Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

With out road trip came lots of mozzies. I got chowed by mozzies, in malaria zones! So I thought I would just check up on the symptoms in advance. You know just in case :)

For those interested:

The main initial symptoms of malaria are often mistaken for flu and can include:

* headache
* vomiting
* fatigue
* nausea
* muscular pains
* mild diarrhoea
* fever

Patients can rapidly progress to delirium, impaired consciousness and generalised convulsions, followed by coma and death. The symptoms of the most life-threatening type of malaria are usually experienced between one week and four months after infection, but can occur later. There are other, less severe types of malaria, which can cause symptoms more than a year later.

Taken from www.malariahotspots.co.za

Its been about a week and I am tired! Coincidence???? I hope so. More than likely the reason is an early morning, first day back and the depressing thought of a 5 day work week ahead.

The malaria excuse sounds much better though!

Do you ever wonder what happen’s when a ship starts rusting and can’t carry cargo anymore? Well the one’s that don’t sink at least …

No? I never really thought about it either. But I stumbled across the answer to the question. Check this guy’s blog out. He knows the answer. And he has taken photos of the evidence. All I can say is poor buggers who do this everyday, breathing in toxic fumes of ship waste.

View the ship’s fate here

What really bugs me is when I’ve been searching for something on Google for like hours and I finally find the thing, only to find out it needs some plugin I don’t have. “This movie cannot be played. You need to download Quicktime to view this file”. Great! So I follow the links and cruise over to www.apple.com (Note: no hyperlink. They are not worthy for a link from me today!) only to find out I cannot download QuickTime by itself, I have to download it with iTunes 6! All 32mb of it!

We ain’t all sitting with broadband T1 connections across the world, some of us are controlled by Telkom.

Oh yeah, and like MSN Messenger tuned me yesterday, “Would you like to download the latest version of Messenger?” I’m thinking, “No, I’m ok”, but alas I can’t use MSN Messenger until I download the latest version. Thanks for asking though.

With less than a week left before Christmas, there isn’t much Christmas stock left in the stores, so when your light bulbs die, don’t throw them out. Hang them on your Christmas tree.

1. Coat the light bulb in approx 3 layers of white craft paint
2. Coat the “hat” in black, 2-3 layers
3. Glue 3 buttons onto his front – either buttons, or little jewelry beads (using a glue gun)
4. Make eyes and nose from jewelry beads, those tinted silver inside add a nice touch
5. For the nose, I used a miniature light bulb from a package of those sold to decorate those mini Christmas village sets – I simply cut off the lights, then their ends and glued it on
6. Make scarf from some scrap material – fold it over, glue it down then create tassles. Tie it around the neck in your favorite position – you may need to glue it down a bit
7. Using floral wire, make a decorative trim to the hat – wrap it around and tie it off, crunching up the ends. This will give it some flare and also a place for you to add your ornament hook
8. Rub a regular glue stick around the base of the snowman then roll him in some clear sparkles

How to make a snowman ornament from a light bulb