Way back machine : Post from Feb 15th 2005

Going back four years in time : This is a post from Feb. 15’th 2005.

Been a while since my last post. I have decided to let all the bad
stuff flow away in this post. Don’t feel like getting all wrapped up in
it all over again. Yes , Babylon is still burning but I’m getting a bit
used to the heat of the fire right now. The biggest challenge i have
right now is the demand of my time. I’m swamped with stuff to do and
things to arrange (its almost like the time when we where renovating
our house) but I’m trying to cope with it. I face one of my biggest
challenges everyday : Saying NO to people (messed up big time again
yesterday by letting people take control of my time and just buckling
instead of standing my ground). The only one who is fucked is Me (and
Saskia) whenever my agenda is invaded with requests from others. It’s
hard saying no.. but as it turns out I’m going to have to learn it
someday. I don’t have anything planned yett for tonight (from 5 to 7
pm) so i have decided to take myself out for a cup of coffee (i have
been planning this for three weeks in a row) and by god, I’m going to
do it !. Just me .. and my Ibook (did i mention it arrived ?)

Yep
, its here , from last Thursday i’m a proud mac owner and am enjoying
my little 12" white buddy very much. Even bought myself a new tiny
backpack to fit it all in and i am extremely pleased with my new
outfit. Went to Aachen last week (did a beeline from Antwerp to Aachen
to Hasselt just to be on time to pick it up).


I’ve started to
realize I’m living a whole different life these days. I’m out the door
so much that i hardly get the chance to sit down at my desk and do the
work thats lying around there. I’ve been trying to come up with a ‘
techno survival pack’ that helps mee ‘keep in touch’ with my ‘home
base’. Its quite difficult making your entire techno-surrounding
adaptable to a life on the road. Its more then turning your office into
a ‘mobile office’. I’m trying to turn my ‘life’ into
‘a-life-DOT-mobile’. (I’m techno ranting again.) But think of it as a
cross-platform-opensourced-remotely-connected-portable-lifestyle. Now
THERE is a title for an essay.


Because i am on the road this
much I’m building this ‘mobile lifestyle kit’ in order to be able to
survive while on the road and stay connected and in touch with my life
at home. The way it looks right now it’s pretty useless having all my
stuff stored on my pc at home. So i’ll just have to figure out a way to
"get myself connected". The ‘mobile office’ i’m building is going to be
just that. No matter where i go , I’ve got to have ‘connectivity’ or at
least be able to work. So , First-class , web mail , vpn connections ,
war driving , Gmail , remote file access , remote desktop, blogging etc
etc…. . it is going to have to come together to give me a virtual
connection to my ‘base-life’. Even in the weekends I’m out the door a
lot so its imperative i get this stuff to work. (now here is a
challenge 🙂 )

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Small town meets Cyberspace

One of the great things I had mentioned about Facebook is that it allows me to meet up with old friends. Ever since we "took to the net" most of our friends and contacts have been a mostly English speaking, internationally oriented posse. Spread wide over the big blue ball and located in more timezones then you can shake a stick at. What has been left out of our "social circle’ (because we DO call our ‘internet friends" our primary social circle) are the people from the ‘off line years’.

Old friends, classmates, or in my case fellow vilagers that grew up in the town where I live. Thanx to the critical mass that facebook is acquiring, even those "backwards towns" are finding their way to the net. Now since my Facebook handle is "Knight Wise" and not my "real name" these people don"t often stumble upon my Facebook account. Even if I befriend them they go : Who the Frack is Knight-Wise  ? Only after I shoot them a message or show them some extra pictures to they recognize me. (Then the slew of questions comes on "why everything on my site is in English"  and "why the hell I look like Belgium’s Nr 1 former Porn Producer"  ) You be the judge of that one and compare my profile picture to THIS one.  Its hilarious. But coming to think of it, I am by far the boy I was when I left the town. The "Knightwise" you have all come to know (and hopefully love) is no longer that little quiet guy they used to know back them. I repeatedly had to explain that "yes thats me on the KWTV video’s" and "yes that"s me you hear on the podcast" Hilarious ! 🙂  And the flip side is : When i reply to some of their profiles in Dutch, I freak out all my "English" speaking friends who, in reading the post, suddenly doubt their own ability to read 🙂 

Facebook is (as n00b as it may seem to some ) still a great way for me to meet up with friends long gone and to introduce "them" to "my world". I hace come to see how much I have drifted away from my small town roots and just how big the distance has become between my everyday interactions with my cyber-social-space, and the social circles many of my old school buddies. They mostly still hang out with the same people, tend the same parties, intermarry within the boundaries of the small town. Its like their perception of the world has somehow huddled away inside the boundries of that little town. Not a bad thing per se, don"t get me wrong, but still .. Different to what I have experienced.

