Rugby is one of those games that you can like even if you’ve never seen it before and you don’t understand the rules.  Currently the Tri Nations Rugby are in full swing and this afternoon South Africa vs. Australia.

The reason I say anyone can like it is simple. It’s action packed, fast paced and brutal.  Everyone likes this, male and female alike.  The players are in top shape. They’re fit, they’re large and they’re often good looking with ridiculously cool hair (except the front row, why are they often bald?).  Men and woman alike find this attractive, sometimes, but not always, for different reasons.

Anyway, last weekend the Springboks (how the South Africans are known) narrowly beat the All Blacks (aka New Zealand).  The victory was in fact much bigger than the mere 2 points difference in the score, because up until last weekend the All Blacks had prevented the Springboks from winning on the grounds they played at for the last 85 years. For 85 years the Springboks couldn’t win on this ground.

LIttle surprise really, because the crowd was entirely dressed in black.  The Springboks scored a try and you could hear a pin drop, when they kicked for goal the boo’s must have made the ball and posts vibrate.  It was so anti-Springbok that I’m sure Percy Montgomery’s hair lost volume when he ran onto the field.

But, in spite of these it-looks-like-the-boks-can-never-win circumstances, a rugby game the likes of which I haven’t seen in decades ensued, and the Sprinboks triumphed by two points.  Two huge, in-your-face-sit-on-this-all-blacks points. Ha.

Of course, we lost in the ugliest game I’ve ever seen the weekend before, but we won’t talk about that.

Swiftly moving on: in a few hours, 5 to be exact, the Springboks will play against the Wallabies (Australia).  It will be a tough game, because prior to the All Blacks showing the Springboks that they’re not unbeatable two weekends ago, the strong contenders were thought to be South Africa and Australia.

I’m watching the game, but I’m a place where almost everybody is Australian.  During the two previous games, which I watched with friends, I was fairly excitable and vocal, so I’m going to have to contain myself if I watch this game in a public place.

Anyway, if you’re in to rugby and even if you’re not, make sure you find yourself a spot where you can watch South Africa play against Australia this afternoon in the third game of Tri Nations Rugby Tournament.  The game takes place at 10am GMT.  They’re actually playing in Perth, but that’s a handy reference for you.

Updates, beaten(up) or not, will follow after.  Perhaps not immediately after, but soon after.

Update 080720 - I don’t want to talk about it. The Bokke lost, ok?

Fine, I’m talking about it. Never mind the fact that all the places around here said that the game was on at 8pm and I ended up missing half of it, but wow - half of Perth is South African and the Boks couldn’t win.  Last weekend, in a literally all black crowd with not one cheer for the Boks, they won. Yesterday, they didn’t.

I looked for a place where to watch the game and all the boards said 8pm.  I double checked with the staff from the one restaurant and they said yeah, the Aussie League Games will be showing at 6pm, so they’re showing SA vs. AU at 8pm. Fine.

I strolled a long way down the beach and had myself a sunset beer, only to discover the game on a big-screen in a restaurant neer the beach.  Mother…  But having missed half the game already I thought it better to go back and watch the re-broadcast.

As I got back and walked past those restaurant though, they had all changed their boards to 6pm.  Mother…

So I watch the last 30 minutes of the game, but what a disaster.  It reminded me of the first game against the All Blacks. As if they were playing this team (and rugby) for the first time. Fumbles, bad passes, omg.  The only saving grace is the Boks’ defence, which is so great because their attack is so poor - they get lots of opportunity to practise their defense.

Anyway, the Tri Nations Scoreboard looks like this: Springsboks played 3 lost 2. New Zealand played 2 lost 1. Australia played 1 won 1.

I think I see a loser emerging.

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I love it when I log into my WordPress admin area and it tells me that  a new WordPress is available. I love upgrades. Yes, really.  On this occasion, however, I lost the battle when I came face to face with the Wordpress 2.6 Upgrade and a 404 Error.

First it’s very important to note that in WordPress’s 3 Step Upgrade Guide, there is in fact a Step 0. Step 0 reminds you, and wisely so, to back-up your WordPress install, because as good as the WordPress community is, they are all still human.  So if a bug in the code sneaks in or you’re trying to cyber while you upgrade and not paying attention, then a back-up is a very handy fall-back for if your site falls down.

Moving on - last night I downloaded the new Wordpress 2.6 with trembling hands, anticipating the new features, the improved speed and that new software smell.  I followed the instructions for the upgrade (backup, delete & upload, click upgrade) and after I did something nice for myself, when I logged back into 1earthadventures, everything seemed fine.

But then I noticed in my Feedjit that somebody had landed on a 404 error page, which shouldn’t happen.  As I clicked on a single post, before it even loaded, the title turned to “Oops!” that signified the serving of a 404 error page.  Turns out that all my single posts under Wordpress 2.6 were inaccessible and got a 404 error page instead.

