With the society that sets the bar for performance so low, I have serious problems. Slowly, slowly we are digging our collective graves as we fall into a sinkhole of mediocrity from which we are unlikely to emerge.

Behind a massive wave of populism, and in the misguided name of regstelling (setting right the past), we open access to resources and universities to young people without the hard work necessary to achieve those gifts and to succeed once there.

Straight to the point, as always.

So here’s something worth admitting: I’ve been running WordPress 2.0 since 2006 and have never once bothered to upgrade to the latest version – unlike Jonathan who seems to update to the current stable almost daily! So without further ado, let me welcome you to the new WordPress2.5′d timokeller.net 2.0. I designed this rather simple theme to run on the effortlessly awesome K2 theme for wordpress, and I think its come out okay. Suggestions?

Congrats to the WordPress guys on a stunning new WP-ADMIN panel and the already huge number of downloads they have received. Its funny how even though its just a blogging script, it gets much more attention than Drupal releasing 6.1!

I’ve spent most of the past four months working on ChirpFX, a simple MVC Framework for developing human-centric web applications in PHP 5. The first application to use the framework is ChirpSchool – a highly extensible webapp for school and student management, assessment, promotion and monitoring. Its been picked up by the likes of Sun Valley Primary School and other local schools, and we’re looking forward to expanding at a rather exciting pace. We’ll have a promo website up soon with more information. More on that in the coming weeks.

If you want to keep an eye on me, follow me on Twitter. If you’re not on Twitter yet I’d highly suggest you join – its a really interesting way to interact with friends and followers!

Schedule for the next few weeks:

• Cognitive Behaviour Analysis Tutorial Assignment and Project
• Computer Science Network Architecture Tutorial 2 and Test
• Professional Communication Unit Paper due
• Deliver SMS and Assessment Modules of ChirpSchool
• See lots of Amy!

Thanks for catching up! See you on Twitter.

Tim

It’s that time of year… The brightly coloured A3 posters have been pinned to every possible surface, the overly chipper candidates are striding around campus like the politicians they’re hoping to emulate. Yes, its UCT SRC Election time! Now, excuse me if I sound a bit pedantic but I cannot understand the point of it all.

80-90% of the Student Body have never, and probably will never, meet these bright-eyed candidates. How on earth can we as the “little fish” in this UCT-Shaped-Pond hope to elect the best people for the job?

The answer is we can’t, and as a result the University gets a group of people who are elected primarily based on how good their photograph is! These people go on to supposedly take the students’ concerns to the powers-that-be. How do they figure out what our concerns are?

The truth is that I don’t really care: I just go about my day to day life at UCT and generally forget that we even have an SRC. What I do care about are these stupid posters that are covering our normally beautiful campus. There is absolutely no way that their presence is going to make me vote (or not vote) for a particular candidate… especially because I’m faced with a wall of 2 of these photos!

Note the geeks (yes I’m one of them) enjoying Tetri-net via xterm ssh sessions! Ooooh!

The above is a photo from the bus stop this morning – the queue was MASSIVE and I arrived in Maths at 7:59am! Perhaps I need to rethink my parking spot.
Maths lecturer Kenny was as impressive as usual in his introduction to MAM1006H. Anyone who’s ever been lectured by him will remember his “DON’T BE PASSIVE” speeches Patrick Marais was even more impressive in his introduction to Computer Science 2 at 9am. What a pleasure to finally have a highly organised and confident Course Co-ordinator. I think this is going to be a good year.

I have my first two Psychology lectures at 12 and 1pm later today – should be interesting. I’m taking Research in Psyc and Psychopathology (beware)!

Cheers

Computer Science – Python Course: 83% (Distinction)

Computer Science – Java Course: 78% (Distinction)

Psychology 1: 69%

Mathematics 1: 61%

Applied Mathematics: 57%

Statistics: 50%

The Statistics test turned out to be okay. Not too hard, but not completely simple. Sorta average where a test should be I guess. Sleepy now. Wow. Good night.

Ps. Amy has Sinusitis and is on tons of meds… feeling quite (very) sick still so do keep her in your prayers if you wouldn’t mind. Thanky.

So it looks like i’ve been missing in action for the past week or so. Tonight I figured it was time for a come-back. And what better way than with a shiny new theme. Its a little slower than the old one but graphically its stunning. Credits to the brilliant designer are at the bottom of the blog, I just edited it a little for personalisation and customisation.

So, this week has been really really busy for both Amy and I… and my next week is even more interesting. Amy’s been finishing up her Teaching Prac’s which she posted off today in one big parcel at a cost of R70. She had to include all the media she had made for the lessons, photographs of her board schemes, reports from the teacher marking her, and personal reflections on each item to name but a few. You can understand the stress and length of time in getting this together!

I wrote a CompSci test (got 74%), Maths Test, CompSci Practical Test, and Maths Mini-Test in the past three days. My next week is as follows:

Saturday: Finish CompSci Tutorial (due Mon), Do Psychology Essay (due Thursday). Edit SAPA DVD.

Sunday: Study Chapters 1 – 3 of Statistics for Test on Monday at 5pm. Submit CompSci Tutorial.

Monday: Hand in CompSci Tutorial, do Maths Workshop (2pm-4pm). Write Stats test (5pm – 6:30pm).

Tuesday: Work on Psychology Essay.

Wednesday: Finish Psychology Essay, Due Psychology Tutorial.

Interesting week hey? Quite sad when one starts using one’s blog to plan out your week! hehehe.