Ernst’s 40th in Joburg…

• Week of 17-23 April.
• Monday, public holiday, Easter Monday brunch at Jacques’, we watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull again, Mia tinkered with a logo design, sunset vineyard walk with Mia, we migrated some photos off Mia’s phone – since she was running out of space, Mia watched Spaceballs – and loved it – while I processed some notes and worked on some Jolp ideas, we watched Groundhog Day… always cool.
• Tuesday, last day of the school holidays, so I let Mia sleep nice and late, Mia watched Jurassic Park (“It’s a Unix system“) while I worked, lunch at Eikendal with Mia – the usual snails and bone marrow with Chardonnay (which is amazing), we went hockey stick shopping and found Mia a 37.5” stick and a glove – a green carbon Princess stick – a somewhat delayed birthday gift, dropped Mia off at her gran’s house, walked up a hill in the vineyards at De Zalze and took a (single take) video for a last minute entry to the SU.org GIC-SA challenge (after I learnt about it at a recent future of health talk at Workshop17), some quick iMovie editing – pretty sure iMovie has major UI changes every time I try and use it, Paul came over for a braai and some Hartenberg Chardonnay – we chatted AfrikaBurn logistics, some creative writing and submitted my SU.org entry, about 4 hours of sleep.
• Seems I reached 1600 FB friends.
• AfrikaBurn: elaborate strategy game of effort vs noise, where the organisers know this and make it harder every year.
• Wednesday, up at 4:15, YC podcast drive to gym, coffee and cat typing, office, a walk and a Sababa lunch with Ian, tea with Michael, promenade walk, a sunset stroll around the Waterfront listening to podcasts and a Mondiall burger.
• Step away from your RSS reader for an Easter weekend and you have like 500 things to filter through.
• I’ve taken a break from the Vitality points thing. Interesting how gamification can be motivating and de-motivating. I’m just going to take a month off and do what I’d like to do without chasing points.
• Thursday, up early, podcast drive to gym, swim, steam bath, office, I sent an email to 214 MPs to ask them to vote out our president (~10 opened the email – one responded), had an epic breakfast at Jarryds, took a walk to fetch a drone for Dirk, promenade walk, swim at the Silo gym, a glass of wine at Dirk’s house… left home before dark, arrived home after dark.
• Gym at 5:30 seems to be a great place to catch up on some cat typing.
• Check out Fasterdata
• Nice read: Can podcasting save the world?
• We made a little pitch deck for our aquaponics project this week. I think it’s looking pretty good.
• The Curse of Creativity
• Friday, just in time drive to the airport, flight to Joburg, Arista meeting, Uber ride, a visit to the Melrose Arch gym, swim, catch up and dinner with Ernst, a visit to Tom’s place with Anton.
• Saturday, breakfast and a catch-up with Andrew, found Ernst a bottle of Talisker, ERnst’s 40th birthday party at their house, Tom’s birthday party at Emmarentia Dam with Anton – we stayed till sunset, back to Ernst’s party, Joburg adventure with Anton, And Club, Maboneng… deep Joburg.
• I discovered the Jordan Peterson podcast.
• Sunday, tea with Anton, very chilled breakfast and a beer at the airport, flight to Cape Town – with a nap and some Jordan Peterson podcasts, drove to Stellenbosch, a pink gin and elderflower tonic with Al at Balboa, a steak and a braaibroodjie at The Fat Butcher… very good, nice catch-up with Al, time well spent.
• Joburg was fun. Thanks Anton. Thanks Ernst.
• I’m at AfrikaBurn this coming week. See you there.

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Easter in The Boland and some AfrikaBurn prep…

