October 27th, 2008 Denham Coote
As some may recall, Stormhoek were kind enough to let us spend the day on the farm when we were down in Cape Town for WordCamp 2008. Good food, good company and good wine! A perfect Sunday. As if this wasn’t enough to convince me just how awesome these guys are, they are now running a promotion where they will send wine and photos to just about anywhere in the World, to users who engage with them online.
I’m sure not gonna miss out on the opportunity to get myself some of their awesome wine! (I opened my last bottle of Stormhoek last week)
Hope you’re all well!
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September 10th, 2008 Denham Coote
There are certain benefits to being your own boss. Right now, I am sitting outside by the pool, under the lapa, sipping on a cold beer. Don’t you love life?
My office
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August 27th, 2008 Denham Coote
What do geeks, code, blogs, Matt Mullenweg and I all have in common? Well, for one, we were all in Cape Town this weekend for WordCamp SA. The glue that holds it all together? WordPress.
Friday, 22nd August, 2008
WordCamp weekend kicked off with Tyler and I heading out to the airport on Friday morning at 5am, meeting Vincent Maher on the way. Upon landing, we were taxied around by Jason Bagley. A few client meetings later, we made our way to the hotel we were staying at, which happened to be a mere 20 meter walk from The Wild Fig (where the event took place).
After dropping off our luggage, we made our way back to Cape Town International to meet Warwick Poole and Matt Mullenweg, both of Automattic. After waiting an hour or so, Warwick came out and informed us that Matt’s bags were missing. Fantastic! There were still held up US side.
After stopping to do some essential shopping for Matt, we made our way to none other than Spur. Not quite South African gourmet, but certainly a home-grown experience. From there we went to the pre-un-conference geek-meet at Asoka. I’d love to be able to link to all the people we met, but I’m afraid Google might turn on me. Needless to say it was an awesome evening, with me introducing Matt to his first Jaeger Bomb!
Back at the hotel, Tyler and I worked until about 2am, sorting out last minute details, and spending a bit of time on Project Wolf.
Saturday, 23rd August, 2008
The event that got 100+ geeks and their laptops assembled in Cape Town: WordCamp SA 2008. Organised by Younique, with the likes of Matt and Warwick as guest speakers, it was a day of note.
Kicking off at 9am, with coffee and muffins, the venue quickly filled up. Prominent bloggers and entrepreneurs alike were crammed into the The Wild Fig. An awesome line up of speakers kept everyone interested (and awake) throughout the day.
Matt is a very natural speaker. He spoke about running a business, and making money, utilising a business model based of free software. Warwick, also of WordPress, gave us some incredible stats about wordpress.com - its traffic and infrastructure.
The day, however, was not without incident. As Tyler was giving the closing speech, I managed to knock a glass of water over into his brand new Macbook. It’s amazing, but in those few seconds following, I was photographed more times than all the key speakers combined. *blush*
That night we went off to Sinns at Wembley Square for dinner. Sinns is the type of place that charges twice as much as Spur, serves half the amount of food, but makes it look pretty. It wasn’t bad at all, though.
Chris Rawlinson, of Stormhoek (who were kind enough to sponsor wine for the day) invited us back to his place after dinner. A special word of thanks to him for putting up with us until 5am, even after having parts of his apartment demolished.
Sunday, 24th August, 2008
I managed to surface at 10:30. I felt like ass. Now, normally, I do not suffer the after effects of consuming too much alcohol. This day was different. I blame Matt. Those Mohitos (sp) were lank dodgy, oke. After dragging my sorry ass out of bed and getting showered, the only logical thing to do was to go to KFC and buy out half their shop. After buying enough for 17 people, Tyler and I were happy that we had enough for the 2 of us. We were also kind enough to share with the other guys when we got back to the hotel.
