Tim Keller

Once in a while I disappear for extended amounts of time and wait until someone notices I’ve stopped blogging – then, encouraged by the fact that someone actually wants to read about me, I create a new post referring to my return to blogging. We’re living in a MySpaceFaceBook world these days, I’m glad this blog is seperate from all that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still trying to convert every single MySpace.com user I can get my hands on, but sometimes logging in and being told that “Steven has joined the group: If 10 000 join this group I’ll cycle the 2008 Argus Cycle Tour naked” is perhaps a tad much after a long day. Anyway, I’m rambling!

Let me start by posting a link to www.jubileestudios.com. This is the portfolio of Josh Staub, a truly brilliant and multi-talented artist who works at Cyan Worlds in Spokane USA. He’s done concept for the Myst and Uru games, take a look at his Cyan portfolio on the above mentioned site – wow!

Next I must say a gigantic w00t is in order. I have almost single-handedly finished and sold my first Web Application, Chirp Assess based upon my custom-written Chirp PHP Framework (CPF). Chirp Assess is a complete modular school administration suite, allowing features such as Student Management, Assessment/Marks Capture, Report creation and printing, Inventory Control, Messenging, and SMS services. It runs on a Web Server and is accessible both inside and outside of the school, allowing teachers with Internet Access the ability to work on it from home. Anyway, it went live about two weeks ago on the client’s servers and has been very stable with only two small patches being neccesary to fix silly little bugs.

Finally I can’t wrap up this post without a rant about how much work I currently have This Friday I have a Computer Science test on such topics as Binary Search Trees, AVL Trees, Hashing, Priority Queues, and Graph Theory. The weekend will see me completing this weeks Computer tutorial on Hashing and preparing for the Closed Practical (apparently scheduled for this week) as well as studying for a major Psychology test on Monday eve! If you don’t see me, you know why!

Thanks for reading!

Timo

I was given the link to this rather interesting video on The Powers of Ten. Its very sciency and won’t appeal to most, but if interested… watch it on Google Video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6945724039283018435

Just in case you were mildly interested… This is the right half of the Senior Unix Lab at UCT. Its on the top floor of the PD Hahn building which means either a 2-year wait for the 40 year old elevator, or a insanely tiring hike up a few thousand stairs!

Note the geeks (yes I’m one of them) enjoying Tetri-net via xterm ssh sessions! Ooooh!

Oh hehe this is fun… I’m sure the girls will enjoy this! Perhaps these famous faces aren’t quite as perfect as the media would have us believe.

See block A and block B? They’re actually exactly the same colour

Believe it! See why

So vista’s been out and about for a couple of days and its time for me to make a decision about my Vista installation. The awful Home Basic is completely out of the question. Similarly Business and Enterprise are unneccesary and unavailable to me. So that leaves Home Premium and Ultimate.

From what I’ve read, choosing Home Premium over Ultimate will cause me to lose out on the following features:

• Windows Domain logon
• Windows Fax and Scan
• BitLocker Encryption
• Ultimate Extras (hmmm)

Is it really worth the cash for the Ultimate version? Help me out! Please!

Years seems to be going faster and faster. This weekend signals one year of working for Umoya Networks, one year of being at UCT and one year of going out with the love of my life, amy! It’s really pretty scary because I so vividly recall my first day on the job at Umoya Networks, my first week at University, and my first date with Amy. It all seems like so long ago… but yet like yesterday… How amazing time is.

I concluded my first year exams this week – writing Applied Maths, Psychology, and Computer Science. Maths was a challenge, but Psychology and CompSci were good me thinks. Best of luck to anyone who wants to take the Applied Maths course next year. Its one mission and a half!For my UCT friends: I recently came across www.sweetjane.co.za – a local website for all things ‘UCT student life’ ranging from old essays and past papers, videos, images and the such. A great and interesting resource.

So I got into 3 months of leave from UCT now, and it feels great. This coming week Amy’s taken some time off from work to relax with me. So we’re gonna be hanging out on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll spend sometime at Umoya for the remainder of the week. I’m going to be developing umoya.net as well as writing a Network Traffic Monitor for them. It will grab data from our OpManager tool as well as many network nodes on the Private-MPLS (Satellite and Wireless links) and store them in a mysql database. Queries can then be run on this data.

I’ll then help my dad out at Sun Valley Primary, cordinating the media for their Academic Awards ceremonies. We’re doing dual data-projection of each class (video, audio, image) and hoping to make all the systems work seamlessly together. At the same time I’ll be starting ChirpAssess – a school assessment system to replace the present Excel-based system which is causing a world of problems. Similarly, I have to get the new ‘The Cavern Today’ website out by 1 December along with Adam Johnson and Bert van der Poel’s help. Should be fun. I’m thinking of using the Drupal base for it – we’ll see what comes of that.
Then over the christmas break I’ll be redeveloping a bunch of websites for various clients including a number of new clients. I look forward to the challenge. All in between that we’ll no doubt have the Myst Online – Uru Live launch which should be stunning! All in all, a pretty full holiday!

Hey guys. For those of you at UCT with me studying the dreaded MAM1043H… May I suggest this website for background reading on Dynamical Systems, Numerical Methods and other sections covered this year.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/AppliedMathematics.html
I hope it helps!

Hey all, phew what a semester! Totally insane in every way! I’m back, and it feels good – lets see…

Right. First of all – Happy Birthday to me for 10/31. Thanks to all of ya who text’d, phone’d, and IM’d me – I think I got more text’s this year than ever before, awesome. It was my first girlfriend’d birthday and Amy got me loads of awesome goodies – she’s very nice (Check out her dA if you have a chance at www.solpalapody.deviantart.com). Its her birthday on 8 November! I gotta sort out her pressie this weekend!

Yesterday the two of us set off on a bit of a shopping trip into the northern suburbs and found the Olive Grove Bonsai Center. Bonsai is something I’ve been totally amazed by for most of my life and since about April this year, actively involved in. I bought a 8 year old Pyracantha which is presently in flower with beautiful white petals. These will die towards winter (southern hemisphere remember) and become Yellow Berries… I cant wait Its a great hobby.

I’ve also discovered the joys of the TWiT.tv podcast network. If you’re a geeky type and not listening to one of their podcasts, you’re really missing out. Its brilliant, and home to some of the net’s best podcasters.

I’m writing exams until 17th November so will be at home and blogging – I look forward to getting back into this blogging thing!

Phew what a day. Its midnight and I’ve just wrapped the SAPA DVD for Wednesday’s presentation in Bloemfontein (it has to be delivered first thing tomorrow morning).

The Statistics test turned out to be okay. Not too hard, but not completely simple. Sorta average where a test should be I guess. Sleepy now. Wow. Good night.

Ps. Amy has Sinusitis and is on tons of meds… feeling quite (very) sick still so do keep her in your prayers if you wouldn’t mind. Thanky.