aisyalam

Though I didn’t get a chance to do a tech rehearsal, everything is set for tomorrow as far as I can tell, and I'm totally prepared. The Mac is wired in the gallery, I’ve organized my laptop’s desktop, ftp’d all of the files up to the server, printed out the final draft of the essay, & ready to have at it. See http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/4, and let me know what you think. After the lecture tomorrow will have to spend the afternoon prepping Monday’s lecture on Digital Literary Arts. The Malaysian routine is strict, intensive…

The meeting with Dr. Somnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk regarding my interest in cultivating artistic databases was very informative, and should lead to something fruitful. We discussed what I was interested in doing (building databases that combine text, sound, and image to begin with), and he advised using Java instead of mySQL. So, that will be the chore once I complete all of the lectures (1st week of April). Somnuk advised me to go over to Sun’s website and find one of the books that they have certified (if any of you out there also want to recommend one, I’m all ears). I’ll start with something simple and go from there. I was very interested to hear that a couple of his IT students (seniors) have been writing programs that make poems, and hope to meet them and see their work at some point in the near future.

An interesting development that came about today is I’ve been invited to lecture at the International Islamic University Malaysia (http://www.iiu.edu.my/) next week, an offer I have gladly accepted (even though it means that I’ll be giving lectures on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday). The school is on the outskirts of KL and looks like a very interesting place. A woman in the English department there rec’d the press release about tomorrow’s lecture, and hoped I would give a version of it at IIUM before their term ends late next week. Tomorrow’s lecture is the one I will deliver at various throughout the region, apparently beginning next week.