According to all the blogging guides out there I have
committed the cardinal sin when it comes to blogging: not being regular. It has
been almost a month since I blogged but apparently according to my Analytics
account readership hasn’t gone down, it has remained at a fairly constant
average and I have finally hit the 1000 hits mark. So bugger all those blogging
guides!!!
I have been apparently busy doing nothing. Yes, you heard me
right, I have been really doing nothing. Besides a few excursions to
Johannesburg with my friend Thabani and my cousin, I have never been this
completely without anything to do in a very very long time. You would think
that it would mean I had more time to blog and catch up on all the things I do
in my spare time but unfortunately I don’t work like that. You see, when I am
under extreme pressure, for example studying for an exam or travelling, that is
exactly the time I seem to manage to do everything at once. I will manage to
find time to catch my favourite series, write a short story about a little old lady I meton a bus, hang out with my friends and study for the exam all at the same time.
Give me free time and I somehow grind to a complete halt. I am quite convinced
this is a medical condition.
But of course even in the midst of doing nothing I did
manage to force myself to do some programming. No, when I say programming I don’t
mean setting up the microwave to automatically defrost my supper. You see dear
reader, by profession I am a Computer Scientist [insert applause here] which
means I join the ranks of people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg and Steve
Jobs minus of course the USD 60 billion dollars in my bank account (I’m still
working on that, have no worry). But trust me, being a computer scientist is
not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, the minute people hear the two
words, they immediately imagine I repair computers for a living. Or that
somehow that means I know every trick there is to know about Windows 7. No dear
reader, that is not what Computer Science is about.
According to what some call the father of Computer Science, Edsger Dijkstra: "Computer
science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
A huge part of Computer Science actually has nothing to do with computers
anymore than mathematics is the study of calculators. So the next time someone
asks you what I do tell them that Bongani studies the mathematical and
scientific approach to data treatment (that will shut them up!). Which brings
me back to my apology. In my efforts to make sure that I didn’t completely
forget what my professors spent four years drilling into my head I went back to
the drawing board (or to be more accurate, keyboard) and designed a small piece
of software that I call Sandman. It is a simple program that you give a
specific time period and after the time has elapsed will shut down your
computer for you. Yeah I went to varsity for four years to learn how to do
that. Varsity is over rated sometimes, no wonder Mark Zuckerburg quit after one
year!!! So as a token of my utmost apologeticness (and no that is not a word), I
offer you all a free copy of Sandman, the product of several sleepless nights
trying to figure out how the progress bar in Windows works.
Download Sandman here, and tell me what you think of it. In
the meantime I’ll try to think of something else to blog about. My next blog is
tentatively titled, “Africa is one big cry baby”. Till then, adios.
PS: To the guys who complaining that they can't comment on my posts, I have tried to fix it, it should work now :)
No comments:
Post a Comment