MIKESTOPFORTH

My apologies to the kind folks at custom T-shirt shop Springleap.com – they were generous enough to nominate me for their first ‘blogger face-off’ with Dave Duarte and sent me some T’s after the fact (even though I lost apparently my T design is quite popular) – and it’s taken me forever to write about [...]

I was a fortunate kid – my folks committed to giving my brother and I two good holidays a year, and for over ten years, every year, we made pilgrimages to the Kruger National Park in July (when it’s perfect for game viewing) and to Pennington on the South Coast of KwaZulu Natal in December.  [...]

Now before you get suspicious, I’m not going to agree with Tank Lanning’s Sports24 column about our win over the All Blacks in Carisbrook this last weekend because his name is Tank (albeit that is a compelling enough reason on it’s own) – I’m agreeing because he is 100% right. You may be wondering why [...]

So just in case you don’t know yet I got my paws on a shiny new Canon EOS 450D D-SLR camera today. I’m like a kid at Christmas. The only downer is that I know bugger all about how to take advantage of my new toy. So what’s a guy to do? I Twittered my [...]

I feel very important. After mentioning Rex the Lion, the SA blogosphere’s newest celebrity (which isn’t saying much but still) on this site yesterday I got a brief mention in his second video… To answer his question – what is it I’m concentrating so hard on in my header? Well, the answer is not much. [...]

Today has been an embarrassingly sentimental day for me. It marks the three year anniversary of my first ever blog post. Ha ha. Had I known in advance the realms of geekiness I would be sucked into I might never have ventured so far, but in retrospect I’m glad I did :)

Just after that first post on the faith-themed Idle Banter and before starting this blog, much of my creative energy was invested in TomorrowToday’s blog, which you can check out here… My foray into citizen journalism sparked a chain of events that included quitting a comfortable job at this company to work with people at another completely different company, trying to build what I called a ‘blog consultancy’ at the time (yikes) that eventually evolved into Cerebra…

I haven’t quite come to terms with the fact that Father’s Day is about me too.  At least not yet.  To me Father’s Day is still my dad’s day.  Fortunately my wife and son are sweet enough to remind me with the most incredible gifts and surprises.

This year Wendy got me something I was pretty thrilled about from the moment (Ethan and) I unwrapped it – two DVD episodes from Rob Bell‘s Nooma series.

I’m a sports lover. I’m absolutely obsessed with cricket and rugby and seldom miss international fixtures, while trying to catch as many provincial matches as possible. When there’s no cricket or rugby to watch I’ll happily waste time taking in whatever is on the telly with the exception of horse racing or showjumping, both of which give me the heebies. Can’t tell you why, they just do.

I watch club and international football selectively but because our national team leaves a little to be desired in terms of recent form and I don’t associate directly with any one Premiership or European club side, it’s not a life or death past time. Besides soccer irritates me, more and more every time I watch it. Especially when I compare the game of rugby and rugby players to their soccer counterparts. Here are seven reasons (seven points for a converted try) why rugby kicks soccer’s ass any day:

I met Darren Gorton online and then for the first time in person over a cup of Vida coffee. Darren must have walked away from the meeting with a very interesting first impression though, because he picked the worst day in the history of my short life to touch base – not his fault of course, I was just in a horrible place. He very kindly maintained contact though and although I haven’t had a chance to make up for our first meeting yet, he has been updating me with the progress of a fascinating project he’s co-ordinated, dubbed The SA Blook, which has now come to fruition. From the introduction to the Blook on Darren’s site:

Welcome to the SA blook, a collaboration between South African bloggers with a strong belief in the future of our nation. Essentially, it is a book, originally published online and written by a diverse group of writers with strong views about our country and the reality South Africans find themselves living in…

Expect short, succinct posts in the next few weeks (I can sense the collective sigh of relief).  I dropped a big-ass audio speaker on my left (dominant) hand yesterday.  Hence…

In my spare spare time I’m a drummer.  Not the hard core, head-thrashing, authority-hating type, but more into jazz, funk and classic rock sounds.  I’ve been playing now for about ten years but am not nearly the drummer I could be owing largely to the fact that I seldom get the time to commit to practicing as one ought to with any musical instrument.

Going to the music store to upgrade or splash out on new equipment is always a highlight for any musician.  I know though, remembering back to my early days as a beginner, that going to a specialist store to ask about specialist equipment is often pretty intimidating…

A bit of fun…

The Afrigator blog announced this morning that a new feature – Topics – would be added starting with a page highlighting social media mentions and conversations around the xenophobia crisis in South Africa at the moment.

Yesterday I wrote about how I felt we needed to do something more as bloggers (i.e., more than just write) about the xenophobia crisis in our country. I’ve had numerous responses, Stii came up with some suggestions and I also gather that a march has been organised.

I’ve also just received an email from my friend Dion Forster, who is a prolific blogger, respected leader in the Methodist church and a Mac and Vespa evangelist to boot, referring to his blog post from today. This hopefully provides you or your company with another practical avenue for contributing to the situation…

Ok, so this funky drum solo is a bit flash, but my goodness Thomas Lang can play a little bit…

The horror of the last few day’s xenophobic violence in Johannesburg has left us all feeling shocked and hopeless. The danger here is that it’s very easy for us (and I’m speaking to the predominantly wealthy and white audience that reads this blog and makes up SA’s blogging fraternity) to remove ourselves from the situation because we think it doesn’t impact us directly.

If you look very carefully you’ll notice that the Golf is actually leaning, along with the people inside…

Ok so I’m kidding but heck, what a phenomenal photo…

A few weeks ago Susan Shabangu, deputy safety and security minister, came under fire for her comment at a police imbizo when she encouraged police officers to shoot to kill criminals, or more directly – “kill the bastards”. Family friends of ours are currently spending their days and nights in ICU at the Glynnwood hospital [...]

So it looks like the cat’s finally out of the bag. I have never written about Bolton the Magnificent, inventor of blogs and master of the Interweb Netsite on this blog before – at the time when the Bolton Deventer meme was at it’s peak I was pretty busy and missed out on the best [...]

In 1964 Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death by a serial rapist and murderer. The murder took place over a period of about a half hour, after which it was reported that dozens of alleged “witnesses” failed to help the victim. As a result the bystander effect – a psychological phenomenon in which someone is [...]