Another update

So, it's quarter past eleven on a Saturday, and I'm in my office. I've decided I'm not going to get any more work done on my thesis tonight, so I'll head home soon. Tomorrow, I'll try some more.

This is what comes from being addicted to web browsing and various other distractions. I've had to spend the weekend trying to do the work I should have done in the week...

So, time for an update:

Last Sunday we got together and watched the Grand Prix. Not such a good day for Schumi, but at least Ferrari pulled off a win! And for most of us old die-hard F1 fans, it was our first race we'd seen this season, mostly thanks to SABC getting rid of its live transmissions. However, the Grand Prix was eclipsed by the big news: Marius and Janette (well, mostly Janette, I guess) are expecting twins!!! It seems to me they were just waiting for Janette to finish qualifying before starting a family, and with that hurdle passed in June, things are going great for them. We've still got to go visit, but that should hopefully happen soon.

Earlier on in the day, before the F1, we had a lekka brunch at Tiger's mountain villa (he rents a small flat with an awesome view and a wonderful garden on the Jonkershoek road). It was nice getting together with friends, and one of the guys there was my cousin, James (who's dating Tiger's sister). We discussed his Uncle Joe's health - he was suffering from cancer. Ironically, on Tuesday my mom SMS'ed me to let me know that Uncle Joe had passed away.

Hugo was also at the brunch, and he gave me some more reading material - so my current read is Brian MacLaren and Tony Campolo's team effort, "Adventures in Missing the Point". Quite good stuff, so far.

And on Tuesday I was left home alone.

Dalene flew off to Malta for a week, where she's at some conference. Hopefully, not just conferencing, but swimming in the Mediterranean, and being a bit touristy and all that as well. I'll find out on Monday, when she gets back.

After dropping her at the airport, I bummed around and did some thesis work at her folk's place, before heading through to Cape Town to watch the first game of the Western Cape Meijin title match, between Konrad and Lloyd. Konrad won a convincing victory, but it was a good experience sitting and discussing the game with Andrew while he recorded it.

Also during the week, I found out I had won a quiz on a Go newsletter. The prize was a 6-month subscription to a online go database. I don't know how useful it will be, though, but hopefully, I can get some value out of it. In any case, I enter the quizzes for the challenge, so the prize is just a bonus.

And this week, our Go clocks arrived from America. It's been a long wait, but the clocks look cool - I tried one out on Thursday at the club (played 2 games on the clock), and they're not as robust as BHB and the like, but they seem adequate, given the price.

And the last thing that happened this week go-related, was that I've been appointed the rank administrator of South African Go. So now people have to ask me if they want people's ranks changed (except for the regular automatic promotions and demotions). Yay! more admin. But it shouldn't be much effort, anyway.

Dalene qualifies

On Monday we found out that Dalene has officially qualified - she may officially now use the title Dr. de Beer (not Kroon, she kept her surname). And, of course, I am real proud of her. Except that she wants me to the graduation. *sigh*

Am I not the picture of a dutiful husband (*martyr*).

Otherwise, the wind has been blowing something awful here in Stellenbosch, denoting the real start of the warm months. The whistling sound in the window casements is quite disturbing when one tries to sleep. This is probably because I'm not used to it, since I was used to sleeping on the other side of the house the last time the wind was doing this.

Cool web resource for finding popular news stories in a number of categories, as voted by the users, is digg.com . Since the site seems to be mostly frequented by techies and geeks, you're likely to find stuff more suited to you if you have that kind of mindset.

Today, Dalene is giving a presentation on her work at some farmer's conference. Since it's in Afrikaans, she's a bit stressed - lots of terms had to be translated, since her presentations are usually in English.

Seeing Schumi off in style!

Hi folks.

Sunday evening is the last race of the 2006 Formula 1 season, and also the last race of Michael Schumacher's career. If you're a F1 fan, you probably have strong feelings about Schumi - whether positive or negative.

