About Me
Hi. If you've been reading my blog, then you probably already know a bit about me. This page is going to fill you in on all the stuff that you won't be able to find between the lines.
I am current enrolled in a college in the U.S., studying for a double major in Philosophy and Computer Science (hence the subject-matter of some of my posts). I was brought up in South Africa, which is an amazing country for a lot of reasons, my favourite of which is the aesthetic beauty of the place. I live in a pretty valley there, surrounded by winelands, meandering rivers, forests and cute little French restaurants. I can drive along mountain edges overlooking endless blue seas.
My enthusiasm for technology and specifically the internet started when I was very young. I was amazed one day when I read that a musician, completely unknown at the time, had uploaded a few songs she had made onto the web, to be discovered by thousands of soon-to-be fans. Since then, she been described as one of the most influential people in the world (Time Magazine: M.I.A). So I learned some programming languages, and I've made countless websites since, every time improving my skills, and having fun.
If you're still following me, let's go a lot deeper.
I have often used writing not just as a form of expression, but also to distil certain values in myself. Writing about how you feel about certain topics can give you a greater understanding of 'who you are', and will help you to identify your values. While I was in South Korea, living there with a friend of mine for two months, I started writing about things that were important to me - things like leadership, education and learning, achieving goals, love. I wrote out pages upon pages of notes on all of these, sourcing a spectrum of references - books, films, friends, etc. until I knew exactly how I felt about each topic. I still have copies of these essays, which from time to time I look back on. Often, friends of mine would bring up topics like these in conversation, and because I was so rooted in knowing my opinions on them, I could talk for hours. And often people would listen to me and be intrigued by what I had to say. So I decided to make some of these thoughts public, in the form of my blog, for people to see my perspective on things, and enjoy them.
This blog is really open. As in, I consider anyone who likes what I write here to have something in common with me, and that's enough to make acquaintances with someone. So I've put links under here to some of my social profiles, as well as my email address if you would like to get hold of me.
Twittter
Facebook
Graeme
About this Site
I actually started this website because I wanted to play around with Google App Engine. I had never used Python to code anything before, so I knew it would be a lot of hard work. The first project I started was a personal content management system, because I was tired of going to sleep with a notepad in my bed, and waking up with pen-marks all over my duvet. So I started PyThoughts, and I worked pretty hard at it.
My sister really liked the site, and she registered the domain pythoughts.com for me. So far I haven't paid anything for hosting, and the revenue generated has covered the price of the domain nicely, even though there are only about 30 people actually using PyThoughts.
Everything about this website I made. The subscription feed isn't some Wordpress plugin - I wrote a script that makes it (which is why it's pretty bad actually). A friend of mine got angry at me for this - he said I was simply "re-inventing the wheel", because, after-all, who makes their own blogging system anymore - even the New York Times uses Wordpress. But I think I learned a bit about what it takes to make a good site, all the hassles that come with building something quite large-scale, etc. It's no high school project this.
The thing you've got to understand when surfing this site, is that I didn't make it, or write any of these blog posts, for some sort of 'commercial audience' that I imagined coming here. I do get quite a decent stream of visitors whenever I write something, but I write it for me. I made the blog to distil a programming skill for myself, not so I could show off or drive traffic anywhere. It's expanded in such a way that now I can write blog posts about things that I care about, and other people can actually come and experience that with me as well, which is something I really enjoy. So whenever I do write something for my blog now, I find myself formatting it in such a way that people can consume it more easily, but the purpose will always be to write posts my own sake - so that I can impress ideas that I care about upon myself.
That said, thank you for coming to this blog - there are so many things to do on the internet these days, so many great things to read, that I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read what I have to say. If we share things in common, then that's a special thing. The beauty of the internet is that now we can actually connect, even if you live in a different country. This blog regularly receives readers from over 50 countries. Considering I've only been to about 10 of them myself, this statistic has made a huge impression on me in terms of what kind of reach the internet can give a person with something to share.
I hope you like the display of things that are interesting to me, and the way I have decided to share them,
Graeme