The net has enriched my life soo much. It has brought me many good things and is solidly intertwined with my everyday routine. As the social aspect of Twitter, Facebook, The Knightwise.com website, skype and so forth isbeing used more and more.. the blue planet is shrinking fast and the world is only a click away. And still I love the whole "local" aspect of this Facebook momentum because you get to meet old friends in new places.

Just for laughs, Here is a picture of me and my classmates in 1986 at our communion. See if you can spot me in the line. (click on the picture for the larger version)

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Permanent connectivity

The one thing I have been pondering about for quite some time now is  whether or not I am going to get myself one of these "inernet everywhere" modems for my Netbook. "Internet Everywhere" is a umts/3G  product offered by our cellphone carrier mobistar, allowing you to hook  up your laptop to the cellphone grid and have high speed Internet access anywhere. Now these things have been along for quite some time, but  where , up until now, quite unaffordable for the average Joe.

The cool thing about it is of course that you are connected EVERYWHERE.  No matter where you are you have the ability to hook up your laptop / Netbook to the net and get connected. Cool idea ! Ok , you have to boot up your computer to do it (hardly as convenient as the push-email connectivity i get from my blackberry) but the abundance of content I can access with the laptop/Netbook through a somewhat "standard" broadband connection, outweighs the possibilities of my ultra-portable blackberry by far. I see my blackberry as a communication device, where  I see my Netbook as a productivity device. A way to create and consume content and, with this UMTS connection, hook on to the "media rich web". Downside ? The price. OK they are running a promotion right now that  lets you get the modem for about 90 euro’s instead of 180. In order to do
this you’ll have to sign up for a one year subscription. Either you pay  5 euro’s a month and 1 euro per day that you have connected to the net (with a maximum traffic rate of 1 gigabyte a months) OR you pay 30  euro’s a month and get 4 gigabytes (no extra charges). Both of these  formula"s seem wrong somehow. Formula A gives you the ability to
"occasionally" connect (for short bursts) but is too pricy when you do it  everyday. Formula 2 is too pricey when you only use it occasionally.

Personally I don’t really know what to choose. Formula B is too expensive  for me. But when I take formula A and just quickly connect over lunch everyday to pump up my blogpost .. i’ll end up with the same amount. There is pondering to be done over this one.

You can find out more about the product HERE

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Meeting Mattoid.

The world on the internet is a big place, and yet sometimes its also a very small place. Take for example today. Somewhere out in the interwebs somebody was reading along the "feisty for the family" series I had written a few months ago. Via the feedback form I got a little email asking for some help on the whole issue and thanking me for the podcast series.

Hearing stuff from listeners is always great. It puts me in touch with those people out there who listen to the show and enjoy the content I put out. I was more then happy to help and before we knew it emails where flying back and forth with instructions, comments and some honest to god hair-scratching moments where I was honestly a little stumped on how to get this little technical problem i got presented to me, working.

Since we are all empowered with the power of skype, and since I was setting up into the merry afternoon, i decided to suggest a phone call to help this particular user (did i say user ? i meant "listener" ) out with his problem. I’m happy to help and if you respect my timezone (and unlike the people who call me at 6am to ask i’f i’m masturbating) i’m more then happy to chat.

So about a few hours later I got a phonecall from Chris in Australia. We chatted and laughed a bit and I honestly got some very very strange looks from people around me as I was on the phone with the Aussie guy while taking my trash to the local recycling center. We got talking and i learned that Chris drives one of these GIANT trucks in a mine in Australia. And as he hauls this immense machine around (carefull not to crush any Landrovers as he does so) he checks out .. my podcast .

I am a citizen of the interwebs so "distance" is dead to me and the world is my playground .. but still .. it makes you smile to wonder that out there somebody (on the other side of the planet) is chuckling away at my banter while hauling an gigantic amount of ore from one place to the other. It is sometimes mind blowing to think where the bits and bytes that I put on the net end up.. That the person who reads this very article might be in the us, in china, in the Uk. Might be somebody I never met or probably will never meet, yet for who "Knightwise" might be a household name.

I had a great time talking to Chris (who was a little starstruck at first .. imagine that) but we had a hoot talking about the job he does and how they sometimes "accidentally" plow a pickup truck into the ground without even springing a flat tire. And while he does this the Knightcast yaps away in his Cabine  25 feet high above the ground. For me the buzz is likewise. Here I am, little Belgian guy who has never been outside Europe and who hardly knows ANYONE in his own street.. talking gingerly to an Aussy Supertruck driver on the other side of the planet. Just imagine ! ! !  Without the internet that would have never been possible.

