Since Esther Derby is talking about creating an environment for success, here's another input. I've just had an experience about a good physical work environment.

Today I've resolved never to work with ancient MacOS machines and MacOS programs again. As part of a rewrite of another expensive program used by the group my company is part of, I have to receive EPS files via the web, create JPEG thumbnails, and also send out the EPS files to a publishing system when they're going to be used. Simple so far. Seems I now somehow need to magically preserve the resource forks used by the MacOS machines with their previews/thumbnails, otherwise the whole system is useless (nice to hear that after the development and testing work is otherwise done). The poor Macs can't seem to live without their resource forks for the preview (can't they just auto-generate them!), and just put in a grey space for the layout. Charming.

I was expecting something about individuals requiring people and organisational skills, but project management guru, Esther Derby, is talking about spending as much time working for the right environment as looking for the right people in her column, Skills are Only Half the Equation for Success. I wish more people claiming to be good managers were reading columns like this.

I'd hoped to get some comment from Nhlanhla Mabaso from the CSIR, but tonight is the last chance to catch an article on Open Source on Summit TV (Channel 55 on DSTV) on "The Competitive E-conomy" at 19:47. Nhlanhla represents the CSIR's Meraka Open Source Center in the show on the one side, Microsoft on the other, and Syncrony will presumably be some sort of middle ground - using Open Source software on Microsoft's .NET platform. Still hoping to see it and provide commentary, though.

As Barry mentions, it's now been a year since we worked together for about two years at iTouch. I've been thinking about that era a bit lately as I've given a suggestion or two (what little I remember) towards his ISSA2004 information security conference paper entitled "Lessons learned in the global deployment of an Open Source security solution" based on our experiences doing so (Barry, with his travels to Indonesia and Thailand a bit more than me).

Bumped into Marcus, an ex-colleague and friend who was looking at property about 100 metres from my flat. Forgot to suggest he start his own web log so I could keep up to what he's up to, but it seems he'd actually just glanced here recently. He's got the cute domain name thing down already, after all.

We had a lively debate on the Schools' Linux Users' Group mailing list about how SLUG and The Shuttleworth Foundation should build a sustainable Linux industry in South Africa - specifically whether providing our volunteer and donated services to schools for free. Here was my take on the situation.

Upon hearing about a TV article about Open Source showing on a channel I don't get, I decided to ask the producers of the article for a digital copy so I could watch it and write some commentary for my web log and some local mailing lists. Long shot, and it didn't come off. No problems.

I've recently added Ethan Zuckerman to my aggregator. Part of his research at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society is research on the gap between what's being reported on by media (and the blogosphere) in terms of the rich and poor nations. He has an interesting web log entry on his research w.r.t. the blogosphere with some graphics of this gap.

Doubt I can claim the blame here, but Peter Henning's started a blog, where he's planning to mostly write about the books he reads. Hopefully we can coax him to discuss some technical stuff, especially some lessons he's learned from his rather well-used environment. Welcome!