I started to play chess in 1993 vaguely seriously. The trigger was writing a chess program and finding that it could thrash me. I thought this was ridiculous, so decided to learn to play properly. I played for about five or six years, but then ‘retired’, and, besides the odd game on chesscube.com, haven’t played… Continue reading Coming out of retirement
Lucid Dreaming – Chalie Morley TEDx
A year ago I did a retreat entitled The Mindfulness of Dream and Sleep with Rob Nairn and Charlie Morley. It was a wonderful retreat, and much of it focused on lucid dreaming. I’ve had a half-written blog post on the go since then, but instead of waiting for me to finish it, here’s the… Continue reading Lucid Dreaming – Chalie Morley TEDx
Back to beginnings – The Birthday Party: Fears of Gun and Boys Next Door: Shivers
Before Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were the Birthday Party. Here’s Fears of Gun. and even earlier, known then as Boys Next Door, here’s the song Shivers, performed in 1979.
Too old, too young
It’s been interesting to observe since turning 40 the power of the words “too old” in my mind. Too old, too young, age is just a concept, but still has such power in our society. It’s one thing to be consciously aware of it, but another to be aware, and to be able to change,… Continue reading Too old, too young
April 2012 African language Wikipedia update
It’s been about five months since I last looked in detail at the South African language Wikipedias, and there’s been significant progress in three of the languages. South African Language Wikipedias Language 1/10/2007 30/5/2010 19/11/2011 13/4/2012 Afrikaans 8374 15260 20042 22115 Northern Sotho** 0 540* 557 566 Tswana 40 103 240 490 Zulu 107 195… Continue reading April 2012 African language Wikipedia update
Lessons from a server upgrade
Recently, the server hosting the Ethical Co-op website died, and needed to be replaced. It launched in 2005, running on a standard LAMP system. Since it was written in the days of PHP4, and was working well, I’d never upgraded it to PHP5. Everything was running smoothly on PHP4, but this had reached end of… Continue reading Lessons from a server upgrade
SOPA and moving from GoDaddy
Late last year I moved most of my domains that I was hosting with GoDaddy to a new registrar, and the rest will follow closer to expiry. For those who don’t know, in October, Lamar Smith, a US congressman, introduced a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill is a hideous monstrosity… Continue reading SOPA and moving from GoDaddy
Northern Sotho Wikipedia now an official project, Afrikaans reaches 20 000 articles
Northern Sotho now has it’s own Wikipedia, becoming the 10th official South African language to do so. The project has been sitting for many years in the Incubator, where projects that aren’t yet ready are hosted and developed. It was a bit of an anomaly, as even though it was more active than many other… Continue reading Northern Sotho Wikipedia now an official project, Afrikaans reaches 20 000 articles
Becoming a morning person, take 2
I may live at the southern tip of Africa, but I’ve been on Hawaii time for a long time. For years my circadian rhythms have seen me going to sleep in the very early hours of the morning and waking up similarly late. Two months ago I recorded it and the average time I went… Continue reading Becoming a morning person, take 2
Ianstraight with Egoscue
For the past few weeks I’ve been practising Egoscue exercises. Do I want six-pack abs and a tight bun? No… Well at least not enough to do anything about it. Egoscue is something else entirely. Since I can remember I’ve been noticeably skew, bent and twisted. Focusing on the physical for now, I’ve never bothered… Continue reading Ianstraight with Egoscue