If you have nothing to do this weekend, you might want to check this out. Just don’t tell anyone. Especially, don’t comment with videos of how good you’ve become at it:

Courtesy of Tim Ferris.

For some reason that has yet to be fully investigated, my usually excellent hosting provider fell over in dramatic fashion about six hours ago. Apologies for the service interruption. It seems we’re back online, though things may be a little jittery for a while.

Here’s what you may have missed:

The Chief, he gets it

In which I consider some unexamined angles of last week’s speech by George W Bush.

Forget what I said about the Chief

In which a far prettier blonde girl discourses on similarly weighty subjects.

If you’re looking for the spike, that is. I’ve moved everything across from the wordpress.com site, and all should be working over here now. Please update your bookmarks, blogroll and feeds accordingly. The new feed addresses are alongside…look to your right. Lots of new features, with many possible points of failure. If you spot one (a failure, not a new feature), I’d be grateful if you’d alert me in a comment, or e-mail me: ivo (at) hivemind (dot) net.

Either way, let me know what you think. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some sleep (and work) to catch up on.

Realism may not be sexy, but the writing sure is:

I’m of the opinion that realism on the surface doesn’t possess nearly as much appeal as that of the bleeding-heart lefty. At university, the girls don’t generally fall at the feet of the realist and his carefully-constructed arguments based on historical proof and empirical accountability. Even saying that is boring. Instead, folks love the passionate vitriol of mass-empathy, revolution of the world. The people surging against the ‘man’ in one big powerful wave. Nobody has to work ever again. We can all live in peace and harmony, drinking unicorn giggles while we poke our former bourgeois overlords in the eye.

Read more at commentary.co.za.

Something about truth and jest comes to mind:

Is this thing on?

Okay, I’ll bite. I’ll blog. I’ll add my off-key tune to the white noise of the internet.

Who am I? I’m Ivo Vegter. I write and argue for fun and profit. I live and work in South Africa as a columnist and magazine journalist, but I always keep some orange gear ready in support of Holland, the country of my birth.

As a bass line, I’ll publish some of my work here. I write columns (and other stuff) for several magazines. In the usual course of events, expect a couple of monthly columns to appear here for your online convenience. As accompaniment, I’ll post observations, arguments, notable quotes and quirky quips about technology, economics, politics, and anything else that’s mildly entertaining. Sometimes, they may even be my own.

You may wonder about that avatar. It’s what I’d look like if I wore a trench coat and carried a lantern and morning star. Actually, it’s our unofficial family emblem. It represents a Danish night watchman, which appears to be the medieval origin of the surname “Vegter”.

Now that I’ve figured out how to write stuff, please excuse me while I figure out the rest of this blogging software.