Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I'm working on everything I have to do before I leave for Africa… Have to get another drive from OfficeDepot (yes, they have them in Mexico) to clone BME and all my code. I have a number of backups, but I think my LaCie drive is dying so I want a second current backup.

  C:\bme>dir /s
  [snip]

That's right, BME recently crossed the million file mark (although a very large number of those files are small; various control markers and files, thumbnails, and so on, plus there's a certain amount of junk files and noise). BME is getting got big…

While in Africa I expect to be online in 75% of the places I'll be. I don't think our trip has been planned at all yet but it's very much a working vacation. I have to do some filming, as well as complete a major coding project — I'll be doing that at family friend's reserve that is credited with bringing the cheetah back from the brink of extinction (they also have wild dogs and so on). Here's pictures from their farm:

It sounds exciting at first but I actually think that will be a very boring few days there, but that's kind of the goal — create a serene environment so I can focus on programming.

We're flying into Johannesburg, and I'm expecting casino-loving Rachel to drag us out to the “Las Vegas of Africa“. I really don't know what else we're doing, maybe going to Mpumalanga or Krüger… I think though we're heading north to Windhoek, Namibia — as if I haven't had enough of the desert living here in the Baja! I'm sure there will be some furious planning going on for the next day…

At least I can still read German relatively fluently (a high percentage of the info pages for South Africa and Namibia appear to be in German)! Afrikaans on the other hand, well… sounds “funny”. I'll post lots of pictures here, but if you prefer Mexico updates, watch Clive's page instead.

Win ORBAX $10,000!

(why?)

Anyway, I have a few articles in the queue as well, but completing the backup process before I go is a higher priority so if one has to get bumped to later in the week it's going to be the articles (sorry to Marisa and Fakir). Anyway, updates should continue as normal during the time that I'm gone, at least to some extent. If I can't process the main site, I'll at least try and keep BME/HARD and BME/extreme updated. BME customer support and so on are unaffected.

There'll be another big update later tonight by the way; it's already uploaded, I just have to activate it.