Hybrids

According to Wikipedia A hybrids are mythological creatures combining body parts of more than one real species. They can be classified as partly human hybrids (such as mermaids or centaurs), and non-human hybrids combining two or more animal species (such as the griffin). Hybrids are often zoomorphic deities in origin who acquire an anthropomorphic aspect over time.

Now this article is not that much about mermaids or Centaurs, but more about operating systems. This morning (even before we dashed out for our morning walk) I dove down into my underground laboratory for some state of the art gene-splicing.  Crossbreeding operating systems was not an easy task to do but by the time my second cappuchino had been consumed I was ready to storm out of my laboratory yelling ‘ ITS ALIVE ‘ while holding my notebook skyward.  But seriously. Here is what really happened. Yesterday I was complaining on twitter that I missed my Macbook Pro (its still in the shop for repairs) and one of my cool buddies TECHANDLIFE ( www.techandlife.com ) shot me a Tweet with a howto on turning your Ubuntu into an OSX look-and-feel machine using THIS howto. The manual explains how to download the Mac4lin package to provide your Ubuntu install with the needed theme, icons and mouse pointers to give it an "Mac look and feel" But it goes a little further by using packages that are available in Linux like Screenlets and Compiz to turn your machine into something that realy feels like a mac. 

But you know me ! 🙂 Why stop at an imitation if you can go even further. So I have spent the remains of my morning tinkering and tuning with the Screenlet ‘widgets’ and the various compis-fusion settings to go beyond the " design limitations " provided by this manual. So right now I have a machine that could hardly be named "a ubuntu box" any more. Neither would it answer the call if you called it an OSX. Its kind of something in-between , and it runs on my Work-Dell machine (A D820 with a screen res of 1900 by 1200 !). In true form result is a little more then the sum of just its parts. Its a hybrid, no a "sinergy" of the power of an intell based computer (that is designed to run XP) an open source operating system (ubuntu), the OSX look and feel interface and the addition of the standard ‘web technology’ that I use everyday (Twitter, Firefox, Gmail, etc etc). A very nice experiment indeed. 

So if you want to go and try it out : Use the manual , but please : Don’t stop there. Go beyond and build your own little operating environment and become a cross-platform user in the true sense of the word. Who ever said that operating systems needed to differ in look, feel and mode of operation ? Fire up the creative furnice of your imagination and create your own melting pot of 

Related Posts

• No Related Posts

De – Cell – Aration.

Our Cellphones. We carry them with us everywhere. No matter where
people are, what they are doing. In church, on a forest walk, in the
bathtub .. never are they without their little mobile companion that
lets them speak to the world and lets the world stay in touch with
them. This little box with 10 digits gives them the combination to Dial
almost anyone in the world and set up a 2 way full duplex
conversation. When you think of the medium per-é its a pretty crappy
job. The technology of the telephone is over a hundred years old, and
all you end up with is a medium quality conversation (voice only) with
the other person. Sure, sending text messages (with that 10-digit
keyboard) and even shooting a little picture and sending it over the
air .. those are possibilities that have popped up over the years.. But
when you think of it : Cellphone communications are primitive, limited
and (when you have an international posse) very expensive.

So
over the last few weeks I have done a little experiment. I configured
my voicemail to give out the message that people could leave a
voicemail, but would be better off sending me an email that would
arrive on my blackberry instead.  (The cellphone number of my
blackberry is fairly unknown to most people, so I don’t get a lot of
direct calls on there) Next I turned my personal cellphone to "Silent",
plugged it in the charger .. And left it there.

We are now 3
weeks into the experiment and the number of missed calls on my personal
(parked) cellphone have decreased dramatically. The number of emails I
receive on my blackberry, from people who would otherwise just ring my
cell, have increased. Sure there are some messages left on the
voicemail (even the occasional SMS) but after being unable to ring me a
few times people get the general idea they need to send me an Email if
they want to get in touch with me.

The trick here is to reply to
those emails immediately ( Even if its only an ‘OK i got your message’)
so people know they can reach you that way. And by persisting in this
way of handling my personal communications, I’m slowly but sure
shifting my ‘com chatter’ from the analogue to the digital.

The
cool thing is that this behaviour swings both ways. More and more do I
use the Internet to communicate to people who are otherwise not in my
"digital circle". Sure , my podcasting buddies, twitter friends and my
extended "Internet family" have been used to communicating via Email
and other digital means with me. The problem was my "analogue circle",
people who saw me face to face regularly, used to be able to ring me on
my cell for some support, some question or just to chat. People like
ones mom, ones close family.  By persisting in this use of my personal
cellphone they are slowly but surely switching over to the digital
channels.

