Harry Potter Remix

(Photo: Brenton Geach, Cape Argus)

The following article and the picture above from a 2005 edition of the Cape Argus newspaper just showed up on our Google search now, crediting a course at the MTN Sciencentre for triggering the Pensieve website. This is according to Tara Weinberg, who was the focus of our 2007 Harry Potter book and movie launches and sleepover... read on!

Teenage Web wizard is just potty about Harry

June 30 2005 at 03:29PM

By Philippa Norris

On Saturday, July 16, dubbed "Harry Potter Day", the literary phenomenon will be unleashed on the world once again.

The sixth book in the series, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, no doubt complete with a fresh glossary of "Potterisms" to be translated into "Muggle" terms, will be on the shelves at one minute past midnight in South Africa.

Just what is it that makes this young wizard and his adventures so popular?

'I love making contact with the Harry Potter community'

Tara Weinberg, a matric pupil at Westerford High School in Cape Town (she's now doing a BA at UCT) explains it quite simply: "It's true escapism, disappearing into another world. It's so rich and quirky."

At only 18, Weinberg is the creative mind behind the longest running Harry Potter website in South Africa. The Pensieve, named after an object in the fourth book, boasts about 1 000 visitors a day and has more than 1 000 pages.

Weinberg is sure of herself as she launches into the technical jargon behind setting up a website. One wonders how a matric pupil has time for anything other than, well, matric. But her initial interest in Hogwarts and its magical characters began at 14, so she managed to get most of the work out of the way before she reached Grade 12.

For Weinberg and her team of newsposters, the Pensieve's success has taken years of dedication, and the imminent arrival of the new book means updates to the site every two days.

Being a magician herself, one can understand Weinberg's Harry Potter fanaticism. The interactive website began when she attended a Macromedia Flash course at the MTN Sciencentre. She started with a few Potter animations and then learned to put them on a website.

Her site, catering specifically for South African fans, is informative as well as fun. Apart from the usual facts, fictions, character profiles, book and movie reviews, it is creative in its inclusion of unique features such as the "Magic Zone", which offers a new easy-to-perform magic trick every month, recipes for Harry Potter favourites like Butterbeer, Fizzing Whizzbees and Cockroach Clusters, a quiz to find out whether you are indeed a wizard or merely an obsessed fan, and a clock that records how long, to the second, until the latest book release.

In the build-up to the release of Book Six, Weinberg has also created a mini-website called "The Beginning of the End", a sub-section of The Pensieve, dedicated solely to Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince.

This site is even more eyecatching and slick, allowing fans to submit their own theories and predictions in anticipation of the big day.

Weinberg is not the first South African to ride the wave of opportunity created by the Harry Potter books. Ex-Bishops pupil Edward Odendaal started a Harry Potter newsletter that turned into a website.

However, according to Weinberg, Odendaal's website no longer exists.

With a documentary photographer for an uncle and an exhibition designer for a father, it is clear that the creative vein runs though the Weinberg family.

She doesn't see herself pursuing a career that would confine her to her computer screen: "I prefer the creative side of it and I love making contact with the Harry Potter community."

The website is more of a hobby than anything else. Most of the money she has made comes from offshoots, such as the Harry Potter workshops she runs. "It's not very profitable but, I mean, I love it," she adds.

So what happens once the seventh and final book is released? Well, with at least two more years until we can expect it, and three more movie versions to hit the screens, Weinberg explains that she still has lots of time to think about that.

In the meantime, she hopes to read for a BA degree in law or journalism at UCT next year.

If you are Potter fanatical to the point of hyperventilation, there's not much longer to wait. On the other hand, if the release of a sixth book is news to you, Weinberg has created a website comprehensive and detailed enough to offer you the chance to catch up.

The Pensieve website address is: www.pensieve.net/book6release/index.php?id=main

A Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Sleepover will be held at the MTN Sciencentre on July 15. Call Veronica on 021 529 8179, or email veronica.pink@mtnsciencentre.org.za for more information. - Staff Reporter