While Fernando Alonso is very likely to win the championship this season, Michael still has a (very) outside chance - if he can win the race, and Fernando gets no points. More important for Ferrari is that a good showing in Brazil may still win them the constructor's championship. In any event, everyone will be fighting hard, and it will be your last chance to see Schumi in action if you're a fan, and a chance to say good riddance if you can't stand him.

So you're invited to join us watch the Brazil GP at the Belgian Beer Pub in Stellenbosch Square on Sunday evening. Depending on whether you believe the official F1 website or Supersport, the race starts at 19h00 or 18h00 respectively. I'm planning to be there by about 17h20, to try secure seats - an extra beer or two while I'm waiting shouldn't kill me ;)

Let me know if you're coming, or if you might - that way I can perhaps try to arrange space for people when I get there.

Also, feel free to forward this to any of your friends that you know who are interested in F1.

Last night

So last night our cell group had a refresher course on helping out at the night shelter. It was good to see that Arion, the superintendent has a couple of new people eager to help him out. He told us that he had not slept the last two days, and with a test coming up this morning, he wouldn't be sleeping tonight either. So, regardless of any help he may already have, Arion could do with more help at the night shelter. Between that, his theology studies and his family, he is a very busy and exhausted man, and although he puts up a brave front, anyone who can help out will be greatly appreciated. If you want to get hold of him, contact me, and I'll get you in touch.

In general, the two biggest needs are (a) for people to help between 5pm and 7pm - letting people in at the gates, and arranging that everyone gets food for the evening, usually by heating up donated food that has been frozen; and (b) people who are willing to handle the overnight duty at the shelter. This is in case any issues arise overnight, and to arrange breakfast in the morning and let the inhabitants out in the morning. There is a bed provided for the person staying over, and I believe there is a nominal payment for someone helping out in this way.

After that, our cell group met at Jocelyn's flat, and tackled some more of C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" - we discussed 3 chapters (19-21), with some more commentary on Chapter 18 also popping up. However, before we could start, everyone first had to meet Frikkie, Jocelyn and Elzette's new ringneck parrot, who wandered from person to person drinking tea out of their cups. At about a year old, he's just starting to talk a little, and has just got to "Hello, hello" and "Hello, Frikkie".

One of the most interesting chapters last night was that which claimed that nothing is really ours: although society makes us want to reduce everything to ownership, actually in the final analysis, everything belongs to God, although (according to Lewis) Satan is trying to conquer it all. We are effectively just people looking after God's stuff. One of the biggest issues here is that our time is not our own. As he says, we get it all the time, but as a gift - the sun and moon are just as much ours as our time. Changing your perspective on this has great parallels with what Johan talked about on Sunday about success.

Yesterday's church service

Yesterday nights sermon was about the right way of viewing success. The idea is that when we are driven to succeed in a desire to get recognition, fame, wealth, achievements, comfort, etc., we so often find ourselves wanting that little bit more, and are always left feeling unfulfilled. The sermon posited that God's love for you makes you worthwhile and that rather than being driven to achieve, you are called to achieve God's goal for you. This is the switch from searching for success to searching for significance (which Johan pointed out is one of the key elements in the so-called midlife crisis). The called-driven distinction is apparently the work of Gordon MacDonald in his book Ordering your private world.

Success in Challenger's League

This weekend I played in the Challenger's League of the Western Cape Closed - a tournament to decide the challenger for the title of Western Cape Meijin. Since qualification for this tournament is quite tough, I was quite stoked to qualify for it in the first place. With one withdrawal, I had to finish anywhere except last to qualify for next year's event automatically, but that seemed a tall order considering the strength of the rest of the field. However, I am pleased to say that I managed to scrape together 2 wins (and come really close barring a brainfart in a 3rd game) in 4 games, which, thanks to being seeded last left me in 4th position out of the 5 players. So I qualified for next year. And as an added bonus, I've been promoted to 2 kyu! How long I'll stay there is anyone's guess..

New book

Cool!

