I think we have a winner, or at least a beta..

My new years resolution (NYR) post is long overdue. I’ve been busy.. but I made a few notes on the topic.

I just looked at my 2009 NYR post.. which I’m not going to link to. At least one item worked out well.. “Start one new project (yes, just one)”.. and I’m happy with the status of my “Be a good dad” resolution.

Moving on..

2010 seems to be a year of big changes.

I’m moving house again soon. I quit drinking. I sold my shares in Frogfoot.. which was a bit of a weird feeling. It has been a part of me for 10 years. I’m about to sell my shares in Amobia, probably signing the paperwork this week.. I probably need to update my homepage and blog theme soon.

So where does this leave me.. unemployed?, self-employed? ..master of my own personal little Wayne Enterprises / Joe, Inc… now what? I guess I could go for the About a Boy 30min-time-slot lifestyle or become a diving instructor and chill on a beach somewhere?

Nope. Not very exciting. Time to re-focus.

I’m focusing my efforts on the new project: TrustFabric. Maybe I’ll tell you what it’s all about soon.

The end game..

What should I be spending my time on in 2010? Hmm…

Let’s see.. this is simple, all I want is.. an R8 spyder, a house in Nettleton road and a woman like Anne Hathaway.

..but I guess that’s not a valid answer. We all know.. getting there is all the fun.

Some thoughts..

• Cape Town is Rome.. I’m not going anywhere.. and I’m privileged to live here.
• Stress kills. Health through happiness.
• Have a dream.. it’s the only way to change the world.
• Figure out what you should be optimising.. what has impact?
• Success is about spotting value before others do.
• Change is a process not an event.
• Apply bottom to chair.. work hard. (..and I’m not talking about forced labour, I’m talking about things you want to do)

About those NYR’s..

1) Go big. Make a big success of the new project.

2) Health. You can’t really live like a rock star after 30.

3) Awareness and consciousness. Sounds all fuzzy, but it’s something I want to work on.

4) Be better at selecting good photos and publishing them.

5) Travel. See two or three new countries.

Some of my friends may want to be sitting down before reading this.

Yes kids, I’ve had a good innings but I’ve given up drinking, for good. It’s been a bit more than two weeks since my last drink.

My reason: forward momentum. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Being good feels good.

I just got tired of waking up not really feeling like doing something productive. Tired of having a reason not to go to gym or go for a run. Tired of smoky environments. Tired of let’s face it.. the last legal drug and supporting the industry built around it.

By far the most challenging part is the social pressure.. which you can easily hack around by saying stuff like.. “February is a sober month for me” (insert current month).. it seems to be socially OK to quit for _one_ month.

So I’ll be drinking passion fruit and soda or rock shandy if you want to buy me a drink.

..all hail st. Joe ;-P

Dig the life fantastic..

• Monday, gym, swim, smoothie, dropped Mia off, photo processing, ~drinks at Carlyle’s with Georg and Madeleine, awesome prawns in pastry dish at Sidewalk Cafe.. the cheesecake is better than the bread and butter pudding, btw.
• Tuesday, bloggers tour of FireID and Mxit in Stellenbosch, TF brand workshop #2 at Aiden’s, got stuck in traffic for about an hour.. note to self, never ever travel when all the suckers use the roads, fetched Keith at hospital.. he had a wisdom tooth removed, a run to Bantry Bay and a Clifton beach walk, bumped into nbm.
• Crossed the 600 FB friends mark.
• Naulene thinks I should go find myself a girlfriend with lots of free time.
• Wednesday, CITI breakfast workshop at Sinn’s.. bumped into Maz, gym, dentist round 4, green sofa at Crush, quick TF brand meeting with Cath, Cath farewell drinks/snacks at Sinn’s.

• “You can’t catch a mermaid Joe.” — Naulene

• Thursday, Fred dropped off Mia’s new iPod Touch, lawyer meeting.. about Mia custody, gadget shopping.. cover, mic, headphones, smoothie ingredient shopping, TF meeting.
• (I hope) the world has evolved so people are now on a first name basis with their local health shop owner rather than their local chemist.
• My lawyer pointed out that in terms of awake-hours I actually spend more time with her than her mom does.
• Seems the South African laws on custody improved dramatically around 2008.. which by default gives the father shared custody.. and implies the mother needs consent for the child’s departure/removal from SA.
  

  The law has effectively developed so as to remove marriage as being the yardstick against which fathers get measured when it comes to their rights. In terms of The Children’s Act, a father (if the couple is unmarried) gets full parental responsibilities and rights as well provided that he was with the mother in a “permanent life-partnership” at the time of the child’s birth.

