Fortunately, unlike the great man whose life we’ll be honouring, our quest is only to make the world suck a little less on July 18; no repressive regimes to bring down, blessedly. To count ourselves lucky and to share a little piece of that luck with someone who could use a little.

And I use “art” very loosely here when I mean the creative products of your head and your hands and the tools you use to extend the reach of both. Whether writers, filmmakers, musicians, webdesigners, potters, poets, dancers, landscapers, crafters, carpenters, architects, hatters; whatever the avenue for the creative imperative to realise itself, these endeavours are most often shunted aside to our secret life, our hobby. Because creatives don’t make money. Or not enough to make a steady living. They do it for the love. Or until they get a …

Because there are so many more excellent & edifying ways to spend a holiday than baking on a tourist.thronged beach or scrambling on & off tour buses to quick tick checkbox marvels, littering our photosharing pages with the same iconic sights.. some bookmarked discoveries for those a little braver, more curious & a little more brilliant than the average perhaps?
<< some shared intelligent travel discoveries for you

Superb reads around understanding where we’re at: philosophically, physiologically and practically with games.
<< Dive into my current bookmarks on games. Bits on game design, pervasive gaming, blended-reality games played on the streets, how gaming shapes our brains. If you’re amazed that games can command their own economies – with global heft or that mainstream business, government, the military or medicine has moved into the realm of serious games. Play has potency.

Emissaries of Facebook have paid South Africa an official visit. As Facebook.com’s 29th ranked country, with 2,322 million unique monthly visitors [track the latest figures on Facebakers.com] we have cracked the nod, and now gently herded into the fold to meet the business end of Facebook. The Emerging Market EMEA diplomats sent to charm the natives; Mark Cowan and Blake Cowlee.
Habari Media organised what looked to be another big.company.meets.small.country gathering. The gist of the gig: Facebook now offers SA more options on ad placement on the site through a …

One of the delights of living in the Southern Hemisphere has to be its dense, dazzling night sky.
Meandering to open spaces where the urban light veil falls away, yields a blaze of stars, the Milky Way (the Galactic Centre and magellanic clouds, a southern sky speciality), even man.made space objects twinkling back at us. In turn they’re scrutinised in ever-crisper definition as each generation of earthlings puzzles out the celestial connect-the-dots.

“Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.“— Miles Kington

 
In the last few days of the International Year …

It’s hard to quantify the small dizzy delight we find in discovering something out in the world that simply makes us happy, no explanation needed. Julie Andrews floods the mental stereo like peach-sugar (what, you have no idea what I mean? see the video at the end to absorb the culture young weedhopper).. Maverick magazine was one of my favourite things (sigh).
 
And I wasn’t alone, peculiar that a business magazine could be a lovemark, but there it is.

 
In magazine materialization, with its suede-feel cover, fiercely clever and stylish innards, and …

No grand 10th century castle – you couldn’t get there on a steam train from secret King’s Cross platforms – but this seemingly unexceptional building at 9 Ntemi Piliso Street, downtown Johannesburg is brimming and buzzing with magic.
 
The Defense against the Dark Arts is for real. Here they’re battling the very real forces of poverty, indignity and violence that swallow too many of the young ones in our country whole. Peacefully, with laughter and a startlingly ingenious approach to education and business, this sister school to CIDA University is a …

I’m back in Cape Town next week for some wrap.up lectures at UCT, seeing beloved friends & family, working & meeting frenzies ..and catching the grand launch of Silicon Cape (last year’s World Mayor, now premier of the province, Helen Zille will be speaking to assure the gravitas of this endeavour).
 
Since the tech heads and urban visionaries will be gathering for said launch in Camps Bay, (and it’s spring!) it seems an awfully good opportunity to lure some of the city’s brightest women to a Cerebella lunch to debrief in …

[On being in the right place, at the right time]
So here I am,1 still in Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, the District 9 city. The African version of LA.
The rough & tough old mining town that I was born in. esCAPEd from. And evidently needed to return to make peace with (like an ex-smoker I bore greater rights to cast scorn on its dirty sexy evils when I’d slipped its golden handcuffs in ’99).
 
Here for the best of reasons – which means I’m not here for the money. And not leaving anytime …