Joe’s extended birthday news..

• Monday, we had a pre-GeekDinner to look at the next venue and a burger at Royale.
• The next GeekDinner will be on 31 July. See you there.
• Tuesday, had a burger at Da Vinci’s in Kloof Street with WSE. Try the Milan burger. Very yummy. Finally sorted out my trust documents now that I have closure.
• More Extreme ECDP training.
• Had my hair cut at Pink 23, 39 Roeland street, by a friend: Bianca, +27 21 461 1067, try it.
• Thursday morning, time with Mia. Shopping for new swimwear and shoes.
• Thursday afternoon, drove to Montagu with Anton. Had a nice dinner followed by a morning in the local hot springs.
• Friday was my 31st birthday. Had a fun party at Asoka. Thank you to everybody who showed up, phoned or emailed. Thanks for the gifts.
• Rainy Saturday, just chilling and reading.
• Discovered Cath’s blog.
• Sunday, brunch at Lazari’s in Gardens, watched Marie Antoinette, dinner in Stellenbosch.
• Dropped Anton off at the airport and then watched You only live twice.

Normally I would write a little thing about the upcoming geekdinner, but Jonathan Hitchcock said it better.

Hi,

The ancient Greeks thought that the rainbow was the messenger of the
gods, and named it “iris”. From this, we get the Iris flower (which
blooms in a variety of colours), and the iris in our eyes (which is
the coloured part). As happens in language, this word gave birth to a
daughter, “iridescent”, which means “brilliant, lustrous, or colourful
in appearance”.

The Iceplant, is, like, a sort of fig.

So, I’d like to announce the ninth Cape Town GeekDinner, named
Iridescent Iceplant, which will be held on Thursday the 31st of July,
at Da Capo Restaurant, in Green Market Square. I want to say that
it’s starting at 5:30, so that you tardy Capetonians will arrive at
6:30 for 7, because that’s when it’s really starting.

Those details are on the wiki page, where you can also see the logo
for this dinner, which should remind you of that time you saw Joseph
and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat:

http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Cape_Town_July_2008

Please sign up if you’re coming, and please remove yourself if you’re
not - the venue’s a little cosier than most, so seating will be
limited. Also, if you’ve got something interesting to talk about, let
us know, we always need talks. The page will be updated as we get
closer to the dinner.

Hoping to see you there,
Cheers,
-Jonathan

(This is a repost of my entry "Be sure to wear a flower in your hair" to the South African Tech Leader technology group blog.  My next post, What is a geek?, has just been posted there, if you want to read it before a week or two from now when I'll repost it here.)

It’s really hard to summarise the experience of a first visit to San Francisco, assuming you’re at least somewhat a technology geek. San Francisco (and by that, one generally means the San Francisco Bay Area) is modern technology’s birthplace and still its hometown.

Xerox PARC (as in Palo Alto Research Centre) either created or popularised implementations of modern computing aspects such as the mouse, laser printers, Ethernet, GUI/WIMP interfaces, Object-Oriented Programming with the Smalltalk programming language, and the Integrated Development Environment. The Bay Area is home to the headquarters of technology giants such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Yahoo!, as well as upstarts like Facebook, Mint.com, and SugarCRM. (And SynthaSite, of course.)

At times during my visit the technology industry seemed entirely pervasive — whether it was randomly walking past three people in the street arguing the merits of various memory allocation techniques (I kid you not) or hearing that one of your colleagues just moved into the apartment the CEO of a popular social media startup just moved out of. It is hard not to let your imagination loose with the idea of what can be achieved here, especially after seeing over 3000 developers, a large portion of them probably local to the area and most certainly at least as geeky as I am, at Google’s I/O conference. (I posted quite extensively about my Google I/O trip on my personal blog, if you want to check it out.)

If I sound a bit in love, it’s because I am. I challenge anyone in our industry to somehow not be a little in love with the vibe and pace and sense of belonging you will find in San Francisco. But this isn’t really about technology in San Francisco — it’s about it in South Africa.

Romance novels suggest that sometimes you need to discover (or be reminded of) what is out there to realise quite what you have, that while you find that there’s a lot of prettiness out there, you will also discover that there have been and always will be many and unassailable reasons for you being with the one you’re with.

I needed that a bit with South Africa. I’ve always wanted to be here for the long run, but it has been hard not to get worn down little by little over the past few years by the scarcity of interesting highly-skilled work and the similar scarcity of ambition in South African technology companies. Now, I have an updated and more accurate idea of what is out there, and while South Africa does fair poorly in some comparisons, there are other, more important, aspects to take into consideration. And those mean that leaving it to find some technology heaven elsewhere sounds like a bad swap.

And it’s not like you have to be in San Francisco to wear a flower in your hair — you can experience and help create your own slice of the San Franciscan vibe wherever you are. All it really takes is creating or finding a workplace you can be passionate about using technologies you’re passionate about with people who share that passion (am I saying “passion” enough?), and finding and building a community of similarly technology obsessed people who can help you, and who you can help, and to make you feel like you’re not alone (and who you can make dinner conversation with without resorting to the weather).

I lucked out on the first one — at SynthaSite I have an ambitious company that knows how to treat their employees well, great colleagues, and challenging work — and a pantry full of snacks, lunches materialising daily at my desk, games consoles, and 40-inch TVs. And there are at least a few similarly-enlightened workplaces around, and more can be created.

I already know a number of geeks who’d give a good argument on the merits of various memory allocation techniques. It takes work, but through efforts like GeekDinner and StarCamp, we come to know more, and different, people and benefit from that meeting as they introduce us to new perspectives and, hopefully, shake our preconceptions. And not only come to know people, but also come to know more about our trade through presentations and less formal conversations sparked by an interest that perhaps we didn’t know we had before others introduced the topic.

While it is easy to moan about the lacks we have here, it seems that by our attitudes and our actions we can create an ever-increasing slice of that seemingly far-away vibe. As we kick off planning for the next StarCamp in Cape Town, and a national web technology conference, I’m hoping we will find positive attitudes and actions in finding co-organisers, presenters, sponsors, and venues.

We had our second Johannesburg GeekDinner yesterday. We're keeping it small until we build a dedicated team/community, so it was more of a GeekLunch. Unfortunately, I missed Yusuf's talk, on why CSS is rubbish, due to a mistimed afternoon nap, but Tristan's on per-user app DBs for scalability was certainly an interesting challenge to the status quo, and his knowledge certainly carried him through his last minute volunteering. I did some live demoing of 0wning a browser with XSS Proxy. We got some serious geek all over the place, which was great, and I think this will grow into something good. Shehnaaz's hand made (from scratch) pizza's were amazing, and she was a gracious host along with Yusuf. The next one has been planned, but we're keeping it invite only until we have it more stable, thanks to nVent for volunteering.

I attended my first GeekDinner (the second one in JHB) this weekend. It was more of a "GeekLunch", starting at 14:00 in the afternoon, although some people hung around until late that night. The venue was Yusuf's house, with his wife Shehnaaz providing the awesome food. I arrived just after 14:00, one of the first to arrive, and the others trickled in over the course of the next hour or so. Yusuf was up first, speaking about the pervasive problems with CSS, and how in many ways it represents a step sideways or backwards relative to what came before it. I went next, slidelessly rambling on a bit about the history of scale in computing, before moving on to a more detailed description of the scaling architecture we've chosen to employ for our application. We broke for lunch then, and then resumed with Dominic talking about CSRF/XSS attacks, browser hijacking, and ways to protect yourself against the aforementioned. That brought the presentations to an end (they were each about 30 minutes long), but everyone stayed for a while, hung out / chatted, and generally had a good time.

The atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly, and with such a small group it was easy to take questions from the audience, so none of the presentations turned into a complete monologue. This was my first time presenting tech-related material like this, and I hadn't really prepared (I only volunteered on the mailing list a few days before the event); I don't think I did too badly, but some pretty slides and more preparation would have been nice. Answering questions from the audience was awesome, though; it's always good to know you haven't completely lost everyone.

All in all, it looks like we're definitely on-track for a thriving GeekDinner JHB event; I think the key will be to let things evolve naturally, rather than trying to shoehorn things forcibly into a canned recipe provided by someone else.

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So much going on, so little time to blog about it.

• Going away this weekend… super stoked about that.
• HPT is moving along slowly. A comrade set up a bazaar repository which we’re now using to share code. Probably going to sprint a large portion of it out next weekend. If you’re a python coder, know stuff about making facebook apps and are looking for something fun to do let me know.
• Uploaded my sailing pics a few days ago…
• Because everyone seems to think that other people care about the slides they used for a presentation, here are my slides on the talk I gave at the last GeekDinner called “Five ways to live like a Capetonian” [pdf]
• If anyone knows any good way to repeatedly mount SMB or NFS shares in OSX (after reboot) please let me know.
• My site will be moving to a new box in Europre soon… ZA bandwidth costs are a pain.
• My friend rolled his had his landy rolled by someone else over the weekend but has yet to give me any more details other than a link to the pictures… Which means he’s probably pissed off with himself and doesn’t want to talk about it waiting to calm down before talking about it. Eish.
• Started using Alarm Clock 2 to wake me up in the morning. It’s a neat little app because it can wake up your macbook and does the whole fade in the music thing. Funny how the commercial 50MB competitor doesn’t seem to allow me to set up a repeat alarm or specify which days of the week I want it to run on.
• “Installed” a UPS on my friends office server a few days ago. Ubuntu detected it and Gnome Power Manager let me set what I wanted to happen when… without installing anything. Toit.
• I tend to spend more time in my virtual Ubuntu on my macbook than I do in OSX. Attempted to install ubuntu natively over the weekend but it was such a ball-ache I stopped. Dear Lazy-Web, please make an Ubuntu distro tailored for MacBooks.

kthanksbye.

So so... I got tagged once again! An excellent reason to procrastinate indeed, I could not have thought of anything better... :P

So, which albums would I take with me?

• Rammstein: Mutter
• Rammstein: Reise Reise
• Rammstein: Herzeleid
• Rammstein: Sehnsucht
• Rammstein: Rosenrot

Hey, stopped laughing, noob! Rammstein is teh_shit! :P

So, what would I take with me?

• Cellphone (duh)
• Laptop (with my usual range of accessories, including 3G modem)
• Google Summer of Code 2007 T-Shirt!!

Mmm, I smell a conspiracy here... I think teh_oubie is starting to wake up my appetite to go to another 27/Geek Dinner! :)

However, now who to victimise, ahem, I mean tag?

In alphabetical order, girls first! :)

• Max
• Simone

And now the boys...

• Dave
• Jason
• Rafiq

So, here I am, Friday evening, hammering away at a guilt post. And what a guilt post it is. I feel like this website has become a red-headed step-daughter of mine. But it does not help to dwell on the procrastinations of the past: one must look to the here and now; and the future. What I am going to do, however, is reflect on some Significant Events of late.

First thing is first. The eighth GeekDinner was like a sequel nobody expected to be better, but then pleasantly surprises. Because I am a week and a half late with reporting on this event, I shall refrain from commenting on the details and rather refer you to the reports of my fellow geeks. Again I met some interesting people, although the batch I was seated with specialized in hammering in the Small World Theory, which made for 180º of fascinating conversation. A special thanks to Mel's Village Kitchen in Rondebosch and Perdeberg wines for facilitating the core ingredients of this GeekDinner.

On Monday, at long flippen last, I finally shook-off the bonds of dail-up and entered the civilised phase of broadband. Granted, as far as DSL goes, it is as slow as it gets, but for the caveman the candle is just as good as the light bulb (better? nah, I'm not going to start arguing that). I'm not sure if being excited about fast internet is necessarily quintessentially geeky, but I have been told that my enthusiasm around this has been a bit over-board. Nevertheless, a new age has dawned, so drink and be merry! (Ironically, I am home in Bellville this weekend, so this post is still being written off-line as usual and will only see light of foreign HTTP request on Sunday or Monday.)

Last night, some friends and I went to see the Chris Rock No Apologies Tour. It is his first comedy tour of South Africa and first show here in Cape Town sold out very quickly, and the second show was very nearly full-packed as well. It was hilarious and I enjoyed it very much, but he did dwell a bit on American politics, as I feared he might have done. Of course he also tailors his jokes for the audience, which, one has to admit, might be a bit difficult in an environment as foreign as ours (to Americans). But I did enjoy it very much and have a lot of respect for him for actually coming out all the way to the extreme end of far-off continent.

Tuesday I'm going to see the Counting Crows live. Lacking foresight, my commentary is at this stage only limited to stating that it is going to be legendary!

Other news is that we are entering the critical planning phase of our overseas trip. The whole situation surrounding my father (I still have not been able to find that “lost post”, so forgive me for the fact that you as the reader will be in the dark as to this point) has soured things a bit. I suppose that there is a sense that this trip is going to involve a lot of sacrifice from everyone, although I know that it is important, now more than ever, to look on the bright side of everything and look forward to the trip. My psychiatrist brother has been a bit elusive of late and I wonder what is going on there, but I can't help to analyse the situation in the background as I know he does. I try not to see the world as he does - I contend that I am too young and ignorant to try and start enforcing other people's experience of life. Still, I don't think one (I) should polarise completely, especially not now.

I think I am going to dedicate another post to describing our travelling plans. At present I would say it is about 70% planned, with another 20% suspended and awaiting some decision-making.

I should have made a post a week or more ago. I wrote a long blog entry in which I poured my heart out. I was going through a difficult period and felt the time was right to say some things I had been promising to say for a long while. As usual, I wrote it off-line and stored it in an OpenOffice document until I got to a decent internet connection (I tried posting from home, but Blogger was having some issues, as usual). The problem is that, of late, I have become a little lazy and just saved the file on my desktop. Then... then I moved stuff around; copied, pasted and deleted and, before I knew I, I had lost that post. Literally lost: I don't know if I deleted it or copied it to some obscure place or what. Needless to say, I was less than impressed (with myself). If it was moved or deleted, I could have tried undeleting it from my ext3 filesystem, but I attempted that sojourn last year and still have nightmares about it. So, until further notice, that post is lost. If I find it, I'll happily put it up, but I am not going to rewrite it any time soon. For what its worth, my father is doing better, although he seems to be ill again.

So I was put off from posting for a while. I wanted to write about the so-called xenophobic attacks, but I've lost my mojo. Its bad – don't do it.

Finally after four months of waiting, my DSL has been set up. Starting Sunday (hopefully), I shall leave this primitive age of dial-up and graduate to ADSL. I'm counting the sleeps remaining :-)

Forcing myself to write isn't helping at the moment. Tomorrow night is another GeekDinner: perhaps I'll feel more chatty after that.

Let’s see, bullet list news for the week..

• I watched Paris Je’taime at the Labia today: not bad.
• Last night was a pre-house-warming party at Georg and Andrew’s new place. They make a nice couple, hehe.
• On Saturday morning, Mia and I went swimming at the gym. At first she was as stubborn as only her mother can be.. had to do some convincing to get her to swim. She loved it. She jumps into the pool, with her head going under the water like a little otter.
• After Jonathan’s GeekDinner pep talk about doing what Romans do in Cape Town, Mia and I went to see the Noon Gun on Saturday afternoon. We had tea and milk tart at the Noon Gun tearoom and visited Erf 81 to go see some goats, chickens, puppies, pigs, ducks, horses..
• Thinking back, it was one of the most fulfilling Saturdays ever. I guess it took me a while to acclimatise to this parenting thing, but it’s awesome being a dad.
• Mia’s new favourite phrase is: “What’s that?”
• Anton will be visiting Cape Town in July in the same week as my birthday.
• Mia and I attended Georg’s leaving Stellenbosch party on Friday evening at Fandango’s.
• There’s an article about Amobia in the latest iWeek magazine.. “puts us alongside the big guns!”

