Down the rabbit hole..

• Monday, made breakfast for Mia and Francis, office, registered gustpay.com, ARBurn meetup at Trumpettree.
• Tuesday, morning walk to Lanzerac, set up new TrustFabric production server, we finished the TrustFabric MXit Opt-out service, sushi at the place under Springbok.
• Remember kids, startup dev is not swiss watch making.
• Wednesday, morning walk to Lazerac, made a Gust video with Frans, lunch with Malan, bumped into a random mid-week street wine festival on my way home, some Jordan wine and a burger with Paul at 5Reineveld.
• Thursday, morning walk, we installed 20 Gust wallets, FTTH meeting, lunch with Charl and Brad, tea with Paul, Theo and Dirk, MXit Thursdays at Gino’s and ARBurn and #HackSTB meetups.
• Passion > impact > wealth.

• “Wondering panther.” – aka Pondering Panda.

• Friday, rainy day, office, bookend some Chuck Norris ads on MXit, fetched Mia and Francis, Kauai, watched The Lorax, book shop.. got Mia the new Olivia goes to Venice, fish and chips, updated Mia’s iPad with the latest photos.
• I think I managed to not use my car for 4 days this week.
• Saturday, Mia’s 6th birthday party at Naulene’s house, late family lunch at Eikendal, shopping, Mia and I went for a walk along the Eerste Rivier.
• Mia now wears a size 1 shoe.

• “You’re never fully dressed without a smile.” — Mia

• Sunday, Mxit family day at Brenaissance Wine Estate – Alice in Wonderland party, awesome day.

• “You have a tiger there!” — comment about Mia at the Alice in Wonderland party.

• I gave away my HD PVR this week. So long DSTV – may your monopoly end soon.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Kicking ass and taking numbers actually.

Tired of random sales calls and SMS spam?

We made a mobile version of the TrustFabric Opt-Out service live on Mxit over the weekend.. 1 April was exactly one year after the Consumer Protection Act came into effect.

The DMA – who runs the only other opt-out list (which is funded by the same people who do most of the spamming) had 39k records last year when their list was reported leaked.

Help us build the biggest opt-out list so we can go ask the NCC to appoint an official National Opt-Out list for South Africa.

Read this for some background.

How to add yourself to the Opt-out list:

• Mxit: If you ever wanted a reason to install MXit, here you go… On your phone, go to m.mxit.com, download and sign up, add the “TrustFabric” contact.
• Mxit via the Web: mxit.im – sign up and add the “TrustFabric” contact.
• Web: TrustFabric Connect – sign up and configure your communication preferences. If you are an existing TrustFabric user you are already on the list.

Spread the word.

UPDATE – Wednesday 4th 17:45 – 5,500 users.
UPDATE – Thursday 5th 8:45 – 10,000 users.
UPDATE – Monday 9th 12:25 – 30,000 users.
UPDATE – Sunday 15th 11:45 – 100,000 users.
UPDATE – Tuesday 24nd 8:30 – 150,000 users.
UPDATE – Tuesday 1 May – 200,000 users.

Walks, meetings and ~6 projects in parallel..

• Monday, meetings from 7:00, ARBurn meetup at Trumpettree.
• Tuesday, meetings from 7:00, Mia teacher meeting.
• Wednesday, public holiday, gym with Mia and Francis, installed DOTT for Mia, a walk around Stellenbosch, strategy chat with Alex, watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou again.. I may need to get some Campari again.
• DOTT is a cool game, but I forgot that you need to be able to read to play it, maybe in a month or three.
• Thursday, morning podcast walk to Lanzerac, Gust meeting, played photographer at MXit Thursdays at Gino’s.. mostly to play with my new flash diffuser.
• Friday, at the office before 7:00, photo processing, went to gather GPS coordinates for the big 1 April party (Down the rabbit hole), took a walk around Stellenbosch with Alan, after work beer with Werner, watched American Psycho again.

• “I’m a child of divorce, give me a break.” — Bateman

• I got a 27″ Thunderbolt Display this week.. pretty cool for photo processing.. but I suspect the i5 integrated display engine is under performing a bit.
• One of my photos from Gino’s made it to BWTH Blog.

• “Ever hear the saying ‘Don’t judge a book by it’s contents’?” – Alan

• Saturday, morning podcast walk to Lanzerac, fetched the family and went to Villiera Wines Autumn Festival with Paul and Andrew, photo processing.

