About Marius

Owner of Henriska Technology and Project Manager by profession.

Good to be a South African!! — Synthasite

One of the RSS feeds that show up in my feed reader is of Ajax MagazineOne of the feeds was on Synthasite, developed in Cape Town, South Africa.

It is good to see work done in South Africa gets mentioned on prominent international sites and being tested by big companies like Amazon.

Synthasite is also being tested on
Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, which in theory allows it to be
infinitely scalable, although accounts will initially be limited.

I have not had a look at Synthasite yet but will give it a test and see how it performs.

Well done to Vinny and the team .. keep up the good work.

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Why are you twittering?…..

This is the question I was asked today from somebody I have no idea who the person is.  It is neither one of my Twitter friends or Twitter followers.  Maybe this person is somebody that viewed my profile on Facebook where my twitterings is displayed via the Twitter Facebook application.

This made me think about how to answer this.  In the end, I think it is more that I follow other people than to tell the would what I am doing.  And via the people I follow, I have stumbled or was told about some really interesting things.  Things I would have no idea existed if I was not twittering.

However, founding out that people do actually read my one or two twitterings made me wonder whether I should actually share more about what I am up to.

So that one person from Knysna who is reading some of my twitterings, either become a follower so that I can start following you or just contact me to solve this mystery for me.

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cocomment — Never miss a comment follow-up again

I comment fairly often on other people’s blog entries but always forget to return to see what responses I receive on my comments.  Not anymore.  Thanks to Miguel dos Santos for putting me onto cocomment. With a Firefox extension (everybody is using Firefox, right) or even adding a plug-in to your own hosted blog, you can now track all you comments in one central place.  How neat.

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Winter, cold weather and flu

In general I never get sick when the seasons change but this year seems to be the exception.  A couple of weeks ago I was as sick as a dog with flu and it seems that I am due for another bout of it.

This morning when I woke up, I could barely swallow.  However I had some important customer meetings to attend and dragged my body out of bed and went to work.  What a mistake.  Barely got through the meeting.

Came home early and tugged myself in bed after taking some medicine.  Feeling a bit better now after some Chicken soup.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Off to bed to see if I can sleep this off.

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Stem wat gehoor moet word ….

Anja, of beter bekend as oopkop, het vandag ‘n Dubuut blog inskrywing van 2 liedjies wat sy sing.  Ek het skoon hoenervleis gehad nadat ek daarna geluister het.  Ek is nou nie ‘n musiek kenner nie maar daai stem … “wow”.

Anja, jy moet defnitief uit die stort klim en die wye wereld ‘n smakie geen van jou sing talent.  Ek sal eerste in die ry staan om die CD the koop.

Die wat nog nie Anja se stem gehoor het nie, gaan luister gerus … kliek hier.

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Geekdinner – Cape Town – 28 May 2007

It is another Geekdinner tonight and I cannot make it.  I looked so forward to it but having only returned from overseas make things a bit tight when it comes to time.  In any case, I still have not catch up on all my lost sleep so would probably fell asleep in my dinner.

Enjoy and see you all around next time.  Will catch up on everything when all the reports hits the blogsphere.

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Back home ….

After a week away in sunny warm Denmark, I arrived back in South Africa early Saturday morning.  It only happens in South Africa when they have to delay the take-off of a flight to make sure that the airplane does not arrive early in Cape Town.  You see, they were working on the run-way overnight and the flight was not allowed to land before 5am.  They delayed the flight by 40 minutes in Frankfurt just for this. 

It was my first visit to Copenhagen and what an eye-opener.  No crime to talk off, actually I almost never saw the police or heard any sirens.  Once an alarm went off in a shop and within a blink of the eye a policeman arrived. 

Bicycles, this is everywhere.  No wonder since Denmark is very flat.  The highest point in Denmark is a pilar on a bridge that goes from one island to another. Since they ride on the wrong side of the road I almost took out some bicycle riders a couple of times. Getting out of the bus I always looked in the wrong direction and then just started walking just to hear some calls from my right from a couple of bicycle riders pedalling down on me. 

And nobody lock their bicycles when they get off it.  Hours later that bicycle will be just where they left it.

Talking of busses.  It is always on time, clean and get you on time where you need to be.  And cars do not drive in bus lanes.  It just does not happen.  Also if a pedestrain crossing is red nobody walks, even if there is no cars and/or  bicycles. It just does not happen.

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Copenhagen- photo report

As promised, here are some photos from my visit in Copenhagen.

Views from my hotel, not my room but the room of a colleague of mine who is here with me. Had dinner yesterday evening on the benches you see. Burger King burger and chips — and that cost 55 Danish Krone, about R72 .. yes you read correctly, R72 for a burger and chips.

While we are talking about my colleague, here is he (Andre) lying on his bed.  We have this joke about him staying in a real pimp room.  I am staying in the new renovated part of the hotel where the rooms are ultra luxury. Last night while beer drinking from pub to pub we came across this traffic light — The small green light on the right is a traffic light for bicycles.  Yes, they have their own lanes with their own traffic lights. 

We also met this “alien” that was dancing every time  somebody threw some coins in her tin .. she was actually very entertaining.  When she was not dancing then she was standing dead still like a statue and would not move even if people tried to make her move. The moment some coins was thrown she started dancing with her flags.

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Copenhagen, Denmark

Arrived in Copenhagen at the Palace Hotel very late yesterday evening after 18 hours on airplanes and in airports.  Was touch and go in Frankfurt when I had to get from one airplane to the next one in under 30 minutes.  Assisted by a security guard through some back allies we eventually made it.  The fact that my luggage arrived with me in Copenhagen was a miracle.

Also the take-off in Cape Town in that stormy weather is not something I want to experience soon again.  Talking of the weather, it is a great sunny 22 degrees here in Copenhagen.  Eat your heart out, Cape Town 🙂

I have taken some photos and will upload as soon as I have some time.  It is beer drinking time so until later.

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I hate packing!

My trip to IBM Denmark is just a bit too long to just take a small suitcase that will go through as hand luggage.  On top of that Denmark is moving from winter to summer so the weather can be anything from below 10 degrees to over 20.  This means one have to pack for both mild and cold weather.

I hate all this permutations … I am one of those travelers that like to throw something in a suitcase a hour or so before I am due to leave for the airport.  Do not think it is going to work this time.  Firstly I have to leave for the airport while I am halve asleep and I do not want to take the change that I leave halve of what I should take behind.  Since this is a business trip I should actually put some thought into what I will wear.  I believe the Danish people dress way more formally than us to work.  So more formal pants than just a couple of jeans which is what I wear to work here in SA.

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