I’ll upload pics soon.

Have a fun week crazy kids.

So, what happened in the past week? On Monday, there was VTES at Phillip's house. I tried out 3 decks, and, while I didn't do particularly well, I managed to oust my prey in two games, which was a fair effort for the evening Tuesday, I was off sick On Wednesday, I attended Geekdinner (pictures here), which was pretty enjoyable, despite riding my motorcycle in the rain (and, please note, the

The eighth Cape Town GeekDinner, Happy Habanero, was held on Wednesday night. We braved foul weather and traffic, which is asking a lot of Capetonians, but it was worth it.



Perdeberg (the one with the zebra) sponsored the wine.

Very kind of them because geeks, I find, can drink.




Glüwein.

I had some.

You can probably tell.




Soup, curry (post) buffet, baked chocolate pudding with custard.

Mel's Village Kitchen was our host. The main course was superb. I had seconds. It almost made up for the Vegetarian Butternut Disaster of '07.

(We try not to speak about it.)

((Except I should say that it has nothing to do with Mel's Village Kitchen. Although, as Bradley pointed out, there may have been beef stock in the soup, which is a terrible thing to do to a vegetarian.))



A Jonathan.



The wave theory of traffic. You had to be there...

...although even if you were, hey... I dunno. I get the N1 bubble, and I get game theory (as explained by the aforementioned a Jonathan), but I don't get how they are related. I was drinking my glüwein though, so, you know....



A(nother) Jonathan.

Notice how they operate in a collective? All black and white. With a microphone.

This one's demonstrating wushu Dinosaur Claw. It had nothing to do with anything. I didn't get it.

This a Jonathan spoke about some sort of Cape Town romance he's been experiencing. I could relate, because I think he's been stealing my material from various sites. It all sounded suspiciously similar to many things I've said to many people since precisely Decemberish (last year), and stuff I've posted on the web (or, occasionally, still need to get around to posting on the web).

(I know - you're going "...what?" It's a conundrum. I suspect a Jonathan may have a time-travel device. But he'd probably never tell me. I'd do things with it.)



This is an Ian, talking about GM food. I'd had a few by then.

Although that doesn't explain why the camera's out of focus.

(He did a great job, even with dissenting opinions in the audience. It could have been war but it turned out quite civilised. Geeks are like that. Bitch slapping is too much effort when you could be writing algorithms of slapdown.

...Oh. Were you hoping I'd share one? Uh, sorry. Proprietary.

(That's an open-source "Bring it on!". I feel the need to explain in case you don't speak geek. The odd thing is, I'm pro open source. So, really, it's a paradox.))



This is a Jonathan demonstrating a fondling action on a Tim (no web site available...suspicious...). It's important because of what happened later.

He knows what I'm saying. A Jonathan, I mean. In fact, two Jonathans.

I was in shock so I couldn't focus.



This is a Jonathan making eyes at my camera.

Although that doesn't explain why the camera's in focus.

In the background a Tim is being mauled by slideshow karaoke. His topic was on echidnas. The twist, for those of you unfamiliar, is that he didn't know that until the slides appeared. He did well. I laughed.

And not at his mutant arm. That would be inappropriate.



I learnt some stuff about echidnas that I didn't know. So it wasn't a total waste of an evening.

Also, it forced a Tim to say a forbidden word into a microphone.

Twice.

Come to think of it (so to speak), he chose to say a forbidden word into a microphone.

Twice.

Anyway, after this I stopped taking photos. It was proving to be a pointless exercise, what with all the blurriness. I'm no Cape Town Daily Photo.

You'll have to imagine the merriment, heated debate, more wine, networking (on a cerebral level), and more wine.

I said that already.

Oh! I learnt how to say something geek at the after party. (Did you know there was an after party? No? Then you probably missed it. The after party happens after almost everyone has left. That's when you know it's the after party. But if no one leaves then you can't have the after party until they do, except they won't, so it's a bit of a dilemma. Sometimes firemen have to be called in...wait. No, that's a different kind of party. Nevermind.)

Anyway, it goes like this: "Fail!" and it is very versatile in its uses.

Except it doesn't apply here.

The experience was nothing but enriching. I met other Geeks who shared my for WordPress equally and in some cases more! That set the tone for some interesting talks about very different WordPress...

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Last night I attended my third Geek Dinner (aka Happy Habanero), which was held at Mel's Village Kitchen in Rondebosch (somewhere on this map). The food was delicious, although I think their vegetable soup had beef stock in it, because my tummy did the funny growling thing that it does when there is actually meat in something that looks like it is just vegetables.

Jonathan gave a cool talk about Game Theory and Tragedy of the commons, which We (the lift club) discussed at length during our drives to work in century city. It basically boils down that when faced with a situation where you can gain (at the expense of others) there is no logical reason not to take that gain, there is, however, an ethical reason not to (see ubuntu/community/being nice to others). Regulation tends to take away from the benefits of the commons, for optimisating one use/situation. The trick would be to either increase the ethics of the users of the commons (but you still face a loss for defectors), or introduce penalties which drive defection down (e.g. Morning radio that re-iterates the message, or broadcasts plates of people who defect, or somehow associating negative effects to defection, like walking into a coffee shop and the owner says "you pushed in on the N1 this morning, and I am going to reserve my right to serve you, please could you leave the premises").

Jonathan gave a short speech about "Living like a capetonian", which basically boiled down to "get out there and enjoy the place you live, cook good food, and be social, do some things that are not enjoyable, because they will make you enjoy stuff more". I enjoyed it (although being a CT noob, we try to go and visit places people talk about, but we could do more of it, and we mustn't become complacent!).

Ian gave a short overview of problems with the current GMO process, in that there is no approval process for GMO foods because (for e.g. in SA) they have been granted the status of being the same as non-GMO, so it gives them a innocent until proven guilty stance. It comes down to consumers not buying it if it is an inferior product, or retrospective studies which find poisons etc. in the food, before it would be removed from the shelves. This again presents an interesting connundrum, where do you draw the line of what is/what is not GMO (for e.g. selective breeding is a form of GMO), and what things do you put in place to protect consumers. Until now consumers bought the things they needed, and products were successful based on how good they were. With vested interests, and continuously declining government ethics (across many countries), we can no longer assume if something is on the shelves then it is good for us (or, not perversely bad for us or our environment). I don't think he made his point strong enough that he was not against GMO, that he was against it's current wild west, bribe and plunder approach of the industry, because some people in the back attacked him for condemning GMO (which he never did).

Finally, Timothy Allen did Slideshow Karaoke, from slides made by me, covering "The mating rituals and sexual habits of Tachyglossus aculeatus (of the order Monotremata)". I built my slides from the fantastically hysterical "Their cousin called monotreme". You can download my slides: Echidna.odp in the ISO standard format for presentations. Henk Kleynhans pointed out that Echidna only mate using one head of their four headed penis, I am not sure if this is per mating, or over the course of their life (Do they only mate four times?).

There was wine sponsored by Perdeberg Winery, which was nice (I assume), since people definitely got quite chirpy. A nice evening was had by all, I think.

I have been to many of the 27 and Geek Dinners in both Cape Town and in the Garden Route, and let me tell you last night’s Geek Dinner rocked! They always do, but the Happy Habanero “Original Geek Dinner” was special!

Mel’s Village Kitchen proved to be an awesome venue. The food was great! Perdeberg also made sure that we had wine for the evening.

