On 2 November 2011, I’ll be in New York to attend the Bastiat X Prize dinner, hosted by the International Policy Network. The prize is awarded annually to journalists who promote individual liberty and free markets, or “the free society”, as the IPN puts it. That, I certainly do. I one of six finalists, and find myself among very lofty company indeed, so it’s an exciting time.

The year is reaching a crescendo, with a book deadline — yes, next year will see my first book — and lots of other work to wrap up. Between finishing the book and its publication by June, I’ll completely revamp this site to make it useful again. Meanwhile, all the links in my previous post remain valid. If you’re struggling to reach me, you can always find me on Twitter @IvoVegter.

I was taught never, ever, to use the words “under construction” on a website. Also, I ‘ve always believed that those words are almost never, ever, true. And indeed, they’re not technically true now, either.

Having said that, I think I ought to give up my half-hearted attempt to keep this blog current. Because I now write several columns a week for which I get paid, blogging in the sense that I used to write here is not on my agenda. I’ll let others compete with how I make a living by doing it for free.

I’m busier than ever — much busier than I expected to be when I left Johannesburg for the safer, quieter, cheaper and more beautiful environs of Knysna. However, I’m giving a lot of thought to how I can better use this site to tie my various activities together. It needs a major rebuild, both in functionality and design, after years first of loyal service, and then benign neglect.

Until I get around to all that, here is where I hang out:

The Daily Maverick — my flagship column can be found under “opinionistas” down the right-hand side every Tuesday (usually). It covers everything under the sun, though that is not a formal restriction. One column recently racked up 400 comments totalling 65,000 words in just one week, which is among the reasons this blog is losing the battle for my attention. Also, it’s a superb site, populated with some really brilliant writers. It’s as good to read as it is to write for.

ITWeb — my area of specialisation, if I can still be said to have one, is technology and telecommunications. It’s what I studied, and what I wrote about when I first, accidentally, became a journalist. My interest in IT, and my long association with ITWeb continues. Most Thursdays I have a column there.

Brainstorm magazine — I’ve been writing for ITWeb’s premier monthly title, Brainstorm, since its launch ten years ago. I still do, and still have great fun doing it. Besides my back-page column, there’s the White Noise page, which is where I get to take the mickey out of everything and everyone in the field.

CAR Magazine — I’m very excited to be writing a column for what has always been one of my favourite print titles. I hardly ever read anything in print nowadays, but I’ve always made an exception for CAR. It is a great honour to be writing for them now too.

Twitter — having publicly left Facebook years ago because of the noise and clutter (and because Microsoft bought a stake in it), my favourite social networking hangout is Twitter. You’ll find me there daily, as @IvoVegter, arguing about economics, media, politics, environmentalism, history and Manchester United.

Hi all. It’s been over a year, and I keep getting asked when (or if) I’ll ever get around to blogging again. The answer is: I’m not blogging, but I am writing. This gives me little reason to blog and some good reasons not to.

Most Thursdays (and occasionally at other times) you can find a column on technology or telecommunications at ITWeb. Every Tuesday, my column on politics, economics and (anti-)environmentalism is published at the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Branko Brkic’s dearly departed Maverick magazine: The Daily Maverick. I also still write a monthly column for Brainstorm magazine, where the then-editor Brkic first convinced me to write opinion, and where current editor Samantha Perry continues to tolerate my invariably overdue mutterings.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since I stopped blogging, written while The Daily Maverick was still in pre-launch beta testing: Going cold turkey.

Since its launch, I’ve taken up one of my favourite cudgels: Too late to cool it? This week I penned a piece on the temerity of leftwingers who claim to oppose fascism: The irony of the left. I have many ideas lined up to fuel future arguments, so keep an eye on The Daily Maverick. Moreover, it is home to an eclectic group of brilliant reporters, photographers, analysts, commentators and columnists who offer some of the finest reading matter available on the South African internet. It is a pleasure and an honour to be published alongside them.

Elsewhere, this rant on power plugs for Brainstorm magazine elicited some vigorous nodding from readers, many of whom, unsurprisingly, share my pain.

