Cape Town photographed from the top of Table Mountain. Click for high-res.
I wish you a truly happy 2016, filled with learning and helping other people! Neil deGrasse Tyson, exemplary human, said it best:
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
Time is fun when you’re having flies! I can’t believe that four months have flown by since the previous WHV. Since then, quite a bunch has happened. Some highlights for me:
- I spent a week in The Netherlands, my other home, taking part in a second hackathon with the Evalueserve peeps (the previous one was in Gurgaon in India). This was again loads of fun, and we managed to build a significant new shippable feature (measurable value!) almost from scratch.
- In October, I went back to The Netherlands (it’s my other home, remember) for 2.5 days to take part in the Doctorification of a friend. Besides the doctorification process (I’ve been out of academia for a while, so my terminology might not be 100%) which went swimmingly, I had so many high-intensity interactions with some of my favourite people that I literally almost missed my flight back. Just picture me waking up in Delft at 8:30 with a flight leaving from Amsterdam at 10:00…
- For a work project, I started programming in Apple’s Swift. As compiled high-performance languages go, this one has a number of modern language features which make it a truly interesting addition to one’s programming toolbox.
- Further on the nerd-front, I’m trying to get more of us to use Signal instead of WhatsApp whenever possible.
- We spent so many weekends and the Christmas vacation doing fun outdoorsy stuff (living at the southern tip of Africa has serious perks), not least of which was a trip up Table Mountain for the first time in 15 years. See the photo up top for an impression.
I have some fun changes in mind for this blog in 2016, but you’re going to have to stick around to find out what they are, so… see you later peeps!