  Should the relationship between the parents end, he has the right to enter into a Parental Responsibilities and Rights Agreement with the mother, which is then registered with the Office of the Family Advocate OR made an Order of Court. The High Court is the upper guardian of all children and any agreement between the parents about the child will be measured against what is in the best interests of the child. — From a memo by Nicci Ferguson Attorneys

• Mia loves the iPod.. she figured out the touch interface very quickly. The idea with the iPod is that I can talk to her in the week and she can phone her gran.
• Friday, pretty much spent the day at Neo with Phil and Jonathan, nap, Naulene dropped Mia off, Beta Beach sunset walk, Mia had a video chat with her gran, bath and hair wash, sleep.

• “With great power comes great responsibility.” — Peter Parker

• I’ve been invited to give a talk at an Infecting the City event: UCT Graduate School of Business Talking Heads.
• Saturday, uber juice, watched Fantastic Mr. Fox at the Waterfront.. brilliant movie, made us feel like 3yo’s mature beyond our years, smoothie, got new swimwear and Nikeplus toy, gourmet pancakes for lunch, gym, swim, Valentines pastries at Knead, Deer Park, book shop to get a Planet51 and Fantastic Mr. Fox book, Joe’s pasta salad, bath, read Mr Fox book, sleep.
• We also have the Fantastic Mr. Fox audio book for the car.
• The Waterfront is a place tourists go to see tourists.
• Kinda cool how some of Mia’s old dresses are now tops.. but she still loves to wear them.
• My Nikeplus profile: http://my.nike.com/swimgeek ..now, I’ve had a few heart rate monitors and toys like these so I know it’s only going to amuse me for a month or two, but I figure it’s good motivation to go running.
• I must say the Nikeplus UX sucks. Setting the thing up is a pain. Calibrating it makes very little sense. The website is pretty. I’ll keep playing.
• Sunday, watched a Pooh Bear movie, gym, swim, pizza at Knead, sinful ice cream, Parlatones at D’Aria, which to quote Mr Fox was a total cluster-cuss to the point where I did not take any photos of the show, bath, read the Planet51 book, sleep.
• I should really make a few panoramic pics again.. guess the wide angle lens makes me lazy.
• Mia was asking about why people have to get up early when I realised she does not really have a concept of a parent with a 9-5 job.
• Oh, and just before you think I’m strange getting Mia and iPod at 3yo, consider having a real early adopter for a dad, somebody like Henk (-;
• Tune of the week: I gotta feeling, Black eyed peas.. well, Mia loves it.
• Album of the week: Odd Blood, Yeasayer.
• My new swimming goggles are such a pleasure.

Have a fun week kids. I’m still in business plan mode.

A few bloggers toured the FireID and Mxit offices on Tuesday morning. It was good fun. Big thanks to Dave and our hosts. A few random notes..

Summary:

Two very different cultures with the same major challenge.. to make good quality software work on ~2000 different mobile phone handsets. (not a problem I want to have)

FireID:

• Interesting views on agile dev, teams, dev cycles.. 3 week cycles seem optimal.
• Very interesting practical use of automated testing.. with lava lamps.
• Have a dedicated product owner in the team.
• Fun employment tactics.. the geek cartoon test was awesome.
• Good idea to keep your working environment human. “Lab” culture.
• Good idea to have a few group activities, go surfing, hiking etc.
• Whiteboards everywhere.

Mxit:

• Interesting how they do human content moderation.
• 2010 will be the year in which the battle for the mobile wallet is won.
• Interesting insights on the collision course of banks, MNO’s and reserve banks.
• Danger of distraction, even if it’s creative and cool, manage your pipeline of projects, keep focus.
• It takes about 5years to get there.

“Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises” — seen on a wall at FireID

Zooming out.. I think you have one shot at getting known for something. Your brand can own one idea in the mind of the consumer.. Google = search. Facebook = friends. Mxit = cheap sms. FireID = OTP without the problem of hardware distribution. It’s very very hard to be more than one thing.. even if your investors are pushing you to find more revenue streams.

Lastly, please would they change that insanely ugly typeface for the sign as you drive into Technopark.. very 80s.

As you were.

Week of upgrades and becoming a Mac Kiddie again..

