To start of today : A little bit of internet history. …"Linus Benedict Torvalds Oct 5 1991, 8:53 am show options
I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the utilities/library functions for minix. If your efforts are freely distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear from you, so I can add them to the system. I'm using Earl Chews estdio right now (thanks for a nice and working system Earl), and similar works will be very welcome. Your (C)'s will of course be left intact. Drop me a line if you are willing to let me use your code. Linus"… Cool huh 🙂 Talk about modern history. Today Google featured a flashback into their news archives digging up some historic news posts. Like this one from Linus Torvalds announcing the beginning of Linux. Its funny to think that the internet has its own milestones in history (such as these ones) Perhaps someday kids in schools might get a historty assignment to find out who invented peer to peer file sharing and stuff like that. Its a cyber world :). ***

In other new my own podcasting adventures are apparently jinxed. Still no luck this weekend in getting the whole setup working. First I had big recording problems (not being able to record the audio comment and the background tunes and jingles together), then the Pc that had the whole setup installed suffered a main board blowup, NOW the new main board won't accept the Sempron Processor. So its off to the shop tonight to get me a new main board and reinstall the whole shit. Alternatives (like recording it on my new Ibook) have been canceled due to lack of Ibook (still no word from apple, its been 2 weeks). Needless to say I'm going hunka bunka with all this crap. But we will prevail. ***

Had a riot over Madge Weinstein when her comment on Adam Curry's daily source code was a bit over the line. She thought Cancer was something small compared to an itch in the groin. When replying on that comment on the Adams Forum all hell broke lose and I had to seriously defend myself against accusations that I was a 'narrow-minded right wing conservative bush-pusher 'To those who are interested : read the THREAD , listen to the SHOW or visit MADGE's site. ***

In other news the world around me seams to be going crazy as people with promising relationships suddenly split up, and people who have been together for ages suddenly call it quits and walk out the door.
You know these things happen all the time but when it hits so close to home its bone charring. We find ourselves caught between the two parties and have a difficult time choosing between diplomatic neutrality and our own feelings and convictions. When family's you think that will stay together forever suddenly fly apart (and it happens so close to you) its very disturbing. Trying to glue the peaces back together will result in getting cut by the flying shrapnel. However, taking cover is not an option either because everyone around you wants you to pick a side. Its ugly and I’m afraid this turmoil around us will only get worse. Our island of stability is surrounded by conflict and we do not want to pick somebody's side or make a stand. I know it all sounds pretty cryptically but I can't be clear about it all just now. Those who know what’s going on will recognize the situation.To top it all off I got blown of 2 times in a row by a friend of mine with the quasi same excuse for not coming over. I’m seriously disappointed. I don’t know what the hell is going on with the world around me these days but … It never rains…

But to cheer you all up , this cute movie about the cleaning lady we ALL want to have. She's cute she's innocent and she's a bit dangerous when you have a lot of silverware or electronics .. But you want her : BO ! CLICK HERE FOR THE MOVIE.

Just a Tidbit of techtalk today, Cause basically its been all techno-blabb all week long. As said in yesterdays podcast : The Minimac is out. I've found this hilarious review http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/mac-mini.ars/1

with some excellent quotes : " A 1.25 or 1.42 GHz G4 (pathetic 167 MHz FSB included), and, sure it would have been nice to have a G5 inside, but it would be nice to have a PowerBook G5 and a flying car too…." "… in the real world, the Mac mini, with the included software, does everything people need, while not doing things they don't need, like becoming infected with mall-ware…" The funniest thing is that TODAY a company released a special PC for older people called SYMPC http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/new_pcs_for_old_people/ I'm wondering if this is the beginning of a trend. The trend that computers should be made simple enough to USE. So you don't end up spending hours of your time MAINTAINING and DEBUGGING. Going back to the principle that the computer is a TOOL you use, just like a fork or a knife, without the hassle and the crap that comes from owning a computer system these days. In other news my own Ibook has been set back a WEEK ( frustrated moan ) so I’ll have to be patient some more.

