The tank was just delivered to our home. Sadly I am in Stellenbosch and cannot do anything until I get back.

I have invested more in photographic equipment than most people do in their cars - 90% of which are Canon equipment. I also own two 580EX flash guns and one 550EX flash. I use them interchangeably when I do wedding shoots. Recently I needed to use them in a master/slave wireless configuration, just to discover they did not fire...

So I started testing them intensely - just to realise they never worked in wireless mode. The master just do not want to trigger the slave. Eventually I decided to take them to Canon for repairs. After a week Canon told me they could not resolve the issue since the cannot fix the flash gun. Since it is out of warranty, they also cannot replace it. Bummer.

It was then when I went back to my retailer - Cats Digital in Sandton - and asked for help. Diraj quickly phoned Canon's marketing director and within 1 hour it was sorted. I went to Canon and picked up two brand new 580EX flash units in return for my old ones. No paperwork - no costs.

I urge anyone who reads this and understands the reason why, to please post a comment and enlighten me too. Why are all imported books in South Africa always at least 15 * the dollar amount? Currently the exchange rate is $1 = R6.66. For the past year the R-$ had been between R5.50 to R6.90 to the $.

Why on earth does a book that cost $19.77 on Amazon, cost R303 in South Africa? $19.77 = R131. Even adding shipping and customs etc. should not add up to R303!!! It is a small book - not heavy, not large. How much can shipping costs be?

Look here:

.NET Allows you to quickly write slow applications.

I was about to install Norton Antivirus 2006 from my Acer install CD when the software prompted me after I clicked on "Install Norton Antivirus": "Are you sure you want to install this module?" I mean come on! It does not even show the name of the module so what use is a message requesting confirmation of something you just instructed it to do, if it provides no useful decision making information?