Dalene gave me a copy of "God created the Integers", edited by Stephen Hawking as a gift yesterday. I hadn't heard of it, but it looks totally fascinating. It's thick, so it'll probably take a long time to work through, though...

(The book is about the major developments in maths through history).

Go last night

Last night's Go started with a discussion of the one space pincer of the two-space low approach to the star point, with Serdyn. There's one move in the standard sequence that still puzzles me, but I know a bit more about the sequence now, at least.

Then I played Rory, in a comedy of errors. Rory tried to defend a group I was threatening to capture, but still allowed me a snapback in a terrible blunder, but in return I missed a ladderbreaker. After that we kep exchanging chunks by blunder, and then I underestimated a large-scale attack, lost a large group by playing too heavily, and ended up down by 16.5 points in a game where I gave him 2 stones. I had it sewn up, but only because of his snapback blunder, I expect, so the result was probably reasonable.

Then I played 3 "how far can you win on scratch" games. PW went down by almost 300 after a dead group of his came alive when I misread and he punished me. Louis made a critical error in his only live group to allow me to get a seki there as well, so he had no points on the board at the end of the game. This game also featured a seki-"bent four in the corner" combination, so I only managed to keep my seki thanks to the Japanese rules. (Final score was probably a win by about 340).

The last 2 games had featured ridiculous cuts, and when I tried that in my next game against Adrian, I was seriously punished, pulling out only a 36 point win on scratch against him. The weird thing is that Adrian and Louis are 14k and 15k respectively.

Anyway, this weekend is the WC Closed Meijin Challenger's League. 2 wins there may get me a promotion, and will secure my spot in the league for next year. We'll have to see...

Killing the spammers

I have an idea!

If everybody who gets spam reports one spammer to a relevant authority and a door is closed because of some of those, the spammer's options will become less and less.

So, go ahead. Report those spammers. And if you don't know how, ask me. I'll be happy to try and help you!

Attack of the Spam-monster

So usually I get about 20 spam messages a day. Out of paranoia, I don't have a spam filter, in case a "Real E-mail" gets blocked.

But as of this morning, I got over 100 spam messages since yesterday. Quite disconcerting. And all I've done in that time which may prompt it is: (a) follow a spam link to MySpace by accident (probably this), and (b) registered an accountand tried out reddit (probably not this).

Hopefully it's not reddit, since they don't share your e-mail address, after all. And reddit is pretty cool...