 

Syl and Pretorian have been on a sleep-over adventure yesterday, and I must say it's pretty weird having those teenagers around the house. They are very well behaved and we have no trouble with them whatsoever and we have a lot of fun. Personally I just love the constant bitching and bickering Pretorian and Nyana do ALL THE TIME. I'm always waiting for an all out fight between them, its hilarious. Yesterday there mom called and asked what they where doing. Syl's reaction was very typical : " We're at Uncle Joe's, what do you THINK we're doing : We’re on the computer of course ". It made me smile 🙂 Are we an obsessed cyber-household ? yes we are :).

Outside the weather is very pretty these days. Clouds are coming in from the east right now, and they are these big ass cumuli-clouds. They are kind of low in the sky so you can look 'over' them and see how they tower in the sky. Its like looking at a giant mountain flowing by. One can imagine just lying on one of these gigantic slopes.. Skiing down.. Or just sitting in the sun.. Coasting miles above a busy world. The view must be awesome up there. Seeing the slight curve of the horizon slide away into nothingness. Gazing at the other gigantic clouds colliding and flowing by. Just look up into the sky and daydream from time to time. I wish I had more time to do that. More time to dream from time to time.. Or just watch the clouds go by. I think we should all do that some more

Ok , Its been my new years resolution, and so far I’m totally diggin' it. I promised myself to use as much open source software and freeware as i could. And so far that promise has led me to using products like : FreePDF, Firefox, Thunderbird, AVG Antivirus, Freecommander, Deepburner, Openoffice and soon : Firstclass. Its amazing what you can find on the internet if you look for it. Take Firefox for example. I started using it about two months ago, and now i'm SOOOO hooked on the tabbed-enabled-ultrafast-googlesearch-barred superbrowser, i NEVER EVER wanna quit it. Played around with MS office 2003 yesterday and I’m soooo sick of it all that i decided to make the invoices for my company in Open Office this year. Enough MS based crap. Now I know i should not bitch MS around all the time , Its like Swift said : "ANY operating system that we work with as intensively as we do, will give us a hard time". True, but still its nice to know there IS an alternative. Ok , I still use MS a lot (maybe to much) and I still haven't made the big step to Linux as yet. ( using it for ALL my needs) The thing that keeps me on the MS box is that I'm just no good on the Linux Shell. But when i think of it : Who the hell says I can't use Linux from the Guy. Let's say I want to become a Linux DESKTOP user. not yapp around in the shell all night long, BUT actually USE Linux as a desktop alternative. And so far I’ve tried that often and surprisingly it works very well. So why the hell don't I start making' the switch. I'm already gearing op to hop onto OSX (when my Ibook eventually arrives) and i'm not going to go command line on OSx, So perhaps i'll explore Linux as a Desktop system a bit more. Meanwhile I’m getting ready to switch from my exchange mail server to FIRSTCLASS mail and 'Tuuke' was gonna come over and help me out. So I’m pretty exited about that too. The way it looks like right now is that for more and more proprietary MS products, I’m finding better and free alternatives. The list so far ?

Internet explorer Mozilla Firefox.

MS Media Player BSplayer

Outlook Express Thunderbird

MS office OpenOffice

MS Exchange Firstclass

MS Desktop search Google Desktop search

MSN Hotmail Gmail (duh!)

MSN Messenger Jabber/gaim (ok, no webcam-coolness, but it works)

Nero Deepburner

Photoshop The Gimp

Norton Antivirus AVG Antivirus

Adobe PDF writer Free PDF

Winzip Powerarchiver

And it goes ON this way , all these programs have been personally tried , tested and approved. So if you're looking for some MS-alternatives ? Time to make the SWITCH !

Ok , I’m on a computer rant again, but the last couple of weeks have been SOOOO stressful in dealing with this whole PC shit. I'm so fed up having to spend hours and hours in a row just updating, repairing, securing, debugging the whole PC park at home.. I've just about had it. I want to work WITH the damn things, not FOR them. To those of you who are wondering just how many computers i have at home (counting EVERY pc ? ) That would be around 10

1 firewall

1 server

3 laptops (one lame ass 486 laptop)

4 desktops

1 test system

Ow f*** I'm such a geek.