It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a book so unexpectedly startling as Nicholas Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters. At the end of it, I find myself wordless and in awe, as if I’d experienced a flash of satori, wanting to but unable to say anything of the insight. I can find surprisingly little written… Continue reading Hopeful Monsters
Category: Earth (Arts and Literature)
Swahili Wikipedia now the largest African-language Wikipedia
The Swahili Wikipedia has just passed the Afrikaans Wikipedia to become the largest African-language Wikipedia by number of articles. African Language Wikipedias – number of articles Language 1/1/2007 16/12/2008 3/8/2009 Swahili 2980 7807 12631 Afrikaans 6149 11285 12568 Yoruba 517 6246 6261 Amharic 742 3251 3333 Lingala 292 1074 1148 Full list of Wikipedias So… Continue reading Swahili Wikipedia now the largest African-language Wikipedia
Learning Languages Revisited
I’m making vague plans to go to Argentina in August, so I’ve started brushing up on my Spanish. I’d learnt Spanish for a month before going to Peru in 2001, but haven’t used it since, and have forgotten everything but Hola and, of course, Hasta la vista, Baby. I’ve been considering how my personal language… Continue reading Learning Languages Revisited
South African Literary Awards and the internet
If the purpose of a literary award is to expose and market the winners to a wider audience, the South African literary awards are doing a terrible job. Somehow I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the Exclusive Books Boeke Prize. The page was missing the 2008 winner, so I followed the link to… Continue reading South African Literary Awards and the internet
Time to go cold turkey – no more news
For a long time I’ve been resisting the advice to stop reading news. The advice comes from so many different sources. From Andrew Weil, in his book “8 Weeks to Optimum Health”. I do not want you to become uninformed about the state of the world, but I note that paying attention to news commonly… Continue reading Time to go cold turkey – no more news
Wikimedia and the Cape Town Book Fair.
I’ll be at the Cape Town Book Fair helping at the Lettera27 stall. One of their projects is WikiAfrica, hence my involvement. Lettrea27’s principal aims are: to create awareness of the WikiAfrica Literature (WAL) to generate new virtual pages in WikiAfrica/Wikipedia. to involve authors, publishers and new readers/users in the WikiAfrica Literature project. to involve… Continue reading Wikimedia and the Cape Town Book Fair.
The South African Wikimedia communities
My South African Wikimedia communities submission has been accepted by the Wikimania 2008 Program Committee, so I’ll be presenting it at the conference in Alexandria later this year. So how are those communities doing since my last update? Not particularly well… Progress is slow, and there’s a proposal to close the Xhosa Wikipedia as well… Continue reading The South African Wikimedia communities
Launch of the FOSS Awards
The FOSS Awards have launched. The awards are aimed at encouraging South African tertiary institution students to contribute to FOSS projects, particularly those that will have local benefits. Students can enter by submitting a summary of their contributions to FOSS projects over 2007. So far there is R15 000 prize money available. Entries close at… Continue reading Launch of the FOSS Awards
Shortbus
The Labia, that bastion of arthouse movies in Cape Town, has disappointed me in recent years. They hardly ever show a non-English movie, which is exactly what I’m so starved of when I do finally get to see a movie. This week, I made my escape and saw the movie Shortbus. It was billed as… Continue reading Shortbus
Is SA Rocks bullshit?
In my ideal world, Red Star Coven would be dominating the Amatomu charts, not David whatsisname. Walton has written a post that deals with a topic I often think about, subtitled South Africa does not rock, it’s a disaster. Before you react emotionally, go read it. He’s not an afro-pessimist, he attacks that (almost) as… Continue reading Is SA Rocks bullshit?