• Monday, carwash, gym, photo processing, Clifton walk, veggie dinner at Henk’s.
• Ingi moved out, Kris moved in. Ingi is now living with BB.
• February is the best month in Cape Town, nice weather, less tourists.
• Tuesday, admin, pool cleaning, home PC upgrade (extra 1TB and nvidia card), walked from Vredehoek to Andy’s lookout spot along the cable car contour road with Georg, very good lentil moussaka at Sidewalk Cafe, Waiting Room with Henk, Elodie and Karen, dinks at Julep.
• Henk has this theory that there is an over-supply of woman in Cape Town, that’s why so many nice girls tolerate losers.
• Wednesday, TF brand strategy workshop at Aiden’s with Jonathan, Posticino pizza at Posticino, nap, run to Bantry Bay.
• Thursday, tea with Jaco at Neo, installed the new MacBook Pro, big backup day, TF meeting, nice Thai yellow beef curry at Carlyle’s with Georg.
• I do a big off-site backup every 3 months. It’s about 100GB now (not counting any audio/video). A terabyte seemed like a lot of space a while ago.. not so much now, but it still takes forever to move around.. you can tell I’ve been creating RAID sets?
• I’m a Mac kiddie again. Actually not much has changed since the v10.3 days. I now have a MacBook Pro 13″ with 8GB memory, a Magic Mouse, Apple keyboard, 26″ LCD and Griffin elevator stand… all working very nicely together. Oh, and a groovy exo-skeleton-like Crumpler Gentleman Farmer bag.
• Lesson of the week.. don’t be afraid to pay for expert skills, it’s quicker than doing it yourself and you learn a lot in the process.
• One more lesson.. stand for something. Some people will love you and some will hate you, which is way better than not even being noticed.
• I’ve been pondering two things this week.. that point where you act on strong instinct.. and, the question you ask yourself after you created something.. is it beautiful?
• Friday, breakfast with Jonathan at Crush, gym, business plan workshop at the Barn, fetched Mia, Orms visit, sunset Beta Beach walk to play with the new circular polariser.
• I had a chat with a friend recently.. I asked something like “how is fatherhood treating you?”.. he commented that it’s a bit strenuous on the relationship between him and his wife.. and mentioned that it’s hard without a support network of grandparents who live nearby. Statistically, many relationships end in the 1st year of having children. You can probably guess why this is interesting to me. Even more interesting is unsupportive grandparents who do live nearby.
• I think I’m an excellent ex (-;
• Saturday, uber juice, gym, swim, lunch at Depasco with Keith and Georg.. try the balsamic chicken sandwich on yellow corn bread, photo safari around Cape Town CBD with Keith, snacks at the Eastern Food Bazaar.
• Sunday, uber juice, stuffed ourselves with watermelon, gym, swim, picnic at Kirstenbosch.. watched aKING with Debby, Georg, Gerjo etc.. seems Mia was not so impressed, more watermelon, awesome sunset, great light.
• Selecting good photos is turning out to be harder than taking them.. it involves discipline and routine.
• I think I need to change the way I answer my phone.
• Tune of the week: Why Do I Keep Counting?, Sam’s Town, The Killers.
• Mia seems to like The Killers.

• “Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.” — R. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

• I’m thinking of making Mia a compilation of all the music from her 3rd year. She’s turning 4 at the end of March.. “Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that make her happy.”

Have a fun week kids.

1. Electrolite – R.E.M.
2. Corduroy – Pearl Jam
3. Rain King – Counting Crows
4. Dig For Fire – Pixies
5. 3:45 No Sleep – The Cardigans

..oh, most of the stuff from the Wes Anderson movies and obviously Disintegration by The Cure.

No idea what intro to use for this week’s post..

• Monday, tea, Toy Story, gym, swim, smoothie, aquarium, Naulene fetched Mia, bought 3 electric toothbrushes.. 2 for Mia’s 2*N redundant lifestyle, walked from Vredehoek to the Kings Blockhouse with Georg, beer and supper at Sidewalk Cafe.. nice pot of mussels.. nice spot to watch the sun set behind Lions Head.
• I always figured electric toothbrushes were a gimmick, not so, my dentist suggested I get one, I agree, just feels cleaner.
• Tuesday, sold my shares in Frogfoot, photo processing, a run to Clifton 1 and a beach walk, cocktail at Kyoto Garden Sushi, dinner at Sidewalk Cafe with Keith, Georg and Parri.. very good calamari and awesome cheesecake.
• It’s funny when you are in a beautiful environment without a camera it somehow forces you to be a bit more conscious of the moment.
• Wednesday, gym, dentist round 3, GeekDinner at the Wild Fig.
• I think facebook is more like TV than we’d like to admit. I read a study that claimed about 70% of facebook users have a read-only experience. I think it’s probably worse than that. Just because people have the ability to publish and interact does not change they way they consume. So instead of having 200 TV channels they may now have 500. So much for the read-write culture idea.
• Thursday, lots of admin, lunch at Gourmet Burger with Abz, ordered a Macbook Pro (with 8GB memory), TF meeting, a late veggie dinner.
• Friday, gym, breakfast at Crush with Jonathan, haircut at B’s, Orms visit to shop for a polariser, Canon S90 seems pretty cool, hardware shopping, Cavendish to buy a few shirts, burger at Royale with Georg.. try the Jack Daniels and peanut butter milkshake, Neighbourhood.. try the Mojito Okinawa, Mint Julep at Julep, La Vie with Aiden and Cams.

