I recently bought two poetry books, both written by recent graduates of the UCT Creative Writing MA. I studied creative writing in my second and third years at UCT as part of my BA – a course I enjoyed more and found more valuable than my IT studies. In spite of the intellectual snobbery that… Continue reading Kim McClenaghan – Revisitings
Visited Countries
Thanks to a link I discovered at Forest Blog, I’ve created a Visited Countries image. I’ve visited all of 4% of the world’s countries. And that includes a bus drive through France on my way from Holland to the UK. At least I excluded Brazil – Sao Paulo airport is not something I want to… Continue reading Visited Countries
Banking and Open Source in South Africa
Now that I’m finally moved off the Windows2000 machine I’d been using at work (all of the developers have been using Linux a while, either Gentoo, Mandrake or Fedora, as have most of the editorial staff, so it was disgraceful that the IT Manager who got everyone to run on Open Source hasn’t been doing… Continue reading Banking and Open Source in South Africa
MySQL certification
A number of my staff are doing the MySQL certification. When I came up with the idea, I planned to do some training, but working 3 days a week doesn’t leave me much time to do anything besides sit in meetings anymore, so that hasn’t happened. But, I’m sure they’ll all do well in the… Continue reading MySQL certification
Creative Commons Licence
I’ve decided to use a Creative Commons licence for my blog. Coincidentally, Tectonic has just published an article comparing the GNU GPL and the creative commons licenses. So as not to repeat everyone else, read the Creative Commons website on why to use a creative commons licence.
Media ethics in South Africa
Recently the great debate amongst South African media organisations has been on whether to show/link to the beheadings in Iraq. It all began when SABC showed the video in their Xhosa news. The producer was suspended and the SABC fined. Later, Vincent Maher, a lecturer at Rhodes University, ran a poll amongst his final year… Continue reading Media ethics in South Africa
Touching the Void
Just come back from watching Touching the Void (also available as a book. It’s a superb film, leaving me exhilirated to be alive. The trailer hadn’t appealed to me, but a friend had told me the whole story in great detail over lunch. She recommended I see it anyhow, and I’m very glad I did.… Continue reading Touching the Void
Happy birthday Perl
Perl turned 10 on the 17th of October. I’ve still got a fondness for the language even though I haven’t programmed in it for years. An internet course I developed around 1998 had Perl as the core, and I had great fun teaching it to people who’d either never programmed, or had limited programming experience.… Continue reading Happy birthday Perl
Why blog
I’ve been thinking, as many new bloggers seem to, about why people blog, as I mentioned briefly yesterday. I haven’t got around to formulating my own views (perhaps I don’t have one), instead I’ve been reading some others. Most discussions aren’t very satisfying, but here’re a few that are: Riba Rambles:`MORE Musings of a Mental… Continue reading Why blog
Neverness – first entry
Finally, I have set up my blog, and am making my first post. As is my wont, I’ve thought about this a long time, and delayed, wanting to do it properly. I tend to find reasons to delay things forever. Blogs fascinate me. One part sees them as egotistical, unimportant waffling written by insignificant people.… Continue reading Neverness – first entry