Old stuff transferred from my Wiki's Diary

=October 2006= ==10 October 2006== General news update I was halfway through today's entry and realized that if you're following these posts, you might be confused if I didn't announce up here: I am now a married man (since 12 August 2006). Honeymoon was great, we took a 12 day break to Kwazulu-Natal, involving a game lodge for 3 days, a house in Leisure Bay for 5, and visiting Carel and Adri Anthonissen in Pietermaritzburg for 3 days. I got a lot of driving experience, including my first foray onto National Roads leaving the airport and merging onto the N2, before driving straight through to Hluhluwe. Toward the end of our visit, we also were privileged to visit some friends from our cell group George Murray and Minette van der Merwe, who were unable to make our wedding. They're also engaged, and are getting married at the end of the year (31 December?). Also, Dalene has started a job as a researcher at the Agricultural Research Council, specifically Infruitec. She's doing SooPeR-S3kr1t, classified research on tea! And she's going to a conference in Malta later this month. So today our new bed arrived at home. Simmonds Pocket Spring bed, cost an arm and a leg, but we're hoping it will be well worthwhile. We took a king size, since king size beds come with 2 single bed bases mext to each other, so that it's easier to get them up the stairs. Problem with that idea was that the mattress, which doesn't come apart, was wider - so getting it up the stairs was a real mission. In any case, the bed is up the stairs now, and we have most of the bedding we need, except for a quilted mattress protector (specified by the Simmonds care instructions) - we bought towelling, since getting a quilted protector for an extra-length bed, which is what we now have, is well nigh impossible; and a frilly base thing - which at first I thought was stupid, but now I see that beside its aesthetic appeal, it actually is functional too: it stops me marking the base with my dirty feet. So now I'm back at the office, and must complete my CV. Why people say they want a "short" CV, I'll never understand. How long is short? And while on my quest to do my CV, I finally gave up on doing it in a MS-Word like environment, and decided to go the LaTeX route. Hopefully future companies will be satisfied by a pdf CV. Good news is that the university's bursary office have decided they were at fault for my not getting a merit bursary for my doctorate the last 2 years, so they have given me permission to apply for the fourth year of my Ph.D. next year, and have indicated that I will receive the bursary. Together with support from my department, that means I should get almost what I was hoping for for the coming year. Yesterday night we had an interesting cell group meeting, with the reading coming from the Screwtape letters. The chapter was on marriage and the Western view of the only grounds for marriage being "being in love". From there the debate veered to marriages between homosexuals, grounds for divorce, the issue of divorcees remarrying, and polygamy. Quite stimulating, but I thought some people were getting frustrated, while others said the conversation stopped just where it started getting interesting. Diff'rent strokes, I guess - I agree with the latter. Oh yeah - and a while back we decided to move flats. The two reasons were, I was led to believe, that we couldn't get a bed up the stairs (which we have now done), and that a large top-loader washing machine would not fit into our current flat. Which is why I was puzzled by Dalene's support for flat's embodying just these problems. Finally, however, Dalene surprised me by opting for a student dive which is very spacious, at least: the rent is a little higher than where we are, the conditions are probably worse, but the extra space (extra bedroom and larger kitchen/lounge etc. and garage) should more than make up for it, we hope. The place is currently rented by students serious about partying and the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll lifestyle. Oh yeah, don't forget booze! The last while I've also decided to steam ahead with my thesis, as you may have noticed, after entertaining some doubts about continuing the last while. As part of my commitment to finishing next year (which I need to do to avoid having thick-necked strongmen with baseball bats coming knocking on my door), I have had to withdraw from as many activities as possible. First of these was the Stellenbosch Go club committee (and probably a lot of the meetings in the coming year). On the 15th my resignation from the Western Cape Go council exec becomes effective. Unfortunately, the [http://www.sagoclubs.co.za website] still has to be maintained, and that's all my baby. The other news is that a friend of mine, [[Madeleine du Plessis|Madeleine]], has given birth. Her new son's name is [[Ruben du Plessis|Ruben]]. This coming weekend I'm playing in the Western Cape Closed Meijin Challenger's League. I suspect I'm seriously outgunned, but I have beaten everyone in the tournament on scratch before. Of the 5 players taking part, the last placed player is demoted and has to try re-qualify next year, so I'm hoping to avoid last place. It is safe to say winning the tournament is out of the question for me. To avoid coming last, I need to win a game, and the person I beat has to lose all their games, OR I need to win any 2 games. Winning one game and ending tied is tickets for me. So I'm gunning for 2 wins, although my chances