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If you are heading to Durban, you will also find some of the big wave surf spots around South Africa here. Vetch’s Reef, Addington, Treasure Beach, Brighton, Cave Rock and the Ranch are a few of the good spots in this area. There are many other spots that any surfer would love to be riding the waves, but Cape Town is best place for you to be if you want good waves and ample ocean! Surfing is indeed one of the most dangerous sports there are; from the tsunami-like waves in some places to the dangers of sharing the water with sharks – but then again, that is the thrill of riding the waves!

On some days the waves are massive while on other days the surf is flat; it all depends on the current swell conditions. One area might be cooking while the very next break there is nothing; this is why you just have to keep looking. Some spots have nice waves all the time because of their location, so you will just have to look around at the big wave surf spots around South Africa and determine which waves you wouldn’t mind riding.

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As one of the most dangerous sports big wave surfing in South Africa only attracts particular types of surfers, and not everyone is keen to be caught in the swell of a giant wave. Most long boarders can be seen on the more gentle beaches of Muizenberg, that allow beginners the opportunity to spend some time on the ocean before they challenge the big waves. Short boarders can be found on beaches like Llandudno and Long Beach where there is quite a bit of space for them to ride the waves around the beautiful beach coves created by the monumental rocks.

The ocean is a place that has earned the respect of many surfers, and riding the waves is not something that every person is cut out to do. It requires a particular mind-set and strength of both upper and lower body, and a form of reverence for the waves and their power. This reverence is most clear at sites like Dungeons, where they can go to be in awe of its natural power and force. This element of the culture is probably what attracts many spectators to big wave surfing in South Africa.

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Luggage – Travel light. Criminals can spot tourists from miles away and generally when on holiday most of us tend to be a little vulnerable as we relax and let our guards down. There are many opportunities for thieves to steal expensive luggage and they do, a lot. Travel with only your essential needs whenever possible.

Image – Dress Plainly. Try not to wear expensive clothing and particularly not expensive jewellery. Thieves are often on the look-out for what they can grab and sell in their local areas to others. Avoid wearing flashy jackets, boots, sneakers etc. If you are staying in a hotel then they should provide safes for any of your valuables.

Carry credit cards rather than cash.

Carry a verified copy of your passport instead of having the original with you wherever you go.

Remain alert when you are in streets or roads where there is quite a bit of activity. You almost need eyes in the back of your head in busy streets. Make sure wallets, purses or handbags are not loosely hung over your arm or hanging or sticking out of pockets and bags making them easy for a criminal to grab and run.

When driving on the South African roads, pay attention to all speed limits, be careful when pulling away from the traffic lights (Robots as they are called here) as many accidents happen due to people jumping the red light. If you are driving long distance be aware that distances between petrol stations can exceed 300 Kilometres. Make sure you wear your seat belts, never pick up hitchhikers and be extra aware when pulling up at traffic lights of the people around outside. In the absolute unfortunate event that you are hijacked, do not try and struggle or be a hero, simply co-operate with the criminals and keep yours and your families or friends safety in mind as priority. Let them get away with ANY belongings they may take.

Do not stop to rest, eat or relieve yourself at the side of the road when travelling long distance, find a garage preferrably with proper bathrooms and rest areas.

When driving on the highways and roads under bridges, be on the lookout for people on the bridge above. There have been many rock throwing incidents reported over time. Also, if anything hits your car while you are driving such as chippings or whatever else and you are in a strange looking or dodgy looking area, DO NOT stop. Even if your tyres have burst, keep driving to the nearest safe place such as a garage. Rather ruin the car than lose your life.

Always travel with a cellphone and in the event that you do break down on the road, phone somebody you know immediately letting them know your location.

Never use the public transport on your own as a tourist and particularly try to avoid travel by train unless it is an organised package deal with a group.

Do not enter locations or townships by yourself or with a friend for any reason. The only time it is relatively safe to enter a township is when you are part of a guided tour. Personally I do not agree with these tours but that’s my opinion, they are regarded safe by many tour operators.

I’m sure there is a lot more advice and information to help those visiting South Africa to be safe. These are just my few thoughts and with the FIFA soccer world cup being held in the country in 2010 I thought it would be an idea to put together some useful and practical tips for tourists visiting this beautiful land that hopefully can be made use of.

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Besides that, it is even harder to stop someone then switching to using their mobile phone!!