As my main page worked, the obvious error was with the URIs and at first I thought perhaps my fancy URIs were turned off by mistake.  Checking the settings in the admin area, this was proven to be false.  I checked my .htaccess file just to make sure none of the conditions in there where accidentally erased, but that too was untouched.

Next I turned to Google and said a prayer, which was answered in the form of several WordPress forum posts.  But alas, the Wordpress 2.6 upgrade had only been release a few hours prior and the only help the forums proved to be was to show me that I wasn’t the only one having this 404 error problem.

A moment ago I searched for this again and stumbled across this bug report, which outlines the problem.  In essense, for those of us who use index.php in the URI, this problem will persist until they fix it, or until you fiddle with your code and temporarily fix it yourself (read that bug report for what to do).

The problem has been escalated and is now considered critical and is destined for Wordpress 2.6.1. Obviously it will affect a lot of bloggers, so lets hope everybody backs up first. But it should, as far as I understand it, only affect those of us who use index.php in our URIs.

In the meantime, I’ll figure out to get rid of index.php in my URI without screwing up all my links in the search engines.  In one of the posts the moderator said that if you’re hosted on Unix/Linux, then you really shouldn’t need to index.php in the URI - as that work-around came about for the benefit of those hosted on Windows IIS.

I’ll explore that and hopefully I can beat the Wordpress 2.6 Upgrade and 404 Error dilema before the 2.6.1. fix.

Update 080717 - Wordpress 2.6 404 Error Fix/Solution

Thanks to the feedback from amy-wong.com and Kerry Webster, I’ve solved my 404 Error issues.  First I went into my WordPress settings and in the custom URI I simply removed “index.php” from the string.

I can’t remember why I chose to have index.php in the first place, but I didn’t want to remove it because I thought my links from other websites and in search engines wouldn’t work.  But as Amy Wong confirmed, the links still work as they simply direct themselves to the new URI sans index.php.  I tried this in my 2.5 install first to test it, before I upgraded - because that pesky “index.php” is what broke my 2.6 install.

Oh, the trick above apparently is guaranteed to work if your site is hosted on an Apache server (on Linux), but if you’re hosted on Microsoft’s IIS you might have problems - as index.php was left in there for the poor people on IIS.  Kerry Webster created this work around, but Kerry, I suspect, is a server admin, so you might not have the access required for this stunt and I’m not entirely sure your host will be keen to try it.

Anyway, after that, I once again installed WordPress 2.6 and *tada*, it worked like it should. No more 404 Errors.  So yay! for upgrades! Yes, it bombed at first, but the upside is not only do I have a fresh release of WordPress, but also much tidier URIs.

Rock on, WordPress!

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6 months ago to the day, I wrote an update about 1Borneo, Kota Kinabalu’s largest leisure and lifestyle hyper mall.

Half a year later 1 Borneo has 1 month of official operation behind it. This is 1Borneo Hyper Mall 6 months later.

Initial Events

The official soft launch took place on the 7th of last month and a string of events followed.  There was the big launch on the 8th, which the CM, Mayor and various other luminaries attended.

On the same day a selection of Hong Kong celebrities made an appearance to much fan fare.  My personal favourite was the fashion show staring Warisan Square / 1 Borneo’s Brand / Style Ambassador, Amber Chia, supported by a slew of other beauties and cool people.

The KK Jazz festival also made an appearance, although I can’t imagine that they walked away with as much funds as they did last year when it was held at Jessleton Point.  But rumours (first of many) had it that they made a bundle when 1Borneo actually paid them to host it there.

The Jazz Festival was also slated to take place in Gourmet Avenue, but the venue wasn’t quite ready, so it was hosted in the Central Atrium instead.  The nett result of this was that everybody who showed up to buy a ticket at the door, likely didn’t buy a ticket, as they had free access to the performances from the perimeter. The said perimeter was removed halfway through the show and all had access to seats.

Acoustics in the Central Atrium isn’t exactly conducive to this kind of event, but sitting in front of stage apparently created a sweet spot.

Disasters: Rumoured and otherwise

Shortly after the opening of 1Borneo, KK had a huge downpour of rain.  Supposedly the road running past 1Borneo promptly flooded and shortly after the cars parked on the shoulder of the road were partly submerged.  Of course, if this rumour is true I feel nothing for those car owners, because what were they doing parking there in the first place? But did this really happen in spite of a directive to improve the drainage issue way back in 2006?

The basement car park at 1Borneo also flooded (how bad depends on who you believe) and this led to some other nasty rumours.  Suddenly allegations circulated of water running down the String Ray Roof (the yellow monstrosity outside the front entrance), inside the mall and down the escalator where, said the rumour, an explosion or so occurred.

Other stories went around that the construction was dodgy, that part of the roof collapsed, that the structure in general was unsound and that there were muggings and car break-ins that the management didn’t report.  Rumours, of course, but KK loves rumours (think petrol kiosk closure) and it got bad enough for 1 Borneo to hold a press conference to dispell those rumours.