The talks were fantastic. Jonathan 1’s, Introduction to Game Theory (or, Why You Shouldn’t Push In On the N1) had me in giggles. I am now convinced that I should make a list and forward the theory to the culprits I know. Jonathan 2 summed up how to really live in 5 easy points. His presentation on Five ways to live like a Capetonian was inspiring. Ian made me more neurotic about the food I consume with his talk on Why greenies don’t like genetically modified food. Of course no Geek Dinner is complete without the Karaoke slideshow. A combination of Brad’s slides and Tim’s hilarious presentation thereof added to the jolly vibe.

Apart from sitting at the naughtiest table [blaming Henk]. I really enjoyed catching up with everybody. I am refraining from naming people this time round as I probably know more than half the room.

After most people had left “nine naughty ones” remained. We got up to mischief with much innuendo and debate. It was truly a laugh a minute! Due to true geekiness - nothing was documented via twitter.

Geek style – I have already signed up for the next one in July.

PS: One last scattered thought, could we spam people who add their names to the list but never arrive? A form of punishment or revenge. Essentially they hog the space somebody else could have taken - truly inconsiderate! Is Game Theory applicable to this scenario too?

Turned out I was a bit too lazy to prepare two talks.. so I only gave a talk at the WordPress meetup and not the GeekDinner.

Here are my WordPress Security talk slides.

The WordPress meetup was fun. Way more people there than last time and I have a new tshirt.

The GeekDinner was cool, nice venue, tasty food and a good turnout of people for a rainy night it Cape Town. Thanks Mel, thanks Perdeberg.

I’ll put up some photos later.

So it was the 8th Geekdinner tonight. And I think 4th one I’ve attended.
Another success I’d say.

Great venue (Thanks Mel’s Kitchen, Rondebosh). Great food (Gluhwein, soup, lamb/chicken/veg curry, pudding+custard). Great people, saw some faces I haven’t for a while (Hi Luke. Hi Allan. Hi all you other people I forget to mention.), even met one or two whose names I know (Hi @kerry_anne) and never met, some interesting talks, good wine (Thanks Perdeberg, I’m not a wine ’spurt, but I sampled both the Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinotage, and they were both excellent!)

The talks. Oi vei. OK, so Jonathan (I forget which number he is) spoke about Game Theory. Funny that, I came across it on Wikipedia the other week for some reason. Interesting.

And the Jonathan (Yet another one) spoke about 5 ways to live in Cape Town. Very cool, really liked it. Some very true points, I’ve been wanting to do as Romans do for a while. Funds limit the possibilities though I’m afraid.

And then Ian had a nice talk about GM foods and GM products and why it’s not necessarilly a bad thing, but how it’s a bad thing if not tested properly. I think everybody, including the big corporations, know this, but it’s all about money and immediate needs. Yes, we need to cater for the 6 billion people on earth, so let’s do it quick and make money while we’re at it, screw the environment, or the planet. That’s a few generations down the line’s problem. I’m still on the fence about it all, but I’m definitely for proper testing of GM stuff though.

Tim did the Slideshow Karaoke, on the mating and sexual habits of some obscure Australian ant-eater mammal thing. Funny. Seemed like well-researched material, Tim managed quite well, even when the four-headed penis topic came up. Don’t ask.

All in all though, I think it was great, had lots of fun, even the coffee was good. Lovurly.

Like everything else, even the Geek Dinners are going green! Tomorrow I’ll be talking about the wonders of genetically-modified food at Happy Habanero, the Geek Dinner being held at Mel’s Kitchen in Rondebosch, Cape Town.

There’s still space - sign up and details on the wiki.

Related posts:

• Garullous Grape at Greens
• Frugal Fennel at Sloppy Sams
• *Camp debauchery
• Small things and Dangerous Drumsticks
• Hot and Sweaty 27-8 dinner
• July 2007 Geek Dinner
• Cape Town May 2007 Geek Dinner
• March Geek Dinner

Wednesday 28 May 2008 at Mel’s Kitchen in Rondebosch, 18:30.

See the wiki for details.

Snapshot from the life of Joe..

• Today: Had a chill Sunday. Went for a walk around Mouille Point. Ended up in Caffe Neo and stuffed myself with a very nice salad selection. I updated the WAPA website. I discovered the best things since sliced bread.. raisin and cinnamon sliced bread. It’s like a big hot cross bun. Yummy.
• Yesterday: Spent time with The Mia. Took her along to gym for the first time. She can bench 80kg.. no, not really.. but she liked the kids play area. Ended up in Somerset West for a friend’s going-away drinks session. One more person going to London. I generally think Somerset West is pretty lame.. “it’s like a wax museum with a pulse”, but Henry’s is not a bad bar.
• Last week I had some fun getting articles about Frogfoot, Amobia and WAPA published. I attended an ISPA meeting and a WAPA committee meeting. Had an Interesnting meeting with a metro-wifi equipment vendor. With a bit of luck we’ll be doing a fairly large scale wifi hotspot pilot project soon. The metro-wifi kit uses some phased beam array antenna technology… getting new toys soon.
• Dr. Strangelove announced he is getting married, in the Cape Town area, in October.
• I’ve come to realise that a large percentage of the world’s popular music is about romantic relationships that ended.
• Had a relaxed lunch at Neetlingshof last week. It’s a nice Sunday lunch spot.
• This coming week we have the next WordPress Cape Town Meetup and the May GeekDinner. I still need to prepare two talks.
• Then, this coming Friday I have a “leaving Stellenbosch” party. Seems my last good reason to gallivant around Stellenbosch is moving to Cape Town. End of an era.

Have a fun week.

Sowat 'n week of twee gelede het ek saam met 'n versameling Geek Dinner-vriende gaan treinry vanaf Nuweland tot in Simonstad en weer terug....

As I said on the GeekDinner announcement list:

Since the last GeekDinner was held at the end of March, and since we hold the GeekDinners bimestrially, it seems we are due another one at the end of May. This is the eightthhth GeekDinner, and we're calling it "Happy Habanero". What with the habanero being the national vegetable of Azerbaijan, we're going to hold the dinner on Azerbaijan's Republic Day, which, according to wikipedia, is Wednesday, May 28th.

The venue for this dinner is Mel's Kitchen, in Rondebosch Village, just off Klipfontein Road.

As usual, you can sign up, and check on the other details, on the wiki page.

We're now in our second year of GeekDinners, and they seem to be going strong. We have a good model, mostly sustainable, although it is slightly dependent on the core group of organisers to get things moving. We have a solid set of regular attendees that should provide the dinners with enough momentum to continue, though, should anything happen, and I'm very positive about the future of the dinners. We're also managing, for the most part, to keep talks short and interesting to all comers - I know that newcomers always worry that everything's going to be "too hardcore techie", but honestly, it's not about microchips and "ones and zeroes". My favourite talks have been about hippies and the buttons on car radios. So, please, if you haven't been before, why not come along, meet some new people, share some free wine, and enjoy some excellent food.

The slideshow karaoke has become a regular feature of our dinners, and is always one of the most entertaining parts. The way it works is, somebody prepares a set of slides on any topic they want (we've had "Etiquette when dealing with British Royalty", "Common problems with cement tiles", and "A primer on lesser known Norse gods"). Somebody else then presents a talk based on these slides without any prior knowledge of the topic, or of the content of the slides - always to amusing effect. This time, Darb is preparing the slides, and we have yet to find a volunteer to present them. If you're keen, do volunteer. If not, maybe you have something interesting you'd like to talk about anyway - we have no volunteers for speakers yet.

If I've sold you, sign up on the wiki, and we'll see you there!