My Blackberry (bless the device) is doing all it can to
facilitate this. The push email option from my Inbox to my cellphone
makes that Email is now THE fastest way to get in touch with me. Nyana
and I rarely speak on the phone and do 90% of our over the air
communications via the web. I have also installed my twitter client,
turning my twitter feed into a direct medium as well. Direct messages
get pushed to the blackberry and I see entire conversations beginning
to evolve over Twitter. There is of course Googletalk (the blackberry
client) as a direct message channel and I need to get MSN Messenger on
there too. (i would love to have SKYPE for Blackberry, not for voice,
but just to chat to my Skype posse). 

But the one application
that has brought the "analogue circle" closer to my digital realm is ..
Facebook ! Adding close friends and family to Facebook AND installing
the Facebook App on my Blackberry has made a big difference. Wall posts,
comments, direct messages.. They all get pushed to my Blackberry and
give me the option to reply right away. That way we found out that my
sis – in – law was looking for a new home for Kira the cat. I saw the
update, replied and 20 minutes later we had setup an appointment to go
and pick her up .. All from my Blackberry.

So : Who needs a
cellphone anyway. Its embarrassing to use in public, quality is shitty ,
its very very expensive and I don’t like it one little bit. If you
really want to get hold of me .. You know where to go. Now put down the
phone and get behind your computah !

Related Posts

• No Related Posts

Watch out : We are moving.

Well, the new year is nicely in full swing as I come wandering along with my first post of 2009.

To be quite honest, I’m not really sure if you are going to be able to
read this because at this moment, my hosting company responsible for
the up (and down) time of the knightwise.com is really making a mockery.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First of all I would like to start of
by wishing all of you a happy new year and may all that is good and
glorious cross your path in the next 356 days. I am not one to make new
years resolutions, nor am I the kind of person that dares to "predict’
just what the coming year is going to bring. I am a creature that
floats in linear time. Yesterday is merely a set of memories, tomorrow
harbors infinite combinations of possible outcomes and the only
fleeting impression we have of the world around us , is at this very
moment.. The present.

"Maiden white as this screen is the future to all of us. Waiting for the
next character we enter. Paused at the blinking cursor of the now, I
can only read back on what I have written and ponder on what is to come."

The past then : Well , the new year started of very well with my own
Macbook Pro becoming the victim of a deadly cocktail : My own
clumsiness mixed with the inevitable presence of gravity. As i was
recovering from my modest new years celebration I had perched myself
onto our sofa and had the Macbook pro on my lap (closed). Since it was
suffering from battery deprivation syndrome I decided to pick up the
wire of the power supply that was on the floor. Before I knew it, the
tilted surface of my lap became an empty place as my laptop slid off
and fell on the floor. Merely 20 centimeters separated my lap from the
floor, but the Macbook Pro impacted on the tiles with the left lower
corner first, and tipped over to fall flat on its closed display lid
afterwards. The result : No structural damage whatsoever, but
unfortunately both the hard drive and the LCD display suffered damage.
The new year had only started a few hours and my Macbook Pro was ready
for the apple store. Bummer.  Resulting new years resolution ? Hook up
an external USB drive to serve as a Time machine drive. I had backed up
most of the data on the Macbook pro, but had not yet gotten down to
moving the recorded instructional videos i made the day before, to a
safe place. Backup backup backup !

Since the incident I’ve been relying on my Acer aspire One to offer me
its services as my main system. So far i am very pleased. The
combination of my command line experience (using the terminal to run
apps like Alpine for email, Centerim for instant messaging and IRSSI
for IRC) combined with tabs in the terminal window, tabbed browsing in
firefox and multiple virtual desktops, make up for the lack fo screen
size the device offers. I have also noticed that the command line way
of working is much easier when it comes down to working with the
device. Where the small touch pad could appear to be clunky and
awkward, just using the little keyboard and some keyboard shortcuts
helps me to be very productive on the little device. Add an apple might
mouse to the mix (with a small scroll ball and short cable) and you
have quite and interesting device. Not as powerful as my Macbook Pro ,
but surely much more portable. Even watching video’s stored on the SD
card or streaming them from the NAS works like a charm. Ubuntu does run
like a dream on this little machine.

Benesol.be Blows.
However the other thing keeping me awake these days is (as I mentioned
before) my current hosting company. Many of you have reported problems
with the Knightwise.com website over the last few weeks. Failing SQL
database servers, corrupt SQL databases, large unreported downtimes and
so forth. It was edging towards the point where it just was not funny
anymore and I started resenting the whole thing. The comments section
got spammed like you would not believe, things did not work anymore and
stuff like that. I didn’t even want to login to the websites control
panel just because I loathed having to fix yet another problem , or
even worse , finding out that the site was down (again). Yesterday was
the final straw. The SQL database became corrupt at 9 am ( taking the
3000+ posts down) and was restored in the afternoon. When I got home at
night the whole database was empty ! There was NOTHING in it anymore. I
was furious.

