Back on a health mission…

• Week of 16-22 February.
• Monday, investor pitch day… it went well, Lions Head walk, broccoli for supper, watched The Family… pretty good, Vrehedoek almost burnt down (see above – photo from our house).
• I’m pretty excited to tell you what we’ve been busy with recently, it’s still a bit stealthy, but soon…
• The SleekGeek diet starts, week 1 of 10. Also, stopped drinking alcohol for a while. Found this again.
• Tuesday, meeting in Newlands, fetched snail mail (for about 11 months) and renewed my PO Box, house viewing around Tamboerskloof, a juice with Wouter at The Power and the Glory – the service there is a joke, a swim at home.
• I suspect I’ve been sharing a lot less stuff on social media recently – and sharing more things only with my Telegram (close) friends.
• Started reading Microselfs again, could not really get into David and Goliath.

• “South Africa is the world’s most ambitious experiment in democracy.” — Simon

• Wednesday, site survey walk, work, watched Mia’s girls relay swimming gala – she swam in the u9 (and u10) freestyle, medley and ladder relays, we had an early supper at Lourensford while Mia did her homework, some JIT saving the day – helping Mia with her show and tell oral – her life timeline slide deck – at least I don’t have a shortage of photos in that department, dropped Mia at her mom’s house and had a nice sunset drive back to Cape Town.
• *sigh*, you would think I would have learnt by now, I’ve been bugging Naulene for weeks to get my laptop (which she needed to borrow for work) and my 200mm lens so I could take photos at the gala, Wednesday morning she lets me know she’ll be at the gala, I ask her to please bring the lens and laptop, I arrive at the gala – after a while I realise she changed her mind and did not come, no photos then, then Mia tells me her show and tell oral is due the next day – not the first time, or the second time this has happened – no communication about this at all, later – I fetch my lens and laptop and she tells me there is a DVD stuck in the laptop and she has no idea how this happened – she left the kids in front of the laptop. Some people.
• Thursday, at the office early, updated our investor deck, Lions Head was burning so I went to gym… so this is what the gym looks like.

• “Sent using paws.” — email .sig

• Jacques seems keen to start an aquaponics farm in London and Michael managed to find some Tilapia to eat which cost around R270/kg – seems there is a business in fish.
• Friday, interesting meeting in Wembley Square, watched Mia’s swimming gala – this time with my 200mm lens, she won the trophy for best swimmer in her grade – she won all her races, we walked through The Art of the Brick LEGO exhibition at the Waterfront… pretty cool, I have my slops back! (from Ernst’s wedding, thanks Lisa), Mia shopped for some shoes, gala photo processing while watching Evan Almighty again, Mia took her new trophy to bed with her.
• Mia’s best freestyle time so far: 19.72.
• Last weekend in the Vredehoek house.
• Saturday, woke up next to Mia, a round of Star Wars top trumps cards, I made omelettes while Mia watched the end of Field of Dreams, we almost finished a bag of grenadillas , OZCF market at the Zille Villa, took Mia to the toy shop in Gardens – have not been there in ages, Deer Park, Mia watched Wall-E, nap, some Dvorak touch typing training for Mia, burger in a bowl at Da Vinci’s, Mia fell asleep in the car on the way home, watched Dallas Buyers Club again, watched the end of Scent of a Woman.
• That spork scene in Wall-E is pretty cool.
• Sunday, AfrikaBurn theme camp planning (with Google Earth / to figure out where the sun sets), showed Mia this Afrika Burnt video, a nice long swim at gym, a late lunch at Da Vinci’s, a Kloof Street walk and some Myog frozen yoghurt, I helped Mia wash her hair, dropped Mia off at her gran’s house, sunset drive back to Cape Town, a smoothie at Wouter’s house.
• Looks like our theme camp membership numbers are growing fairly quickly.

• “You may already be a member.”

