I’ve had 3 people from the Real Life (which is a very weird and disturbing place) telling me that I’m not updating my blog often enough in the last week. I’m not sure how much is supposed to be enough. I usually blog when I have some time and have something I’d really like to say. I’m completely fine with about 2 blog entries a month and perhaps more now and again when things get interesting. However, sometimes I like to cave a bit under pressure, so here’s a random blog entry for the bored:

• I heard the I-can-ride-my-bike-with-no-handlebars song for the first time on Friday. Listened to it 20 times over the weekend so far. Aparently everyone else knows it already. It’s an awesome little song about how power can corrupt (or at least, that’s my interpretation ).
• I played with Mac OSX again yesterday. It’s annoying. Recently Mark Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu will be more attractive than a Mac in two years. I think he seriously needs to take a look at a Mac again. I’ve installed plenty of add-ons and stuff to my Mac, and I just can’t make it match the usability and productivity of my Gnome desktop with Compiz on Ubuntu. In order to make Ubuntu really more attractive to the current Mac market, it will need to run the software that’s available for a Mac. I bought my Mac because I want to use the real nice video editing software that’s available for it.
• Still stuck in Jo’burg for work purposes. Tried to fix that but it failed. I’ll just have to try to get back home a bit harder. I guess I’ll be here for another 6 months max. At least my mother is visiting next weekend.
• Everything else is pretty much ok.

Some pictures from the real world (not sure where they’re originally from though):

Whohoo! My first real holiday since… since… a very long time! Haven’t planned all my holiday time yet, but this is what I have so far…

• 21 March: Go to Rand Easter Show
• 23 March: Fly home to Cape Town
• 24 March: Going to Coke Fest. \o/ Just saw on the “news” that Paris Hilton is going to be at the Joburg one- hehe. I think I’ll particularly enjoy:
  • Van Coke Kartel- With “Van Coke” from Fokofpolisiekar)
  • Chris Cornell- From Soundgarden/Audioslave
  • Kaiser Chiefs- They’ll change the mosh-pits to mob-pits
  • Good Charlotte- I hope they play more of their earlier (less emo) stuff.
  • KoRn- They have a Jonathan, what more can I say?
• 25 March: Clug Talk: Xrandr (Adrian Frith), MOTU FTBFS class after that
• 26 March: Wordpress Cape-Town meet-up, Xubuntu meeting for Xubuntu goals after that.
• 27 March: CITI IT services and Open Source seminar
• 2 April: Fly to Bahrain (in the Middle East) and party
• 6 April: Go watch the F1 Grand Prix

Next week I’ll also try to catch up on a lot of Ubuntu stuff (more on that to follow) I’ve been meaning to do for a long long time now (some things even 2 years). After that I’ll just relax and have a good time, I want to get back in full force and really take 2008 by the horns!

Have been in Jo’burg for about a week now. Ligthning struck the guest house I’m staying at, and it knocked out the DSL router, and 3G coverage has been choppy, so I have been Internetless (see Internetlessness for title definition) until today (except at the office of course, but we’ve been having troubles there too). Apologies if for any on-line meetings, etc I have missed.

The Ubuntu-ZA Planet and Wiki themes are coming along nicely. The planet needs a little bit of work (mainly for the hackergotchis to display nicely) and so does the wiki. After that, we just need to make sure that we’ve got all the data imported from the old wiki, then we will go live. Thanks to Ubuntu-IN for providing the Mediawiki theme. I will post links to both the wiki and the planet themes when they are at least semi-ready. I haven’t had a chance to work on either for the last week, but by the end of next weekend it should be just about complete.

Working for Microsoft

No no no!!! It’s all lies. Well, not really lies, just a misunderstanding. It’s another Jonathan Carter that has gone to work for Microsoft, not me. I’ve received two phone calls today and one email asking me about it. The other Jonathan’s about page says “I am currently acting as the technical evangelist for the .NET framework and Visual Studio at Microsoft” – that makes it quite obvious that it’s not me.

Moving to Jo’burg

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Jo’burg the last 2-3 months. Lots of people have told me things like “I hear you’ve moved here permanently now” or “I hear you’re moving to Jo’burg next year?”. I don’t know where you’re hearing this, but it’s not true. I might spend more or less a week or so there every month next year, but that’s about it, there are no plans to move to Jo’burg, and it’s extremely unlikely that there ever will be.

Hope that clears everything up