For those who were trying to access the site yesterday evening, you might have noticed that it was, well, a blank white page. My apologies for this. I was attempting to upgrade my Wordpress software to the new version 3.0, but my custom theme didn’t take it too well. Luckily I was able to restore a backup and return to 2.9.2 safely with no data lost.

Such a sudden crash made me re-think the current site design and made me want to change it. It’s been a year under the current design and perhaps a change is appropriate. I’m going to make it my summer project and will work on it gradually. The current version (2.0, as I refer to it) took me about 2 months to put together, but I’m assuming things will go a bit more quickly this time seeing as how I’m more experienced with the software.

More updates to follow.

Update: So Wordpress 3.0 is causing more trouble than I first imagined. I won’t be able to work with the new theme I want to until developers (inevitably) get up to speed. Looks like site makeover won’t happen until the Fall.

During last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama announced a three-year freeze on America’s “non-security discretionary spending” to help bring down the inflated national debt brought about by the country’s response to the financial crisis, 8 years of Bush tax cuts and foreign wars.

This move, similar to most of Obama’s fiscal policies, was met with skepticism because it only amounts to around a fifth of the country’s annual budget. The critics are right that this doesn’t do much in terms of debt reduction. But perhaps the answer is simple and necessary: reduce defense spending. God forbid the question should be posed. After all, it is America’s untouchable.

Recently Obama put forward his budget for the next fiscal year and defense spending weighs in at higher than ever before: $708 billion.

No, you’re eyes are not failing you. Obama is spending more on defense than George Bush; more than Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War. This president was supposed to be the pragmatic president; the one who favours diplomacy over war; multilateralism over going it alone. Those seemed to be the conditions to no longer require a global police force and war machine, right?

Obama has beefed up the war in Afghanistan and is pursuing terrorists in Pakistan more vigorously than ever using drone air strikes. This, from the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Meanwhile, the American national debt is more than 1.3 trillion and unemployment is hovering around 10%; health care reform hasn’t gone through and many believe it will simply fade away.

Wow, what a difference a year makes.

For all those who access my public Facebook music page, you can now do so directly by visiting www.facebook.com/jonahkanter. This change will be reflected throughout the site.

Hiatus is done. Stay tuned for new entries.

New entries over the next 2 weeks are going to be very sparse, if not completely halted, due to it being a very busy time at work. Things should get back to normal after October 5. In the meantime, I will, however, be able to “tweet” on all of my social networks through cell phone access so definitely keep up-to-date with me on that front.

You might notice some aesthetic changes to the site since your last visit. I changed up the fonts and added new glowy icons for my social networks (which took damn near forever to figure out). It feels like June 2009 again.

I’ll be working on more tuneups in the weeks ahead.

And the videos keep coming. Enjoy one of my favourite Matt Good tunes.

Okay, so this one’s a work in progress. It’s a cover of an old Coheed tune from their first album.

Number 2. More to come…

Check out this first video in a series of acoustic songs I’ll be doing. Yes, I’m a YouTube sellout. More to be posted soon so keep checking back. Comment to let me know what you think!