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Guns, whiskey and solar panels…

• Week of 9-15 February.
• Well look at me, blogging all done by the Sunday evening already.
• Monday, up before 6:00, swapped one of my off-site backup drives, JIT school run from Franschhoek after some confusion about 7:30 vs 19:30, Mia ended up having biltong for breakfast, Waterstone gym, signed up the first customer for the new business, promenade walk, fish and chips at Sidewalk Cafe with Georg.

• “Bad cop, worse cop.” — Georg

• It’s pretty cool how, in only two weeks, you can make something out of nothing and create a new business.
• I’ve been thinking a lot about good posture and good attitude recently.
• Tuesday, work, some drama about Mia not having her swimming goggles and cap for swimming time trials, Mia phoned me – she came first in freestyle, backstroke and butterfly (breast stroke needs work)… says she was about 1/4 of the pool ahead of the 2nd swimmer in the butterfly. Joy. Worth the fuss about the swimming gear earlier, a walk around Bantry Bay, sunset supper on the balcony and Wouter’s house – trout and a beer, we finished our AfrikaBurn theme camp sign design, looking good (above).
• Yes, we’re still looking for cool people to join oun AfrikaBurn theme camp.
• I read this and thought – I really should try and make time to write something useful on the topic of tech entrepreneurship at some point – in long form – but I’m just not feeling very inspired at the moment.
• Good read on how startups die.

• “But you know what they say. There is no easy in fantastic.” — Nikki

• Recent stories about Eskom really make me want to think of starting companies outside SA again.
• Mia’s swimming times… Freestyle: 20.66, Backstroke: 26.18, Butterly: 26.78, Breaststroke: 33.46.
• Wednesday, flagged a lot of old emails and RSS feeds as read – goodbye 2014, struggled with some weekend planning and logistics (can’t say I’m a big fan of Valentines Day), ribs at Carlyle’s with Al and Georg.

• “Hoe voel dit om ‘n langbroek te dra?” — Al

• Time to clean up my own back yard again – eat better, get more exercise, a few SleekGeek diet weeks coming up.
• Let’s Encrypt, free CA by the EFF, very cool.
• Week two without coffee.
• Thursday, made myself a six egg breakfast with chia seeds, work, hair cut at Yogi’s, fetched my bicycle (three weeks late), a beer with Carel in the Gardens Centre – he wanted the blockchain 101 intro, kinda locked myself out of the house, so waited for Georg at Carlyle’s and had some pizza.
• Friday, some reading about fibre types, a beer at Fireman’s Arms with Nick, Georg, Aiden – who told a scary story about his 11 kidney stones, Up Yours and Yours Truly with Paul, Claus, Janey, Hilah and Al, fun evening.

• “Why are you here, did you do something wrong?” — Aiden, about new relationships.

• I watched The Imitation Game at the Labia this week… brilliant.

• “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine.” — The Imitation Game

• Saturday, watched Fantastic Mr Fox again with some tea while doing some prepper news reading, photo and notes processing, blogging in loadshedding time, watched Rambo First Blood again… classic, watched some rugby with Georg – we have DSTV again.

• “Mrs. Fox: [to Ash] We’re all different.
  [indicates Mr. Fox]
  Mrs. Fox: Especially him. But there’s something kind of fantastic about that, isn’t there?”

• Read this: How the CIA made Google – hmm, what to do? Give money to the EFF?
• Funny how we forget, we read about Assange and Snowden, the worst parts of mass surveillance and the military industrial complex are all true, but then we get busy and we forget and people happily keep using their gmail (skynet) accounts. We’re all sheep. See you in the Matrix cave.
• Skynet is going to have to run on solar in SA anyway.

• “But if the reservations of billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk are anything to go by, the Pentagon’s hubris is deeply amiss. Musk, an early investor in the AI company DeepMind now owned by Google, has warned of “something dangerous” happening in five years due to “close to exponential growth of AI at the firm – and some AI experts agree.”

• Sunday, almost had breakfast with Ernst, made myself another six egg breakfast with chia seeds, processed the 2014 photos on Mia’s school DVD – pretty bad state of photography (kept about 70/1700 photos), drove to the airport to have tea with Nikki – who is off to the US for a while, epic 4h afternoon nap, pizza at Carlyle’s with Georg, watched The Bourne Legacy… good movie.

