Madonna has posted a note to Australian fans explaining why she can’t bring Confessions to Australia:
http://www.madonna.com/news/ (Posted: 13 July 2006)

I guess it is just not gonna to happy. It sadly means that I won’t get to see Madonna live, yet again. While I undersand that her kids have to get back to school, this could all have been solved by starting the tour in Australia. Some other country could have missed out then.

Now I must correct this statement: “I really did hope and expect to come to Australia during the Confessions Tour and asked my managers to try to include some shows there. I have fond memories from previous tours.” The word tours is in plural. Madonna only brought the 1993 Girlie Show tour to Australia. Multiple shows but all from the same tour. …But that little mistake can be fixed by Madonna really easily

Wicked Cool Java does a great job at showcasing Java and many open source Java libraries. There is no need to be affraid when I mention Java libraries. Libraries are quite distinct from Frameworks. Wicked Cool Java is a framework free zone ie no overly complex web frameworks. Only “cool Java” examples are included in the areas of the semantic web, science, maths, graphics, data visualization and multimedia. Wicked Cool Java is well written, includes simple illustrative examples and with just 200 pages totally restores the faith in Java. I’ve had such fun building a Genetic algorithm (JGAP), Neural Network (Joone), Network Visualization (JGraph & JGraphT) and a zoomable GUI (Piccolo).

Cool stuff encountered in the week:

• Prefuse
  A nifty visualization toolkit in Java. Great for diagramming social networks.
• Slope One
  An algorithm for collaborative rating based recommendations. Check out the java and php implementations. The php implementation is hooked up to a mysql database. Looks like it would be easy to implement. I might have a go at implementing a ColdFusion version.
• David Heinemeier Hansson’s RailsConf 2006 keynote
  I could not attend RailsConf but just reading the slides make me see the power of CRUD in a whole new light. Just brilliant!

Why do you need a blog?
Well everybody has a blog.

What will you blog about?
I have no idea.

Who is gonna read your blog?
Does it matter?

Will you have time to blog?
Probably not, but I will try.

Will you mention Madonna in a few posts?
I always mention Madonna.

What software will you use?
WordPress

But you never code in PHP?
If I like software, I use it. Features are more important.

I thought you had purchased Rails hosting?
Yes, I like Rails and Ruby. I also like Java. I like C#. ColdFusion is cool as well. Mmmm, I like programming languages. I think I’ll call the blog Random Syntax.

What will your first post be?
Enough with all the questions. I have a name for my blog. I’m off!