Personal News
Site News
01/03/2003
-I've just had a look around the site, the first time in ages.
All this stuff is so dated, especially the thoughts and about
me sections. It describes me 6 years ago, yet strangely
I can't be bothered to delete, nevermind update the stuff.
30/05/2001
-I've added a link to an
explanation of how mirrors work to the things page.
-I had a look my site statistics and saw that I've had
visitors from over 30 countries. Cool!
29/05/2001
My plan then is this:
-Updates about my personal
life and other curiosities you will find at
xanga.com/tjpbrandt.
-Changes and additions to this website will be
blogged ici.
28/05/2001
-Hello there! As it so often happens, I again haven't
updated my page for a long time. To overcome this problem
I have signed up for an account at
Xanga.com which should
make publishing News updates easier. We'll see how that goes.
You can find my page there at:
xanga.com/tjpbrandt
-Apart from that I wish to change the layout of the page. Change
the green to something more vibrant, add a couple of pictures etc...
but I don't think this will in fact happen.
21/12/2000
-Hi! I'm sitting in an internet caffee in Amsterdam after
having arrived in the Niederlanden this afternoon. Amsterdam is
beautiful! The old dutch houses along the canals with the X-mas
decorations everywhere. There are so many people on the street
which creates a really nice atmosphere which you don't get in
Cape Town in the same way. My verdict so far: Excellent!
30/10/2000
-Hello there! I'm busy with exams at the moment so I
haven't done much. There are a couple of news though. First,
Christopher has been bothering to update my picuters section, so
I've finally gotten around to it and added a picture of him
and Yavor at Ratanga Juction to the friends
page. The second bit of news is that I'm going to a conference
in about two weeks. The conference is on Aspects of Modern Physics
and takes place in Luederitz, Namibia. Therefore I'll be in
Namibia from the 11th to the 19th of November. I think it should
be quite cool and I'm looking forward to it. Cheers!
28/09/2000
-Hi! It's been a while again. Don't have much time. Just wanted
to let you know that I've added a cool little assembly program to
the Things page. It's a com file of
only 511 bytes which displays the Mandelbrot set and even zooms in
on a point while buffering the output. Pretty amazing, isn't it?
The boot sector version is even cooler. Have a look! Cheers
18/08/2000
-Hi! Whenever I'm at home I think of so many things that I
want to say in this space but when I get here I can't think
of anything. Anyway, I give this website as a reference on
my funding application for next year. I hope they're not going
to look at it in the next week or so because I'll have to tidy
it up a bit, remove the swearing etc... . When is this going
to happen I hear you ask? I don't know, soon I hope, maybe
this weekend.
13/08/2000
-If I said last time that this semester was going to
be easier than the first then things have changed since
then. I am now pretty busy as always. I did another
numerical project, this time it was on modelling scattering
events between kinks and antikinks in the Sine-Gordon equation.
I've got some interesting pictures so hopefully I'll find
the time to put them up here. Otherwise I'm learning some
pretty interesting stuff in my Algebraic Topology lectures. For
once I think I'm actually following all the Categorical reasoning.
My cosmology lectures are pretty interesting too and I'm doing
a project in cosmology at the moment as well. My last major
worry is the upcomming seminar that I have to give. It will
probably be on Quantum Computing or something related. Check
this space for details. That's all folks!
26/07/2000
-Finally another update! Sorry about that folks. I don't
know how you survived for over a month without news from me.
Just having looked at the site statistics and having seen how
my visitor numbers have dropped dramatically I obviously had to
put in another update. As things would have it I'm back at UCT
again. So far the second semester promises to be more enjoyable.
There is still tons of work but it's more project work and stuff
like that which is a relief after the stress ridden first semester.
Now that I'm back at UCT I'll try and get this column moving
again. Cheers for now.
21/06/2000
-Still writing exams at the moment. Luckily I only have
two exams left though. I'm writing Differential Geometry
on Friday the 23rd and "Linear and non-linear waves" on
Friday the 30th. After that it's two weeks of semi-holidays.