So I have taken up an account at Bluehost and am in the process of
(thanks to the help of Codemonkey Rob) moving everything away from my
current hosting company. The hosting formula at Bluehost offer me more
storage capability so I might even be able to do something special. Who
am I kidding " might be able ". For the first time I have the chance to
put ALL of my content on line (all the 38 episodes of the previous
season, the 20 episodes of this season and of course the KWTV
episodes.) So I’m planning and scheming to get everything moved over,
upgraded, cleaned out and in order for the coming year.  Being able to
put all my stuff in one place and use one "master" rss feed to push out
my content has given me a lot more motivation to carry on and produce
more content.

I’ll keep you guyz and girls posted on how it goes, but in the meantime
it might be a little "silent" here at the site. No worries, you can
look me up on facebook or twitter if you need to find me. Now stand
back .. we have a site to move.

Related Posts

• No Related Posts

Meet Major Kira.

Meet the newest addition to the
Knightwise.com family. We adopted a new little kitten called Keira.
Keeping in line with the "Star Trek DS9" naming convention for our
pets. (Our dog is called Neelix) we have converted the name to .. KIRA
( As in "Major Kira ") Somehow her personality matches that of the major
as she is serving in a foreign environment, but still kicks ass.
(Neelix has had a run in with her claws). But the rest of the time she
is super-sweet.

In this picture you see her, clearly assimilated
by the Borg and boasting two bright green eyes. After the shot was
taken she tried to assimilate the camera and has turned the shoebox
into a small borg cube. It took 2 Galaxy class starships and a RactaJino to calm her down. Some cat !

Related Posts

• No Related Posts

Overpowered Laptops and constant connectivity.

Its Sunday afternoon here at the KnightsCastle, and as we mellow down and chill out on the couch, I’ve plopped myself down at the kitchen table with my Macbook Pro. I’m not in my fortress of solitude ( see KW006 ) because that room is currently occupied by Nyana’s baby sister who has come down for a few days to study for her exams. Yep ! We have a guest for the holidays, a lodger, an exchange-student from not so far away. In short : We have company.

As a result I have gladly vacated my office, together with its powerful 24 inch Imac and have gone mobile just using my macbook pro to do the stuff one needs to do.  And to be very honest : I think it works great ! Don’t assume Mac-Fanboy-ism. Just common sense and use of existing technology.

As I’m typing away I’m watching some classic Dr Who ( "The death of the Daleks" ), updating a virtual ubuntu machine, chatting away on Google Talk and visiting several websites (not to mention I’m in the process of downloading an episode of another TV show ) And all of that on this one little machine. This is one of these instances where processor power and the addition of 4 gigs of ram does make a difference. Most laptops sold on the market these days are sort of like this configuration. And looking at the general use they get, they are monstrously overpowered. ( You need a sluggish  overblinged OS like Vista to at least use up some of these superfluous processor cycles). 

And just think about it. Up until a few years ago laptops where "underpowered alternatives" to desktop computers. These days most laptops are equally powerful and per formant. Zdnet even reported that laptop sales are outgrowing desktop sales this year and expect an even larger decrease in desktop sales for the coming year. So the question is : Is the desktop dead ? Is the next generation of the mobile road warrior going to be the "road warrior with the portable super-powered workstation like laptop ? " Is the next pixar movie going to be edited and rendered on a laptop while the owner is having coffee at starbucks ?  Certainly its going to be an interesting year. The ultra portable desktops are gaining in popularity (also concidering their low price point) UMTS coverage and the sales of UMTS modems for laptops is on the rise.

Are we growing towards a world where the average joe has constant connectivity to the internet, carying around a pretty powerful laptop and being able to do .. well, what actually ? Mobile journalism ? Web 2.0 presence ? Is this new evolution, combining connectivity, portability and affordability going to be a pivot point for citizens of the web ? Who knows.

Meanwhile its time to move on with the things I still need to do and enjo some quality laptop-time.

Related Posts

• No Related Posts

My Brother in Dakar

Some people do not dream. Others DO dream. Most of us don’t persue or dreams. We put things off until ‘later’ and nag and complain when we are old. So when your dream is to ride your bike to Dakar .. you can daydream about it until you are blue in the face. OR you can just go and DO IT. And that is what my own brother is going to do. Come Friday this guy is going to join up with a Caravan and drive into the big adventure. You can track the event on line and follow his progress here .So i wish him all the luck and Gods speed on this awesome adventure. Having just watched the entire series of ‘the long way down ‘ I can only imagine what its going to be like. Awesome ! These are journeys that change you forever. Where the destination does not matter, where the treasure lies in the journey that gets you there. These are epic journeys that fill you with sights and impressions so exquisite .. you will be a different and better person when you return. Some people put their dreams off until later. This guy grabs them by the handlebar.

Related Posts

• No Related Posts