Beer prices in Pretoria pubs

Recently, the South African Minister of Finance added more tax to cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Usually pub owners misuse this as an excuse to push up the price of their drinks. I am compiling a list of the current price of Windhoek Lager at pubs and restaurants I visit (and will use the info from others as they pass it on to me). Currently (28 Feb 09), Windhoek Lager bottles are on special at R109 for 24 (R4.50 per bottle) at Makro. The normal price is about R125 for 24 (R5.21 per bottle).

Pub	Location	Price	Date
Col'Cacchio	Brooklyn	R16.00	18/01/10
Crystal	Hatfield	R16.00	29/03/10
Geet	Brooklyn	R16.00	25/08/09
Ogalito's	Brooklyn	R16.00	09/03/09
Pachas	Hazelwood	R15.50	23/11/09
Burgandy's	Brooklyn	R15.00	21/01/10
Greek Easy	Brooklyn	R15.00	28/09/09
Kream	Brooklyn	R15.00	26/10/09
Piccola Italia	Monument Park	R15.00	04/03/09
Herr Günther's	Hatfield	R14.50	24/06/09
Oxford English Pub	Hatfield	R14.50	11/12/09
Trademarx	Loftus	R14.50	10/07/09
Adega	Brooklyn	R14.00	01/03/10
BOERgeoisie	Menlo Park	R14.00	27/07/09
Burgandy's	Tukkies	R14.00	26/06/09
Livingstone's	Hatfield	R14.00	27/02/09
Oppieplaas	Waverley	R14.00	18/09/09
Fringes	CSIR	R13.50	07/04/10
Springbok Bar	Hatfield	R13.50	24/06/09
The Corner Cafe	Monument Park	R13.50	10/07/09
Aandklas	Hatfield	R13.00	24/06/09
Achilles	Tukkies	R13.00	25/11/09
Coco Bistro	Erasmuskloof	R13.00	07/03/09
McLarin's	Kilner Park	R13.00	09/03/10
Brooklyn Bowling Club	Brooklyn	R12.00	15/06/10
Pikkies	Prinshof	R12.00	14/09/09
Queen's Cafe	Queenswood	R12.00	22/07/09
Roman's Pizza	Hatfield	R11.95	02/02/10
Cactus Creek	Hazelwood (closed)	R11.90	26/02/09
La Pat	Tukkies (closed)	R11.90	30/06/09
Coffee Buzz	Tukkies	R11.00	25/06/09
Hunter's Grill	Silverton	R11.00	25/11/09
Harlequins	Groenkloof	R10.50	18/06/10
Oom Gert se Plek	Tukkies	R10.50	04/02/10
Picasso's	Villeria	R10.50	12/01/10
Toutrekpark	Villeria	R8.50	07/05/10

Current Makro price (15/05/10): R114.95/24 (R4.79 per bottle).

Herr Günther's was not allowed to sell Windhoek Lager when we visited the pub. SAB is their major sponsor, and for the duration of the soccer FedCup in South Africa, they were only allowed to sell SAB beers. The barman was kind enough to give me their price on Windhoek Lager though.

Trademarx has become the first to increase prices (R13.50 to R14.50), citing the recession as a source. However, the price of Windhoek Lager at Makro has not changed, so the price increase has probably more to do with them having to shut down during the soccer FedCup.

Blacklisted

• Hunter's Grill: live music (venue too small for amplified music)
• Livingstone's: disagreement with management (obnoxious) about loud music
  
• Pikkies: loading the bill

UPDATE
Establishments in red in the table have recently increased their prices. These will now be updated in a new blog.

I hate flash

This goes back a long way, when one used to hit a flash site and it hogged the download, even if you didn't have the flash player installed. But, what seems to be happening more and more these days is that Web developers are building flash-only sites: ie, sites which rely on flash for everything, including the navigation, with no html alternative. This irritates me even more than the flash script hogging the whole download. I still refuse to install flash, and have even installed the Firefox flashblock extension. For the past ten years, I regularly get told, "you're behind the times, just install flash". However, that only makes me more adamant that I don't need it.

What I'm pleased to find is that I am not alone out there. Googling the phrase "I hate flash" comes back with almost 20k hits (153k: 12/9/09), the most eloquent being this one.

This is a collection of flash-only sites that I have found:

Telkom SA's do broadband (lost a potential customer for adsl)
Sinotech SA (not that I'd buy any of their products, just wanted to look at what's available)
Wyckedd Foods (I like their products, and have a printed list, so don't need their site)
MNA Brewing (Text based, but uses flash navigation only)
Spengler Medical Equipment
Amalgamated Appliances (see my Russell Hobbs rant)
Subaru SA
Legacy Hotels
Scribd documents, for instance Linux starter pack
Wodim (I was looking for info on the wodim cd burning app when I came across this site).
Ekuthuleni Lodge
Crumpler camera bags
Kuswag Hoërskool

I have deliberately not included photography sites - there are a myriad of those too.

I recently purchased a Samsung NC10 netbook, and was horrified to find that the online user manual (the only manual available) was a flash app. Fortunately, I could figure my way around fairly easily as I dumped windows in favour of Ubuntu, and there's plenty of help for that out there!

Another reason for avoiding flash from PC Pro Magazine
"Mozilla is kicking off with reminders to upgrade Adobe Flash Player, which has been held responsible for a series of malware attacks."