some other guy on top of the leaderboard actually playing real golf strokes.

And another thing – do the American spectators realize how ridiculous (and uninformed) they sound when Tiger tees off from a 600 yard par 5 – and they shout “GET IN THE HOLE” ???

Give us a break – and take a cue from the commentators at the British Open, or the Ryder Cup whenever its played on European soil. Its about presenting an unbiased, accurate and representative picture of what is happening – it’s never just about one player!!!

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Wisden names the South Africa’s Jacques Kallis as the No. 1 cricketer on earth for 2007.

Kallis becomes the fifth player to win the accolade of “Leading Cricketer in the World” since it began in 2004 to identify the first name on a World XI team-sheet to play Mars.

Previous winners include the Australians Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne, Andrew Flintoff of England and, last year, Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka.

Credit: Wisden

Firstly, let me congratulate Jaques Kallis on his achievement – it is indeed something special to be considered the worlds No. 1 cricketer.

However, that been said – am i the only one that feels that somehow he isn’t living up to his true potential? He has the ability, far more so than any other in his team, to demolish any attack. But how often does he in fact do that? He so often seems to be playing a supporting role to the batsman at the other end – one would assume that Kallis – “the best in the world” – would more often than not be the player that others would support…

How often have we seen him – when we are in a strong position of 550/3 – looking to declare, yet Kallis will still bat at 2 runs to the over, preferring his junior partner to take the risks. Its as if his “not out” is more important than the teams so-called strategy of “brave cricket”.

Little wonder then that he was excluded from the Pro20 World Cup – that’s just not his game. He likes his 15 overs to get his eye in, and there are only 20 overs. In this game one needs to be firing from both sides – Kallis keeping an end up while expecting his batting partner to do the work just doesn’t strike me as the ideal gameplan for Pro20.

When Lara, Ponting, Tendulkar or Sehwag walk to the crease, then I sit glued to the TV – not wanting to miss a thing. However, when Kallis walks to the crease I find an excuse to work in the garden – secure in the knowledge that he will probably still be there when I return, but there’s just no way I want to watch him play.

And somehow that – to me – defines the essence of greatness!.

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