The brave revival of Toddlerpedes

When it comes to being a gentleman, few things are more important than a love of the arts. In this weeks Art post, we thus want to introduce you to the pure splendor and beauty which can be found in Toddlerpedes.

Once believed to be creatures of myth, here the artist Jon Beinart clearly depicts in painstaking accuracy the shear elegance and raw unrefined  beauty of the toddlerpede.

Many contemporary artists can only stand in awe of this artists bravery in illustrating what can only be otherwise described as the contents of the recycle bin at an abortion clinic. The artist hastily rounds up the remains and is left with a conundrum, “shall it be soap or shall it be Toddlerpede”.

Lucky for us, he always decides on the latter, for now the toddlerpede is forever captured in all it’s grace for the world to enjoy for centuries to come.

Hooray Toddlerpedes!

What is Meat-eat-arianism?

The tradition of eating meat stretches back to the beginning of all life. We eat each other. It’s fun, makes us look god-damn sexy, and feel absolutely awesome.

What is Meateatarianism?

Simply put we eat meat. And if we really have too… bread. “Minimal Plants, Maximum Meat” has been our proud slogan since we started the global organization which has taken the world by storm.

Why become a Meateatarian?

Here is a list of simple reason why we eat meat:

1.) Animals are by far the prime cause of global CO2 levels, and they thus contribute to global warming in a drastic way! By being a Meateatarian we can make Al Gore proud and reverse the deadly effects of Global Warming!

2.) Vegetarianism is probably one of the worst things man can do to this planet, killing innocent plants and removing the life force of the planet in one single salad. Plants help us Fight Global Warming… Vegetarians kill Plants… thus Vegetarianism is Evil.

3.) Saying the words: “I’m a Vegetarian” in public makes you sound gay or at least mentally retarded.

4.) Saying the words: ” I Eat MEAT!” makes one look like a awesome bastard that probably has a lot of sex with other awesome bastards. It is plainly put your ticket to becoming a sex symbol.

5.) Meat builds muscle bulk! Thus the more you eat the better you look! More muscles and more muscles makes for awesome abs, biceps and ass! Vegetarianism on the other hand makes you look either anorectic or whale-like from all the damn Starch you pump into you body.

6.) Plants have souls too, and by eating them you are killing… thus you are a MURDERER!

7.) Animals have no souls… so we can EAT them… read your Bible or something…. I bet it is written in there! So in other words Jesus approves!

Jesus was one of the founding members of Meateatarianism… “Drink my blood and eat my Flesh” he says in the Bible… thus we are insulting him when we don’t eat meat!

9.) Animals may look cute but they are really evil, and we kill them for the safety of Humans! How many trees have you heard of ripping some kids head off with his giant claws and teeth? None! Exactly so save the tree and eat the meat!

10.) Meat does not make you Fat and this has been Scientifically and Biomedically proven!

Many more reasons will follow!

Interesting Facts:

Tom Cruise was such proud Meateatarian that he ate placenta! Wow, now that is truely respectable… but maybe he did not read our second rule of Meateatarianism… We are no allowed to Eat Humans… just Vegetarians, and since Katie Holmes was not a Vegetarian he had to be kicked out.

Rules:

Do not eat other Meateatarians, we only eat Vegetarians.

Do not eat too much Vegetables… you might kill the planet through Global Warming!

Episode 1 – Raunchy Geek Discourse

Listen to Episode 1 – Raunchy Geek Discourse

Topics discussed:

• Why did Barrack Obama get  the Nobel Peach Prize?
• Wheelchair mayhem
• How to get advertisers to your video blog
• How to pick up women using the Internets

Warning and Disclaimer:

• This video blog is strictly audio. It is not a podcast – because podcasts are sooo 2006
• We do swear, we do make inappropriate jokes, we do come across as amateur arses – but its part of the charm of it really.
• The opinions shared on this audio-only video blog are not that of the individuals saying it, but rather the alcohol enabling it to be said…

Charles is Dead

He lays there with an vacuous expression – a life lost and a life passed at such a young age. He stares, for the last time,  to the sky, knowing it’s over. He will never have a wife, see his children grow up, and certainly never feel the sheer rush of doing cocaine off the breast of a whore. He had lived a life without risk – clinically clean and utterly responsible – and now his fate is with the worms and the manure that makes up the soil to which his lifeless body will be thrown.