• Week of 10-16 April
• Monday, work, gym, took my car to check out an issue, tea with Dirk around Stellenbosch Square, shopped for three XL bathrobes – in the ladies section of the Woolworths – got a few strange looks.
• Tuesday, up early, podcast drive to gym, swim, office, dev meeting, after work catch up with Michael, Dirk, Warwick, Ben and Mike at La Vie, Chenin Blanc Association event at The Grand / Granger Bay with Al and Georg – nice wines.
• I learned a fair bit about micro-bursts, TCP speeds and packet loss this week.
• Wednesday, work, lots of packing and minimising, gym, moar packing, a glass of wine with Paul and Janine – Paul came to fetch the bathrobes.
• Don’t buy stuff. You’ll just want to get rid of it later.
• Nice read: Goodbye Things, Hello Minimalism
• Thursday, packing and moving morning, pro tip: pack the kitchen stuff first, a visit to Dirk’s house, a beer at Trumpet with Al, Ter and Janneman, Balboa with Al and various Stellenbosch locals – the town was pretty quiet because of the university holidays.
• Friday, public holiday, brunch at Schoon De Companje with Al (die hoofseun), Milissa and Greg, a bloody mary at Trumpet, epic nap.
• Nice read: Your homework: Impact positively the lives of a billion people

• “our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter” — from link above

• “The Clan are doing something, I can’t tell you, but I was working in the electronics tent with the LEDs and I did soldering and glue gunning and crimping and I got a lot of burns and stuff.” — Mia, after her early AfrikaBurn visit these last few days

• Saturday, chilled morning of reading and Youtube, mostly read SU.org content, fetched Mia, a steak lunch at Hussar Stellenbosch, our usual chain bridge walk, we watched Boss Baby at the movies – pretty good, sushi at Ocean Basket, watched Need For Speed – which was actually very entertaining, 11h sleep.
• Sunday, brunch at the De Zalze clubhouse with Mia and Al, Mia took another nap – while I processed some blog notes, Babylonstoren wine tasting with Mia and Jacques, followed by a CBC beer tasting at Spice Route, Trumpet Tree with Al and Thys – somewhat sombre chat with Al about the future of SA.
• New Alt-J album out on 2 June. You can listen to the first two tracks.
• Tune of the week: Clout – Save Me (original all-female South African rock group formed in 1977)

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

Zuma Must Fall protest, Fizzday and Pump Up The Volume…

• Week of 3-9 April.
• Monday, dropped Mia off at a holiday study workshop, work, Waterstone gym, office, decided against the next Wolfkop event, a swim at the Silo gym, my first Telegram voice call.
• I now have 20 podcasts I subscribe to.

• “Tough, calm, technical.” — Sam Altman on Co-founders

• “Because you can’t not do it.”

• Tuesday, up at 4:30, a16z podcast drive to gym, some cat typing about podcasting while keeping an eye on a 10Gig cross-connect upgrade, swim – alone in the pool, office, dev meeting, tacos at the new Mexican place down the road which I’ve been meaning to visit for weeks, Myog.
• Happy I removed all the time wasting apps from my phone this year.
• In 2001 I had a 64Kbps leased line at home. The general market price for this was about R5000/m. Considering inflation and how easy it is to get a 100Mbps home link now, fixed line home internet has improved a fair bit in the last 16 years. 1600x the speed, at 1/10 of the price… or sixteen thousand times better value!
• I got a mention in this podcast at around 4:55 (-:
• I now have 9 certs from Let’s Encrypt. Cool service. Pro tip: you can have more than one hostname in a cert… -d www.blah.com,blah.com

• “A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.” …the original full stack developer.

• Wednesday, up early, How to Start a Startup podcast drive to gym, cat typing about a few design ideas, spinning class for one, swim, office, SingularityU future of health event at Workshop17 – very interesting.
• SingularityU Global Grand Challenges… food, water, health, learning.
• Thursday, brunch at Ya-Ya, catch up with Dirk, the last First Fizzday of the season with Paul, JD and Lizanne, good fun.
• I listened to that Smart Drug Smarts podcast about Flow again. Have a look at: Flow Genome Project
• Georg is back after spending two months in South America.
• Mia is in the Karoo. Heleen was in Australia and is now in China.
• Friday, up early, Peter Thiel podcast drive to gym, cat typing with a matcha latte, swim, office, dev meeting, Zuma Must Fall protest at parliament with Georg, Van Hunks with Georg, Paul and Claus, Yours Truly, Diabi’s with Georg, Al and Paul.
• Silo District Virgin Active has three problems: 20m pool, 4Mbps wifi and bad change room design. I can get over the first two, but small cramped change rooms are probably going to be a problem as membership grows. Now you know.
• Just made my 850 Vitality points for the week. 2nd month of making all my weekly goals. I’m a bit worried that all this gamification is making me less healthy.
• Nice read: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric
• The Black Keys – Little Black Submarines
• Saturday, woke up in Tamboerskloof next to the plant from The Professional, chilled day at home, I figured it was time to watch Pump Up The Volume again after listening to an interview with the Mr. Robot creator, great movie, watched some Jordan Peterson videos – love that guy, 12h sleep.

