On the edge of the CrackBerry ?
Oct 05
Well, by the looks of it the website is back up and running, so I should be able to post another article. Yesterday and the day before something went wrong over at the funny-farm where Knightwise.com was hosted and apparently the collective SQL Database array decided to shit itself and leave us hanging out to dry for about 2 days straight. I’m still in the process of figuring out what in wankers name went on, but things seem to we working ok.
This weekend, one of the first this year, has been spent mostly at home. As the weather outside decided to lay out a setting that would even make the Duracel Bunny depressed, we cuddled up in ‘the embassy’ (a nice nickname for our home) and have spent the majority of the day in our hobby room upstairs. With Neelix and Nyana sleeping, watching tv and surfing, I have some time to get behind the pc and get some outstanding work done. So far most of my activities have been : Trying to record the next episode of the Knightcast (Trying), Securing one of my remote Linux servers and documenting the whole thing for my school project, cleaning up my massive itunes music collection and listening to some of the "freshly acquired tracks" that I have sorted so elegantly. Its a good thing I have the 24 inch Imac to hide behind otherwise people could quite easily think i’m mad since i’m bopping my head up and down, Senheiser Headphones up and bopping away to the music.
On saturday i sold the last of my G4 macs. The little mac mini I still had ( I had been using it as a Linux server) got adopted for some small ammount of cash by an 11 year old Mac enthusiast who, with this machine, got his first Mac. I installed the machine into perfectiona and bothered to slide a crapload of freeware and open source software on the desktop. This way this little guy won’t be bothering his mom for at least some time to come.
Saturday afternoon my central heating guy came by to install a thermostat downstairs and I had to lend a hand. When he asked me if I had a manual for the boiler in the basement I had to look at him and gently shake my head. His worried expression informed me I did however need one , so Google was my friend. Together we went into the basement, took the Acer laptop with us, checked the model number and found a PDF of the manual on the net. Pretty cool huh 🙂 Halfway in looking over the PDF (we did not of course print it out) the Craftsman and the IT guy were interrupted by the sound of a .. BLACKBERRY ? And what do you know ! Heating-guy pulls a BLACKBERRY from his pocked and quickly replies to an email. I was stoked ! Quickly afterward the whole situation turns into this techtalk babble between geeks. He’s bitching about the buttons on his Pearl being to small, I show him my HTC ! This is my heating guy ! He’s more geeky than me ! (when it comes to blackberry anyway). Love it !
Now I have been playing with the idea of getting me a Blackberry. Since i’m on the move quite a bit, a more permanent means to connecting to the internet is becoming apparent. Up to now freeloading of open Wifi was a pretty cool way to get things done, however more and more people secure their wifi networks these days. The dumbo-dumb days are unfortunately over. So I needed a fallback scenario to get on line when I needed to. There is of course the issue of "what do you go online with : Go for a 3G Usb modem and use the Acer Netbook, or use the smartphone with a GPRS connection ? The former is more powerful then the latter, but the latter is more convenient. Its quicker to whip out your cellphone and check your emails or Twitter, then to boot up a complete netbook. So I had been looking at GPRS contracts, 3G contracts and even Blackberry solutions. At 15 euro’s a month they don’t come cheap and the 100 megabyte data cap is not really smiling in my direction either.. But its worth a look. A Blackberry would form the "instant communication umbilical" between me and my life on the internet. And as much as I look at the possibilities, I also am a little frightened of the whole concept. With Mobistar having a deal on the Blackberry Curve 8320 for a peasy 225 euro’s (if you buy it toghether with a blackberry contract) the Blackberry is within my grasp.. But then what ? Will I become one of those "Crackberry addictees" ? or might it be a disappointing experience ? I do know that , having already done my research on the apps I can run on it, the Blackberry would tie me into my web based life pretty smoothly. Syncing the Google calendar, Getting my Gmail on the BB, Contact sync software for the Mac is also out there.. and the list goes on. Portable SSH client, Googletalk, Irc… Tie that together with the fact that the BB 8320 comes with Wifi, a digital camera and a micro sd card .. this could be leaning towards the perfect device for a sweet price ?
Related Posts
Living in the cloud.
Oct 01
Today, a different commute, this time to the head office of the company in Leuven. I left a little too early (about half an hour) so I have some time to kill before I need to be at my appointment. Dribbling rain and gray clouds have chased away the blue steel skies and amber sunrise as our side of the globe slides into autumns gray cloak. As I drive to work, listening to an older episode of Spacemusic, I feel right at home. And it is about "home" that I reflect today. For many among us "Home" is where we live. Where our house is, where our family is, where we were born. But for me that term is very relative. Since the whole "house debacle" we went through some years ago, the "sophistical context" of home has become relative to us. Home to us is not "our house" or even "our home town" Home, for Nyana and me "Home" is where we live together, no matter where that is, in what city or what house.