So it’s another other-month, and it’s time for another GeekDinner.
I try to make the GeekDinners when I can, sometimes it’s just too far, and other times it’s too expensive. I count cents you see.
But, this month is different.
This month we’re off the Mel’s Village Kitchen (no site, but see a pic here)for the Geekdinner, on the 28th. Nice, it’s after pay day (My current employer pays salaries *before* the last day of the month, like *normal* people…), and Mel’s is in Rondebosch. And on the menu, for a mere R115, is a typical 3-course meal (Soup, bread, curry buffet, baked choc pudding), and we’ll likely get wine sponsored by one of our previous sponsors. (There’s talk of Perdeberg being involved, more about that later). Previous sponsors included Stormhoek and GetWine and Blank. They all have some awesome wine (I’m not ’spurt on wine though, but what I’ve had tasted nice, haha), and you can even own a vine in Stormhoek’s vineyard too if you have some cash to help them out.

Anyway, the Geekdinners have always been fun. Lots of interaction with old colleagues (mostly from IOL) and fellow geeks, funny-as-hell Slideshow Karaoke, and some (usually) interesting and (usually) informative talks. It’s very informal, and there’s a small group of people that usually take charge and run the thing, keeping tabs on the time for talks and introducing the next speaker, or generally just talking crap while some poor sod tries to get Windows and the projector to talk nice.

So, I’ll be there, very, very likely. Not talking about anything (I don’t think I have much to say yet…), just enjoying the interactions and the wine. Maybe, the wine.

Oh, and if you use/like/develop for Wordpress, you can swing past the 3rd Cape Town Wordpress Meetup at the Bandwidth Barn in town, right before coming through to the dinner. I use and like and (can) develop for Wordpress, but don’t think I’ll make the meetup. I might have to make a plan though. *ponders*

Just returned from a brief meeting at Mel’s Village Kitchen.. which will be the venue for the next GeekDinner.

The eighth in the new series of original GeekDinners, aka Happy Habanero (in sync with Hardy Haron it seems), will be held on Wednesday the 28th of May 2008, at Mel’s Village Kitchen. Be there at 18:30 for 19:00. Sign up here. See you there.

Earlier that same day (16:00) you’ll find me at the Cape Town WordPress Meetup #3, at the Bandwidth Barn.

Two geeky gatherings in a row.

Because Blogging has become a secondary industry to Having a Family, and Working, and Living In Cape Town, I figured it was time for a generic status update, for those of you who dont use Twitter, and/or live near me. It is a hodge-podge, so apologies to any random internet search victims who think this page contained what they were looking for.

• We moved to Cape Town at the beginning of the year, for me to take up a position as a Web Architect at openVOICE, and for the whijos to start living the Cape Town dream. About a month after I joined OV the decision was taken to split the company into different parts, to maintain focus. I was offered a position in the still to be formed company (which is now called nvent, and for a short time was called Richtrau no. 201). So, the company split, and I started to work for the new company (April 1st). In the run up to the split I became a bit unhappy with the uncertainty involved, and I ran into the problem (which I have had for a while) of being "the Web Guy", and, while talented and handsome, I am very much keen to be part of a web team, in a web company, to see what it feels like, to have peers who worry about the same things I do, etc. So I put my CV out there, hoping to find a web firm that does python (my one true programming love after pascal). I didn´t find that, but I did find a very nice PHP web firm called Persuasion Lab. So, I interviewed with them, and decided to quit my position at OV/nvent, and take up a position in PL.
• Now, I was not convinced of PL at first, on paper, since they specialised in...Online Dating. I chuckled to myself, and decided to give them an interview, since it was either going to be new material at parties, or something genuinely intriguing. They won points out the box because they are located within walking distance of our home. To be honest I was expecting red velvet, and a handful of programmers wearing black silk shirts with long, slicked back pony tails. The former was true, the latter was devastatingly not. I interviewed with the directors of the company, David Burstein (there is only one n in burstein), and Duncan Forrest. They were nice, and I enjoyed the interview (I was unusually nervous, FNAR). I did a small amount of research before I went to the interview, and was satisfied by the info that turned up (even if it is not 100%, 4 errors is better than this web page). So I was pleasantly surprised. They have the online dating game wrapped up in SA, powering most of the newspaper dating sites, including ¨Date Your Destiny¨ IOL dating (which always makes me smile when I read an IOL story). They seem to have grown, or split, out of Ogilvy Interactive (information courtesy of some retrospective facebook research), they have been going since 2000 (which is dog years in the web game), and Duncan seems to have done a lot of the development, and currently still dives into the code (which is something that makes me happy). They have a good number of employees, split over varying roles (which also makes me happy), and they also have a London office, for their British clients. I think I stand to learn a lot there, and hopefully pick up the skills and understanding I will need when I build my own empire.
• We visited JHB for two weeks to go to Pippa and Vaughn´s not-a-wedding-wedding, which was frankly amazing, and, to date, is one of the most heartfelt and enjoyable weddings I have ever been to, but maybe it is just because they invited all our friends. The time we did spend with them we used productively to encourage them to get pregnant, so Fin has friends. We stayed with Pippa and Vaughn, Hannah and Mau, and saw a lot of Marc Bradley Lewis and Bokkie/Sweetie, Alison Green, caught up with old school friends Marc Patrick Lewis, and Breton VDB, among others. Unfortunately we did not see everyone I would have liked to, but JHB is a big place hey, and, with traffic, two weeks goes by quick.
• In May we are going to visit Grahamstown, to attend the wedding of Mamello Wheee Thinyane, and Dr. Hannah Barbie Sparkles Slay, and I did not want to fork out for the plane trips, so Mandy said we could drive if we had a new car (I am sorry Telburt, I loved you like a man loves a car, and It Was Her Idea). I really wanted a Toyota Prius, but they are PRICY, and still the first generation of hybrids, so I am a bit cautious. Instead, after narrowing down the choice between a low mileage VW Polo Classic, and a low mileage Golf 5, we went with the Golf. The Polo Classic came with mostly the same features, but the Golf FEELS incredible. I find the fittings and interior of the Polos to be quite plasticy, and sensible. So, parked outside our house is possibly the most expensive toy we have ever bought, but shew, it´s nice. I have taken every opportunity to drive it over the long weekend (we recieved it on Wednesday, when I traded Telburt in), including an airport run for Russell and Les. It feels like heaven to drive, and features like being able to wind down the electic windows using the remote blows my mind.
• We bought a new VW Golf 5
• Over the past few months I have steadily been attending more Geek things, like CLUG (actually, the first CLUG talk I attended was the one given by Jonathan and Me). Attended two[1][2] Geek Dinner(s), during the second of which I did slideshow karaoke, and designed the random grape graphic (SVG here, needs gradients and blur filters) using inkscape. There are some blog posts about GeekDinner on Planet Geekdinner.
• I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 ´Hardy Heron´, and I am in love with Linux once again (every six months Ubuntu re-ignites the spark)
• I have accounts on, and I am going to write for, ILML (the brainchild of my brother Kyle, and his mates), and the still-to-be-launched TechLeader

That should cover it for now, thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoyed your stay.

I sometimes have some people telling me that there's no point behind local-only ADSL as all the worth-while sites are hosted overseas. Although many (if not most) South Africans opted for hosting their blogs and other sites overseas because of the ridiculous local bandwidth prices, there are still many great sites hosted inside of this country. Here is a short list of the ones I use most frequently.

My Broadband, the famous portal site for everything internet-related (and actually tech-related in general) in South Africa, is still one of my favourites. There's everything, news, forums, blogs, photos, etc. I also love the wug.za.net gallery.

The CLUG Park helps me to keep updated with what's happening in the geeksphere and the CLUG Wiki is also a handy point of reference every now and then. The Geek Dinner and WAPA are also good to watch. And of course, to me Tectonic is just unmissable!

As far as news (in general) is concerned, we are spoiled for choice. In no particular order:

• The Times
• SABC News
• IOL
• Mail & Guardian
• 24.com

You can also go to the WeatherSA site directly.