• “Manners are a great thing.” — Aiden

• “Drive it like it’s stolen.” — Mark at Julep

• Saturday, Origin with Georg, watched The GODS first gig at the Hidden Celler.. very good, Akker.
• Loads of fun walking around Origin at dusk with the 85mm.
• Thank god for that Paul van Dyk CD.

• “The deafening sound of fuckall.” — Andrew, about Origin starting at 13:00

• Sunday, woke up in Stellenbosch, fetched Mia, breakfast at the Blue Orange with Cath and Parri, Andrew’s birthday braai, dropped Mia off.
• I figure this is a good week to stop drinking. For a long time.

Lots of photos to go process now..

Getting ready for a few big changes..

• Monday, tea, vitB shot, gym, run, swim, pizza at Knead, MTN science centre.. not bad, dropped Mia off, pretty much pulled my hair out in dealing with crazy bitch.. trying to explain why it’s a good idea to give a child antihistamines to prevent a flemmy cough, a few glasses.. erm, bottels of wine with Andrew at Henry’s, photo processing.
• Tuesday, swim, general admin involving tea drinking and listening to music at home, a run to Bantry Bay, veggie dinner.
• Wednesday, gym, dentist round 2, nap, Amobia exco meeting and pizza at Da Vinci’s kloof st.
• Thursday, leftover pizza for breakfast, gym, lunch at the Wild Fig with Abz, dinner at Jonathan’s, a few beers with Georg at Carlyle’s.
• Friday, early Beta Beach walk, a good VC meeting, lunch with Theo and Paul in Stellenbosch, a bit of a technology entrepreneurs get-together in Somerset West (it still needs a name), fetched Mia, shopping for the braai, swim, Mia watched a Winnie the Pooh movie, veggie dinner with some very good Jordan Nine Yards Chardonnay, made some Chimichuri sauce.
• Saturday, gym, swim, smoothie, braai and pool party in Bakoven.
• Sunday, tea, nap, Fokofpolisiekar at Kirstenbosch photo session, pizza at Carlyle’s with Georg.
• This custody and maintenance stalemate and inertia with crazy b.. is getting a bit frustrating now.
• I was reading about.. Concerted Cultivation vs Slow Parenting. A guess a mix is best.
• CTSP have no idea how to handle constructive criticism. Muppets.
• I have to really start looking for a place to live after Feb.. but I guess moving is refreshing. Time to dump some unused stuff.

Have a fun week.

A week of Edamame beans and taking photos for Keith’s book about Cape Town.

• Monday, vitB shot and picked up some chill pills for a dentist visit, gym, watched Let the right one in at the Labia.. brilliant movie.. haunting actually, had a few beers with Dave at Greens.
• I’m standardising on Hugo Boss Dark Blue again. Good memories.

• “..and I convince people of the truth” — Me

• “The thing about being addicted to brake fluid is you always feel you could stop at any time.” — Seen on Twitter somewhere.

