Mugabe declares himself President for Life

An interesting snippet of news from the UK Independent:-

Robert Mugabe has effectively appointed himself as President-for-life in Zimbabwe after extending his present term by two years until 2010. The ruling Zanu PF party will this week endorse a controversial amendment that would maintain the 82-year-old's grip on power and prolong his country's status as an international pariah. Mr Mugabe has already given his assent for the presidential poll - currently scheduled for March 2008 - to be "harmonised" with the parliamentary elections in 2010. His cabinet, the Politburo, has already agreed, making a necessary resolution at the party's annual conference this weekend a mere formality. The proposal has also been adopted by eight of the ruling party's 10 provincial executives. The extension will take Mr Mugabe's rule up to 30 years, and put him among the select few of Africa's longest-serving despots - while scotching earlier hopes that he would step down in 2008 in order to concentrate on writing his memoirs. Under the leadership of the former school teacher, Zimbabwe has suffered a precipitous slide in living standards, life expectancy and economic output that has rooted the country at the bottom of global quality-of-life indices.

Given Zimbabwe's political, social and economic decline whilst under the rule of Mugabe, isn't it madness for us Zimbabweans to just stand by and let this happen?

Stunning views

On Saturday 4th March we went walking/climbing for the afternoon. The weather was absolutely terrible - very unusual for Zimbabwe. Wet and windy, but what a lovely day it turned out to be. Our bush, hills and countryside are just so beautiful, it is hard to resist going out there, even with the fuel shortages. We initially intended to go to Domboshawa (Domboshava) but because it was so wet we thought the rocks would be too slippery. So we went out towards Ngomo Kurera, down the Domboshava Road and turned off after about 30km. We spent a lovely three hours wondering around the countryside. This is communal land so we came across quite a few people. The children were so happy and friendly which is great to see. There were some good mealie crops and lovely fresh tomotoes were being sold. A lot of the children spend their time guarding the crops from baboons, a real pest in that area. We climbed to the top of one of the gomos and having had some light refreshments proceeded to cross a small river then round the waterfall. After that we got lost but quite a few people in our party spoke Shona (the local language) so we were able to ask some of the farmers for directions back to the police station where we had left our vehicles. We had a visitor from Canada with us as well as a lady from Zambia and one from the UK, and they had a fantastic time and remarked how friendly the people were. Enjoy the pictures!

The Place for Templates

There has been a lot of negativity in the industry with regards to the use of templates in web design. Critics claim a lack of creativity and churning out of hundreds of similar sites. However, I have found that it is often much more cost effective to purchase a template rather than start the design of a site from scratch. This can save you hours in time and reduce the overall cost of building the site - which makes your clients happy! This is particularly so in the case of small static HTML sites.

Some template sites that I have found useful are www.webdesignhelper.co.uk and www.webpagedesign.com.au for good quality photoshop templates. On both you can purchase a good number of templates for a small fee. One of our sites on which we utilised a template was www.chinangasafaris.com. It's a small HTML site and took a day or two to put together once I had received all the images from the client, who was on a tight budget and short timeframe.

Whilst I'm happy to use templates for smaller sites, there are a large majority of clients who have particular design requirements and who want something unique. In this case, a template will not do and you will have to spend many hours brainstorming with your teams to come up with a suitable "look and feel"!