He was a respectable young man. He was always on time and always did his work when to him work was delegated. A reliable worker. He will not be remembered for his accomplishments – as all his plans he had always postponed. He spent his Friday nights in solitude, committing himself to resisting the seductions of a more free and playful existence. Deep down inside it was boiling and ready to burst at the seems…

In his free time, of which he allowed himself little to none, he dreamed of ripping loose from the prison which was his respectable life. He wanted to live a life that was truly free of the responsibilities he had been burdened with by his parents, his siblings, his community, his boss and more. He wanted to be free.

It was just another week day, like every other that had come before, but today would be different. He he had it all planned: He would not go to work – not call in sick and not taking the day off – he would simply not go in. He would start the day at 5pm by going to stop at the strip club two blocks from his home, he would drink just enough as to get tipsy and take a drive down town. Here he would drive down the alley and buy cocaine from a Nigerian drug dealer. He would then drive to a brothel he had heard of just weeks before. He would get two whores to offer him there breasts as a surface on which he would for the first time ever sniff the cocaine he had purchased earlier.

It would have been a great day, a remarkable life changing moment in his short life and the start of a brand new existence. It is unfortunate that he died of a simple heart attack in bed the night before. Yes, Charles never checked his Cholesterol levels , and now he is dead- may his story be a lesson to you all!

The End.

The SA Web – Networking in Retrospect

I moonwalked with Tyler Reed, I went to a trance party with David Perel and Charl Norman, I had coffee with Stii, I got beer-ed up with Vincent Hofmann and that is just the start of it…

I promised in my last blog post on the subject of Networking in the South African Online Community that I would take a tour of South Africa and meet as many people humanly possible. In this post I will give you a list of people that I met on my journey across the country. Admittedly I could not meet everyone I mentioned in my previous post, but I did meet a lot more folks and I’m sure I will eventually meet the rest from that list.

The Meetups

It started in Johannesburg with me and my brother arriving at JB’s Corner to meet up with Vincent Hofmann (Moral Fibre), Elan Lohmann (Avusa), Saul Kropmann (The Digital Edge) and Nick Jackson (Firewater). I had never met any of these guys before but we had a jol of a good time.  I met up with Vincent Hofmann and his fiance Talita later that week again at JB’s corner. I posted a Nerdmag article that will be coming out soon that might shed more light on what happened earlier.

My next meeting was with Greg de Chasteneuf, Justin Spratt and Ian Carpenter over at ISLabs for a cup of cappuccino. Admittantly I was really nervous going into the nerve center of the South African Internet aka Internet Solutions for this meet, but the guys were so cool that soon that feeling was gone.

My following major meet up was at Internetix in Cape Town to which I was invited. Here I met up with Tyler Reed (Tiny Impact), The ISLabs guys, Justin Hartman (Afrigator), Stii (Afrigator), Barbra Mall (Obami), Roy Blumenthal (CNBC Africa), Gabrielle Rosario and many many more.

Last night was my last meetup with Charl Norman (Blueworld) and David Perel (Obox-Design) in Long street at the Purple Turtle.

The Tweet-Shirt

Complicated story, but a Tweetshirt is printed and will be posted to Vincent Hofmann soon, congrats dude!

Now for the moument of truth… How many People did I meet in my Networking for the last few weeks?

The List

Saul Kropman

Vincent Hofmann

Justin Spratt

Tyler Reed

Greg de Chasteauneuf

Ian Carpenter

Justin Hartman

Stii

Gabrielle Rosario

Charl Norman

David Perel

Roy Blumenthal

Nick Jackson

Malcolm Ford

Shena Kassiem

Barbara Mall

Elan Lohmann

Marcel Oudejans

Simone Abrahams

to name but just a few..

Conclusion

It’s possible and Just Do It

Thriller – Michael Jackson is History

I woke up this morning with the deepest sense of loss and sadness at the news that Michael Jackson had passed away. For the first time in my life I actually felt sad about the death of someone that I have never even met, and will now unfortunately never see in person. Normally when I hear news about a celebrity death, I look for a second and move on indifferent, but with Michael it was different…

A Decade and a Half Earlier

My brother could not stop talking about it – I mean he was literally shouting it at us for weeks! The TV was going crazy and the music was electrifying. I can remember jumping on the bed and running around the couch like a kid in need of Ritalin every time I heard the commercial come on. South Africa was in stitches and brimming at the seems with excitement. It was an event that was going to rival even the grandeur of The ‘95 Rugby finals and it was bigger than anything that a kid’s brain could handle. It was Michael Jackson, and he was coming to our shores!

