The 2009 FNB Whisky Live Festival

I wrote a monster article about the 2009 FNB Whisky Live Festival over at brainwavez.org so I won't say much here, but the whisky festival was fun, unexpectedly unpretentious, and educational. Its last day is tonight and then next week it moves to Johannesburg for four days. If you can attend, I highly recommend it. It's the biggest whisky festival in the world and there's a lot to see and do.

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UCT, Cape Town, At Night

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The University of Cape Town is one of four universities in (or within a 40 minute drive of) Cape Town. The upper campus sits in the suburb of Rondebosch, up on the mountain overlooking the Southern Suburbs. I didn't study there but when I was in high school I did occasionally spend time at the upper campus to utilise the libraries or to visit a friend in the engineering department who would let me use the Internet connection to do research for school projects.

It's rare for me to have an opportunity to go to the university but I always look forward to it. Last week a friend's birthday party was hosted at the tennis club (that - in itself - was an adventure to find!). As I left I drove along the windy, eerily deserted road that runs around the campus and, because I wasn't distracted by the usual rush of traffic and hordes of students, I noticed this view for the first time. It took a few attempts to get it right but I'm quite fond of this shot and the interplay of the light and colours. Have a look at the larger version on Flickr if you'd like to see more detail.

Sleight Of Mind, At The Intimate Theatre, Cape Town

Above: Stuart Lightbody (facing the audience on the right) uses various techniques to demonstrate the power of suggestion to the audience while Bryan Miles (facing away from the audience) addresses a group of volunteers to assess those that might be most open to suggestion and most willing to participate in the next psychological experiment.

Combine Stuart Lightbody's abilities at misdirection and sleight-of-hand manipulations (best utilised with a deck of cards) with mentalist Bryan Miles' penchant for suggestion, psychology, deception, and illusion and the result is the new show Sleight of Mind, which is in Cape Town on a limited run after a highly successful debut at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown earlier this year.

Mentalism and sleight of hand are categories of magic that are not usually well matched or easily combined but the two performers have managed to do so in a manner that flows effortlessly from one style to the other, then back again, engaging the audience in the process as they are let in on a few secrets, but not too many.

There's not much I can say about the actual contents of the show as I would spoil the experience for those who still have to see it but the venue allows for close contact with the performers leading to a warm, jovial setting and some interesting results as the audience is utilised masterfully to demonstrate the surprising malleability of the mind. Audience members were required as assistants a number of times but were never put on the spot or made to feel uncomfortable and many were fun, engaging participants. For one of the bigger experiments, pictured above, a group of volunteers was necessary so that Bryan Miles could determine who would be most suitable as subjects to demonstrate the power of suggestion (without the use of hypnosis) and I think the results were as surprising to the participants (you could see it in the expressions on their faces) as they were to the audience.

I spoke to the performers after the show I attended and Stuart said to me that the audience had been more skeptical (and therefore in some ways, I would presume, more difficult) than most. In contrast, what I saw was a group of highly intelligent people being won over by a friendly atmosphere, brain-twisting effects - both big and small - and unexpected moments, with lots of discussion after the show as audience members who had participated in some of the experiments were quizzed by others as everyone tried to determine, without much success, how the impossible had played out.

Sleight Of Mind runs for three more evenings (8, 9, and 10 October 2009) at 8pm at the Intimate Theatre and I highly recommend it. To book, email info -[at]- bryanmiles -[dot]- com. Tickets are also available at the door.

Previously in Cape Town > South Africa > Africa > Earth:
* "52" With Stuart Lightbody

Shameless Self-Promotion: Twitter Wit

I'm featured in Twitter Wit: Brilliance In 140 Characters Or Less. Read this jaded post on Gawker about the marketing campaign* and then buy it anyway. It's my first published piece of fiction!

Amazon.com: Twitter Wit
Amazon.co.uk: Twitter Wit
Kalahari.net: Twitter Wit

(The book will actually make a great Christmas gift for almost anyone. Problematic friends? No ideas for presents? Problem solved!)


*You'll note how long it's taken me to post about this, for entirely the same reason.

The Long Lost Symbol

Jaded journalist Mandy J Watson paused midway through crossing Long Street, so named because of its length, and grabbed her camera from her bag to take this photograph at this most opportune moment, for the road had been closed due to a function* or a filming project - she wasn't sure which as a giant tent blocked her view, outside Long Street Cafe, but at least it was also blocking traffic from getting in the way of her taking this photograph. She lifted the camera, in doing so dismissing a momentary fleeting thought of regret that this was the only camera that she had with her, as it had by this point already been in for repair twice and had proven to be a most unsatisfactory purchase as the second time it had returned from being repaired it returned without its former glory and an inability to take perfectly focussed photographs, which meant that this photo she was now taking would never look as good as it may have if she had used another camera.

Also, the weather was kak.


*Turns out it was The Loerie Awards - but never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Shameless Self-Promotion: August 2009

Well here's a post I should have done about three weeks ago but you know how it goes....

August was another bumper month for me in terms of published tech articles - pages I wrote appeared in three consumer magazines:

• COSMO: my regular Gadget Girl page, of course,

• House & Leisure: a special one-off gadgets page focussing on glamorous gadgets, and

• Elle Decoration: a possibly regular page, of which this was the first (things went a little up in the air all of a sudden so I remain rather confused at the moment). Each Elle Deco Tech page is themed and this one focussed on gadgets for kids - I had a lot of fun writing it.

DOMINATION! (::cough::)

If you can still find any of these issues on the shelves grab them, buy them, and keep me in a job! (If you can't - because this post is so late - then steal them from a friend. It won't help to keep me in a job but my writing will enhance your life in mysterious ways - and who wants to miss that?)

Prime Circle At The Launch Of The Nokia Music Store, Johannesburg

[ Flickr link: Orton Effect ]

Above: Yes, yes, it's an Orton Effect....

In April Nokia held a press function in Johannesburg to launch the Nokia Music Store in South Africa. The special music guest was Prime Circle, which played a great set that lasted about 20 minutes.

I don't have much to say about it, so here are some photos (they were taken with a Sony DSC-W290 Cyber-shot digital camera, which I was testing for the July issue of COSMO for my gadgets page):

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Above: The man behind the scenes who sorts out all the awesome (and unpacks and then repacks it in boxes and trunks).

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Above: Smile!

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And finally, a song:

I was also testing a digital-video camera while filming this (the Sony DCR-SR47 Handycam) so see the YouTube page for notes on that here.