Though a promising challenger has recently appeared (here’s to you, Duncan McLeod), ITWeb has for 15 years been the backbone and daily staple of the South African tech and telecoms scene. Among my recent ITWeb columns are an opinion about which commenters appeared to miss the point somewhat: Sure, fund the SABC with tax, an argument about who might be producing primary reporting in the future: Reviving the leisured classes, and a story about a man, The chief incompetence officer, which may yet have repercussions.

Discussion of or comments on my columns are best posted on the publishers’ respective sites, not only because they buy my bread and beer, but also because I’m more likely to read and respond there. I’ll post alerts of new articles and columns over here, however, so the many friends (and enemies) I’ve made here can follow me wherever I write. Speaking of following, I’m @IvoVegter.

Of course, the archives remain intact, and contain some 218 041 words in 520 posts, with 1 331 comments. Some of the topics I tackled, or responses I promised (but never wrote) will no doubt surface again on ITWeb, in Brainstorm or on The Daily Maverick.

Thank you all for reading and, most importantly, arguing with me. You’ve been a whetstone for my blade: sharpening my arguments, but innocent of how rashly I wield them. You rock — dangerous communists included.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging. Life is a touch on the hectic side at the moment, with some good developments and some less entertaining. I’ll return soon, I promise. Meantime, welcome, and please feel free to browse around. Over 200,000 words of riveting, entertaining, and incontrovertible truth are archived on these pages. Enjoy them.

This week (I thought it was today, but the first post was on Tuesday 24 June 2007), marks the first birthday of the spike. It’s been a fun ride, so far, with lots of interesting discussion, entertaining fights and illuminating argument. Some 30 000 unique visitors have come by, of which 20% constitute a hard core of regular readers. The average month entertains about 4 000 unique visitors with around 8 000 unique page views. This is more than I’d hoped for, from such an eclectic, general-interest one-man-show such as the spike.

I have readers in 160 countries, including the Faroe Islands, Congo, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, Grenada, Montenegro and Guam. South Africa accounts for about half my visitors, followed by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway, India, Ireland, France and the Netherlands.

Of the 510 posts to date, the most popular were about the David Bullard affair. If anyone doubts his claims to popularity, don’t. He’s more popular than teen sex (see below).

Another ongoing favourite is the collection of cool computer mods posted back in August last year, and augmented by another brilliant steampunk job in April this year.

Other popular posts have been about teen hanky panky (who’da thunk?), why I don’t buy orthodox global warming alarmism and the case of the non-endangered polar bear, a controversial view on child labour in China and what, if anything, we should do about it, as well as a tribute to Kevin Carter’s photojournalism. And who can forget the charming personality and intelligent discourse of Miss South Carolina? She was just a silly segue from a serious piece on George W Bush; who would have thought anyone could be more popular than the Chief?

Though one of my core interests, economics, is further down the list if you rank individual posts, it does turn up in the search terms used to find the spike. Other than my name, popular search words include “public perception nuclear”, “gold stuff site:ivo.co.za”, “rising oil price inflation”, “al gore investment company”, “zimbabwe failed state”, “food inflation + underlying causes”, “resolution recycling”, “global warming”, “arguments against global warming”, “100 scientists bali”, and, of course, “david bullard”.

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the 1 153 comments received to date, and the many sites that have discussed or linked to my posts. Many great points have been raised, and much healthy debate fostered. They have broadened my thinking, honed my arguments, and generally been a lot of fun. Thanks for taking the time to have these discussions. This toast is to you.

PS. It seems the WP-Footnotes plugin does something evil with character encoding in Safari, or spews out garbage upon returning to the body copy. It works on Firefox and Opera, which is where I usually preview posts. Sadly, the plugin author’s wep-page doesn’t render in Firefox 3.0. I’ve removed the footnote and added a paranthesis in the first sentence to resolve this problem, and won’t be using this very useful feature in future. Annoying.

