DancerUniverse Enters Internet Frontier AND Shizouka, Japan (静岡(日本)) & WorldSkills Competition...something you've never heard of in the States, eh??

I'm having some troubles with my sound card right now, so no music review until that gets resolved. I have some ideas though...a mix of Japan and Vancouver rock, though not literally!

My sound situation? Apparently, machines around me are going petulant for some reason. I wonder if I offended them in some way?

However, a couple of items of interest.

Item one, Katie Farhat of DancerUniverse.com gave me a heads up about her relatively new site dedicated to dance. She saw my 'old now' review of Movmnt magazine and my decrying of good dance websites in that review. :)

In her own words...fair game, Katie!...

"We publish all articles from the print edition of magazine on the website each month and have an archive that dates back to 2002 (maybe 2000?) with full articles online in the (mostly) appropriate "portals".

The website is for everybody who cherishes dance. Danceruniverse.com is basically an information and networking site. We have directories/calendars for industry companies/organizations to put their information in the "right place" as to not interfere with regard to promotion and advertising. We of course, have regular ad serving to pay the bills. My Dance Place on Danceruniverse.com is also the only dance specific news source indexed by Google (that is new and we are really excited about it)......

This is our attempt at creating a REAL community for dance on the web.

Just want to give you a heads up that we are here and that there IS a place for everything dance on the web! (well that is what we are trying to do anyway)."

I took a quick peek and it looks promising. I'll check it out more later but I'd like to hear what other people think, first. Oh, and keep in mind that website is "Dance...R...universe" with an R, not Danceuniverse...type the wrong one and you go to one of those search sites that tries to redirect you to somewhere you likely don't want to go.

Item two is for Japanese fans and curious alike. I found some video footage on a Japanese Government site of the WorldSkills Competition held in Shizuoka, Japan (静岡(日本)) last December 2007.

Pretty cool stuff and this particular video is subtitled--bits of art, fashion, landscaping, and so forth, you name it. Other videos as well..the "Nursing Care Robots" got my attention as well! Not to mention the video on aquariums. And don't miss the one entitled "Communicating Japan's Pop Culture to the World!"

A government that wants to communicate POP culture to the world? Aren't governments usually trying to suppress silly stuff like that? :) Oh wait, maybe that's just neo-conservatives in our government!?

Anyway....
Not something you generally get to see in 10 second sound bites on local TV around here, especially stuff that is world-view oriented...not these days in local or national news, or even US world news which is more concerned about politics at home and body counts abroad!

And this stuff is definitely something that has NOTHING TO DO with the US Presidential Race. HURRAH!

What? Do I sound petulant now? :)

Back to negotiating with petulant machines,
Ta!
CG Anderson
cganders1@yahoo.com