Nixon in China

I watched a filmed version of the Met's Nixon in China last night by the incomparable John Adams. It's an incredible work, and fascinating how good a subject for opera modern politics makes.

Enjoy a yummy clip above - that's the sublime Kathleen Kim singing 'I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung', my favourite bit.

Bittereinder - Not Another SA Rap Outfit

Bittereinder, definitely one of the SA bands I'm most excited about right now. Check out 'Tale of 3 Cities' - probably their most accessible - but the whole album is worthwhile.

Unfortunately, too many people seem to be immediately jumping onto the 'they're the new Parow/Die Antwoord. They really aren't - they're serious and considered rather than ironic.

Between these guys and Spoek Mathambo, I'm seriously excited about SA music at the moment.

HTC Wildfire - First Impressions

Originally published on GirlGuides

I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do justice to this review, folks. Seriously, the phone could be a hand-me-down Windows 7 phone with all the buttons missing and I would still think it was space-age technology, as long as it doesn’t advertise its top feature as ‘FM Radio’. (Yup. Some people still think that ‘FM Radio’ is a feature worth advertising.)

Here it is, out of the box and in my hand. In fact, it’s unlikely to ever leave my hand again. I give little squeals of pleasure every time I stroke its lovely shiny screen. People in the office think I’m cracking up.

So, stay tuned as I take my first happy steps into smartphonedom and experience the joys and sorrows of touchscreens, autocorrect and app stores for the very first time. I may even get around to listing the features of the HTC Wildfire along the way.

It's Me, on ZA Tech Show!

Big excitement for me... I was a guest on ZA Tech Show last week. This has always been one of those big dreams and it feels *friggen super*.

http://zatech.co.za/podcasts/episode-149/

Supa Strikas... and Tron?

The cover of 'Supa Strikas!' caught my eye this week. Notice the Tron-esque rival team? Awesome genre-bending.

Supa Strikas could really be a great comic book, were it not for the uncomfortable product placements... and the vague sense that it's actually written by white guys trying to be hip.

Jonathan Franzen on Depression

Does any modern author write depression as well as Franzen? I love this quote from How to be Alone - his collection of essays.

"Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it."

Why I'm Not Ready to Abandon my RSS Reader for Twitter

Ah, Twitter. The maniacal, THC-twitchy jabbering voice in the corner of my screen. Snippets of friends telling me a million-bajillion snippets of interesting information throughout the day and night. Yes, I'm addicted. I can't get enough. But I am not - despite the repeated urgings of my favourite tech blogs - going to let it replace my RSS reader anytime soon. Here's why.

• Twitter is noisy - Yes, it's easy to unfollow people who are uninteresting, but there's still just too much stuff to keep up with. If you have a bit of an OCD disorder about information, like me, you like to take time to carefully go through things you want to read, mark them as read, and file them if they're interesting. There's just too much on Twitter to give you any sense of control, and too much of it is about other people's breakfasts.
  
• Twitter is an echo chamber - The power of the RT is incredible, but it does mean that you're exposed to the same articles and memes over and over again. More than that, everyone is too similar on Twitter, which means that you'll hear the same opinions voiced all the time. There just aren't enough conservative pro-lifers on Twitter (or corporate whores, or Julius Malemas) for debates to ever get very interesting.
  
• Twitter is too geeky - Building on this, everyone on Twitter (pretty much de facto) is a geek. Much as I love geeks (and am a geek) this limits the conversation to what matters to a very skewed, niche community. When Apple makes an announcement about a minor employee sneezing, it causes a tidal wave on Twitter. When a Nobel-winning author releases a new novel, barely a ripple. If you have interests that fall outside of the geek realm, you'll need an RSS reader to keep up with the times.
  
• RSS is quiet time - Maybe I'm just a bit antisocial, but I like the fact that going through my RSS reader is totally solitary and private. I can share articles if I want to, but I can also choose to keep some stuff in reserve for interesting dinner party conversation that everyone won't already have heard on Twitter.
  
• Twitter doesn't cater for your (odd) interests - It's difficult to find people to follow on Twitter if you have very eclectic/eccentric interests, but it's easy to find that blog on medieval cartography or (ehem) Victorian pornographic knitting, if that's your thing.
  
• Twitter is a democracy - Which is awesome, but sometimes you don't want to judge the truth by popular opinion. When it comes to matters like hardcore science, I'd much rather read one or two journals that I trust than try to distinguish the truth from the memes in the Twittersphere.

I still believe there's a space for the RSS reader in the Twitterized world, regardless of what popular opinion (mainly voiced through Twitter) is saying.