From there, we made our way to Stormhoek Wine Estate. Graham Knox was simply awesome, giving us a private tour of the farm, and treating us to a wonderful lunch. I have never had so many open bottles of wine in one sitting. Stormhoek is an estate that is full of history, and really takes pride in the wine it produces. I shall certainly be buying many many bottles from them in the future.
After a great day out in Wellington, Jason once again taxied Tyler and I back to the airport for the last flight back to Joburg.
A very big thank you goes out to Tyler, who is responsible for the weekend. Though he will try pass credit on to other people, WordCamp would not have happened without him. His guiding hand, his generosity, his huge personality and his ability to bring people together and enjoy themselves. Thank you, mate!
This post is VERY short compared to the sum of the events of the weekend. I think the best suggestion I can make is that you don’t miss next year’s!
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May 24th, 2007 Denham Coote
On Saturday morning I came around to the sound of puking. The person puking, it appeared, was me.
“Why am I hunched over the toilet, puking?”
“Why is there, what appears to be, blood mixed with my puke?”
“and WHO is this person standing next to me in the bath?” I think to myself.
Incoherent noises.
“You’ve had a seizure” I hear the voice telling me.
Then it dawns on me. This would be the reason I have been speaking with a lisp this past week.
OK, so for those of you that have NO idea what I’m rambling on about, I’m a diabetic. My diabetes is fairly well controlled. My doctors are generally happy with me. Just over 2 years ago I had the following series of unfortunate events take place:
I woke up on Friday morning and went to work, as per normal.
I did not eat anything during the day, for reasons I can’t recall.
I went home, skipped dinner, changed, and went out to Sutra (A club).
I proceeded to drink (and dance) the night away.
I went home, checked my sugar, established it was high, and injected the appropriate (or so I thought) amount of insulin.
Having not slept for the past 26 hours, fell into a very deep sleep.
Now usually, when I go low, I will wake up. I will stumble through to the kitchen and find something to eat. The problem here is that I was so tired (and/or trashed) that I didn’t wake up. My glucose levels continued to drop. Having not eaten anything and having exercised (the dancing), they were dropping faster than normal. They dropped so low (1.2) that I had a seizure and bit my tongue. My folks had to get the paramedics out to get me stabilised. This landed me a week long stint in hospital. Needless to say I learnt a lesson the harsh way, and have since endeavoured to avoid a similar situation.
I’m still trying to figure out all the details, but it seems that something very similar happened on Saturday. Yes, I had been out that night, but I had not had nearly as much to drink as before. Yes, I did get to bed late (about 4am), but I didn’t inject nearly as much insulin as I did before. This is something that I’ve become very weary of, and I would rather go high than have another fit! Additionally, I had made sure I ate something before going to bed.
Perplexing. The only thing I can think of that makes any amount of reasonable sense is that my insulin wasn’t mixed well enough, and I got a stronger-than-usual dose. This isn’t really supposed to happen, but I cannot think of any other logical explanation.
Regardless, we were at least a lot more prepared. Since the last incident I keep a glucogen injection in the fridge, which is easy to use. My folks immediately recognised what was happening and injected me. This, I later found out, was also what induced the vomiting, and not my alcohol intake.
I should probably apologise to the paramedics - apparently I was quite aggressive and very rude. All I wanted to do was hang on to the toilet bowl and puke away my sad existence. I made that very clear to them, and I sort of remember them saying something along the lines of “we can’t take him without his consent” to my Dad. I think I told them exactly where to get off when they tried to take me away from my porcelain telephone!
Anyway, the point of the story is: Always make sure you mix your insulin (or drink, for that matter) properly!
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December 16th, 2004 Denham Coote
I got a tablet for my birthday yesterday. It’s gonna be cool for photo touch ups, etc. Here’s a quick scetch: -> [link] . I guess I just need to learn how to draw now!
I am so stuffed. We went out last night to celebrate my birthday. Needless to say a steady supply of alcohol was forced upon me! Good thing today was a public holiday, and I’m not working tomorrow either.
I need coffee.
kthxbaai!
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