A guy, a blog and the internet
Family
Cecilia, Catelyn and me, and extended family
Life changing events…
Jul 30th
In less than 12 hours I leave Capetown and move back to Johannesburg.
I am excited, a little nervous, and really looking forward to what the future holds.
On that note, it’s almost lunch time, and I’m gonna miss the friday ritual of going out and getting food. Thank you to TheClassifieds it’s been a great year, I’ve learn a lot, and I hope you guys have also.
Time to shutdown and go to lunch, catch you on the flip side 
SARS eFiling and Linux
Jul 7th
SARS (South African Revenue Service) a couple of yeas ago (eFiling) introduced an awesome system, where you could go online and submit your tax return.
The problems I have had have been annoying, firstly (2008) I was unable to do anything as the system required you to have Adobe Reader 8.2, this was not available for Linux. And you can imagine the support staff were very helpfull… NOT
And then 2009 & 2010, a similar problem or so it seemed, when ever I tried to load one of the system generated PDF files it would tell me I needed to upgrade my Adobe Reader (which at the moment is 9.3.3, the latest I believe).
After trying to figure out what could be the problem I found it to be a javascript related issue, yes javascript in a PDF…
Solution
Well to solve this problem you need to have the Debian Multimedia repository setup.
And then all you need to do is:
apt-get install acroread mozilla-acroread acroread-plugins
After that restart firefox/iceweasel and there you have it, the missing peice of the puzzel acroread-plugins
So now I have submitted my returns for 2008/2009/2010, here’s waiting for a refund *holds thumbs*
Trying to reorganize ones life
Apr 27th
It’s amazing how time flies parts us and we sometimes don’t even notice it.
Well I know I can’t change time or the past, but I can shape the future, and I plan to do just that.
I know it’s not going to be easy, but I am needing to split my day in to various chucks so I can at least get some meaning out of them and not just plod along like I have been doing.
So lets see how this works out… And hopefully I can stick to it for more than one or two days :p
I am slowly becoming a stronger person, not only emotionally but physically and mentally as well. I have some motivation, and it’s amazing what you can achieve when you have people around you that believe in you 
so thank you to all those people
I have a few big plans for the future, unfortunately the timing isn’t right yet for some of them, and some other plans are reliant on the first few, but with time and patience, these things shall come to pass
And hopefully I will now have more time to mess around with more technology
Well best get off to bed, it’s getting late 
Taking a break…
Feb 25th
Isn’t it funny how much we rely on the interet. I have my email, twitter and facebook setup on my phone and all the pc’s I use, just in case I miss something. It has started taking up a lot of time, I have hardly had any time for myself.
So, I’ve decided that for the next couple of weeks I’m going to disconnect myself from that world, unfortunatly I can’t disconnect completely from the internet due to my work. But I can close down chat clients, and the like.
Here’s to the next couple of weeks, hopefully something good comes from it, catch y’all on the other side. And I will try and blog more, havn’t really had a chance to learn anything new recently, hence this decision
Love you all, C
PS. If you need to get hold of me, pop me a mail or sms, or leave a comment below (they are moderated so if you don’t want it to show up just say so
UPDATE – 2 Mar So it took a week and I’m back, but I’ve removed a few people from follow lists, unfortunately these things need to be done
Moving… again…
Jan 25th
Well, I can’t believe how time has flown, Cecilia and I split up end of October last year, and we were still staying together till the end of the lease. I found a new place end of November, and now finally get to move in
So now instead of driving 100Km a day (from Durbanville to Tokai), I am now gonna be driving 10Km a day <– AWESOME!!!
And now I’m closer to the beach, it’s like a 10min drive, on a busy day so will be spending alot more time there, and when Catelyn comes to visit she will also, she loves “THE BEACH” as she puts it… hehe…
So as one part of my life finally comes to a close, another starts up…
Now finally I’ll have more time to spend on the stuff I love, and hopefully I will be able to start contributing to the Debian comunity.
New things to learn, new people to meet, new experiences to experience… #ROCKON #AWESOME
Happy New Year
Jan 2nd
So, it’s the begining of a new year, man 2009 went by quick… I really didn’t expect (or want) the year to end the way it did, but go figure.
Well I have a feeling that this next year is gonna be a tough one, but I’m sure I’ll get through it…
Here’s to the new year and I hope that all of you guys reading this have an awesome year. Hopefully big things happen…
Merry Christmas to all
Dec 25th
Well it;s that time of year again (what happend to the rest of the year).
Merry Christmas to all of you out there, some of you are close and some of you are far.
So special greetings go to my Dad (even though you are far away we are thinking about you and miss you lots)
Well guess I should stop being “rude” and leave the pc alone for a little bit, hope you all have an awesome day surrounded by people you love and great food.
And so I write some code today
<?php
$holiday = new Holiday('Christmas');
$holiday->celebrate();
$holiday->eatLotsOfFood();
$holiday->beMerry();
lolz
New host and toys… :)
Nov 22nd
My 100th entry 
New Toys
Cecilia and myself were looking over the finances the other day, and due to her laptop giving issues, and myself not having a decent machine. At the moment iBurst is running a special where you get a netbook, USB modem and 1Gb bandwidth a month We found it would be cheaper to cancel the current Internet connection and get two of these and external hosting.
I am currently writing this post on my netbook.
The netbook is a Samsung N140.
- CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz (Dual core)
- Memory: 1Gb
- HDD: 160Gb
- Wifi: BGN
- Bluetooth 2.1
- Screen 10.1″ 1024×600
Hosting
For the past couple of years I have been hosting this blog on my server at home, I got static IP from iBurst which helped. unfortunatly due to bandwidth usage and cost I have had to move this blog offsite (moved my mail a couple of months ago)
So this blog is now hosted by A Small Orange, and thanks goes out to Geoff Garbers for suggesting them
Well now back to setting up a dev enviroment on the netbook…
New network/machine setup
Nov 14th
So I finally got myself the Linksys WRT54GL and now my network hardware went from:
And now after:
Now to try load DD-WRT onto her, and then eventually Debian…
Also finally sorted out the laptop that I am using, well the screen was moved to Cecilia’s laptop and this one was using the external, with a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Well just waiting for the last couple of thing to finish on Cecilia’s laptop (had to reinstall) and then off to bed…
What a month… – Update
Oct 21st
So, things are slowly getting back to normal… Quote has been approved, they hopfully start fixing the car in the next couple of days. I also got my phone yesterday.
I know I have chosen to not talk about work here, but I just have to mention that I am very happy working for TheClassified, my boss (Jonathan Page) has been very helpfull and patient during this time, I am very greatfull. Thanks Jonathan.
Well that is all for now, hopefully don’t have to wait too long for my car, although I’m gonna miss the rental car when I give it back… (VW Golf 1 – brings back memories)
I'm a self taught PHP developer and Linux Sysadmin, I'm also starting to learn BSD.