Jonathan Hitchcock - Vhata Vas Hyah

If you have any spare clothes (and I know you do), or any spare cash (and I know you do), please, PLEASE, help out. There are thousands of people left with no homes, and nothing possessions but what they're wearing. Most supermarkets should have donation boxes, but for more ideas of how to help, check out the Treatment Action Campaign site, and there's even a facebook group for you.

Thanks.

A champagne breakfast out of town in Stanford on the Garden RouteOverberg. Nothing more relaxing.

Pictured: Danni Davies, and our bottle of Poingracz. Not pictured: Matth Gair, Emily Davies, Shannon Morreira, James Reeler, and yours truly.

You can't really make him out, but that is totally my man MC Hawking up there on stage. He's presenting a talk entitled Universe. It's awesome.

As I said on the GeekDinner announcement list:

Since the last GeekDinner was held at the end of March, and since we hold the GeekDinners bimestrially, it seems we are due another one at the end of May. This is the eightthhth GeekDinner, and we're calling it "Happy Habanero". What with the habanero being the national vegetable of Azerbaijan, we're going to hold the dinner on Azerbaijan's Republic Day, which, according to wikipedia, is Wednesday, May 28th.

The venue for this dinner is Mel's Kitchen, in Rondebosch Village, just off Klipfontein Road.

As usual, you can sign up, and check on the other details, on the wiki page.

We're now in our second year of GeekDinners, and they seem to be going strong. We have a good model, mostly sustainable, although it is slightly dependent on the core group of organisers to get things moving. We have a solid set of regular attendees that should provide the dinners with enough momentum to continue, though, should anything happen, and I'm very positive about the future of the dinners. We're also managing, for the most part, to keep talks short and interesting to all comers - I know that newcomers always worry that everything's going to be "too hardcore techie", but honestly, it's not about microchips and "ones and zeroes". My favourite talks have been about hippies and the buttons on car radios. So, please, if you haven't been before, why not come along, meet some new people, share some free wine, and enjoy some excellent food.

The slideshow karaoke has become a regular feature of our dinners, and is always one of the most entertaining parts. The way it works is, somebody prepares a set of slides on any topic they want (we've had "Etiquette when dealing with British Royalty", "Common problems with cement tiles", and "A primer on lesser known Norse gods"). Somebody else then presents a talk based on these slides without any prior knowledge of the topic, or of the content of the slides - always to amusing effect. This time, Darb is preparing the slides, and we have yet to find a volunteer to present them. If you're keen, do volunteer. If not, maybe you have something interesting you'd like to talk about anyway - we have no volunteers for speakers yet.

If I've sold you, sign up on the wiki, and we'll see you there!