One of the best things about The Times for me is actually the multimedia section. Believe it or not, the videos are hosted locally. :)

Although I couldn't find that many "Web 2.0" sites and utilities specifically, there is of course TimesURL (complete with API) for shortening long URLs.

As far as communication goes, we definitely have some options. Although there used to be two public Jabber servers, there is currently only Jabber.co.za left (to my knowledge). The nice thing is that although you only connect to a local server, you can still chat to anybody on any of the other Jabber servers out there so you can easily communicate with friends and family overseas (including anybody using Google Talk). You can even Twitter using the Twitter Jabber bot.

We still have lots of IRC networks though (for those that still use it), including (my favourite) Atrum but there's also LagNet and the old ZAnet.

We also have some great download mirrors, which are obviously the best part of "local-only" as it's very bandwidth-intensive. Because I use ISDSL local, I normally first try ftp.is.co.za but if I can't find what I want I go directly to mirror.ac.za. Unfortunately their PHP mirror still seems broken but in general their mirrors are updated much quicker than ftp.is.co.za, especially their Ubuntu mirror which was ready with the latest ISOs at the time of the (official) Ubuntu Hardy release.

I'm sure there's many other servers out there I still have to discover but at least this gives you a good start. If you know of more (especially servers that host multimedia content), please comment! :)

Yesterday I attended the seventh Cape Town GeekDinner, “Garrulous Grape”, which is also the fifth one I attended. Along with “Dangerous Drumstick” (the one at Summerville in Camps Bay), this was one of the GeekDinners which I enjoyed the most. The experience was largely dominated by good company, interesting new people and excellent food. I have to admit that I started feeling like a GeekDinner veteran when I elicited several “wows” from people when I told them that this was my fifth GeekDinner. I have never felt uncomfortable at a GeekDinner and it is not cliquey at all, but I suppose that, as with everything else, some are better than the rest. This one was definitely one of the better ones.

Our venue was Greens in Plattekloof. The food was... well, let me put it this way: I could not chew slow enough to absorb the magnificent taste of it all. Definitely thumbs up.

For a long time I have endeavoured to persuade some of my friends to join us at a GeekDinner, but the enthusiasm was always less than convincing. But, after this one, it appears that there is an entire group eager to get in on the event. The Stellenbosch posse seems to be swelling; soon we shall have a majority vote over the venues. ;-)

Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are, for what you could become.

They say that change is as good as a holiday.  Things are changing in my life and with it will come new challenges.

At work I have moved on to a new role (still within IBM South Africa) which will mean that for the next couple of weeks and months, I will be staying in Cape Town and working in Johannesburg.  I will be commuting between Cape Town and Johannesburg on a weekly basis and depending on the needs of the work, I will be in Johannesburg anything between 2 and 5 days a week. I cannot say much about the work I will be doing but when things are more finalized then I will post it here.

I will get to know the inside of airports, airplanes and hotels.  Made sure that my Voyager and BA Executive Club cards are up to date and make sure I stay in the same hotel group to benefit from Frequent Guest privileges.

This should give me a chance to pop in at 27dinner in Johannesburg.  Do they have Geekdinners in Johannesburg?

This will also give me the opportunity to see my Johannesburg and Pretoria friends more often.  Hey, one cannot live on hotel food alone.  So if any of my readers from up there want to meet, then contact me and we can make a plan.

I am sure I will build up a wealth of experience of how to commute across the country for one’s job.  From time to time I will share that here - what to look out for and what to avoid.  What the quickest way through an airport is?  Experience with hotels, rental companies and airlines.  I will also appreciate any comments which any of you might have on things to avoid or look out for.

To my Cape Town friends,  I will not leave this beautiful place anytime soon so you will still see me around.

FeistyFemale loves living in Cape Town! Here’s why:

My career and work has always been a big part of who I am, but now more than ever it has taken priority over a number of other facets in my life. I love what I do! Living in Cape Town has been a great career and business decision. I love doing business here.

I live in town and a stone throw from Camps Bay. I often amble down Kloof Street for the hell of it or simply go run near Cable Way - awesome! It has made me realise that living in a cool location and living in a place that is comfortable and feels like home is crucial.

The lifestyle in Cape Town is amazing! There is nothing I like more than balance - both work and play is crucial. Cape Town is most definately good for play. I have seen more of Cape Town in two months than I did in two years commuting back and forth between George and Cape Town. Here are a couple of things I have been up to and that I can recommend:

Wembly Square - my second home. I gym at Virgin Active in Wembly and I love both Sinns and Salushi. The free wireless have made it my hang-out and office extension of choice.

Beluga - They make the best white chocolate Martinis!

Que Pasa - great networking, lots of single people, tons of fun and an awesome workout. What more can you ask for? [Also the new venue in Camps Bay is breathtaking.]

Mango-OMC Friday dancing - this is the way to get into the mood for the weekend.

Butterfly Word in Paarl - I happened to discover this gem after missing the Cape Town turn off after visiting a friend. I of course slammed on breaks, made a u-turn and spent a magical morning viewing butterflies!

Kirstenbosch on Sunday afternoons - a vibey place to be.

Drive! My cuz and I did a three hour outing along the coast and had some lunch in Simonstown. It was tons of fun.

I have watched and photographed the kite-surfers at Misty Cliffs. Just because I can!

Networking - I have done the 27 dinner, Bloggeratti Party, both Geek Dinners, the Girls Luncheon, and PRnet, the Blogging Awards and a myriad of other events. They have all been great fun! The geek and social media clan rock!

Kyoto Sushi Garden - great Sushi! Definitely worth a visit.

Please feel free to comment on your favourite activities in Cape Town - I’m building a wicked to-do list!

Monday night saw the seventh of the Geek Dinners, Garullous Grape.

It headed north for the first time, and was held at Greens in Plattekloof. The food was fantastic, and Perdeberg saved the day for the drunkards wine connoisseurs by coming through with a wine sponsorship at the last minute.

Geek ingenuity was amptly demonstrated with a projector screen constructed entirely of plastic bags.

There were 4 talks. I spoke on the green hippie thing - and Jonathan Endersby, who was the main instigator, wasn’t even there to appreciate it. To clarify, the talk was an in-depth sociological study of the overlaps between ecological consciousness and the scientific method. In short I stripped down to a tie-dye shirt and flashed a large grass joint (kikuyu, I swear), before listing 5 or six topics I find interesting.

In spite of my misgivings, it seems I may have to postpone the haircut and haul out the tie-dye shirt again next month, as there’s some demand for a continuation. This time focussing on just one topic, in more detail.

Newcomers must have been confused, as my talk was followed up by Jose Meredith on Payment Card Industry Certification (a description of the nightmare Bob’s been experiencing for the last while), an exposition of, er, flaws in paving stone by Brad Whittington (another brilliantly done karaoke), and an invitation for some Action Learning with Tania.

4 short (mostly) talks was a good number, leaving lots of time for talking, and meeting all the newcomers.

Visit planet.geekdinner for all the posts.

Related posts:

• Frugal Fennel at Sloppy Sams
• *Camp debauchery
• Small things and Dangerous Drumsticks
• Hot and Sweaty 27-8 dinner
• July 2007 Geek Dinner
• Cape Town May 2007 Geek Dinner
• March Geek Dinner

Tags: geekdinner

It’s been a frenzied few months, but { Huddlemind } is getting stronger by the day and it’s time to look up from the books and get out to play.

Many months ago at a geekdinner in Cape Town, the bright Sarah Blake suggested that we start doing geek.girl gatherings here in South Africa. What a great idea! what appalling timing!
We’ve finally resolved to do something about it: though admittedly we haven’t really rolled up our sleeves on organising a serious event, no extravaganza of prizes, nor yet with seeming effortlessness whipping up a luscious feast for the occasion - because we’re too damn BUSY. As you probably are.