• “Do something difficult. Do something difficult and heroic.” — Jordan Peterson

• Sunday, backups, photo processing, nap, took some pizzas to Paul’s house and watched some True Detective, came home and watched Snowden and a bit of the original Ghost in the Shell.
• Luisa Sobral, sounds like Madelein Peroux

Have a fun week, crazy kids.

IMAX, Al Baire and a few birthday parties…

• Week of 27 March to 2 April.
• Monday, up early, podcast drive to the Silo VA, gym, swim, office, catch-up with Tammy.
• Worth watching again: Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

• “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs

• PRADA presents “CASTELLO CAVALCANTI” by Wes Anderson
• Listen to Reply All. Cool podcast.

• “Courage is more important than confidence.”

• Tuesday, up early, gym, cat typing, swim – I’ve been swimming more breaststroke recently, office, OS upgrade day for watch, phone and laptop, after work promenade walk, some notes processing at gym, late night swim, spa pool, steam bath etc.

• “The LD50 for sugar for a rat is about 30gr/kg. So if you’re a human, who weighs 75kg, eating 2.2kg of sugar would kill you in 50% of the cases.”

• “Continually divide your moment-to-moment concerns into two bins: the things you can control, and the things you can’t. Whenever you feel any sort of anger, desire or aversion, you look at the situation in terms of those two bins.” — The Only Thing You Need to Get Good At

• I discovered the How to Start a Startup series in podcast form. Much easier than watching all the videos.
• Wednesday, Headspace Level 3, work, brunch at Ya-Ya, catch up chat with Dan, fetched Mia and took her to a 5 hour hockey festival, more work and tinkering and a bit of photography while she played, supper with Al at Trumpet Tree – Mia pretty much inhaled a rack of ribs, gelato.
• Watching some of Mia’s hockey – I honestly can’t remember a time we lost a junior school rugby game – and I’m sure we lost a few – which kinda proves that over time we only keep our good memories. I really have a bias for remembering things in a happy way… just wait a year and everything was a fun adventure.
• Listen to: What It Takes, start with the George Lucas one.
• Thursday, I woke Mia up with the Headspace Wake Up meditation for kids – she was not impressed, school run, work, coffee with Hannes, gym, office, networking workshop, promenade walk, gym – catch-up chat with Hilah.
• How was your commute today, in the golden era when humans were allowed to drive?
• Friday, Mia’s birthday, up early, podcast drive to the Silo gym, swim, nice catch-up chat with Tyler at gym – chats about time, teams, doing things for others, wearing the same uniform to work, health hacking and AirPods, office, dev meeting, fetched Mia – beginning of the school holidays, lunch at Vergelegen – always nice, went to go try out theatre mode in the new WatchOS by watching Ghost in the Shell IMAX-3D with Mia and Jacques – rad movie for IMAX – always liked Scarlett Johansson, pancakes and Star Wars XBox games at Jacques’s house.
• AirPods look very cool.
• Millionaire who operates 10 businesses while sailing around the world.
• Saturday, chilled morning, usual brunch at Ya-Ya with Mia, wine tasting at Villiera with Paul an Janine, family braai at Jacques’ with cake and candles for Mia’s birthday.
• Sunday, Mia watched some Simpsons including Cape Feare, ladies of leisure brunch at Melissas with Mia – the banana bread with honey mascarpone was pretty spectacular – Mia did her usual complaining about daily vitamins, swim, steam bath, picnic shopping, we watched Al Baire’s very last show at the last Kirstenbosch Summer Concert of the season – Mia’s other bday party with friends and parents from school, great fun, it was packed and Al Baire really put on a great show, time well spent!

• “A-students work for C-students and B-students work for government. To be an A student you need to just memorize what the correct answer will be. C students are the dreamers like Albert Einstein, whose elementary school teachers thought that he was a foolish dreamer.”

• Tune of the week: Al Bairre – We Move On

Have a fun week, crazy kids.