Found this site today. It's the Soca CD Project.
What's it about?
From the site:
"The Soca CD Project was started out of the need for an efficient means of information distribution about the artform. How many calypso and soca songs, artists and albums are out there? Unlimited. How many do you know? Exactly. Which CD has on that song I keep hearing? Exactly. These are some reccuring reasons why The Soca CD Project was started.
Also, we aim to promote the calypso artform and music as an all year round production and full-time profession. We believe that it is time for carnivals & festivals to be associated with calypso music rather than vice versa. "
I love Soca. Its a very upbeat form of music with some great artists. I definitely recommend Destra for starters. Its a very pop type of music which mightn't suit people who prefer Radiohead or more as I call it "guitar music" but I recommend everyone have a listen if they can.
Destra is from Trinidad & Tobago and here comes the weird crossover with my own fascination with all things Indian. One of the languages of T&T is Hindi which was passed down from East Indians who were brought there as indentured labourers by the British when they ruled T&T. Some Soca songs (off the top of my head, Come Beta by Destra and Shurwayne Winchester) feature Hindi in them which is cool imo :o)
Not exactly a computer related post but Soca is a totally overlooked musical form and I recommend it to anyone interested in expanding their musical horizons.
The Irish Computer Society (ICS) has picked security as its theme for its September seminars.
The first part of the programme will be three seminars given by Eamon O' Tuathail who won the Microsoft EMEA Security Championship 2004.
The talks will cover, in chronological order: Threat Modelling, Prevention of Web Application Hacking, and Practical Use of Cryptography. The first two talks are on 8th and 22nd September, and the third talk is on the 6th October.
Contact events at ics.ie to register to attend. Non-ICS members must pay a fee of €10.
I've finally landed a job! In fact I started about a month ago but have not found the time to update my blog. I'm not a java developer now but a consultant with one of the major international consulting companies (try to guess which one, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised :o)). What do I consult on? Anything and everything to do with IT, but mostly IT security in many of its forms, from penetration testing to application testing to system hardening to system design and so on. Since I've started I've done a report on the security of a system for a utilities company, contributed to a best practises document about hardening Websphere and done various other bits and bobs which I'm not going to comment on at the moment (cause they're boring :o)).
What else have I been doing? I've rejoined the Simon Community as a volunteer on their soup run, giving nice soup and sandwiches to the homeless around Dublin. Its an interesting diversion from the rest of my life. Aside from that I'm learning holiday Japanese in preparation for my trip to Japan in September with a few of the lads from college to visit a friend (jesus @ rb) who's working over there. Like any nerd I've always been interested in Japan (manga, nintendo, sony, all that ;o)) so am really looking forward to seeing Japan!
That's pretty much what's happening with me these days. I'll try to post more often on aspects relating to my job or to vent my various crazy opinions on subjects such as the debate on open sourcing Java.
I'm also going to find some way to stop my blog comments being spammed.. or at least check my blog regularly enough so that when they do appear I delete them asap. Grrr.. spammers...