• “I got ya, Vanilla.”

• Tune of the week: Telemiscommunications, Deadmaus5, the curse of being busy…

• “Guns, whiskey, solar panels.” — Jacques, about AfrikaBurn prep and electricity in SA.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Mr. Fox…

• Week of 2-8 February.
• Monday, work, sunset Promenade walk (photo above), a swim at home.
• Tuesday, at the office by 7:00, mostly finished an investor deck and we created a logo for the new company, wine tasting evening at Carlyle’s with Georg, Ania and Lyle.
• Wednesday, (post-outdoor party) car wash, work, business card design, nap, great ribs at Carlyle’s with Georg during load shedding time.
• Probably time to resign from the only child club and the league of emotionally unavailable gentleman.
• Thursday, very interesting meeting/workshop about Carrier Ethernet and new GPON toys, fetched my new business cards, big backup mission for my 6-monthly offsite backups and some blogging, cheese and wine for dinner.
• I stopped drinking coffee again.
• I’ve not been swimming in about a month!
• I’m not going to miss Vredehoek’s crappy Vodacom Edge speeds.
• Friday, at the office by 7:00, GPON workshop, phone chat with Ernst, fetched Mia from a choir party, played ADSL support guy in Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, sunset swim.
• All startups are train wrecks inside, some are graveyards, but they still get more Twitter followers.
• Saturday, AfrikaBurn theme camp building (mostly design) day with Wouter, Al (who finally met Nikki), Storm, Michael, Nicole and Paul (who managed to arrive before dark), braai, ice cream in cones with Horlicks.
• Discovered Rhino3D.
• Sunday, swimming, Mia watched some Harry Potter (5/8), a walk to get limes, fetched pizza from Col’Cacchio, early night.
• Seems I have a new nickname: Mr Fox.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

AfrikaBurn ticket logistics and startup ideas…

• Week of 26 Jan to 1 Feb…
• Monday, a misty drive over Kloof Nek rd to work, office space shopping, set up new company email, 1 hour sunset promenade walk, a swim and a braai at home, watched Iron Man 3 again.
• Funny how your startup-ideas.txt files grows a lot quicker when your head is not in a startup.

• “You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” Empirically, the way to have good startup ideas is to become the sort of person who has them. “Live in the future and build what seems interesting.” — from How to Get Startup Ideas

• I’m starting to think Gust Pay was maybe a “sitcom” startup idea. A bit like Oop! from Microserfs.
• Tuesday, work, a sunset walk up Lions Head.
• Good read: This Industry Is Still Completely Ridiculous
• Wednesday, work, bought an AfrikaBurn ticket – JIT Joe style, site survey walk, another site survey walk, looks like you need walking shoes for this job, a walk around Beta beach, bumped into Tori, picnic on the big rock in Bakoven, a swim at home, last minute AfrikaBurn creative crew ticket admin – managed to assign 20/22… herding cats.
• Let me know if you want to join our theme camp?
• Thursday, work, survey walk, meeting at the Radisson Hotel, sunset walk.

• “What’s for you will not pass you by.” — Moloko

• Friday, work, watched Mia’s inter-house athletics, Franschhoek, great bottle of Sadie Family Palladius… ;-P
• Feels pretty good having an income again. Near miss. Jackrabbit country.
• Saturday, scrambled eggs with cream, babysat 5 dogs, nap, braai.
• I’ve been thinking… the easy business recipe is: Start with cool co-founder, split the shares 50/50, do something you can start with a small amount of capital, find a recurring revenue (passive income) business model… easy? Yeah, pretty much what I did first – but you only realise this stuff, looking back, after you try doing things the hard way.
• Sunday, Origin with Nikki, stopped for a photo of the Franschhoek valley (above) on the way back, a drink at LQF, epic day.
• Tune of the week: The Veldt, Deadmau5.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.