As of this week, I will be writing a weekly column on technology and telecommunications for old friends at ITWeb — a top technology news site in South Africa with readership that slightly exceeds that of this blog, albeit by only a few orders of magnitude. The idea is to comment on issues that come up in ITWeb news stories, through my usual political or economic policy lens. It will initially be published on Thursdays. I’ll still write a separate monthly column, “Backbite & Sneerwell”, in Brainstorm magazine (link for subscribers). After all, it dates back to 2001, and is my longest-running effort at commentary. I will also continue to write columns on topics other than technology in Maverick magazine.

Last week I wrote a trial run for the new column, on the monstrously bad idea of having the state establish a local set-top box industry for digital television because “we’re loathe to rely on foreign suppliers”. This week, The Spike proper begins, with a final stab at one of cabinet’s most deserving members, Poison Ivy.

Cross your i’s, dot your t’s, and never, ever, ever put a tittle or iota where it doesn’t belong. Because it causes critical errors and terminal failures. The modest quotation mark may be small, but it is oh so powerful.

Some readers will have noticed that the comment post form hasn’t worked for a few days. That is why. A single quotation mark broke a string, causing a perplexed blank stare from WordPress. Thanks to Hard Rain for pointing out things were broken. I thought nobody loved me anymore.

If you tried to comment in the last few days, please accept my apologies for wasting your time, and by all means try again. It should work now, because this time I did something really radical: testing. I should patent that idea. I’m sure it’s fairly novel.

I had hoped to blog a few items today, and respond to some comments, but a failed hard drive caused a day-long server outage which affected both my blog and my e-mail access. Let’s just say today didn’t break any traffic records. Hopefully, all is well again. I’ll catch up with comments in due course.

The annual SA Blog Awards were handed out last night. This blog didn’t get any first prizes, but despite only having been launched in June last year, got a few merit badges for being among the runners-up in three categories. Sadly, those exclude the one I kinda wanted: best green blog.

Given the competition, many bloggers were unsurprised at the winners. As Bridget McNulty points out, there will be some griping in the blogosphere.

The overall winner, deservedly, was the Mail & Guardian’s online opinion project, ThoughtLeader. I’ll desist from gushing too much about the impact it has had in the South African blogosphere and its coming of age, since I also blog there, as it happens.

Peas on Toast snapped up two more awards to add to her illustrious list of accolades, for best post and best original writing. Well done, and well deserved, on both counts, I might add. Her best post sounded terrifically familiar: How not to buy condoms. I’ve had exactly the same experience, with the added embarrassment that a long queue was forming behind me, and a cute girl towards the back called out, “Hi, Ivo! How nice to see you!” There’s a reason I didn’t blog about it…

Matt Buckland deserves an honourable mention for being involved with three of the winners (and Vince Maher for two of them): Best overall and best politics blog, ThoughtLeader, best business blog at matthewbuckland.com, and best blog about blogging for aggregator site Amatomu. Well done, Matt and Vince. You host excellent braais — sorry, Bloggerati/Digerati events — too.

Other winners were the most popular blog in South Africa, Mark Keohane’s sport blog, Cape Town Daily Photo for best travel blog, best design blog for the felicitously titled Skinny Laminx, best tech blog imod.co.za, best foreign blog by a South African and best food & drink blog to the delectably presented Cook Sister, Peak Performances for best music blog, best personal blog to the perennial So Close, and best photo blog to Jenty’s Photo-a-Day, not to mention Urban Sprout for carrying the banner of the orthodox green religion. Newly added to my feed reader is the country’s best undiscovered blog, written by a young girl with cystic fibrosis, who has the sense of humour to title her blog about how breathtaking life can be Living Life Breathlessly.

But, on to the gripes. ThoughtLeader was the Goliath that dominated the politics category. Competition from a site funded and promoted by a major weekly newspaper seems a little unfair to valiant pajama-clad Davids who are among my favourite blogs, such as Commentary South Africa, Politics.za and Alex Matthews’s AfroDissident. ThoughtLeader has at last count recruited over a hundred contributors to churn out copy. Despite such volumes its stated readership is only about 10 or 15 times my own meagre traffic numbers, which makes for an interesting object lesson in the law of diminishing returns. That none of us genuine bloggers — the solo kind — could cut it against a media-funded mega-blog is not entirely surprising.

