Adams Calendar
by Tom on Dec.26, 2012, under General
Recently I was googling something (South African History) for some good pieces to read & with a view to planning a future trip/day out for the kid’s, my wife & myself, This due to the fact that the last time I was in south Africa I was a ripe age of 8! Now I was last out here at that age with my mother & we stayed in my aunties house in Benoni.
From what I can remember I spent most of the time in the pool lol as I was a kid but one memory will always be with me & that is my mother dancing in the street to some of the music from Ipi Tombi Dance party ( http://www.discogs.com/Ipi-Tombi-Dance-Party/release/3762077 ) because my aunt had recently gave this to my mother as a gift lol
Still back to the search, I waited for the search results to load & the first post in the list was this:
Michael Tellinger – Adams Calendar
along with some image search results & a Google maps link, after looking at the first result & visiting the maps link I zoomed out of google maps to see where I was in location to this Adams calendar & I had actually zoomed in by accident & also shifted the view to the left slightly but what I saw was amazing.
I saw Hundreds of ‘copy cat’ Adams calendars all around the site! so I decided to do a bit of google maps hunting 
I started by marking the main Adams Calendar in yellow (as you can see on the above maps link) Then I began marking of cluster or single sites which resembled the main Adams Calendar location & after spending a few hours I had discovered about 300 sites!
I found this quite remarkable because if you zoom out on that map link you will see that there are more ancient sites in that area than modern sites!
So I have found our next ‘day out’ location & cannot wait to go there & yes I will be taking my camera & I will upload the images here for you all to enjoy, I shall also try to post some on the actual google map I created.
can’t wait 
Galleries
by Tom on Dec.26, 2012, under General
Recently I began a new hobby …Photography, Initially I started photography as part of a job which alas fell through after my wife & me had gone out & purchased about R5000 worth of equipment! So rather than complaining & never using said equipment again I decided to continue this pursuit & now when we go somewhere where I have never been to or if we go to place that sounds interesting I take along my camera & all the equipment & begin snapping away.
If you look along the top of this blog you will see:
” about me galleries search skip to content ? ”
If you click on the Galleries link this will take you to my galleries page, for now this is pretty basic as I need to upload the content & change all the names but I am still getting used to this WP plugin so please bear with me & feel free to leave a comment
Alas the picture’s I took whilst working as a photographer I am unable to post onto the internet but what I can say is that they of ‘Ladies of the night’ which are used as profile pictures for an escort website. Now if you know me then you will probably be thinking “Tom this is just a way for you to increase your porn collection!” but you will be totally wrong! All I was interested in was getting a good shot & gaining experience of working with models which to most is hard enough but when your model is semi nude & wearing lingerie some find it even hard to focus & keep cool. The feed back I got from my trainer & the models was excellent with each model telling me how nice I was to work with & how professional I was towards them & that I was not embarrassed by the whole thing. My Trainer was especially pleased with my photographs considering I was a n00b, but she said the only problem I had was the colour of my pictures & the quality that the boss was expecting but we persevered & I continued until the boss wanted to see the pictures at which point he decided that mine we not acceptable & I was told it was game over.
All of this has built up an avid interest in photography which I did not think I had until this stint, My wife has a studio & all the stand’s, light’s, etc and I think she has been close to being a pro-photographer for a long time now even though she say’s she is still learning & is far from pro!
So I shall continue to take photographs where ever I go & try to post them here to share with all my blog visitors.
Hope you like my pictures.
Happy Winter Solstice & a Great New Year
by Tom on Dec.25, 2012, under General
To all my readers I want to wish you a happy Winter Solstice & a great New year, may all you wishes for the next year come true & I hope that how ever you choose to celebrate this Winter Solstice may it be full of cheer & happiness.
Take care on the roads & stay safe
15 UPS units
by Tom on Dec.13, 2012, under work
Today I began refurbishing 15 UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) all I had to do here was Test the unit(connect household light to a terminal & then connect power, turn it on then remove the power cord & listen for the beep codes) then remove the cover, use high pressure air to clean inside as these are used in a commune & are housed in a shed (zozo) so they get extremely dusty as this is out in the rural area’s of northern South Africa in a place called Nelspruit.
Once the unit is clean we then swap out the batteries inside, to my surprise these used the same batteries that you would find in a 50cc moped/scooter !! which are simple rechargeable 12v batteries, reconnect them & place the cover back on & put on a charge for 24 hrs when they are tested again & then sent back to customer.