It was the History Tour, and in true Michael Jackson fashion it was going to be a spectacle that no one would forget. He arrived in SA with a giant statue of himself that he had been dragging around the world by ship. Watching the show on television with my family we watched as he had people fainting in stadium loads and as he sang Thriller and Beat It – and he had me absolutely addicted.

If I had to reflect on my youth it would be very near to impossible to ignore the excitement I felt when my mom decided to get us the Michael Jackson History tour tapes. I can remember how excited my brother and I were in the car driving home, drooling at the packaging. We got home and ran to our newly acquired Technics Hi-Fi system (which my dad guards under lock and key to this day) and my brother removed the tapes with surgeon-like care and precession and then popped it in and pressed play. Song after song he had us dancing like crazed buffoons and moon monkeys, he had me screaming my voice hoarse “Thriller!” and on the floor with exhaustion from dancing.

Michael Jackson was not a mere singer, he was an entertainer pioneering a brand of music that was nothing less than heroine to my hears. He drew on various disciplines to master craft his performances, using magic tricks (Thriller disappearing trick) , dancing stunts (Smooth Criminal Lean), Hollywood special effects and much more to create something that the world will never be able to rival. Thriller music video credited for transforming the music video into an art form and a promotional tool. His performances were not limited to the stage either and this made him even more great, making use of publicity stunts to sell albums was his business and he was great at it.

Michael's Smooth Criminal Patent

Michael Jackson transcends racial, cultural and generational boundaries and affects everyone with the same amount of excitement for his work. Two years ago my brother bought me the live in Budapest DVD and all those old memories and feelings came back to hit me again. My younger cousin (Age 7), in her crazy running and shouting of ‘Thriller!’ as I pressed play on the DVD, reminded me of the day we got those History Tour tapes.

Michael Jackson  shaped my view of music and is essentially the benchmark for judging anything I hear and see in the entertainment world. He revolutionized the industry and has left a enormous chasm in his passing. The man was by no means perfect and almost synonymous with controversy, but he was and remains to be a legend and a giant that contributed to everyone of our lives in ways we might not even realize.

RIP Michael Jackson.

The SA Web – Networking in Practice

Everyone online knows about Twitter, unless they still play World of Warcraft all day. In the first two issues of this series of posts about the SA Web I tried to motivate you by telling you how to develop the SA Web scene and I gave you a noobs guide to networking called ” The SA Web – Networking for Noobs“.  Now in this post I don’t just help you network  using Twitter, I do it with you! Anyone that joins me on my tweet-up spree will be entered into a competition which I will talk about a bit later in this post.

Tweet-ups

Since it’s creation Twitter has revolutionized how people network globally. It has enabled perfect strangers to come together over coffee, coke or a beer, and it starts with something as simple as a tweet. They are called tweet-ups and they happen all around the world, all of the time.

They are organized with people on twitter that you follow or follows you. You then tell them where and when you are available to meet and just like that you tweet-up.

The First Step

The most difficult part of any networking experience is the first step. Geeks like you and I find communicating online much easier than going out there and actually meeting people, so we need a little push. I think I might have stumbled upon a way to get you out of your office seat and into a tweet-up and I will explain.

My Tweet-up Marathon

If you have been following my tweets on twitter then you know about my grand tour of South Africa I have planned for early July ‘09. I will be leaving the cold freeze of Cape Town and will be visiting Johannesburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, J-Bay and I might drive by Bloemfontuin at highspeed. In this period I will tweet-up with as many people as humanly possible.

I will be meeting people in Johannesburg in the first week of July, I will then make my way to PE in the second week of July where I will meet people there, I will then finally return to Cape Town to complete my Tweetup Marathon.

• Johannesburg country – 28 June ‘09 to 6 July ‘09
• Port Elizabeth country - 8 July ‘09 to 19 July ‘09
• Cape Town country -  from 20 July ‘09 onwards

I will try to take as many pictures as possible and I will be making a massive blog post to display them here on the site.

TweetShirt Competition

It’s not just any T-Shirt, it’s a TweetShirt! In other words we print a tweet of your choice onto the TweetShirt. I am giving away a TweetShirt sponsored by narcissist.co.za to one lucky person on my tweet-up marathon. To stand a chance to win it, all you need to do is meet me in my tweet-up marathon. It’s that easy.

All you need to do to meet me is drop a comment containing the tweet you would like on a t-shirt. That easy. I will then tell you when and where we will meet. If you are lucky you will win the TweetShirt.