• “There’s nothing sweeter than an airport beer.” — Andrew

• “And these are Naulene’s other kids.” — Andrew, introducing two random children to Victoria

• I migrated all my 2011 photos to external storage. (Only) about 6600 photos in 2011 – 110GB. So, I guess if I move my photo masters to external storage quick enough and can get away with a 256GB SSD.
• Hmm.. I’ve only taken (kept) 1191 photos in 2012 so far.
• Sunday, catch-up day, morning podcast walk, cleaned, dried, trimmed, charged and backed up stuff around the house, 4 hours at the office, a 1 hour nap, family supper at Col’Cacchio’s, I had the Zissou pizza, Marlyn started walking.
• I think there is room for a company to focus on making shorts. Just cargo shorts.
• Now that all my photos are processed, I guess I’m going to have to process all my backlogged video footage.
• Dear Pocket Change and Payment Receipts – your days are numbered.
• We’re busy planning a pretty awesome party. Gust and ARBurn App will be there.
• btw. We’re making progress with the fibre to the home idea.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

A low carb week..

• The last post was late – so this one is early.
• Monday, woke up in Somerset West, took Mia to school, a beer at Anton’s, MXit Monday at Gino’s, drinks at Trumpet Tree with Anton.
• Tuesday, left the office at 19:00ish, Mia visit, photo processing.
• Note to self: remember to do lower back exercises.
• I think the last time I drove to the office (with a car) was in early 2009.
• Wednesday, took Mia to school, gym at Waterstone (to use their wifi), got an inverted dome flash diffuser from Orms, gym at Wembley Square, dropped off some photos at Klein Constantia, coastal road back to Marlyn’s 1st birthday party, a Guinness with Andrew at Erinvale.
• Thursday, Gust Alpha install and demo, a walk with Dirk, haircut with Ancia, Mia visit.
• Crazy days. Fun, but crazy.
• After three disappointments I think I’ve finally found somebody that can cut hair in Stellenbosch.
• Friday, dropped Mia at school, car service, gym, lunch with Dirk, Mia visit.. we played with Scratch and took a walk, Guinness and rugby in Stellenbosch with Georg, drinks at Joe-casa with Anton and Georg.
• Tune of the week: Right This Second – Deadmau5
• Saturday, watched 1/2 of Dexter episode 1.. pretty lame, watched Life Aquatic again, tea in Jonkershoek with the family, supper at De Oewer.. try the lamb salad and the unfiltered Fleur De Cap Chardonnay.
• I managed to reduced my photo processing backlog to zero.
• Sunday, raw green smoothie, Mia and I played a game of Backgammon, a glass of Chardonnay at Andrew’s new house, dropped Mia at Naulene’s house.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

• The week of 5-11 March.
• Monday, woke up in Knysna, breakfast at Windmill Cafe (at Timberlake/Wilderness) with Andrew and Emma, Route 62 road trip, stopped at Ronnies Sex Shop, Huguenot Tunnel, a beer at Old Bridge Tavern.
• R62 – a reminder of the freedoms we still have at the bottom tip of Africa.

• “I guess I’m living a life less ordinary, but it’s interesting.” — Emma

• We named my car “Bert”.

• “Bird loves Bert.” — Emma, aka Big Bird.

• Tuesday, work, Mia visit.
• Wednesday, took Mia to school, gym, afternoon walk, photo processing.
• Thursday, morning podcast walk, Gust meeting, MXit drinks at Gino’s.
• Seems I need 9k Discovery Vitality points to get to Diamond status.
• Friday, morning walk around Stellenbosch, played photographer at a Klein Constantia cocktail party with Naulene.
• Saturday, gym, toy and shoe shopping with Mia, Nina’s 6th birthday party, Mia and I went to a braai at Paul’s house.
• Sunday, Stardust, Stellenbosch botanical garden for what must have been a 7 egg omelette and some Lego building, fetched Naulene, Francis and Marlyn, Goldfish at Kirstenbosch with Cath.
• This was the first time Mia wanted to build Lego all on her own.
• No shortage of shot denim shorts at Kirstenbosch.
• Seems last week’s update was number 200.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Road trip!