Unfortunately I can't really call it more than that since
I have one GR assigment to do in that time plus I have to
get started on my honours project. Actually there is also
a seminar I have to prepare which I have to give in August
some time. Apart from that I'm pretty happy that Schumi won in
Canada over the weekend. Could this be the year where Ferrari
finally wins the Drivers Championship again? Wait and see.
03/06/2000
-What a crock of shit! Life just isn't fair. Well I was
happily watching the Monaco Grand Prix when suddenly Micheals
exhaust exploded which means that the rest of my day is ruined.
He was leading by over 30 seconds ahead of Coulthard with Hakinnen
out of the points which would have really put his Championship hopes
on a sound footing and now this crap. Anyway, enough about that.
-Btw, I don't think I've mentioned this yet but they were making
movie at our house the other day. Some film version of a Wilbur Smith
novel called "Diamond Hunter". Well it's only a TV production so not
that exciting but it was interesting to see a film set up close plus
Alyssa Milano was there. I'm not really a fan of hers but I guess I
could use it as my claim to fame that she was at my house for 2 days.
Here is a quick link in case you don't know who she is.
31/05/2000
-Hi'all! Sorry for the recent (or not so recent) lack of
updates. I've been really busy with end of term assignments
and exams. Well my first exam is on Friday so I've been studying
hard. Anyway, out of curiosity I just did a search for my own
name at Google.com and can you believe it, my site came up
top of the list. Cool hey? Also, my site tracking service shows
that I've had two hits from Germany and one from Australia. Pretty
impressive :-) Anyway, gotta go and study again.
06/05/2000
-I did some work on my PDE's numerical project today.
I even went through all the trouble of making some pictures for
you guys so go to my weekly page
to have a look at them.
-Just came across the following article on the web.
Go to the link above to check it out. The movie sounds quite
interesting and I wouldn't mind seeing it. Please mail me if you
have it or know anyone who has downloaded it.
05/05/2000
-Hello there! Well it's been a while since my last update.
The vac has come and gone and I definitely had a good time.
Didn't do much work though so I hope I'll manage to survive
the semester somehow anyway. Things are busy as ever so don't
expect too many updates. Next week I'll be giving a 20 minute
presentation to my General Relativity class on "the exterior Schwarzschild
solution to the Einstein field equations with a non-zero cosmological constant".
Apart from that I have all the usual weekly assignments to hand in etc.. I'm also
working on a numerical project at the moment where I simulate the Non-linear
Schroedinger equation (NLS) for various intial conditions. Some of the 3d plots
look really cool so if I have some time I might put up some pictures.
-Dune news! Hey apparently a new Dune book has come out and the sci-fi
channel is producing a 6 hour Dune mini-series as well. Read more about it
on my weekly column page.
20/04/2000
-Hi everyone! Phew, it's been a long first term but it's finally
over. Tonight and tomorrow night I will probably be arbing
around Cape Town and then from Saturday on I should get
started on work again. This holiday will be no picknick, let
me tell you. I have plenty of work to keep me busy.
-The following link takes you to a
network traffic monitor page
for UCT. Pretty neat if you ask me since now you can
schedule those overnight downloads properly. Anyway,
I've also added it to the links page.
15/04/2000
-Went to another "Alternative Nation" party last night.
Once again it was very cool, so if you weren't there you
missed out.
10/04/2000
-I finally moved into my new home which spelled disaster for my work though!
I didn't managed to get any work done this weekend and I have a test tomorrow and
3 assignments for wednesday.
07/04/2000
-Added internet security/privacy sections to links page
03/04/2000
-Didn't do much this weekend. Nothing new to report really.
29/03/2000
-Went to see Southpark yesterday. Quite good although
very crude.
-Added quite a few more links to links page.
27/03/2000
-Woohoo, finally made it onto the links section Skip's webpage.
Thanks Farrel.
-Added Simon to
my links section.
