(..and no though I love them muchly, this has nothing to do with the African Digerati WebAddiCTs)
If you ARE SouthAfrican, been to South Africa, or happen to have given up your otherwise civilised life to make this wild country your home (or even.. ag, shaaame a South African far away from home). Can you quantify what the hell it is about this place that makes it get under your skin? It’s rough & rowdy, beautiful and dangerous.. I think it may be the energy that throbs here that keeps me here. It’s not safe to stay but OMG it’s ALIVE! & addictive.
“I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy“
Brian Eno Continue reading ‘‘fessing up to the addiction’
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…thanks to NicHarry for a new fun space to play in and celebrate why we who are crazy & brave enough to live in South Africa love it here ;-) on SA Rocks!
[Clever fellow! I feel all special, produce content & tell my mates etc.etc. virtuous cycle - SARocks is one of many blogs I've been asked to contribute to, but since I haven't got my GTD down to perfection yet I'm only taking on one other blog.. which I'll tell you about tomorrow. There seems to be a spate of this artful network leveraging - because it works! ]
I’m rocking the regular Monday spot to give a little vooma to begin the week >> ignition with customary opinionated passion for the first post: Why SA can’t afford to be a tarty date
If you have the time to swing your eyeballs over I’d love a little feedback - though I think I may be perpetuating the myth of lions roaming the streets with the pic (lol, mythinformation)
PS. I know the header’s a little goofy! Suggestions always welcome
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V’day indeed! If I must surrender to silliness of Valentine’s day: then my untimebound valentine - verily the very essence of victory :-P the seriously ravishable Churchill (I know I’ve gone on about him before but) he truly embodied genius:
- creatively (he could rival Edison in prolific applied innovation & outperform any in creative strategy - to win a megalithic war you gotta have some deep skills.. and of course he painted and wrote - damn well)
- in unparalleled courage with which he impassioned a nation,
- in clarity of vision &
- communicating it in such style and of course
- the wow!factor of his unstoppable determination
- the dangerous scalpel-sharp wit coupled with a charisma & character large enough to change the course of history. Profound leadership.
C’mon, how could one not fall in love with the delicious curmugeonly chap. Brittle, arrogant, drunken and dogmatic perhaps but perfection holds little delight for me. Francis Bacon said it best:
There is no excellent beauty that hath not strangeness in its proportion
although Feynman may nudge him out in the funstakes, ..oh gosh and then there’s always marvellous Mozart: who truly understood the nature of genius
| Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius - Mozart |
Oh the delights of great men to adore, if I started a list now I’d be engulfed >> from an adoring little huntress of those wild & wonderful : in celebration of men of courage, curiosity, creativity, character, com… (oops, I almost started giving away the What Makes Genius symptom list!) if you are daring to do something remarkable today I wish you a real V’day ..for Victory 
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<< this is when we’ll be rockin’Relish - don’t cry to us if you don’t get yourself on the list in time: 80 is the limit ..and it’s almost there!
The guest list is jamming with genius & not just with the technocracy of the geekdinner >> so don’t be scared if you’re a techbum ‘cos 27 is a gathering at the edge of the future of innovative business in South Africa.
Come cerebrate some of the reasons why SArocks!
oooh PS. Verity will be rocking the house :-D
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I came, I saw, I drank
(okay.. last of the geekdinner posts I promise).
Guess this one should have a geek alert: my boet was laughing at me once again for being pathetically nerdy but I found it amusing (sitting for hours squished in a car roadtripping - if you’re a slighty hyperactive human - can make anything funny*) hence my take on Julius Caesar’s Veni Vidi Vici after a heavy night of Stormhoek through a hungoverhaze**. I discovered that the linux forums had a whole list of them >> go if you’re nerdy ‘nuf
Continue reading ‘Veni Vidi Vino’
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One of the pleasures of roadtripping is discovering crazybeautiful spots along the way: tumbling your numb.bum out of the car and sharing the wander/wonder with your mates. Captain Chris took us to Herold’s Bay (home to Ernie Els) where he apparently spent many a rowdy night while doing his flight training.
^above^ the Cape Town geekgang - Chris, Max, Rafiq & Miguel (Dave our Marketing Geek behind the camera) heading back home after the GardenRoute’s first geekdinner. The dinner was so much fun, little sleep was had, much Stormhoek consumed & new friendships were forged. Business & pleasure on rails. [We even had enough coffee to focus on a business meeting for an exciting new project the next morning].
I believe that our journeys change us & I know that my life has been enriched and changed for the better for this one. Thank you so much to all of you guys who made this weekend truly memorable in all the best ways.
(esp. DD who moves worlds with laughter & courage)
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thanks so much to my friend Stii - who I suspect doesn’t sleep much because he is a PROLIFIC hunter of extraordinary bits of brilliance, webtools & webbeauty: constantly delivering gems to enjoy on StumbleUpon and beyond - this was one of his discoveries.
It hustled the muses around me whispering of heart.soaring inspiration.. siren-calling the artist in me to dive dangerously back in. This is utterly exquisite & one of those bizarrely underrated youtube offerings.
Beware it’s entrancing & quite hypnotic:
clear 10 minutes of tranquility for this1, it’s worth it
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr5W2mERkUs]
PS. anti-tranquility update - (while I fix the plugin conflicts from the Wordpress 2.1 upgrade my Youtube embeds may not show) pop over here to watch this beautiful one
.. if this is the case here
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One of the very best things that we can do to nurture our capacity for genius is to occassionally refresh & challenge our thinking by breaking away from the cynical bastards who thrive on playing Devil’s Advocate to your beat your bright ideas into submission. And instead: hang out with others who dare to think and share wild & original thoughts.. and do it in a relaxed and playful environment. This is the basis of accelerated learning - it’s brain-friendly and pops us effortlessly into the realm of inspired & innovative problem-solving. Fun is the very best way to generate brilliance and superlearning’s extraordinary results
[Here in South Africa we've been doing this within the framework of geek dinners: where outstanding ideas, projects, alliances and good friendships have been forged].
Continue reading ‘Hunting party - roadtrippin’ 2 hunt some genius’
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In preparation for the fourth in the What Makes Genius series, a little homage to a wordsmith & wildman, a genius for those who were born with fire in their bellies >> “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world” the blazing Walt Whitman
Perhaps it’s something in the DNA strings still resonating (there’s a poet laureate somewhere in my chemical coding) but I have a passion for potent poets (& songwriters) who can sling words with masterful ease & style. Their words lie like time bombs: patient, dormant until cast over & activated by human eyes or ears, delivering their intended visceral impact. Booom! Uncoiled power & real immortality.
From the deep & wide frenzy of imaginative fertility online, (thanks to the ease of online publishing and social media) I’m constantly being blown away by powerful gems of genius that lie scattered around the web. It seems we’re unleashing our wildness & defining who we are as individuals en masse. Styles diverse, delicious, disturbingly real and distortedly delusioned ..Who are you, really?
Try this: grab a quick 10 minutes & go write/share/make something today that speaks of the unbounded & unique you.. print it, scrawl it or go leave it somewhere online in sheer celebration of your unruly & wildloving creative self. The more outrageous the better, particularly if you haven’t done it in a loooong time..(anonymous may make it safer to be real the first few times) In the words of yet another delicious wildman Oscar Wilde:
Give a man a mask & he’ll tell you the truth
If it makes you laugh uproariously/ get a lump in your throat/ bursts a massive adrenaline rush into your blood/ floods you with relief when you’ve put it out in the world >> you’ll know you’ve hit the mark.
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