You may not believe this, but I’m actually a whiz in the garden. (Except for mowing.)

When I was younger I once grew a corn plant. It was doing really well. It has a cob of corn and everything. Then the fuck-o monkeys that lived in the jungle behind our house picked the cob, ate half of it and threw it on the ground next to the uprooted corn plant. Gutted.

I think my chances are somewhat better now that I live in a country that has no crop-eating monkeys!

Our new house came with a built in vege patch. Score. So last Saturday I spent a good hour weeding and aerating the soil. This weekend I intend planting some stuff in there.

A lot of people have given suggestions of things to grow…My policy is as follows: If you can’t eat it or smoke it I’m not interested in growing it. To quote Monty from Withnail and I:

“I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is, you’ll agree, a certain je ne sais quoi oh so very special about a firm young carrot.”

I won’t be growing carrots. I will be growing:

• Herbs
  • Coriander
  • Basil
  • Oregano
  • Thyme
  • Rosemary
• Veges
  • Tomatoes
  • Courgettes
  • Silver-beet

A modest, yet satisfying selection. Perhaps there are gardening types out there who would be kind enough to suggest some additions to my little editable patch of goodness?

I’ll be posting photos of the process on Flickr - hopefully it’ll be as riveting as I imagine it in my head.

I’m not sure how long this has been live, but Amazon has launched a MP3 download service much like the iTunes store.

The exciting thing about this MP3 store is that all the tunes are 256kbps, DRM free and well priced. Single songs are 89c (US), albums are around $9 (US). This is the way music should be sold! I’m surprised it’s taken Amazon this long to get their shit together, but hey - they got there in the end and it’s pretty sweet.

Currently they have about 2 million songs from both indie and major labels. At this point it’s American/UK focussed so you’ll still need to hit Amplifier or iTunes if you’re after local music.

After about 2 years of trying I’ve finally managed to turn Manda into a Mac user. She’s still not 100% convinced, but at least she will be using a Mac full time now.

We just purchased a shiny new MacBook (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/2GB/120GB/SuperDrive) which is going to become my everyday machine. Manda is going to take over my first-gen MacBook (which is kick arse!) We can now video chat while sitting in the same room on the same sofa :-P Glory is the life of the geek! (Or something.)

So yeah - we also have a new living addition to the family: a little 3 year old cat named Ziggy. We adopted her from the SPCA just over a week ago. Unfortunately, the poor little thing caught cat flu from the other nasty cats at the shelter. Needless to say this week has been a week of being scratched to pieces trying to feed her medication…She is getting a lot better now, and has started to hang out with us while we watch Dexter (best fucken TV show ever!)

You may have noticed that the posts here are picking up…I’m hoping to keep a relatively steady flow of content, but we will see just how well that goes…:) Dave…say nothing!

The Media Design School gig went very bloody well!

They want me to guest lecture again for next years intake of students. They also want me to be on the ‘advisory panel’ which is a panel of ‘industry professionals’ who will help crit the students end of year projects. This is golly good - and very bloody scary…

Imagine: I’m going to be helping sculpt the minds of your future employees. Ha! At least I don’t have to teach them how to drink, I think students are pretty good at that by default.

Thanks Media Design School, for giving me the opportunity to share a little of my knowledge with your students! (And for making me blog again…)

A few years back I wanted to attend Media Design School. I know a fair few people who have attended the school. They tend to produce some pretty good talent. It’s good to know that these sorts of establishments are starting to teach some proper web technologies. The introduction of Webstandards and CSS development is an awesome step in the right direction - and I believe that they’re going to be introducing a little more emphasis on accessiblity and general best practise…

I know this because I’m going to be guest lecturing at Media Design School this week. I’ll be focusing on advanced CSS and accessibility techniques. If all goes well it could turn into a regular affair.

Needless to say, I’m very bloody excited! I love sharing what knowledge I have with as many people as I can. Teaching the future web developers of NZ will be an honour and a treat. I can only hope that some of my passion for the web will rub off on them!

Yay for the web and the future! :)

This is me - and I work on the web

From the loving embrace of the geek-inclined family I had no choice but to follow in their steps.

Several years lost thanks to command-line IRC connected through a university BBS. Then several more years lost to a fast growing music tracking scene which flourished on the internet in those early days.

FastTracker II, how I loved you!

Those hours making music quickly turned into hours tinkering around in HotDog trying to create a place on the web for me to showcase my music. Thankfully the Wayback Machine has no record of those early years…

After trying (and failing) to get some sort of web job in South Africa - my original home. I decided the best course of action was to head out to London to seek my fortune. Lucky for me my older brother had already set himself up in the web industry in London-town. After a short pub-interview I was hired as a junior HTMLer at Clarity Communication Ltd. Little did I know that I was about to enter the industry at the peak of the internet boom (1.0).

The three years I spent living and working in London I witnessed both the crazy growth of the Web and ultimately it’s demise. From boom to bust! During those years a lot of lessons were learnt. These lessons stay with me today.

Now I live in beautiful New Zealand with the love of my life. Together we are rocking the web world and will continue to until something more interesting comes along (and we all know that will never happen!)

Seeing the web turn into a fully grown application platform makes me week at the knees with excitement and anticipation. Being involved in this wonderful medium is a treat and an honour.

TBL - You are a true revolutionary!