Tags, gargleblaster

Finally I seem to be able to keep a promise.
After several failed promises to keep gargleblaster.org updated, this time i seem to manage to write a blogpost now and then, and regularly look after the site.

I also edited around 80 posts to give them tags, to get a nicely filled tagcloud. But… it’s a boring job and I realized there are more posts on gargleblaster as I thought :).

Will continue to do it however in the next days. Now I will jam mouse in the lower left corner of my screen (sleep display) and continue reading the last book of Naomi Klein. Yh that’s right! reading a book!

Thoughts on the take over of MySQL AB by Sun.

The buzz in the blogosphere yesterday could hardly be missed. MySQL AB and Sun Microsystems announced they reached a final agreement for the acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems. First of all, I think that it is very important that there is a difference between MySQL AB (the company) and MySQL the open source Database engine.
MySQL doesn’t “own” MySQL. Mysql is an open source project, so the source is free to modify and use etc according to the GPL license.

The people of MySQL AB seem to be very happy with the take-over. I can imagine that. It will give for sure some financial ease of mind for the company and his employees and access to a large source of knowledge and resources. Somehow many people, including myself, have a suspicion against “the big corporations”. With the exception of Apple computers ofc :).
Don’t forget however that Sun has a decent and reliable history with Open Source. Open Office and making Java open source to name 2 big achievements of Sun.
I use MySQL now for close to 9 years. I have learned to love this database engine, discovering the more advanced features of SQL step by step. I only have used MySQL directly or interfaced by PHP.
I can only express my hope that Sun will support the continuous development of the MySQL API as used by the MySQLi or mysqlnd extensions of PHP.
Some analysts suspect that Sun is busy to build his “own” alternative to the classic LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. The Sun-Stack would be SAMJ (Solaris (opensourced!), Apache, MySQL, Java).
People should have the freedom to use and code the language they prefer.
I really hope it won’t be soon that if you want to have the full support for the capabilities of MySQL, you have to use a Java interface to interact with the database engine from a web-environment.

The best RSS reader for OS X…

Has become a free download o0?
I have bought this application 3 years ago or something, because it simply rocked. Apparently the recent additions of Leopard concerning RSS feeds, have made newsgator to release Newsnetwire for free and keep some market-share.

It would been even better if it would be made an open source project…but who knows :)

Anyway…it can be downloaded here

Top 2000? Here is my top 10 of best songs.

The last week on Dutch radio the top2000 of popsongs has been broadcasted. On 1 was Bohemian rhapsody by Queen, and the whole list contained a lot of good music. But…also a lot of rubbish.
Listening to the countdown, made me wonder what my favourite songs are…and why. I am very well aware top whatevers are changing from day to day according to your mood etc…but here is a shot anyway:

1. Dancing in the moonlight - Smashing Pumpkins
Original song of Thin Lizzy, who released it on the album Bad Reputation in 1976. The song was released as single in 1977 and reached the 14th position in the UK. The Smashing Pumpkins recorded a cover and released on a Disarm cd single.
From the 1st time I heard that song, I was absolutely in love with it.

2. Her ghost in the fog - Cradle of Filth
Released in 2000 on their Midian album, this song has everything what makes me love Cradle of Filth. Listening to this songs always takes me away to dark woods, mysteries and fairy tales. And…many “music-lovers” won’t agree this with me…but I really, really like the Cradle of Filth music…the drums, the guitars…the melodies and harmonies of the women voices…and the raw energy the songs have.

3. Velouria - The Pixies
Released on the Bosanova Album.

4. Dead Embryonic Cells - Sepultura
From the “Arise” album, in my opinion one of the best (trash)metal records ever.

5. One - Metallica
From the legendary album “…And Justice for all”.
I always preferred however the radio edit, with the samples from the movie in it.

6. Hurt - Johnny Cash
As how much I like to listen to Nine Inch Nails, the original version of this song doesn’t even come close to the version Johnny Cash recorded.

7. The Mercy Seat (acoustic version!) - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Released on the b-sides and rarities…absolutely brilliant version.

8. The Partisan - Leonard Cohen

9. The needle and the damage done - Neil Young
Not the harvest version…but the version as recorded on: “Live in Massey Hall - 1971″.

10. Nothing really ends - dEUS

Pfew…this was hard :) only 10! I have at this moment 9845 songs in my iTunes library…and i love almost each and everyone of those songs…But the above are really special in my opinion.
However…lots are missing…no Depeche mode, No Radiohead…No Pearl Jam, no Nirvana…no Kyuss…no White stripes….sigh…

Work in Progress

Give more Xmas-holidays :p
I finally was bored enough to create my own wordpress theme from scratch.
I have tried to keep it as minimalistic as possible, and I am pretty satisfied with the result.
The layout is the *yawn* 3 column one, but hey… they are popular for a reason. The theme is not tested in any other browser as Safari (10.5)…but to be honest…I don’t give a #insert nasty word#.

Todo is creating and adding some graphics…but I discovered I don’t have any image editor installed on my iMac…>.<

The next weeks I will be finishing off, but I like it already…