http://me

At first there was only one channel, called ‘#za’, and my nickname was ‘burp’. At this time we also saw one of the first inter-continental romances developing into a marriage, between a fellow IRCer and someone from the US. All my once virtual friends have now become real-life personal friends. 

My first attempt at a personal website was in 1996, which I hosted on my own Linux machine that was connected to the university network from my dorm room. While finishing my MSc degree, I started thinking about my online identity. I registered my first personal domain in 1999, called cpbotha.net, and to this day it remains my central online presence, currently still manifesting as a blog. It’s my own little soapbox, where I’ve been posting regularly since about 2001. Despite the onslaught of Twitter on my bloggable material reserves, the length – and hopefully the quality – of my posts has increased steadily over the last few years. I find it therapeutic to sit down at the end of the week and write a nice blog post. I usually try to write about at least one thing that might be interesting or educational to some of my readers. My main priority though is ‘Getting Things Off My Chest!’, which I try my best to do in an entertaining fashion. Around 30 percent of my social and professional life revolves around online communications. I organise my tasks in a Ruby on Rails GTD (Getting Things Done) app called Tracks and keep track of more than a hundred blogs in Google Reader. My online activities are a significant aspect of both my personal and professional life. What’s interesting with social networking is that Facebook seems to be flowing over into the professional side as well, offering a welcome blurring of the line between professional and personal relationships.”

My favourites

http://cpbotha.net

http://twitter.com/cpbotha