Instead we spoke very nicely to the good peeps at Gardens Virgin Active & Stormhoek who are sponsoring workouts and wine (virtue or vino balance each other out surely) and we’re inviting some of the startlingly bright women we know to just come & hang out at my new fave wi-fi & alt.office spot & re.connect ..before we drown in to.do lists and meet our demise ingloriously, at our desks. No karoshi for me thank you!

This isn’t necessarily a GEEK.girl session - I’ve realised there are sadly very few of us xx chromosome creatures who go crazy for code - and more about the tech.supported social media infused lifestyle and embracing the new economy that women are flourishing in. One where relationships have heightened value over process. And where trust is the gold standard.

So all that said, it’s ever a good idea to enrich your networth: come hang out with us at Sinn’s on Wed 9th April after work at about 6ish . Click on the pic (above) you can RSVP on the Facebook event, or mail me & I’ll pop you on.

Directions & map >> just click on the thumbnail (right).

Easypeasy, no agenda, no lectures ..just some great women I’d love to introduce you to. hooray.

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Tonight's GeekDinner was held at Greens - a restaurant in Plattekloof - about 20 minutes' drive from the city. This really was an awesome venue - the service was great, the food brilliant and the ambience just perfect for this GeekDinner, Garrulous Grape.

Aside from the restaurant and interesting technology talks, the evening was made even more enjoyable by Perdeberg wines, who sponsored a couple of cases of red and white. Perdeberg is currently running an innovative competition, called Clink to Win. They're giving away a whole lot of wine each month - apparently one lucky guy recently won 156 bottles of Perdeberg wine in one go! I bet he suddenly has a whole lot of new friends... ;-) Visit www.clink-to-win.co.za to find out how to enter.

Last night was the seventh Cape Town GeekDinner, held at Greens in Plattekloof. For all that it was a bit disorganised, I think it went fairly well. Through a bit of miscommunication we ended up with two projectors, and no screen, so Dave and I made a rushed mission to Pick n' Pay, and came back with a roll of ten white rubbish bags, which we stuck to the wall of the restaurant, which actually worked fairly well.

Ian gave his usual stellar performance, talking about the difference in attitude to change and new technology that geeks and "hippies" (green people, ecowarriors, etc) have. He discussed how common it is for people to make a snap decision, and then find facts to back the choice up, and challenged us to try it the other way round.

Bob Meredith then gave quite an interesting exposition of what one needs to do to have credit card certification, after which we had Darb doing an excellent Karaoke Slideshow on problems with concrete, put together by Tania.

The venue was great - very accomodating, with friendly and efficient staff, and excellent, excellent food. And they let us stick stuff on their walls. Thanks very much to Greens in Plattekloof!

Finally, profuse thanks to Tim from Wired Communications and to Perdeberg winery for supplying us with 30 bottles of very nice wine. They came through at very short notice and we really appreciate it. Please support their Clink-to-win campaign, or order some wine from their website!

Last night was the Garrulous Grape GeekDinner, seventh in the series. A bunch of interesting people (mostly techies, but we had at least one hippie) met at Greens in Plattekloof for an evening of conversation, heckling, food, wine and generally being around like-minded people.

The food was marvelous, even better than I have come to expect from Greens. The wine was also really good (at least, the cab sav was -- I had half a bottle of that and didn't get to any of the others) and was, as is the case at all the geekdinners, free. This time, it was sponsored by Perdeberg who I had previously never heard of, but are now on my list of places to buy from.

Also noteworthy, today is the tenth birthday of the best mailing list on the tubes. I had heard of the Hivemind long before I joined, but didn't fully grok the depth of its usefulness and entertainment value until I caved in and joined. Since then I have mercilessly attacked the current copyright system, vehemently defended rationality and science against superstition and learned a lot about politics, economics and how to prod the Ivobot just so.

After months of not attending the Geekdinner, I went to last night’s one that was held at Greens in Plattekloof.

It was really enjoyable.  The food was great and Perdeberg sponsored the wine — thanks Perdeberg.

It was good the see Ian, Tania, Neil, Bob and many others again.  I also met Bev, the one and only Feisty Female  — was great meeting the person behind the tweets.  Also got to meet Kerry-Anne and Paul from Cape Town Daily Photo.  Kerry-Anne, hope the moving today is not to strenuous and that it goes well.  Paul, you must enjoy your tip to Vegas, am sure you will enjoy it.  I am so envious.

Ian was his best again with his talk on Hippie, Green and something about technology. Bob told us all about what is going on the payment systems and the Presentation Karaoke was just hilarious.  I did not get the name of the presenter that tried to find his way through Tania’s slides, but he did an excellent job.

All in all, a great evening with a bunch of Cape Town’s geeks.

Attended my second Geek Dinner last night, and boy oh boy was it fun!

Had an awesome chocolate Martini with my friend Tim from Wired Communications who also organised the Perdeberg wine for the evening. [Thanks Tim!]

FeistyFemale finally got to meet Jonathan Hitchcock and Marius Bock in person, and that after months of online banter! It really makes a huge difference meeting people offline – it adds even more colour to online personality and contributes to a deeper understanding of everybody’s online chatter.

I saw some of my favourite people: Kerry-Anne and Paul Gilowey, Simone Puterman and the lovely Tania who had me in stitches with her parent-computer-training stories. Brandon of course was happily snapping away… and since we have “this thing” I am sure he will be awaiting my “after event mail” demanding the removal of certain photos…

I also had an exciting time networking and meeting new people - Wessel Venter, Nico De Wet, Shaun O’Connell, Philip Barrett, Chris, Ian Gilfillan and Bob Meredith all added a great deal of entertainment and interesting conversation to my geek dinner experience.

All and all, a fabulous evening and a really worth-while event!

PS The Presentation Karaoke was simply hilarious!

Got 4 hours of your graphic design skills just floating around this morning?

The guys at Quirk are looking for StarCamp T-shirt designs from the community (in the self-organising style of the event itself) for the T-shirts they’re sponsoring for StarCamp.

For the full Brief, Problem, Reward and Process head on over to the GottaQuirk eMarketing blog.

Wow! SVG rocks! Look at how an 11kb of a StarCamp Cape Town logo can be scaled to ANY size. Why do all designers not use SVG instead of this PSD BS?

I’ve just come back from 27-21 (link should be active soon), the (sort of) 21st 27 dinner and it was an event fit for a 21st party, and certainly a lot better than my 21st party.

The secret to its success was that there was much more time for chatting to people than normal. This incarnation of the 27 dinner had only 1 main speaker, and 1 and a bit short talks.

Adii talked about his business selling Wordpress themes, and the challenges he faces from working with the GPL licence and ripoffs. It seems to be the kind of business most of us dream about - waking up in the morning with a little bit more in the bank account!

Graham Knox, of Stormhoek wines, perennial sponsors of the 27 dinner and now Geek Dinner as well, talked about the December bankruptcy of the UK distribution arm, and the impacts on Stormhoek, as well as the plan to repay the debts incurred by local companies as a result - entitled own a vine, save a job.

I was disappointed that another of the sponsors, Pushplay, didn’t talk, as I would have liked to learn some of the inside story. I’m a complete Pushplay fanatic - it’s revolutionised my enjoyment of film, as anyone (and there can’t be more than one can there?) who follows my Facebook profile can probably tell.

With so few talks, there was more time for what the real purpose of these events is - meeting and talking to other interesting people! Perhaps I’m biased because I seemed to be talking about organic food most of the time, a topic you can’t shut me up about, but I had really interesting talks with Chris, an environmental scientist from Rudevco (good thing you registered the domain for him and put up a holding page Tania!), Tanya, from teapots.co.za, Paul and Kerry-Anne Gilowey from (amongst other things) Cape Town Daily Photo, Trevor, from the venue, the Wild Fig (it’s really a great venue - a successful Geek Dinner was held there too, and there’s talk that the 27 dinner will stay at the Wild Fig), and Charl.

