howzzzt.co.za

As part of our ongoing exploration of technologies we don’t understand and probably shouldn’t be messing with, Howzzzt now employs the services of Disqus to handle comments on the site. This has a couple of advantages obvious even to us luddites, including the fact that you can now use your Facebook or Twitter identity to talk back. Or something like that.

It probably also has a number of drawbacks which, being effectively cavemen playing with computers, we haven’t spotted yet. If you find the comment system broken, please drop us a line via our contact page.

To be fair, our Twitter account has not yet brought about the Apocalypse, but we remain convinced that all this Web 2.0 stuff is, somehow, up to no good. That may be exactly why we can’t resist tinkering with it.

Howzzzt isn’t updated on any kind of regular schedule, which makes things tough for our regular readers (of which there is currently approximately one. Hi mom!).

If you see this you've found the right Twitter feed. We tried to squeeze in all three Zs, but that just looked silly.

But now, thanks to groundbreaking technology the likes of which the world has never seen before, you can get your Howzzzt fix via Twitter. Simply go here for the web feed, or add us to your Twitter feed by searching for the username “Howzzzt”.

Actually, we tell a lie. There is nothing groundbreaking about either the technology or the Twitter feed. It just automagically updates with the title of the latest post and a handily shortened link the second we publish anything new. We also throw in some news relating to the site or South Africa, at present an average of less than two tweets a month and likely to stay there. So we won’t be flooding your Tweetbox, promise.

The title makes much more sense if you are an old-school Slashdot reader, trust us.

Unfortunately, those kind of bad jokes are exactly what you can expect from Howzzzt.co.za. Our raison d’être can be summed up thusly:

• do some fun writing (which happens to be about South Africa and will mostly be useful to people who don’t live here)
• have fun publishing it
• and see if anybody reads it.

Also, if we can pay for the costs of hosting it, that would be nice too.

Howzzzt is about South Africa because South Africa is strange and wonderful, and provides endless material for us to write about. We don’t set out to inform or educate – we set out to make sense of this place for ourselves through the process of explaining it to other people. So you’d better take everything you find here with a grain of salt. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

If you plan to be a visitor to our country, or just want to learn more about us, then Howzzzt may be of some help. But, honestly, the odds are against that. You’d be better off somewhere formal (and a little boring) like SouthAfrica.info.

If that disclaimer hasn’t scared you off, then please do call again. And do feel free to leave a comment. We love knowing that we aren’t just talking to ourselves.