• Monday, raw green smoothies, took Mia and Francis to school, gym, 27 Dinner at El Burro, a beer and a braai broodjie at Georg’s, tea at Cath’s.
• Traffic circles in Somerset West are strange – seems to be: yield to biggest 4×4.

• “There’s a lot of crazy here.” — Richard, about a MXit drumming circle.

• Tuesday, woke up in Tamboerskloof, gym, left the office at 21:00ish.
• Wednesday, morning walk to Lanzerac, meeting in Cape Town, car wash, Heavy Chef, Thai yellow curry at Carlyle’s with Georg.
• Thursday.

• “Maybe we should call it MXit Fruit Bat.” — Kevin about MXit 2.0 vs 7.0.

• After I catch up with my photo processing backlog I’m going to reward myself by having ADSL installed at home.
• Friday, took Mia and Naulene to the Design Indaba, installed Scratch for Mia, road trip with Andrew and Emma.
• Seems a collection of dolphins is called a pod of dolphins.

• “I’d rather be whole than good.” – Carl Jung

• Saturday, woke up in Knysna, tequila milkshake at East Head Cafe, fishing at Buffels Baai.. Andrew caught two small fish, G&Ts by the river, braai and a swim at Dom’s house.
• Sunday, rainy day in Knysna, breakfast on Thesen island – service sucked so we got breakfast for free, oysters and Kudu shank at Zucchini close to Wilderness, supper at Tapas.
• Seems my blog caused a bit of unhappiness and closure this week.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

While taking a morning walk recently, listening to a ZATech Show podcast, one of the people on the show mentioned that he was locked out of all his Google services for a few days because a Youtube video he uploaded a long time ago seemed to have (mistakenly) contained copyrighted material. No calendar, no contacts, no email.

Sucker.

Give some thought to how dependent you have (probably) become on the Big Brother companies of today: Apple, Google, Facebook.

If Facebook goes away I’ll have to find some other way to share my public photos – but I’ll still have all my photos. If Google goes away I’ll have to use Bing search. If the Apple AppStore/iTunes goes away I’ll probably be a bit sad about the $2 I spent on the one app I ever bought. If Twitter goes away I’ll lose all my tweets.. not that there is any useful way of really finding old relevant tweets anyway.

Don’t get sucked in, kids.

Emma asked me about cameras this weekend. What to buy. Why I like my camera etc. I get this question fairly often and I usually just give people Jonathan’s rule of buying cameras:

“Buy the most expensive Canon camera you can afford and you will be happy with it.”

I added that at some point the cost of pressing the shutter button gets a bit high for most people. Let’s say you have a R30k camera with a max actuator count of 200k (yes, at some point the mechanics will fail) – that’s 15c every time you press the shutter button. For a R90k camera it’s almost 50c per click.

Most people are not pro photographers – they are more lifestyle photographers. So, let’s do the math a bit differently…

Let’s say you take 15k photos per year and you expect the camera to last you 4 years. You keep 1/2 of the photos you take – because you care a bit about the results. You end up with 30k photos for your R30k investment in camera hardware. Pretty much R1 per photo. R60k kit gives you R2 per photo.

Now, imagine you go away for a weekend and you come back with 100 good photos. We know a photo costs you about R2, but what did the weekend cost? No real point in dividing the cost of the weekend by 100, but if you do, especially for a really awesome weekend, it’s probably a fairly expensive set of photos.

I guess my point is this: there’s no point in me telling people about the cost of pressing the shutter button or talking about which cameras are expensive or in-expensive. Cameras just have to fit in with your lifestyle. Which takes us back to Jonathan’s rule of buying cameras.

ps. Remember to make backups.

It’s after 23:00, just got home after a pretty standard Thursday…

We demo’d our geo-fencing mobile wallet, I helped with a sales proposal, got a new production Linux VM up and talked routing and firewalling with the sysadmin guys, we finished a new TrustFabric app, figured out a fibre to the home plan, designed an augmented reality application for AfrikaBurn over (free) beer and pizza at Gino’s while the (18Mbps) free wifi went live.

Living in Stellenbosch is not bad at all.