The List

Vincent Hofmann – Moral Fibre (JHB)

Saul Kropman – The Outpost (JHB)

Exmi (real name unknown to everyone) -  ExMi blog (JHB)

Chiraag Ramjee – Narcissist (JHB/CT)

Sheena Gates aka “SheBeeGee” – Nerdmag.co.za (JHB)

Gabrielle Rosario – gabriellerosario.com (CT)

Christopher Mills – iMod (CT)

Ismail – startupafrica.com

I am keeping this list updated, once your comment has been dropped I will add you to the list

Now let’s put Networking into Practice. I urge you to do a Tweet-up Marathon in your hometown and meet the twitter folk and help develop the SA Web in the process.

The SA Web – Networking for Noobs

In this post we take a look at the movers and shakers of the SA Web Scene. We tell you how to meet up with them,  how to become friends with them and ultimately how to get them to listen to your ideas (without seeming like that sad 40 year old with a demo cd of course). In the same wind I tell you guys a bit more about organizations set up especially to help folks like you and I get our projects off the ground. Now grab a notepad and pencil guys, I am about to drop some knowledge.

Networking mediums

In my first post in this series I looked at developing the SA Web and tried to offer a bit of motivation to the guys sitting around with cool ideas. Dave Duarte made a comment on that post that made me think a little bit about networking within the SA Web space and how important it might be to you as a beginner (me included).

I think it is needless to say anything about the electronic social mediums like twitter, facebook, and classic blog interaction etc., so I will jump straight to 27Dinner.

Developed by Mike Stopforth and Dave Duarte 27Dinner has been a revelation to those who has made space on the 27th of each month.  I think their website summarizes what they do pretty well, and it doesn’t require much reading to discover why it is important that you make an appearance at one of these dinner dates:

These 27dinners have fast become a staple entry in the calendars of South Africa’s smartest, funkiest and most networked entrepreneurs, business owners, designers, developers, geeks, marketers and even good old corporate jacket-and-tie’s.

The Players

There is nothing more important than to know who you should be networking with to achieve success in the SA Web space. Having said this, it is important that you remain on friendly terms with everyone, even the 21 year old kid that started a blog a few days ago.

So who are the big players? Luckily Mike Stopforth is here to help, again. Mike published a few blog posts on his personal blog taking a look at some young up and coming guys on the SA web. Mike’s site is very useful if you have no idea who you should be seducing on twitter.

Here are a few of his posts that you should take a look at:

1. Ten Young Digital South African Citizens to Watch
2. Ten (more) Young Digital South African Citizens to Watch
3. South Africa’s 10 Most influential bloggers (according to Mandy)

I have had a need for a nice list of the most influential folks on the SA Web Scene for a long time and needless to say I still have not completed this list. Perhaps you guys would be nice enough to help me out by posting your lists as a comment to this blog post.

Special Platforms

Believe it or not, not all Internet companies in South Africa require begging to listen to your ideas. In fact the bigger boys realize that ideas are a valuable commodity in the information age and thus do everything they can to listen to your brainwave. Enter ISLabs.

An Internet Solutions initiative run by Jeff Fletcher, Greg de Chasteauneuf and Justin Spratt, these guys are actively looking for the next big idea:

As long as the idea is workable, practical and helps make the South African internet a better place, we are interested. It can be a full-blown business proposal or just a good concept that needs to be developed further. We are interested in all ideas – anything from an e-commerce idea, to a social media concept, to a better way to route traffic or deal with spam. Literally anything that help make .co.za a more interesting and fun place to be.

They are very approachable, they take their time with you and your ideas and they work around your schedule. I suggest you go to them if you want to skip the difficult networking steps and jump straight into developing your ideas with the experts.

The Intellectual Resources

In recent weeks I have started uncovering the true power of knowing about the community in which you work. I used to spend most of my time on twitter, in many ways wasting my time. Not networking with the people that might have been able to help me with my ideas. It is important not only to keep on top of who is behind things, but also what they are doing and saying.

Here is a little list of resources you might find helpful in expanding your knowledge about the SA Web scene (in no particular order):

I Smell Hypocrite In The Air

They are back and they started with a bang, burning people’s home and treating violence if you haven’t figured it out yet- I’m talking about PAGAD and not the ANCYL. With this highly violent vigilantly organisation patrolling the streets of Mitchells Plain I feel little bit more fearful for my life. This not because I am a drug dealer and if I was I would be safer because at least I would have a gun to protect myself from these crazy ass terrorists called PAGAD.

