Viewing entries tagged with 'silverstripe'

Bumper Update Posted on 13 November 2007 | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

A beautiful storm is raging outside - the crash of thunder, the brilliant flashes of lightning, the sound of rain on the roof, of wind through the trees. I'm quite the fan of storms, and I thought I would take the opportunity to relax, and mayhap update that blog I've been neglecting for far too long.

Firstly, I've decided to try and learn Japanese. The motivation for this I'm not sure - I guess I've always been kinda interested in the country (it's a prerequisite of being a geek I think..), my good friend Mat knows a bit and offered to help teach, and of course the lovely Emma (or えっちゃん as I fondly call her) is pretty much a Japanese genius, so I've got lots of smart people to help me along. Matt (not to be confused with Mat) has loant me his Japanese textbook; he started an introductory course at University but dropped out pretty early. Progessing alright thus far - I've got most of the hiragana down, and am starting to work my way through memorising the katakana. Learning some basic grammar and vocabluary as well, although I think I'm learning some words in a bit unconvential order, Emma teaches me how to say lots of useful stuff that I haven't got up to in the textbook quite yet.

A few months back I finally decided to do that which most of my peers had done long before me - get my driver's license. After studying up the New Zealand road code, I went in for the test to get my learners license. I passed - just. Seriously, why would I need to know the amount of tread that should be on my tires? Or how far something is allowed to stick forward from a roof rack? Well, I passed, and I guess that's the important thing. Mat took me out for a few lessons (geez I have nice friends!), and um, I wouldn't trust me on the road just yet. Or any time soon. Lanes are for losers. Guess ya gotta start somewhere though, right? The lessons are on hold at the moment - petrol isn't cheap and I'm pretty poor during term time. Now that university is over (yuss), I might try get a few lessons in, Mat willing, although work and life in general has been keeping me pretty busy.

Earlier this year, me and my buddy Hamish decided that we wanted to get a flat together come end of year. We signed up Mat as flatmate number three, and began a flat hunt as university neared its closing for the year. We've looked at quite a few flats, seen a few we liked, loved even, but has thus far been unsuccessful in securing a flat for ourselves. Hamish moved into a friends place when his lease ended, so he has somewhere to stay until we find somewhere. The issue of when we need to find a flat has been further complicated by the moving out of my old flatmate - he moved out last Saturday. He gave me a good few hours notice, but he's going to continue cover rent until I find a place, and then discuss with the landlord about terminating the lease early (it doesn't end til early January). I don't have any Internet access or a phone line at the moment (both were under my old flatmates name), which makes it difficult to continue flat hunting; it's all in Mat's capable hands now. I'm confident that we're gonna find a great flat, and with us three guys it's gonna be the most awesome flat ever - I'm just praying that we find it soon.

I've spent most of my time at work recently preparing the SilverStripe 2.2.0 release - it's gonna be fairly fantastic. We managed to get the first release candidate out today - if you're at all into web development you should definately check it out - http://www.silverstripe.com/assets/rc/silverstripe-v2.2.0-rc1.tar.gz. It is such a gigantic improvement over the 2.1 series that I'm not even gonna bother listing the improvements - lucky Sig is pretty good at that kinda thing, and will be covering them on the SilverStripe blog these next few weeks.

In the world of university, I've finished up for the year. Not sure how well I did on the two papers I did last semester - I didn't work nearly as hard as I should have, so I won't be too suprised if my grades are rather poor. I'm considering changes to a BSc in Computer Science, rather than the BIT in Software Engineering that I'm doing at the moment. There are a few reasons for this - first the BIT has been discontinued, so although I still have the chance to finish my degree, how well it will be recognised I'm not sure. Also, as I'm only studying part time now (work part time and studying full time did not bode well for me) it would take me another two years to finish my current degree. Changing to a BSc means I would be able to finish next year if I picked up a few math papers. I'm fairly over university at this point - I'm sick of doing papers that don't interest me because I have to, and I'm confident that I am ready for the workforce already. As fun as studying for studies sake is, I want to get out there and use what I've learnt, and I feel I'm at the stage when I'm going to learn more useful skills out in the big wide world than I would in a lecture theature. I'm pretty sure I'm going to change degrees, but I am going to wait till the new year before I make my decision.

It is growing late, so I feel I should get some sleep. The rain seems to have subsided, but the thunder and lightning continues to rage - I'm not sure I've heard thunder this loud in a long time, it's literally shaking the house. Sleeping to the sound of rain makes me happy :). Until next time..

Do it Posted on 10 September 2007 | Tagged | Comments (1)

Don't forget to ?flush=1 Posted on 18 July 2007 | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Will made this awesome wallpaper a while back:

If you don't get it, don't worry, it's a SilverStripe thing...

SilverStripe on TV Posted on 7 May 2007 | Tagged | Comments (5)

Close Up decided to explain to the wonderful New Zealand public all about open source, and they came to SilverStripe as part of it! Unfortunately I'm not in the video at all... But that just means my national TV debut will be even bigger and better! Or something.. Possibly I'm just bitter..