So how do you restrict access to the Twitter and Facebook social networking platforms in order to get employees to focus on the work they are being paid for instead of poking, tweeting, gorping over hottie of the day or chatting to friends? Good question, one I do not have the answer to but if I did I could probably make quite a bit of money with it! In the past I have believed that an employee needs to be given a certain dose of freedom in order to keep them happy and I truly believe that a happy worker is a productive worker. But a line somehow needs to be drawn with something like this as unless an employer is watching over a workers shoulder all day it is really hard to control.

Some companies of course use these social networking platforms to market and maintain business. This just makes it even more of a dilema for companies doing this to control how much time is spent using the applications for actual work reasons and how much is personal. Many organisations in South Africa are absolutely fine with workers using these applications as and when they please and make no effort in trying to block Facebook or Twitter. Some try to block access to music downloading sites such as iTunes and certain dating websites. Others put measures in place to block an employees access to YouTube.

You may well be wondering what my point is or where this article is going and the truth is there is no point and it is going nowhere. I was just sitting down with a cup of coffee today and thinking about how these social networking websites are affecting businesses in SA and thinking it would be interesting to know how many companies block employees from using Facebook, Twitter and other applications. If you have any thoughts on this topic, feel free to comment below as usual, if you came here looking for a genuine way to unblock Facebook or Twitter, don’t ask me!

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Here is a link to the actual form but in case you can’t open the pdf file, it is MVR-3, an acronym for Motor Vehicle Report #3.
http://www.ncdot.org/dmv/forms/vehicleregistration/download/mvr3.pdf

If the towing company cannot show this form, they’ll tell you the form number…but if the towing company can’t produce this document, they CANNOT take your vehicle. You can then call the local police and ask them to come and intervene. Sometimes local police won’t because one they couldn’t be bothered with this, and two they sometimes err on the side of the bank if you haven’t made your payments and try to tell you just to give the car up.

Personally I would call the DMW, and ask for the Law Enforcement Division, or Theft and ask for an officer to come out to your home, that someone is trying to illegally take your car. Most of the time, and this is all the DMV officers do most of the time, is enforce that proper documentation is provided before a vehicle is repossessed.

I had a vehicle towed, towing company WOULD NOT give me the vehicle back even tho they weren’t provided with this form by the bank. The bank didn’t have a right to take the vehicle as it wasn’t registered by them as a title lien holder (which I might add, a LOT of banks or finance companies FORGET to do this paperwork, they must register as a title lien holder with the state your vehicle is registered in). So check with your local DMV office to see who is on your title as a lien holder first to see where you stand.

That arm yourself with that information and ask for authority. These Enforcement guys at the DMV believe it or not have MORE jurisdiction over the local Sheriff or police…they have STATE jurisdiction so it doesn’t matter that your car was taken in Iredell County and is now in Mecklenburg, these guys can cross county lines and enforce their laws are being followed. I got my car back…but I tell you…they were about to charge the owner and all the employees with car theft if they didn’t open the gates and drive my car out of their secured lot and it took almost 4 hours to get them to do that…the towing company just wasn’t going to do it till they got the okay from Capital One and Capital One wasn’t going to give permission.

I actually heard a conference call with the Director of lending with Capital One and the NC DMV, telling this Director that he couldn’t do what he did, he broke the law. Capital One actually asked the DMV Officer to take my car and hold it somewhere while they get this paperwork, he said he can’t do that. That they did an unlawful repo and MUST give the car back. That once they have the appropriate information and form, they can go get the vehicle then.

So check with your local DMV and check your title and make sure all is okay. Even one figure off on your title registration and you might be okay even if you fell behind in payments. Their loss is their stupidity but it’s better you hold the upper hand than them, then you can negotiate with them. The fees Capital One charges is awful, it’s highway robbery…no wonder people can’t make their payments, they fall behind and get zinged with fees, etc that they couldn’t afford BEFORE they fell behind…it’s a monopoly and quite frankly, it’s about time these finance companies got zinged back for all the fat bonuses they’ve been making off of the people they shouldn’t have given credit to begin with but they were too greedy.

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The band members of The Script include Danny O’Donoghue (lead vocals and keyboard), Mark Sheehan (guitar and vocals) and Glen Power (drums and vocals) and they are all really talented musicians with excellent voices. The only CD available from them at time of writing is their debut album, aptly named “The Script”.