Thanks again to Dave and the organisers. Followup events are being opened to the community, more in the model of the Geek Dinner, and it’ll be interesting to see how it works for this event.

Related posts:

• Hot and sweaty 27-8 dinner
• 27-4 dinner at the hotel school
• 27 dinner Cape Town off to rocky start

Tags: 27dinner

I’ve (finally) finished encoding the ~6 hours of *camp video. They can be found on archive.org. As usual, 3 qualities.

I’ve probably screwed up at least one of them, so if anyone spots a problem, please let me know soon, before I delete the source material.

The time has come to put your money where your mouths are and help a friend. Stormhoek amongst some has been hit hard by the collapse of their UK wine distributor. Read the full story here. So you can help them by buying a vine in their vineyard for ZAR2000 (approx. US$270) and support the guys that supported us bloggers so generously with free wine at almost every Geeky gathering.

Please, if you can afford it, buy a vine. If not, help spread the word and please Digg it here.

I’m in for sure!

It was very informal, no official invites, just a Facebook event but Tertia & I were surrounded by outstanding women - and some of the boys who volunteered to dress the part - who picked up the idea with a dash of speed (primarily women who work in technology, naturally).

Who came to share lunch and non.pink and fluffy company?
(In order of introduction around the table, and then order of appearance)

Tertia Albertyn my divine co.host of the Valentine’s non.pink & fluffy lunch. Celebrated author of bestseller So Close and massively popular mommy.blogger at Tertia.org in between the IBM day gig to put her MBA to some use.

Sam Wilson editor of Women24.com, among other channels where she stars, like Shape & Cape Town’s Child. Force of nature this lady!

Elaine Rumboll director of Executive Education at UCT’s Graduate School of Business (and published poet and blues singer to harmonise the force), blogger and gf of Dave Duarte (who almost everyone at the table was connected to in some way)

Nicky Friedman aka The Lush; gorgeous wordsmith who has forged a new story engineering consultancy: Big Words Scare Me which develops the narrative for companies to enrich their brand & culture. [adore this concept], she is also a fiercely popular blogumist at The Times with Tersh.

Sarah Blake: recently of Incubeta, and apparently more famously as gf of Rob Stokes (as Nikki F learned!) and soon to be co.constructor of geek girl dinners (such a fabulous idea Ms Blake) and fellow relapsed blogger here - go prod her!

Leoni Uys brought another little girl with her (who makes her world debut in 2weeks time - with her own personal blog of course); interior design has given way to this woman’s glorious artistic skill with canvasses and oils. Love Leoni!

Shana Kassiem who I met through the equally marvellous Ms Vasco, is jetting her way to the States next month, as co.owner of IT solutions company Maxxor, she’ll be representing SA women in technology and bringing skills and stories back to share with us

Catherine Luckhoff owner of the PR powerhouse Mango OMC, which is solidly moving into position to be a pioneering force in online PR in South Africa. Cath also takes the honours as a superconnector, and go.to to make things happen. Wonder woman.

Beverley Merriman aka Feisty Female, who was nominated in the Garden Route regionals as Woman of the Year (& turned it down because she didn’t have the time to fly in) has finally arrived in Cape Town and joined the Mango OMC crew, while still somehow managing her own company. Bev is a also a fellow Thought Leader at the Mail & Guardian

Michelle Matthews writer and publishing consultant specialising in digital hybrids (Tertia’s ex.publishing agent), founder of the Oshun imprint, mobfest maven - well worth discovering more about this publishing visionary

HajraBibi Cassim stay-at-home mom with MBA in tow, ex tech gal, who is a long.time fan of the worthy blogging queen Tertia

Kerry-Anne Gilowey who I met at Podcamp (she organised a Mini for the day as a prize) is another wonderful wordsmith with her own content creation consultancy specialising in social media production and co.creator of the popular Cape Town Daily Photo. She is also an alumnus of Nomadic Marketing.

Jenna Miller Bloch who I will no doubt see at future geek.girl gigs and definitely spend more time with; incubated her PPC talent at Incubeta and is soon to join the Shoulders of Giants team.

Robynn Burls co.founder (with hubby Scott) of Encyclomedia [media database co. connecting PR and media outlets (also read bloggers) together] who I met at the Bloggerati party through catalyst Cath Luckhoff

Kirsten Pearson fellow Huddleminder (our Catalyst of Progress) whose Conscious Dialogue workshops are starting to add real value to individuals, couples and corporates who participate in the sessions; amongst keeping Huddlemind processes on track and practising Reiki

Thank you all so much for your splendid company!

[We missed Tanya Odendaal (diarised the wrong day, but helping to organise the Cape Epic will do that to you) & Lauren Cohen (chasing a gritty story in a squatter camp on Valentine's Day for the Sunday Times), another wordsmithy Thought Leader Bridget McNulty, Christine Da Silva (also ex.Incubeta, now owner of AlterSage online reputation management), Verashni Pillay (News24.com journo & blogger here), Jacky Lourens (helping refresh the film industry in SA), and MariaVasco (the force behind the Goddess Events & the Bookless Bookclubs around the country)].

PS. Please let me know (leave a comment or mail me) if you’re keen to come to, or even sponsor a little something fabulous for our upcoming and more structured Women in Tech (name TBC) dinner in March >>

* a word on the header
I say “.co.za” when of course I mean Cape Town; but given that when it comes to the real.world social element of online culture in South Africa, Cape Town has consistently proven to be the pioneer.
From geekdinners to podcamps, the meme emerges here & goes on a great trek north. (Sound like a little dare to you Jozi & George crews? It’s supposed to ;-) The more we blend our realities & share space beyond the isolating busyness, the closer we get to developing a strong tech culture here)

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I saw this post on RWW about Blitzweekend today. They mention other similar get togethers, such as Startup Weekend (each team will be focused on their own app) and Rails Rumble (more of a competition), however unlike those mentioned Blitzweekend will get everyone working on the same agreed (after some brainstorming) web application.

The idea: A small group of developers, designers, and entrepreneurs will converge in a single location for 48 hours with the singular goal of creating a web application from start to finish.

I like this idea. Remember, “Creativity loves constraints”. I remember a while back WebHuddle was created in one of these weekend start to finish design/code/entrepreneur-a-thons, or whatever you want to call them.

Unlike a GeekDinner, Barcamp, OpenCoffee or 27Dinner, where people get together to share ideas and passions and meet new people, the idea of the Blitzweekend or Startup Weekend is to get together to actually create something from start to finish.

I would definitely like to try a concept out like this with our local community of Developers, Designers, Marketers and Web Entrepreneurs. I think we could produce something world class.

Well, I’d better blog something about this before it’s well past too late. Another geeky do is upon us and this one has been dubbed “Eccentric Eggplant” - I don’t care what they call it, as long as that’s not on the menu … no matter how eccentric the bloody thing is, it remains the most acquired of acquired tastes. Anyhow … I get sidetracked so bloody easily … I have the attetion span of a … hey look … a kitty.

Any old how … back to the post - as stated, we have another Geek Dinner coming up in Cape Town and teh_VN and I shall be road trippin’ for the second last time this year to teh_madacity with teh_wikidnickers and some of her furry fwiends in close accompanyment.

We convene at Ferryman’s Tavern at the Cape Town Waterfront on Wednesday the 28th and if I’m not mistaken there are still a few seats available for late bookers. Sponsored wine seems to be the norm and I am sure much Jagermeister and Tequila® will be consumed too. Some people will be speeching some, but that’s not really all that important - we’re there for the party. teh_VN is speeching much on the Google Summer of Code and what we can expect from Joomla 1.5

Great fun was had by all and high fives all round to be expected the day after and the blogosphere over. Thursday night we are at the Baxter … yaaay … finally going to see The Most Amazing Show and Co