The Quickening week at MXit and the Will Ferrell box set…

• Monday, upgraded Mia’s iPad, sunset walk around Stellenbosch, photo processing.
• Tuesday, upgraded Mia’s Mac Mini, left the office at 20:00ish, Mia visit.
• Wednesday, dropped Mia at school, gym, left the office at 21:00ish, photo processing while watching A Night at the Roxbury.. pretty lame.
• Watch this: Elon Musk Profiled: Bloomberg Risk Takers.
• Thursday, morning walk to Lanzerac listening to ZAtech Show, Duct Tape Wallet meeting, got Django and our dev environment running on Ubuntu in Virtualbox, left the office after 21:00, beer at Gino’s, photo processing while watching Superstar.. pretty lame.
• Friday, watched Old School again, nap, photo processing.
• I processed about 1000 photos this week.
• Saturday, gym, family outing to AfrikaBurn Park Life at Rocklands Park (Deer Park), Fresh Sauvignon festival at Buitenverwachting with Paul, Jimmy the Fish with Mia and Francis.
• Sunday, woke up displaced from my bed by Mia and Francis, photo processing while Mia and Francis watched Stardust, Mia built 7 floor puzzles while Francis and I took a nap, Goodluck at Oude Libertas with Andrew, Mia danced with Juliet on stage.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Chazz Michael Michaels – ice-devouring sex tornado..

• Monday, put new home movies on Mia’s iPad, took her to school, gym, sunset walk to Lanzerac, video processing.
• Tuesday, morning walk, Mia visit.
• Wednesday, dropped Mia at school, Waterstone gym (to read email waiting for traffic), Wembley gym, tea with Sarah, lunch with Cath, bank with Jonathan and Gerhard, Orms to get a replacement polarizer, AfrikaBurn volunteer meeting at the Bijou with Cath, a beer at Georg’s house.

• “No radio, no sleepy songs, no tunes.” — Mia, about car music options.

• Thursday, morning run to the top hockey fields, breakfast at Guardian Peak with Ben, Paul’s house, MXit Thursdays at Gino’s, braai at Debby’s house with Ben and Werner.

• “If there is one thing we like doing.. it’s answering questions.” — Ben

• Friday, got my AfrikaBurn ticket, after work beer at De Akker, Mia visit.
• Feels like my load average is running above 2 at the moment. Work, family, exercise, friends.
• Saturday, woke up with 5 people in the bed, breakfast at Mondeor, braai at Will’s house.
• Sunday, family time, gym, lunch with Andrew, Bianca, Terence, Sherri, Emma at Glen Carlou.. try the Glen Carlou Quartz Stone Chardonnay, a swim at Bianca’s house, photo processing, watched Blades of Glory again.. brilliant.
• New pet hate: people who keep yapping on about their pets.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Playing with some video editing..

• Monday, dropped Mia at school, dropped Francis at her gran’s house, some photo processing while waiting for a minor car service, gym, sunset walk around Stellenbosch.
• Managed to get my picture in this story.
• I joined the Waterstone Village gym. Really sucks that Stellenbosch does not have a Virgin Active. It’s been 4 months without a good exercise routine.
• Seems Stellenbosch has a lot of wasps – I sat on a wasp last week and the back of my leg was swollen for 3 days.
• 233 photo albums on FB.
• Seems I’ve become way more selective about the photos I keep. Only about 400 photos in 2012 so far, that’s way under my 10k per year goal. Amusing looking back at my photos from 2010 and spotting all the things I would fix now.
• Tuesday, morning walk to Lanzerac, tea with Paul and Theo, afternoon walk around Stellenbosch and some sushi, video processing.
• Funny how imported beer tastes better in its home country.
• Wednesday, morning walk to Lanzerac, left the office at 20:00ish, video processing, made a video for Jacques, for his birthday.
• People probably think I’m a bit strange when they see my typos – not knowing that I type Dvorak.

• “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.” — Mike Tyson

• Thursday, car service – again, gym, MXit Thursdays at Ginos.
• Friday, woke up in Somerset West, dropped Mia at school, fetched my car, hair cut, after work beer at Jan Kats, dinner with Alan at Wijinhuis, a glass of wine with Kloppies.
• I’m not so sure about that idea that married men live 7 years longer.
• Saturday, fetced Mia, gym, swim, toy shop, lunch with the family at Eikendal, Riesling Rocks festival at Hartenberg with Paul and Ben.
• Sunday, photo processing, backups, Mia, Francis and I went to watch Star Wars ep1 in 3D, Bikini Beach walk.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.