‘Breakeven’ – With Lyrics:

March 2009 will see them release their next single ‘Talk You Down’ which is destined to become another hit in my humble opinion after listening to the track on YouTube. They’re signed to the RCA label and in December 2008 were confirmed to be supporting Take That at their up-coming concert at Croke Park Stadium in Ireland in June 2009. I reckon this band is much better than Take That, again, my opinion, and likely to blow them away at that concert. I would pay for a ticket just to see The Script perform in that stadium and go home when Take That get on stage.

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Is anybody else using this at the moment? I know it is by invite only that you can do this so I would imagine Google have only just got around to inviting South Africans but it would be great to hear from another publisher/s that has been tracking this.

From what I have read this will allow us to track a lot more detailed information on the type of visitors that are clicking on ads and on which ads they are clicking etc etc. At this stage I do not know enough about it but am looking forward to seeing the results and hopefully using the information to further tweak things and increase the online earnings a bit.

To be completely honest I think I sometimes get way to wrapped up in statistics when it comes to making money on the web and tracking things etc and can easily spend half the day analysing when I should be researching and pumping out the content. In the same breath it is important to analyse somewhat and know what is working and what isn’t and I am definitely looking forward to seeing some more detailed information about which of my AdSense formats are pulling in the cash, from exactly which pages, topics and visitor types.

If you have had experience with the integration of your Google Adsense stats in your Analytics account please leave a comment and share your experience so far, would be great to hear how it’s helped you.

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Anyway, I read many articles written by successful online entrepreneurs on how you need to choose a niche market that you are passionate about when it comes to earning any decent cash on the web. So if you are a cyclist, then you create your own site on cycling and constantly write articles related to that sport. Over time, visitors increase and you can then look at ways of monetising that traffic to earn the most money possible from your cycling website.

But what if your only passion in life is something like catching butterflies?!!

Exactly how much money are you going to make with a website about catching butterflies? Let me answer that…. Very little, probably none.

So although I can understand the thinking behind creating a website only on a topic you are interested in and passionate about it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for people that are into less popular interests and things in life.

My advice if you are serious about a proper Internet income is.. bugger that!
Unless your passion in life is an extremely popular topic on the Internet then don’t write on your passion but on something that is going to earn you some real money online and not waste your precious time. There are many niche topics on the web to research and choose from that will bring in large amounts of visitors and give you many options when it comes to the actual monetising of your website.

Take Insurance for example, highly popular topic and frequently searched in all the major search engines. If you created a website on this and could get a good ranking in the search engines (that’s for other posts) you would be off to a flying start. Of course, most people are not passionate about insurance at all and it would become very difficult to keep writing articles on this for years to come but who says YOU have to?

Once your website is getting traffic and you are earning a small, steady income from it on a program like google AdSense then find someone willing to write good content for you and pay them. From there you are simply building on the foundation that’s been laid. Over time your earnings are going to increase significantly and you can afford to pay a few more people to write for you. Or better still, find more popular niche topics, create new websites around them and build your empire.

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So whether you are viewing in 800×600, 1024×768 or whatever else, the site will try to adjust accordingly. Problem with this is that you get very unpredictable results and never really know exactly how your website is looking on other people’s systems. I couldn’t trust that anymore so decided to upgrade my site and chose a money making WordPress theme with a ‘fixed width’ instead which gives me the peace of mind that my site now looks the same for everyone.

I like this new theme, I have modified it a lot as it had a green colour scheme before which I wasn’t keen on and I’m happy with the blue, grey and black. It’s incredible to see just how many WordPress themes are available these days, those of us who use WP are spoilt for choice!!

The other new addition is the ‘Peel Away Ad’ in the top left hand corner of the site. I have heard great things about using this kind of model to help make money through advertising on a website so I thought I would implement it and give it a try. What I really like about this is it sort of grabs the visitors curiosity with the little animated corner gently swaying to attract attention.

When a visitor runs their mouse over the small corner it “peels away” displaying an advert which according to statistics and tests I have been reading offers a very high Click Through Rate (CTR). This is an un-obtrusive method of advertising on a site and much better than annoying pop-ups and other kinds of flash animated advertising models often used.

The potential of making money with this kind of advertising on your website is large in my opinion. You can use the space to advertise various affiliate products and services or offer to rent out the space on a monthly basis to companies that may wish to advertise with you. Personally for the moment I have opted to use it for promoting the excellent affiliate program Affiliate Window. This may change in future but I’m leaving it for now.

Want one for your site? Get Peel Away Ads Here

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