-Had a busy weekend. Did some General Relativity and Differential
Geometry tuts. Went out on Saturday night for a short while to
play some pool at Rolling Stones in Obs. Not much time for
anything else.
24/03/2000
-Added that weekly column
page that I had talked about earlier. I just noticed that it
sort of conflicts with the thoughts
page so I'm not sure what I should do about it. I think the
thoughts page is more personal though and this weekly thing is
more about technical or scientific things.
-Updated links page. Still haven't
sorted them properly though but it's amazing I found time to do
this much.
23/03/2000
-Added a link to http://www.cut-the-knot.com/
on the splash page. Otherwise I've been too busy for anything
interesting lately.
-Fixed a mistake on the page which was pointed out to me by
Skip. I hope noone
saw it so I'm not going to tell you what it was.
20/03/2000
-Added some new links to the Splash
page. Once I have organised things those links will move to the
links section. At the moment it's convenient to just put the links
there.
-John Baez's weekly find is quite interesting this week. It's about
the existence of mathematical structures in (different) universes.
Seems to me to be related to the whole anthropic principle argument
and I thought that was all sort of metaphysical but apparently the
paper by Max Tegmark states that there are some predictions that can
be made from this. Haven't read the paper yet so I can't say anything
more about it. The links to both pages are on my splash page.
20/03/2000
-Saw "Apocalypse Now" by Francis Ford Coppola last night. Quite disturbing in a
way. Don't think I understood it properly though because I don't really know
what it was trying to say.
19/03/2000
-Went to the
17/03/2000 (Part 2)
-I should be doing electrodynamics or something at the moment but what the heck, right?
I have simplified things somewhat. Still doesn't look particularly right but
at least one can see what's going on. I think functional is much better than
pretty.
17/03/2000
-What's this? This wouldn't be an update would it? I find
it quite hard to believe myself. Well it goes without saying that
I'm incredibly busy at the moment but I really would like to get the
site going again. I'm struggling to find a style though. Skip's
page is very nice(= neat and concise) but I feel a little bad about just
copying his layout.
23/02/2000
- Wow! Look! Finally another update. I'm back at varsity now, and boy
am I going to die this year or what.
-As you can see I'm trying to revamp
the site. At the moment it's just quite a mess though so you'll have to
hold on.
Coming Soon!
-A weekly/current column where I want to mention that I'm currently
thinking about, have read recently, or just in general find interesting.
Well I don't know how soon this will materialise but that's what I planning
to do. So now you know.
-Seems like this news column has taken the place of the above
mentioned. Well, we'll have to see how things develop.
About me
Not very interesting but hey.
Current things of interest
This is the "weekly" column of things I've read, heard about, etc..
that I talked about recently in the News column. Anyway, have a look at
it, should be interesting.
Links
This is the best part. Links to all the best stuff on the web. Well
stuff that I like anyway.
Thoughts
Random thoughts of mine that I feel like sharing with the world. Could
be interesting at times. This section is what actually inspired me to make
a page since I have a couple of ideas that I would like people to comment on.
My Things.
Stuff that I've made like programs, assignments, essays, etc...
At the moment you'll find a couple of my written assigments from my courses
and a really cool little DOS program which you definitely should check
out.
Message Board
A message board where you can post your opinions. I thought this was
a rather good idea but noone seems to use it. Well I guess noone actually
reads this page so that isn't much of a surprise.
Friends
Who would have thought it, but I actually have some. Well that's what I think
anyway. Don't ask them whether it's true or not. Anyway, here are some
pictures of them in somewhat compromising positions.
If you wish you can e-mail me at thufir@mindless.com, or better, get in touch with me directly by using the ICQ respond online panel below. Otherwise my ICQ UIN is 3971509. You can also send me a SMS message to my cell phone by going to the following website: http://websms.vodacom.net/.
Sign Guestbook or view what other people have written.
I support the SETI@home project.
Click here
to see my current stats.
Here is a link to the SA Top 100 users. See if you can spot me.
