Bits and pieces

Bit of a catch all post this – everything from Linux to Japanese politics 🙂

Early in the week, I was glad to see that Takenaka-san had held his job in Koizumi-san’s cabinet as the Banking Sacrificial Official. This is the guy whose job it is to try to sort out the Japanese banks. You know he’s doing a good job for 2 reasons: banks are slowly admitting to some of the bad loans they have (trillions of yen – no one seems to know exactly how much) and 2) all the banks *hate* him!
Check out stories on Koizumi-san’s re-election within his own party here, and here.

Non-tech freaks miss this bit: This week, I upgraded my windoze box to an Athlon XP2500, and bumped my Linux to XP2000. I need to sort Redhat 9 on there now. I also got some decent sound recording software called Audio Hijack Pro for my Mac for getting sounds out of DVD and so I can get the whole ‘Hichhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ from my tapes into MP3.

I’ve been reading a pretty good concise History of Japan from Tuttle (a very interesting subject), and for some reason I got thinking about another of my pet subjects – Thomas Paine – so I’ve kind of semi-decided to write a much bigger article on him, because there just doesn’t seem to be enough good stuff on the Net. Just thought I’d mention it.

Song of the Day: ‘Guilty’ – John Belushi – “Made in America”
Phrase of he day: The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster – like being smashed in the face by a slice of lemon, wrapped around a gold brick.