Forever contemplation ?

A long time it has been since additional words have been placed on this blog, many a thing or two have happened in the meantime. I believe a few highlights are in order.

Last post was in December when I was still living back with the parentals ( after coming back to SA from the UK as you all well know, or didn't (as it turns out a lot of people thought we were still in the UK.. happened even recently that someone asked me if we were back yet ? Uhmm.. righto.. ppl, all my contact details on here and in Facebook has changed back to SA contact details.. duh !), and was wondering what to do with my time other than try and sort out furniture quotes and varnishing the book cases we received from Rudi's buddies : Marissa and Enrico ( again guys, thanks for all the free stuff, I still owe you that Forries lunch / dinner, perhaps next wkend ? )

Right, back to highlights ( we'll get to the topic at hand way later in this post I presume ).

Few days before Xmas Grieks came down with family back to Cape Town, we went to Kleinbaai ( Groenewald ocean sanctuary) for Xmas and boxing day, enjoyed it thoroughly and then Grieks, myself and my sis flew up to JHB for an almost 3 week holiday up North. This was my little sis' first flight and we made sure she was well nervous before and during boarding of the plane, and then just before take off as well, oh and landing was good fun as well :)

We spent New Year's with Grieks' family in Kroonstad and then departed for Durban on the 2nd of Jan ( dates are a bit vague now, I stand to be corrected) for Ed and Tarryn's wedding on the 4th of Jan in Ballito ( just north of Durban ). The wedding was a great success and the week spent after that in St Lucia ( Ed and Tarryn decided they'll have their week off after the wedding there as well, the honeymoon is/was going to belated, going to Aus [so so jealous] ).

Great times were had getting soaked while trying to go fishing, and driving in the game reserve close by :D Saw my first rhino in years and a few other animals I had never seen in the wild before either. Ed showed he had impeccable skill as a wild life tracker ( new career there sir ? ) and everyone took some great shots with the cameras we had in the car at the time as well.

From there we went back to Kroonstad and then flew back to Cape Town after a great Jan spent up north.

Mid Jan saw us hunting and getting a flat in less than a week. We started moving in so that Grieks would be settled before varisty started for her around beginning of Feb, but as it turns out I was the first one to start hectic work things when I was asked by MySchool ( www.myschool.co.za ) to finish their migration system that their IT manager had been working on since November last year. I accepted and in true Zodan style decided to rewrite the whole thing rather than just finish it and make the db interactions work..

You would have thought that experience would have kicked in, but alas I believe absolute stubbornness in believing I could do a better interface and make it more intuitive with AJAX prevailed... ie I didn't sleep much for the 10 odd days that I had to have it working from the 25th of Jan until the 4th of Feb that it was suppose to go live as the data capturers piled in to start their work.

I delivered, all be it two days late, the system that I wanted to write and had a happy MD and IT manager for it. There were many things ( and there still are ) that will have to get looked at in that system, but will be a module in a much bigger rewrite of the current internal systems that MySchool employs. The initial contract between myself and MySchool was to be only until the end of March, as they had not budgeted for another developer in their company for a year and I was perfectly fine with that.

Grieks started her M.Sc Marine Biology in Feb and have since been working hard, but enjoying her course immensely. I continued working under the premise that I'd only be with MySchool for another month ( after Feb ) and was pleasantly surprised when I was asked if I would like to stay on until end of June. I accepted.

In short that's basically been the highlights, E+T's wedding, holiday up north, found flat ( in very nice area), moved into flat, very happy with flat actually :) Grieks started her course and I'm gainfully employed again :)

The topic at the top of page needs some explaining I suppose : It's just been one of those weeks. Been thinking a lot. I started playing with HDR'ing ( there aint really such a term ) some of my old (although can one call a year old pic old ? ) pictures, any there have been some people who really like it. More and more wondering about taking up the camera more serious, not because I don't love what I do at the minute ( I really do love coding ), but merely because photography has been something I've always wanted to get into though..

There's been a lot of talk of the big 3 - 0 with friends lately, and a multitude of other things that have put me back to sit and evaluate things.. life.. just in general. I should really sit down and just think some things through decently.

Anyhoo, thought I'd let the world get an update on things. If anyone has time please post your view on this set of HDR's I've done to just try it out : HDR set link

Z [out]