Sometimes people say the internet pushes us apart , isolates us, deprives us of human interaction. Well : I say you are wrong. My entire day is filled with twitter tweets keeping me company in the car, emails from all over the world. Voices on my ipod of people i have gotten to know all over the planet. Its amazing ! How else would I ever have mett all these people, how else could I ever have had an insight in the life of a supertruckdriving geek on the other freaking side of the planet ! 🙂

Listening to "A short History of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson has made me appreciat just how massive our planet is (i’m at the chapter about the size and the weight of our planet) and how infinitesimally small our planet is compared to the rest of the galaxy. And here we are on our little blue ball.. most of us only talking to people in our own little country or so .. Others chatting away with ones and zeroes to all the other little microbes on this iny tiny blue ball. The scale of it all boggles the brain .. I smile and finish my coffee , thinking about a giant dumptruck rounding a corner and running over a humvee because the driver was distracted by listening .. to me :p
 

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"How about six Cybermen and 2 Daleks for our wedding ?" : Married to a geek.

Being a geek is not that bad. Its a good thing come to think of it. You’re into tech and gadgets, and you are kind of a Sci Fi Cult fan. Calling people " Nerfherders " and mumbling " Awanawanga* " before closing an Ebay deal .. stuff like that. Normally a geek has a non-geek wife. (well some geeks have imaginary girlfriends or have cybersex
with guys called Dana in Zimbabwe) These non-geek life partners tend to
"tether" the geek to reality. Their tasks consist of putting a spending
cap on the excessive geek budget (nobody needs a full-automatic NERF
gun in EVERY room) and otherwise "grounding" our Geek of the house to
reality. This by giving them ‘the stare’ when they act too nerdy and
sighing incomprehensibly when the geek tries to explain some sci fi like inside joke.  This keeps Geeks from splashing out on fancy toys and totaly floating away from reality. Situations where the geek goes to the coffee shop, orders a ractagino*** and demands to speak to the Klingon High council when they tell him it’s unavailable.. are rare.

I have no such luck. Being a geek is one thing, having a geek WIFE is another. No anti-Starwars anti-geekness factor to hold me down. No, I am left with a lovely wife who has the smitten’s for David Tennant ( dr Who), went in an all out tantrum when I explained to her what ‘regeneration’ meant for a Timelord, and that recently enquired where we could order a full size Dalek to put in our living room. Yes ! I have a geek-wife.
When a fat girl walks down the street, she mumbles ‘ Dey Jabba no Babba*’ in my ear (gently suggesting that this girls hipps might be out of proportion).
When
looking for an inscription for our wedding rings we decided it would be
a good idea to use the inscriptions "one of two" and "two of two" in
our rings, pointing out that our love is like a Borg hive where one
cannot exist without the other.
This girl made me (willingly) sit through 5 straight episodes of Battlestar Galactica because she was instantly in love with the series and wanted to "see just ONE more episode".  This lady hogs her Macbook like its an unborn child, she hungrily eyes my Macbook Pro when i’m not watching. She offered to BUY ME A MACBOOK PRO this year just so she can have mine. This babe walks into the apple stores ahead of me to look around. She browses through DVD’s of sci-fi series and repeatedly changes her wallpaper between David Tennant and Tricia Helfer. 
Once waxing romantically about "how we would do our wedding, if we
could do it all over again" she mentioned it would be cool to be
escorted by six Cybermen and two Daleks when walking into the church. Bridesmaids are overrated, Cybermen and Daleks, THAT"s what she wanted.  Cellphones ? We argue about the best Cellphone OS : Windows Mobile or Java. Movies ? if its sci-fi or a B-movie you need a Mandalorian battle armour**** to get the remote off her. Star trek ? She’s a DS9 fan in heart and kidneys and cannot fathom watching a TOS episode.

This is the girl that said it would be a good idea to have our 24 inch Imac on the kitchen table. Who wonders if we could place the "remade model" of the Millenium Falcon in our living room. This is the girl that thinks Vista is for noobs
and if it ain’t a Mac she"s not going anywhere near it. But what do you
expect ?  She comes from a hard line of early adopting geeks. Dad in
law ? Bought the first Pentium available in Belgium , has about 20
laptops or something. Mom in law ? Programs 4 VCR"s and has only
recently been satisfied with a 180 gig harddrive
recorder. This family toggles remotes and tech like utensils and has
zero fear of new technology. Did I mention her 82 year old GRANDMA is
sporting an asus EEEpc
and a Compaq laptop, both running Linux (she has even been featured in
the Full Circle Magazine twice).  So as you can see : I am a troubled
man 🙂 A request for doing the dishes is mockingly followed up with a Dalek impersonation of "OBEY". The line " Klaatu Berrata Nikto"
means ‘cut it out’ in our house. Whistling the five tones from "Close
encounters" gets you a poke in the ribbs (She hated that movie) A tiny
disruption of our internet
connection leads to social and sensory deprivation. Disconnection from
our wireless network means love-trouble etc …  Needless to say : "  jIH muSHa’ Daj Daq Hegh !! *****"

* Hutteese for : "Let’s make a deal, lets go"
** Hutteese for : "Jabba is not going to go along in this deal"
*** Klingon Coffee.
**** The one Boba Fett wears.

***** I love her to pieces.

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