Other categories saw similar scenarios. East Coast Radio has several corporate blogs, and between them, they swept all before it. Best new blog went to its NewsWatch site, best entertainment blog, most humorous blog, and best group blog all went to The BIG Breakfast Blog, and best podcast was snapped up by its Just Plain’s ‘On The Blog’. It would not surprise me if some bloggers feel a little put-upon to be routed by media personalities who get paid by their employers to blog, and who enjoy, for free, the promotional power of radio to boot.

To add to the confusion, ThoughtLeader, the best overall blog, was also a finalist in the group blog category, which ECR won, and despite having been launched in 2007 didn’t crack the new blog category. Ironic, not so?

It is true that, as one of the organisers explained to me, the ECR and ThoughLeader wins have a positive promotional spinoff for blogging in general. Their links to the winners could result in a traffic boost for runners-up, and it promotes blogging in general. I know I’ve discovered a few excellent blogs of which I had been unaware through participating in the awards.

Still, my solution would be to limit group blogs to the group blog category, so individual bloggers can’t go win the group category, and solo politics writers won’t have to take on entire armies in the politics category. Similarly, I’d establish a “commercial” category, for blogs that are funded and operated by commercial media organisations such as East Coast Radio. They’re not in the same weight division as regular bloggers who can’t hire full-time staff, so matching them up is going to cause bruises. If it seems unfair to ban a commercial blog from a particular category, perhaps the categories themselves should be split into amateur and commercial. The shortlist of nominated finalists in each category can then be halved, if organisers, judges and voters don’t want to face an overwhelming number of entries.

That said, I’m chuffed with my three merit badges. Armed thus, this nightwatch will stride resolutely onwards, putting barbarian heads on the spike as he valiantly defends individual liberty and market economics against pillaging socialists, fascists rulers and the invading green hordes.

Nice way to end your week’s downtime. A cloudburst of major proportions just hit Johannesburg’s north-west and flooded my home. Here’s what’s left of my patio roof.

To give you an idea how violent the rain and hail were, this is right outside my office. It collapsed not two metres from where I was sitting, on the other side of a curtained window, and I didn’t hear a thing. I only saw this when I surveyed the house for damage after it got flooded.

A foot or more of hail was a little more than my drains could handle:

The water poured in at the doors. This is my workshop after I blocked the worst flooding, and the icy water had subsided from being near ankle-deep.

My pool was sparkling a couple of hours ago. It wasn’t brimming either. And it was 18 degrees, not 14 degrees, as it is now. That’s some serious chillin’ right there.

It’s half a metre deep here, at the bottom of my garden. Yes, there’s a storm drain, but it’s not the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Not that the raging torrent that passed for a road outside the wall needed any help. Maybe I should built a boathouse. At least then I can get to the garden shed for the shovel I need.

The ice dam shovelled out of the way, in case the cursed clouds open up again.

Now my back hurts, my feet are frozen, and I’m somewhat grumpy. I bet Alec “The Bolt” Erwin had something to do with this.

I have one item planned for Sunday morning, but I intend taking most of the next week off to spend on projects and family. I asked my boss, and he says it’s fine, but don’t expect to get paid, you lazy sod. I’d argue, but since I work for myself that just serves to attract funny stares. If you’re going away, be safe. If not, enjoy the long weekend.

The environmentalists must have got wind of the spike’s plot to conquer the green category in the SA Blog Awards 2008. It does not make it to the green blog shortlist, despite said shortlist being shorter than that of most other categories.

The silver lining on this ominous cloud is that ivo.co.za has been nominated in three categories: best political blog, best original writing, and best new blog. Those nominations are much appreciated, indeed. Voting is now open.

Tough luck for that cheetah cub, though. Guess I’ll have to set my sights on some new promo technique. Stuff the cute fluffy animals. Sorry, are the puns a little off-target?