• Tuesday, garden services and pool cleaning, dentist, late lunch with Jonathan at Greens, watched 500 days of Summer at the Labia.. good movie.. a bit like the last 800 days of my life, brief Kink visit, Mouille Point walk.. bumped into Aiden and Cams, salad pita with a very good 4 star John Platter Merlot, fell asleep watching South Park.
• Wednesday, ran to Clifton, swim, meeting at Greens with Jonathan, PW and Aiden, beer at Carlyle’s with Georg, Cardonnay and Edamame beans with Cath at Wakami, Karma, Sapphire and St Yves with Keith, Cath and Georg, some late night cooking at home.
• Thursday, swim, dinner and photography and Nobu.. One&Only with Keith.. Edamame beans, 8 courses of awesome food.. the 2nd last course was sushi, three types of sake including an unfiltered sake, best crayfish ever.
• I like sake.
• Friday, routine medical check-up at Wellness Warehouse, gym, Orms visit, some house hunting, Mia time, Whisk(e)y tasting at Bascule.. while Mia made gingerbread men, dinner at Signal/Cape Grace with Keith.
• So I phone Naulene and tells me she wants to take Mia overseas for a while. Made my blood pressure rise a bit more than my medical check-up was happy with.
• Saturday, tea, watched Hercules, oysters at the Neighbour Goods Market.. bumped into Ernst and Benny, nap, swim, took Mia cycling on the Promenade for the 1st time, cooked Edemame beans, asparagus, broccoli and salad while Mia watched Hercules again, bath, Olivia*2, sleep.

• “Fucking drones and ex-hippies” — Keith’s love for the neighbour goods market

• Played with a Lensbaby, amusing.
• Sunday, tea, Hercules, uber juice, made a slide show for Mia of the first 2 years of her life which she watches on the ~tv, gym, swim, smoothie, aquarium, Zebra and Giraffe at Kirstenbosch with Keith, bumped into Carla and Marianna, Beta Beach swim and play area, corn on the cob for supper, bath, Olivia*2, sleep.
• btw. Mia’s mom’s second name is Olivia.
• The Mia photo slide show idea is a bit of an experiment in getting her to remember her younger years better.. she seems to remember things like Rocking the Daisies and (pop) music I play in the car. It’s not easy to figure out what sticks. Only snag is that there are about 12k photos in her album (and growing), so at 3sec per photo I’ll keep her busy for 10 hours.
• Two people have recently told me that when I start something I commit and make a success of it. Nice to get compliments like these.
• Sam’s Town by The Killers seems to be my favourite gym album at the moment.

• “They say the devil’s water, it ain’t so sweet. You don’t have to drink right now, but you can dip your feet. Every once in a little while…” — When You Were Young, Killers

• Kinda figured out that Facebook is actually very read-only.. I often bump into people who never do anything on Facebook and they always comment on how busy I am on Facebook.
• Tune of the week: L.A. by Amy Macdonald

• “It’s so rock and roll to be alone.” — Mr Rock & Roll, Amy Macdonald

• Dr Ernst spent ~R18k on a diamond and is getting married in Sept. I could buy a nice lens for that money.
• I’m bad with giving compliments, I wish I was better.

• “Why does he talk so sad?” — Mia after we talked to Thomas on the car phone.

• This was the first week of our new 3days a week Mia and Dad routine.

Still getting used to the new year. Refocusing.

A little hack to add a copyright border to photos.. and make them max 604px for Facebook uploading.

This is a (very random) low quality jpg, but you get the idea:


#!/bin/sh

# Get photos ready for Facebook upload
# Resize to max 604px, add border, add copyright

mkdir fb

for photos in $(ls *.jpg);
do base=$(basename $photos .jpg);

echo -n $base.. ;

imgx=$(identify $photos |cut -d ' ' -f 3|cut -d '+' -f 1|cut -d 'x' -f 1);
imgy=$(identify $photos |cut -d ' ' -f 3|cut -d '+' -f 1|cut -d 'x' -f 2);

if [ $imgx -lt $imgy ]; then
resize=588
else
resize=600
fi

convert $photos -resize "$resize"x"$resize" -bordercolor black -background black \
-border 2 -gravity SouthEast -splice 0x12 -fill white -annotate 0 \
"(c) joebotha.com" fb/fb-"$base".jpg

echo done.;

done


Very very good movie, but not a top 10 movie, a bit too much fantasy like floating mountains and the “dark-green” thing.

Anyway, very entertaining, good plot, awesome CGI, plenty to think about. Like Aliens, Braveheart and Lord of the Rings.. a few epics all in one.

“They fought like warrior puppets” ..erm, warrior poets. (That’s from Braveheart btw.)

Loved the Aliens themes.. we had the marines, Vasquez, Burke and Ripley, even the space ships looked the same.

Liked the Warcraft’ish vibe, matched machine and animal warriors.

I like the way the movie challenges the ideas of cookie cutter consumerism and capitalism as a way of life and dominant force in our reality. Makes you want to become a hippie and go to trance parties every weekend. Haha.

So kids, if you liked Avatar but you have not seen Aliens, you must see Aliens.. that’s a top 10 movie.

ps. I hate Lord of the Rings.