Callum’s musings on the world at large…
Somewhat begrudgingly, I have finally joined flickr. I was delighted to discover that I got the url flickr.com/photos/chmac - my usual username. It’s somewhat confusing, I log into flickr with my yahoo account callum_macdonald then my flickr username is callummacdonald (no underscore) and my url is chmac. Oh well, the chmac part is the important bit!
Here’s my first flickr photo…
George and my crew at SmartHippo organised a R1′000 dinner at Savoy Cabbage (their web site is being updated I’m told). I worked miracles a few weeks ago in producing some truly mind blowing javascript (at least it blew my mind). The dinner was a thank you for working an outrageous number of hours to get the code live on time.
I took 3 friends and we all ate well. I had a beef tartare starter and a springbok main. I figured I would try the South African icon! Then the most wonderful chocolate pancakes for dessert. My word they were good. Our bill came to R1′034, or within 4% of target!
Thanks guys.
I’m going to Mzoli’s again today. Last time my trip to Mzoli’s prompted me to give up alcohol. The following morning I started counting my drinks from the night before. I drank somewhere between 15 and 18 beeers. I felt fine in the morning. Well, perhaps not fine, but normal.
This prompted me to question my alcohol consumption! I decided to give up alcohol for the rest of the month. I made an exception after my attempted mugging, but otherwise I haven’t had a drink since.
Today should be fun. Sober fun no less! 
Oh, and no kilt this time. I don’t want to over-excite Gugletu! 
I just created my first Wikipedia article on Starling, the Ruby persistent queue server that speaks the MemCache protocol. I really know nothing about Starling so if you happen to read this and do know something about it, please go ahead and edit the Wikipedia article!
I was at the Cape Town Facebook Developers Garage last night. I have the badge to prove it!
It was an interesting evening. Pizza was generously provided by Butler’s Pizza. If I’m not mistaken their delivery staff arrive wearing a tuxedo shirt (whatever it’s called) and a bow tie! Fantastic. Drinks were supplied by Joyent (I think I got the link right).
There were a few interesting presentations. Jacques Marneweck spoke about memcache. He looked pretty nervous, but had some interesting things to say. He talked about starling, a memcache based queue server developed by Twitter and some other highly techy stuff. His slides were missing due to a format issue. I think the slides would really have helped the presentation, maybe he’ll post them online.
I’m meeting a few of the same people at most of the tech events in Cape Town. There seems to be a few interesting businesses going on down here. It feels like a small tech community, with a few “big fish”. Reminds me of Edinburgh.
I went to the February Cape Town OpenCoffeeClub meet yesterday. I had lunch with Nur (Nomade One) beforehand. We had a really interesting conversation around religion, values, ethics and business. I look forward to meeting Nur again.
Internet at the event was generously provided by Henk from Skyrove. Skyrove have an interesting business model. They manage internet hotspots and revenue share with the venues who host the hotspots. Bandwidth is outrageously expensive in South Africa, so Skyrove are also a little pricey.
However, Skyrove have undoubtedly gone up in my estimation since I met Henk. When accessing the internet through Skyrove hotspots he pays as an ordinary user, so that the venue get their revenue share. It’s nice to meet ethical business people.
From the meeting we spawned a Cape Town WordPress meetup. I’ve started a mailing list and a blog. I chose Google Groups to host the mailing list, much to my distress. I simply cannot find a good alternative. If you know of one, please put me out of my Google misery!
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