And working as an IT consultant has changed the concept of my "digital home" as well. There are people who cling to their "hobby room" , their little home office where they have all their goodies around them and can "compute away in perfect piece". Without direct access to this machine they feel lost and feel that their "creative wings" are clipped, due to the fact that they are not "behind their station". For some , the digital home is their laptop. That specific machine that houses all their programs, their data. A machine they drag around everywhere. For me, my "digital home" has become a very relative term over the last few years. At my parents place I have an XP machine running, with logmein enabled on it. From any computer on the planet with an Internet connection, I can access this machine and use the programs that are on there. And what IS installed on there is very little. 90% of the applications that I use for private use, are web based. So no matter where I am I can access them and feel "right at home". Either its Gmail, Googletalk, Remember the Milk, the Joomla interface of my Blog, the Aussiegeek podcast forum, Twitter.. It doesn’t matter where I am, what operating system I’m using, what computer I’m using.. As long as I have a connection to the net, i’m at home.
Even during lunch breaks at some remote office, where I don’t know anyone and am silently sitting behind some free computer, hooked up to the net.. I’m home. My internet buddies are reachable, I have access to all my files and programs using the remote sessions I can run on my remote XP machine, I have access to several virtual machines running on that phisical box. An SSH session running on the remote XP machine connects to two virtual Linux servers running on that same machine, or to another virtual linux server running at another remote location. So whatever I need to run "locally" I can run on the XP machine using Logmein, Whatever I need to access on the web, I can access using the many web based services I use, Whatever I need to access at home I can access via VPN or SSH.
So no matter where I am, on what computer, using whatever operating system… As long as I am connected to the net, i’m home. So … has the cloud become my casa ?
Related Posts
Dirt Cheap !
Sep 30
Another great weekend has come and gone, almost keyboard-less but still great. Enjoying the last warm rays of sun before autumn glides over this part of the globe, we decided to take a little trip to Aachen for some shopping. While Nyana looked around for shoes (Of all things) I took a little walk past the shopping windows of some of my favorite computer shops. And I was shocked ! Computers these days are dirt cheap ! And I really mean dirt cheap ! A few years ago when the computer prices were a lot higher, I used to hop over to Aachen regularly for parts. They had cheaper shops (Cash and carry shops, just a counter with a lot of boxes behind it) where you could order online and pick up your parts. These shops also had the advantage that the German VAT rates added only 6% to the price , while over here in Belgium we paid 21 percent. So I regularly popped over to “Germania Generosa” to get parts for myself or for friends and family.
It all changed when the whole computer-retail market crashed and Dell started offering computers dirt cheap. The hardware evolution became so rapid that it was no longer interesting to upgrade and the VAT rates in Germany jumped to 16 percent. Soon many of the small retail computer shops went belly up or started selling the same low cost crap that the stores over here offered. Meanwhile I had switched to macs and did not need a lot of pc hardware anymore.
But with the idea of rolling out a central fileserver at home, using linux, I peeked around the pricelists of some of my favorite shops and found their prices to be very cool indeed. A quick calculation estimated the cost of a new pc ( an ATOM 1.6 processor, 2 gigs of ram, 500 gig harddrive, case) at 207 euros ! Dirt cheap ! Since this little machine is going to be our home linux server / mediacenter I’m not sure if this little Intel mainboard with onboard atom processor is going to be powerful enough, but I’ll sure as hell try to score a new box under 300 euro’s !
The only down side to this story is that I’m gonna have to rely on some help from the shopkeepers to select the right hardware : There is no way I can keep up with the hardware developments these days. So if anyone has any good suggestions for a good mainboard / processor / graphics card to do the trick .. let me know !
Links : Datec , HIQ computer.
Related Posts
Dawn
Sep 24
Dawn, without any doubt my most favorite time of the day
, and now, in the twilight of summers demise and winters coming, it is even more so. As I gently slide out the door at 7 in the morning, those few seconds outside capture my senses and leave their frosty footprint to thaw out in my imagination. The world, pregnant with the silence of a sleeping city, stirs gently beneath a steel blue sky resting on the amber fire of the dawning sun. The last clouds slither their way through the eastern sky as stars dwindle out and make room for the light of day. Gentle wisps of frost and fog cover the fields, in wait of Winters first coming. As the crisp morning prickles my nose, the first swirl of fog evaporates from my mouth into nothingness. The car door slams shut and the muffled sounds of the morning routine herald the beginning of another commute to work. 60 minutes of solitude amids the dance of the steel stallions, riding towards the horizon on the blackened asphalt paths. The Satnav comes online, mapping out my position, direction and time and tells me the miles and minutes before I have to enter the working world. My cellphone beeps discreetly as it hands over the hands free control for safe driving. My Ipod gets hooked up and uploads its playlist to the satnav, with lots of new podcasts standing by to be played. The bleu light on the MM50 speakers blinks ready for playback and the car stereo sighs as it will be make obsolete for yet another day.