The fact is PAGAD is just another Islamic fundamentalist organisation and yes their ties to Islam might be just a veil (like all other terrorist organisations), but no matter how you slice it what PAGAD boils down to is a group of people willing to use any means possible to achieve social objectives, while this is the FBI definition for terrorism let’s for semantics just stick with it. While it might appear what PAGAD is doing might be in a moral gray area the fact is they are just going down a very slippery slope. As they torch people’s homes what they are doing is no better than the supposed crimes of the victims they persecute. Also when you have groups like PAGAD who will do anything to achieve their goals in group dynamic they have going, where religious right sits in the front and morals are thrown to the curb, a mob mentality sets in where if told to do something they will do it – kind of like the movie Fight Club where the group take orders without question, thus how long will it take before they use this mob against individuals and groups they just don’t like claiming they are “drug lords” because really they use no evidence when they persecute these people rather speculation and rumour is there evidence. Also looking at them in footage on the news I cannot escape the similarity to those of other terrorists from other countries coving their faces with scarfs and waving weapons in the air. For group claiming to want to make the country safer you kind of doing the opposite when you state on national television that violence is not out of the question (I really feel safe now like a horse at a glue factory).

There is a reason why we have a police force (yes they might be corrupt and inefficient) and laws and judicial system to up hold them to deal with criminals. If anything PAGAD have become just another gang (sorry I mean group: no wait I didn’t) that plagues the Western Cape, rather than solving the problem PAGAD have just added to it by becoming another problem and not a solution. Let us not forget this is the same group that had ties with the Cape Town night club bombings of the late nineties, but I never heard of drug dealers blowing up a club, but that would kind off be like a fat person blowing up a McDonalds. Yes PAGAD can claim that the judicial system has failed by allowing these drug dealers on the streets but did any of them actually come up as a witness to the crimes these supposed gangsters committed in a court of law (the answer will be, No. So really the failure of judiciary is actually your failing in the end).

While it might appear I’m fighting the cause of drug dealers(I will gladly accept payment in weed), I’m not I know what they are doing is wrong but going out burning these suspected dealers homes and killing them is not the way to do it as the old saying goes “two wrongs don’t make a right”. If anything all that will end up happening is the drug dealers will retaliate (I mean they are gangsters after all they think diplomacy is something you catch from a one night stand) and then shit will get out of hand (I can just see it our very own middle east crisis in Mitchells Plain).

I leave you with this how can you stand for the moral right when you, your self are willing to discard it so easily , I mean is that not the epitome of hypocrisy.

How to Develop the SA Web Scene

The dream of every coder, every designer and every business minded web junkie, is to one day develop something that achieves success locally or even on a global front. If the goal is financial, or if it is the power or if it is the recognition from our peers, we all want to achieve success.

“Dream Big, Aim High. If you fail… Retry” I have come to live by this self-generated motto of late and would like to spread the idea by telling you what this catchy line means to me.

A few months ago I had a great conversation with Saul Kropman, the guy behind The Digital Edge, First Step, a number of Blogs and he has been on TV a few times. I was much less experienced in the business side of how the Internet works and was rather desperate for advice. My brother told me about this young gun that he worked with in Johannesburg and within minutes I was confessing my love to Saul on the telephone.

I was new to the internet and in many ways I am still an Internet virgin. My first project which was Local List was and still is much more of a learning experience than anything else, but it was the means by which I could get my foot in the door. Soon Saul and I had discussed other ideas we might respectively run with in the future.

In the early days of Local List I also started chatting to David Perel who at the time had this crazy idea called from-the-couch. Basically what he wanted to do is video tape himself sitting on a couch talking – basically he wanted to be like Oprah. David is one very cool guy, and soon we were talking about marketing online and developing our respective sites in various ways. Soon David reached celebrity status and now gets millions of retweets when he let’s out even a burb, and his from-the-couch has in the meanwhile grown from strength to strength.

There are so many of us young ambitious web geeks in South Africa, we have great skills and we have crazy ideas every now and again. Some of us take the risk like David Perel or Saul Kropman and go with our ideas and we make a success out of them. Some of us pump our ideas out there and we do not see much return. The point at the end of the day is that we tried, come failure or success.

The problem we have in this country is not the lack of support, skills, resources or ideas, it is that we sit back and do nothing. The guys on the local scene are very supportive and pick up the phone to help even a perfect stranger. Skills are abundant and all you need to do is go to a 27Dinner to network with a potential business partner. At the end of the day all you need to do is remember my motto: “Dream Big, Aim High. If you fail… Retry” tweet it, send it out there make it part of your daily life but never forget it.