About

About the site

This is my personal web site. When I first set it up in 1995 all it had was a photo and an email address. The provider was Icon, the dial-up arm of the Internet Solution in South Africa. After moving to Europe I registered Wittenburg.co.uk and the site evolved into what you see now.

About the name

Wittenburg is a German family name. Its bearers originate from a German town called Wittenburg (I managed a visit in 2021). You can read about the name's origin in English here, or here in the original German. You can read about the name's entymology on Wolfgang Wittenburg's web site Wittenburg.net.

About me

I am:

A father
A snowboarder
A scuba diver
A twin
Secretary of the parents association at my son's school 🙄

Cape Town, January 2017

The personal stuff

I've lived on three continents, and been to 37 countries. I'm fluent in three languages (slowly absorbing a fourth by sheer force of exposure), have swum with sharks, and jumped out of aeroplanes. There's titanium in my shoulder because snowboarding, amongst one or two other augmentations.

The professional stuff

I started programming computers in 1986 and have since worked for companies like EDS, Microsoft, and Nokia. These days I consult. Enterprise architecture, operational management, IT strategy, security, identity and access management... I also speak at events about making software, architecture, and being an IT consultant. My resume is here, a German version here.

The army stuff

Also experienced the end of the tail-end of the border war because they still had conscription back then. Started at 5SAI, on to the Army Gymnasium (1SAI?) at Heidelberg for the medical, then off to 5 Signal Regiment for basic training at Wallmansthal. Second phase was Wonderboom, with a brief stint (two weeks, if memory serves) in the Junior Leaders school in Oudtshoorn. I got booted from that because I wouldn't give up my European passport. Then 524 Troop in Phalaborwa for the remainder of my national service, except for the 6 weeks (I think) in Oshakati and Rundu. Craziest time of my life, and the best closure I ever got was bending some rondom dude's ear on a flossie.

About the tech

I hand-code Wittenburg.co.uk using .Net, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I'm not a web developer so some of the markup may be questionable. That's ok. The goal is to keep the site fast and usable.

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