I had managed to get 11 done today & so job finished tomorrow. Lot’s fun
office move
by Tom on Nov.30, 2012, under work
Well today I had to ensure network connectivity whilst Mayfair Gearbox moved offices to a different part of the building.
This went surprisingly well considering we had to replace some rj45 to enable a access point in the floor to work, all told we were there for about 3 1/2 hours.
Sheet metal roofing
by Tom on Nov.29, 2012, under work
Today I replaced A sheet metal roof I managed to get this job via a close friend Andries Labuschagne. As this was the first time I had repaired a roof I let Andries take the lead & essentially became his assistant First we had the great job of removing the rivets holding the sheet metal to the roof frame, then when got those off we could shuffle them around so we could remove the rust & repaint the frame. After that came the equally great task of cutting 3 new sheets & then placing them on the top, this task took about 2 hours to get them up which was a right pain in the but as we were working in 31 Deg C in south africa!!!
Once we had them in place Andries then screwed them in place with some self tapping screws + rubber washers & after 4 hours all was done.
Gotta love Job diversity
freelance work
by Tom on Nov.28, 2012, under work
Today I began some freelance IT support work for a local company.
at mayfair gearbox I replaced a rj45 junction box! what fun that was, the company appear to have installed their own makeshift junction box to provide another connection to the network but the person who installed this junction box left all the wires exposed(no cover) & it was attached to a piece of rj45 that was long enough to get tangled into the chair legs of the receptionist. So after a few weeks of running over the junction box with her chair it then began to fail, hence the call out to my employer (ADD X IT Support) So I had to ensure the cables were all good & connected (lan cable tester) then install a new junction box & affix it to wall, during this I discovered that the company who installed the network had wired the rj45 abnormally so when someone like me turns up it makes it harder & generally this trick is used to ensure your customer comes back to you!!!
Also today I gave some advice on network productivity to Tshwane Events Center as their file server is running absurdly slow & the Operations manager wants to know what upgrade path is best for his network. The first bit of advice I gave was to consider giving the file server an extra network card so as to allow traffic to flow faster through the server without creating a bottle neck
Steam on Linux
by Tom on Nov.12, 2012, under General, Linux
Recently Valve announced they began a closed BETA test for the Steam Client on Ubuntu which is great news to me & quite a few other Linux fans but the best news of all is that gtmanfred from the arch community has created a user package to enable fellow archers to install steam within ArchLinux yaaaay
I shall post a small post later about my efforts to get it running
Things are on the up!
by Tom on Oct.13, 2012, under General, work
met with a couple who are close friends of my wife’s & mine, they have BOTH offered me work I shall be Assistant Boom Operator & Trainee Junior freelance photographer.
To celebrate my wife has decided I need a scooter so we will get a Gomoto Yesterday-SI (150cc) looks really nice & just what like in a scooter.
Really cannot wait at all for all this to finally come together as it is going to get me out of the house & running about all around Pretoria also will be picking up new skills all the way which will defiantly help to increase my CV.
Website production will continue but at a slower pace & I will still be available for technical projects should I be required all I will have to do is monitor the calendar more closely.
more to come 
New website for Barracuda Security Management Ltd
by Tom on Sep.27, 2012, under work
Recently I was given the opportunity to create a new website for Barracuda Security Management Limited. These guy’s are one of the best Security firms working in Basingstoke & I would recommend them to anyone I know who are putting on any form of event simply due to the level of professionalism they ooze when working at an event. I have had the pleasure of working with Andre (the founder) previously at a top class global IT firm (who shall remain anon.) & even then I was impressed with the way he worked & performed as part of a team.
When I came to learn he was starting his own Security Firm I knew then it would be successful.
When I undertook this contract they were using the default CMS provided by 123-reg which looked very basic & amateur which to me was obviously not the kind of online presence a Security firm needs, So once I confirmed the contract I decided to create a website based upon CMS Made Simple & I think the results are very nice indeed.
The website theme’s are largely controlled by CSS which gives you such a wide scope of control that should you want to each page can have it’s own theme or you can give it a global theme. For this particular site I felt that all that was required would be some adjustments to the default theme (removal of sections & some re-organisation) the actual layout now is just what I was looking for & the owner was more than happy with the results.
I must say that I can see how this CMS got it’s name as it really is simple yet very powerful, I can see that I will have great times updating this site as it evolves & feel comfortable that the CMS is very flexible.
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