Yesterday and this morning I couldn't get 'recent topics' to show anything at all. Last week or so, the forum stopped updating it's caches for me. It had been doing really well for a few weeks, though slower.
I figured that Matt had decided that the tradeoff was better the way he had it before - less updating but faster. For me, it end up being slower though, because since I can't tell what's been updated I have to hunt around to see if anything's new. I'd rather load one really slow page than four slightly less slow pages.
Oliver just needs a faster server/hosting service. That, or a less taxing/more mature forum platform.