In the context of the Bozar Festival India, my father-in-law (Philippe Falisse) will give a dhrupad concert with the Gundecha Brothers on Wednesday 17th of January 2007 at 20:00. The concert will take place at the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium ( access plan). :-)

Some interesting links for today (didn’t had time to read everything, that’s why I’m storing them here): Java boutique has a in-depth review of NetBeans 5.5 Java Practises has a small tip about implementing toString in Java A new (very important ;-) ) feature of Java 6: the splash-screen functionality. Another interesting thing is that Java DB (Derby) is integrated by default. About databases, David Coldrick’s Weblog hosts an interesting discussion about H2 -vs- Derby databases The Java Plug-in Framework Project Besides Design Patterns, OpenSubsystems released the Open Patterns, a repository of common application functionality patterns … Some links about companies: ...

While everyone (interested in this topic) is looking at internet applications, using and abusing of buzzwords like " Web 2.0", " mashup" or " Ajax", I think the next wave of cool software applications will be related to personal, local storage and organisation of documents. Of course, you have > 2Gb of storage in most free e-mail services. Of course, you have broadband access at home, at work and nearly everywhere you go. Of course, you can watch movies on the web. Of course, you can share photos on the web. Of course, you can download songs and books on the web. Etc. ...

Here are some news about the Jadoo blog engine … I updated the CSS file (2ko) and corrected some mistakes; now, all HTML/CSS tags are correctly used. I updated the main script in order to link to Technocrati for all tags I also updated the footer (= the side bar in the published page); it now includes the Technocrati search box I added the blogroll. It’s not showing links in random order like many other blog engines. But do we need that feature? Some tasks still need to be done: ...

It’s a bit late to wish you a merry Christmas (if you celebrate this event). But it’s still time to wish you a happy new year 2007. :-) And now, a little video-clip/remake from Boymongoose (some background about India needed). youtube owK5tHjL0aE You like Indian self-satire? Here is Welcome to the Laddu shop (after 50 Cent “Candy shop”) and Curry n Spice girl (after Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”) (a lot of background about India needed). OK now, back to real work …

While reading the GnomeFr planet, I found this nice article to save documents on my university backup system (written by Steve Frécinaux).

This evening, we attended a wonderful concert of Shahid Parvez at Bozar. He plays the sitar and was accompanied by tabla and tanpura. As usual, it’s better to hear a live concert rather than a CD. I was also delighted by the games played between the tabla player and Shahid Parvez :-D No photos since I didn’t dare to disturb the performance.

The whole day, I was busy working with DeCyder, a software to analyse spots of proteins in 2D gels. I hope I won’t dream of small red/yellow/green dots tonight: The software use a 3D representation of the spot. If we change this view too fast (either by moving it or by quickly browsing through spots), the graphic diplay freezes and we fall back to an ugly VGA mode (screenshot below). Since the morning, the computer crashed 7 times! I reduced the screen resolution to 1024x768pixels in 24bits colours and it seems to work correctly now. :-) ...

On Saturday, we participated in the ISAL Christmas party. I did a 15 minutes presentation on Belgium for our Indian friends, Shreyas did a mime game (with some very funny participations) and Alam came dressed up like Santa Claus :-) Some photos are available on the ISAL photo album.

This evening, we went to see Mallika Sarabhai dancing Kuchipudi at Bozar. Kuchipudi is a dance from South India. It looks a little bit like Bharatanatyam (with my non-specialists eyes) but with more contact with the audience (or is it the way it was performed by these specific dancers?). I think that if you want to see only one dance from India, you have to see Bharata Natyam. If you want a gentle introduction to Indian dance, Kuchipudi can be more accessible.