As I select the podcast or music track I want to listen to the silence of the cabin is filled with familiar voices and revels with entertainment or the opportunity to learn. After the engine revs up to the right temperature the automatic air conditioning kicks in and brings the ambient temperature to 22.5 degrees Celsius. My daily cup of double cappuccino has by now cooled down sufficiently for its first sip.. All in all .. i’m off to work.
As the Satnav pauses the playing podcast for a second or two to inform me that I’m coming up on a speedcamera, the lights of the car turn on automatically and my windshieldwiper, as by magic, takes care of a few stray drops on my windshield. I suppress the urge to say "thank you" to the satnavs ‘C3PO" voice, because that would be a little strange.
But all in all, this IS technology working for "me" right ? From the alarm clock waking me, to the imac booting up automatically, downloading podcasts, syncing an disconnecting the ipod even before I have set foot out of bed. Right up to the moment where park the car at work .. technology is working FOR me .. instead of the other way around. And all of that so I have the time and the luxury of enjoying a beautiful dawn.
Related Posts
The first duty is to the truth.
Sep 19
Most of the time my blog is about fun and tech and gadgets and stuff, and sometimes its about serious things. Like today, Knightwise.Com takes up one of the roles it is also meant to preform : My public Forum. One of the reasons for that is a rumor that is circulated by my former employer about the reason for my departure at my previous company. Because the truth , my honor and my reputation are VERY important to me, Knightwise.com becomes the place where I’ll give you the correct version of the facts. To protect the innocent (and not so innocent) and the general rule ‘never to blog about work’ , names and locations have been left out.
The story.
About nine months ago, I started working for a small consultancy firm in the north of our province, to fill a position in IT Support.The job gave me the opportunity to for fill an ambition of supporting small to medium size businesses when in came to IT. Going down to clients (small businesses) and fixing their IT problems was a wonderful task. Listening to clients, trying to understand what it is they did for a living and how "technology could work for them’ was a very challenging and rewarding job. All my different talents, From tech to sales to listening to people where tapped and I found myself driving happily to work every single day. At the company things also proved very interesting: there where places for my ideas in working with open source software and a month after starting to work on the internal IT infrastructure, I had Linux servers up and running and was promoting and pushing out open source software.
Because I had quite a lot on my tray ( Developing an open source server project for our clients, training trainee’s, doing sales, being the local sys-admin) there was not much room left for marketing. So the growth of the client base was slow, but steady. Our clients where happy with the service we provided and had faith that we could help them out when they had a problem or a question.
All that changed two months ago, On a Friday morning (the last day before my holiday) management informed me that they would be shutting down my department. IT-support for their customers would be curtailed and I was to report to a client in Brussels for a four-month consultancy assignment. Never mind the fact that profile that was required did not meet my technical skills, as long as I just did it, I would be bringing in cash. But filling in a position for which is was not qualified and having to preform a two hour commute EVERY DAY (4 hours in total) was not my idea of a good time. The first loyalty of a person is to the truth : The truth was : I was not qualified for this job, nor would I be able to give the customer ‘value for money’ and do my job right.
During my vacation I had time to ponder over my professional future and decided it was time to move on. I looked around and quickly found a new opportunity, thus upon returning I reported that I would be leaving because I had come to work with small business clients, and that the consultancy gig in Brussels was not something I saw as something I wanted to do. If they where terminating the ‘small business support’ branch, I did not want to be a burden and would look for a professional future elsewhere. The reaction I got was that they were far from pleased but had no other choice then to accept my decision. I gave them my word that I would do my very best right up untill the last day, so I took care of the business as they boss went on holiday, trained my successor, made sure all the systems where running smoothly and so on. In all : I did what I should do : Do ones best and make sure that the clients would not suffer from the fact that I would be leaving.
So on my last day I handed over my keys, patted my little servers and told them to behave and gave my successor a good firm handshake (and my Cellphone) should he ever need anything. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to say goodbye to the customers but .. I signed off with honors.
At least .. that is what I thought. Yesterday I found out that my former employer is telling a different story. According to them I was "Kicked out because I fiddled around with my Timesheet*" (* the sheet where we fill in the hours we work every day). I am a very calm person but boy was I mad ! I’m very disappointed upon hearing this statement that is far from the truth AND is smear on my reputation and good name. For me : Thats important. My reputation , the way people and clients perceive me and my "good professional reputation" are one the fruits of the hard work I put in. I do my job well, put my soul into it and do everything as good as I can. I’m honorable and loyal and am not the scamming slacking kind. My work is "what I do" . How i do my work is "who I am" My professional reputation is a combination of both. And I have a spotless record when it comes to that.
Am i mad , pissed of about the slander ? No not realy. I think its small and immature. BUT my fist duty IS to the truth .. and here you have the whole story.