are small. My first round game is against [[Lloyd Rubidge|Lloyd]] - we always seem to end up playing each other in tournaments. Last thing, a school classmate, [[Beverley Minnaar|Beverley]] turned 30 today. Of course, I've hardly been in contact with her, for no greater reason than that I suck at keeping in touch. Tough knowing what to say when you send an email. Comments welcome - use the discuss tab ;P Poor Schumi Michael Scumacher was almost a legend - coming back from a terrible situation, he went into the Japanese Grand Prix with the lead in the Driver's Championship (albeit by tie-breaker), and looked to be driving to a win before suffering the most ill-timed Ferrari engine failure ever. Admittedly, he's been a helluva lot luckier than Kimi, for example, but still, it breaks my heart, I tell you. So Alonso won, and now he's 10 points up. The only way Michael can win the championship now is by driving to victory at Brazil on 22 October, and for Alonso not to score any points at all. That way, Ferrari will also score the constructors, which also now seems to be unlikely to head the way of their trophy cabinet this year. And if Alonso doesn't score points, it will be due to (a) dirty tactics, (b) an Alonso brain-fart, (c) a Renault car-failure, (d) collateral damage involving other drivers. I'd have to say (d) is the most likely scenario of the 4, and then Michael still needs to grab the win. Hopefully, we'll be getting together to see the season finale. And with it being Michael's retirement race, perhaps people won't pour drinks on me for supporting Michael! =June 2006= ==23 June 2006== Hmm - can't seem to get any work done, today, so I've decided to try and get the maths display working on this wiki, which will at least help me to be more productive in future. To do that, I've got to get Objective Caml running on the cs server as a regular user, which is a little non-standard. The BIG NEWS for today is that [[Janette]] who at one stage was in my actuarial class, received news that she passed her final exam, so she is now a qualified actuary!!! congrats, Janette. ==20 June 2006== I've spent quite a lot of effort the last while on my thesis, and am trying to understand how the various approaches to my research field relate to each other. Some of these approaches I don't really understand, so I end up spending a day or 2 looking at papers blankly, which gets me frustrated, since "I need to get something done". Yesterday, we ([[Dalene]] and I) went to Louis Leipoldt Hospital, to go visit [[Sonet]] and [[Theuns Anema]], who are proud new parents of their first-born, [[Emma]]. Emma was not in a co-operative position in the womb, so Sonet had a Cesarean, and the baby came out at 2.8 kg. I also discovered I had neglected my duty to organise a tournament director for the Go club's 9x9 tournament next Thursday, so I had to send out an announcement about that, and will probably have to run the tournament. After visiting Sonet, we popped by Dalene's folks who live across the street from the hospital, where I saw a snippet of the current Survivor series, in the Aztec/Inca ruins. I figured an interesting Survivor modification would be to remove the challenges, immunity, etc, and also to outlaw speaking - if you speak, you are taken off the island. If no one is taken off the island for talking for a week, a tribal council is held and someone is voted off. =May 2006= ==22 May 2006== OK, this past weekend's main social activity was an indoor braai at [[Izak Burger|Izak]]'s place, for his wife, [[Tresia Burger|Tresia]]'s, birthday (on Saturday). The rest of the time I neglected my domestic and academic responsibilities at home to read some stuff. Finished off Rupert Morgan's "Let there be lite" (highly cynical and crude in places, but recommended for a laugh and some thought-provoking, if you don't mind that kind of thing (crudity, not laughing and thinking)); then I spent Sunday afternoon devouring Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys" - highly recommended. Spent Saturday afternoon visiting with [[Carel Anthonissen]], a mate who's living in Pietermaritzburg now. He's down here to work on his masters thesis for a week. His thesis is about [[w:Genetic Algorithms]] and [[w:Particle Swarm Optimization]]. Interesting reference from our church service this Sunday - apparently the chance some random Joe fulfills just 8 selected prophecies of the 48 Messianic prophecies which Christians claim they are sure Jesus fulfilled is around 1 in 10 to the power of 17 - anyone know how to do exponents in wiki?) Reference is apparently "Science Speaks" by a fellow with the name of Stoner (I jest not). So I got in to work today to discover I had placed 4th in a Go trivia knowledge quiz, and this qualifies to play in a simultaneous game vs "breakfast" on KGS. He's a 1-dan pro in Korea, Alexandre Dinerchtein, from Russia. I asked to play him on 7 stones, and am uber-excited about that. And on Friday, I discovered that I couldn't set up an ante-nuptial contract myself, and just get it notarised - we have to have a discussion with the lawyers - they claim it's part of their responsibilities as a notary. Is it, or is it just a money making racket? And if so, is it just the lawyers, or are they in cahoots with the government? Surely any 2 people should be able to make and sign an agreement if they wish - why does the contract have to be notarised? Any lawyers or people with more knowledge about this care to elaborate or respond? Post on [[Ante-nuptial Contract and Notarisation]]