skizz.biz

I’ve been familiarising myself with the JBoss Application Server (an excellent open source product). It has an example application that is a CD collection application. Looking at the list in the sample database I saw Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. What amused me was the ‘Genre’ that they had it under - ‘unclassifiable’. Sounds like my entire CD collection.

Q: Where do you put a Kronos String Quartet CD that contains works by Jimi Hendrix, or an accompaniment to an ensemble of Mongolian Throat Singers?
A: In the ‘Kronos’ section :-)

Always reminds me of something Dad said once - there’s only two kinds of music - Good and Bad.

It’s a beautiful day today, and so I left the sliding door to the backyard open. Just a minute ago a cat peered inquisitively around the corner of the room. Auntie Pam doesn’t have a cat, so this was a surprise to say the least. Unfortunately the cat was a bit scared and made a run for it. Reminds me of Atomic, our cat who is now partying hard at Ben’s parent’s farm :-(

I like to keep track of the articles I have read, and so I thought one of the best ways of doing this might be to put them on my weblog. Most of these come from Arts and Letters Daily or Science and Technology Daily. I will be posting some of the most interesting ones here.

Japan is reinventing superpower—again. Instead of collapsing beneath its widely reported political and economic misfortunes, Japan’s global cultural influence has quietly grown.
Foreign Policy — Japan’s Gross National Cool, By Douglas McGray

I have been getting this weblog up and running on my laptop, and now I’m ready to take the plunge and send it live. Not going to redirect my home page yet. I’ve hacked things a bit since I want to be able to edit it locally and upload when I feel like it.

Just to show that London is not entirely deserted by wildlife, I just saw a fox walking down the street outside the house. Of course we are just around the corner from Mitcham Common, one of the largest green spaces around.

May Day arrives. Here in england there is great fear in the media that the riots of last year may be repeated.

I can’t help think that governments at the moment are walking a very dangerous path. They condemn these people as extremists and terrorists, thinking that their views are as marginal as their actions.

But the desperation that drives the few to violence is widespread. The views that cause small parts of our societies to actions of violence are not uncommon.

I saw a documentary from Pakistan, presented by Imran Khan and highlighting the views of many of his countrymen after the September 11th attacks. While most people are horrified at the terrorism, the attitude to America and the west most extremely espoused by the terrorists is widespread. America and the west is seen as imperialist and exploitative, in bed with exploiters of the world’s poor.

This is not helped by reports about possible changes after Saddam Hussein is overthrown. US oil companies are already investing in the Iraq oil industry and are poised to go in and rebuild the oil fields of Iraq.

How magnanimous of them.