Official 1Borneo Website

In the meantime, 1Borneo seems to be having trouble with their online precense.  1Borneo.com, 1Borneo.net and 1Borneo.org are all the same company, but 1Borneo.com is independently maintained from .net and .org (which seem to point to each other).  1Borneo is neither a network nor an non-profit organisation, so why bother with .org and .net.

And they completely missed out on 1borneo.com.my and 1borneo.my, so if you’re quick you can still grab it (I would). And they missed out out on oneborneo.com, something I would have considered.

And I’m not sure what it looks like on your system, but through Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04 the flash intro (why, why, why?) on their website is so small I can hardly read the text. Luckily Firefox 3 has this cool absolute zoom function, so you can zoom right in without loosing any formatting.

When they’re done with the mall, the website needs some love.

Traffic Problems

It could be because of the hysteria of a new destination, or perhaps it’s just that all the inconsiderate drivers in KK share an interest in 1 Borneo, but whatever the reason, over weekends 1 Borneo traffic is a mess (I can’t say what goes on during the week though, anybody?).

Punters park on the highway that zooms past the hyper mall, on both sides, and sometimes double.  The signs that say Strictly no parking mean as much as the gravel on the road next to it on which people park regardless.  Traffic slows to a crawl as other people look for more parking on the road and tempers flare as others just want to pass.

When you actually make it onto the 1 Borneo property, there’s a few choices of parking locations.  You can either park outside along the building’s border, in the basement, or on the 2nd / 3rd floors if you go up the ramp next near Tune Hotel.

Parking outside usually fills up first.  It seems people think this parking is the easiest to get in and out of.  Parking on the 2nd and 3rd floors also fill up quickly, but this is because there’s not all that much to start with.

The design of the parking is such that once the parking is full, cars go around in an infinite loop.  More people come up the ramp and nobody wants to go down the ramp and admit parking defeat.  The three or so times I got caught in this situation, the traffic soon locked up and nobody could move, until the security guards finally realised what was going on and started directing cars down the ramp again.

It seems people use the basement car park the least, even though this is where a lot of the parking is.  Perhaps it’s the flood rumours, which everyone must have heard.  I’m scared to park my car there too, just in case it’s submerged by the time I get back (nasty rumours, nasty).

Meanwhile, regardless of where you park, your car will likely be covered with a thin film us dust by the time you get back.  Construction is still ongoing.

The 1Borneo shuttle bus also made a good entry to the market and I was quite impressed by their efforts.  After all, they essentially fortified the public transport in Kota Kinabalu as they service a busy route.

But a few weekends ago when I tried to take the shuttle from Warisan to 1Borneo, I gave up waiting after 1 hour and 20 minutes.  It was a Sunday, there was traffic yes, but to wait an hour an 15 minutes for a service which is supposed to run every 30 minutes is beyond acceptable.  It was a nice dream though.

Shops stocked up

Once you get into 1Borneo things aren’t so bad. Apart from the fact that cellphone reception is a bit sketchy.  Or it was, but hopefully they’ve solved that by now. It’s not like Maxis can afford to disconnect any of their subscribers…

The chaos that reigned on opening day has died down a bit and now the people traffic is steady and easy.

During the Jazz Festival there were a few dissapointments though.  We left Dome because they were out of stock of too many items on their menu.  At Pizza Hut the veritable army of staff were at first not interested in our group of 8.  They too were out of stock of several items, and the store was filthy.  The floors looked like it hadn’t been mopped all day and dirty dishes, plates and jugs stood around on vacant tables and the kitchen counter.

We put it down to the exceptionally busy day that 1 Borneo had.

Earlier in the week I got a picture on email showing a fly inside a sushi plate that looked suspiciously a lot like the Sushi King at 1 Borneo.  Of course, those little stickers on the plastic cover are probably used at Sushi Kings all over, but it came with a pretty descriptive email.  I deleted it. Rumours I say, rumours.

Borneo is busy

Rumours, no rumours, like it or loathe it, one thing is certain: 1Borneo is busy.  And busy is good.  For 1Borneo it is.  And success comes with envy, especially if you tried the same thing and it didn’t work, then it’s so much easier to spread rumours. Or if you disgruntled by a new traffic jam in your neighbourhood. Apparently people start rumours because of those reasons too.

I personally think a 1Borneo was overdue for Kota Kinabalu, but I also think they could have put a little more thought into things like parking and traffic.

Seeing as they’re such a ground breaking development, it would have been nice to see them break KK’s evil parking trend and actually build more parking than the demand. Why build a mall you want to be successful, but fail to provide sufficient parking for your customers? And then with 1 measily u-turn to handle all your customers, you’re bound to piss them off and make it less likely that they will come back in future.

Isn’t that limiting your own potential?

Anyway, I look forward to when the parking is sorted out, the traffic is smooth flowing and we no longer have to drive two kilometres down the road to make a u-turn to get back on the road to town.

1Borneo has potential, let’s hope they’re able to release it.

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