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Ermagerd, I forgot how to Nerd.

I have been pondering a while now on how I was going to write up this blogpost, thinking about the title, the lead-in, the postcard, the body and the takeaway (These are copywriting terms BTW) but in the end I decided to ditch the whole idea and just write this one off the cuff.

Truth is, I’ve been crazy busy lately. Having my own company, giving talks, subcontracting as a freelance Project manager AND moving house has left me with very little time to do anything remotely interesting in the geek world. That in itself is sad, seeing how much fun I had doing stuff like the Knightwise.com podcast and website over the years.

It has been SO busy that I even started sliding into “norm” land. You know, Norms, those folks who watch daytime tv and consume mass media. When instead of browsing through some obscure SubReddit devoted to cyborg bunnies, I was aimlessly scrolling through mainstream crap like 9gag, Facebook and some celebrity’s Instagram feed. What has become of me ? ?

So I gathered up my imaginary friends (Neo from the Matrix, The ghost of Optimus Prime and a couple of dead Jedi masters) to host a virtual intervention. A moment in time where I told myself: Enough is enough. I urgently need to get my geek back! I need to read books which are insanely niche or unknown to the general public. I need to watch Youtube channels instead of Netflix enjoying smart content from brilliant people who live in tiny apartments across the world. I need to listen to ted talks in a way other people listen to pop songs AND I need to ramble my thoughts online, on my personal blog.

Yes! Blog, you know, that thing we thought up back in 2004 where everyone with a keyboard a screen a teakettle and an internet connection could write his or their thoughts online. Over the last years my “blogging” has more and more fallen into the pre-shaped constrictions of copywriting because “it reads well”. If you realy geek down to it, the main purpose of a blog is not only to be read, it is also the fact of writing it. Expressing your thoughts with the world at large without having to make it “commercially viable” because .. its geek .. right ?

Case in point: Couple of weeks ago I managed to clump together a stupid Youtube screencast on how I had installed Ubuntu 18.04 on my XPS 13 and what applications I was using. 48 hours later the silly little video was hitting 20 000 views and brimming with comments. Wow! Where did that come from ? Turns out I still have some Knightwise mojo in me after all. Now we must be careful with this because the lure of fame (if you can call it that) is never far away. Before you know it you start looking for topics that appeal to a greater mass, and in doing so start to “dumb down” your geeky video into some shallow commercial youtube-countdown video that says “Top 5 things to do after installing Ubuntu”. Not my thing, not at all.

Where I a going with this insane ramble is that, as a Geek its OK to hang out at the fringes. Obscure knowledge, technical documents, falling asleep while listening to the sounds of a numbers station you found on Vimeo… the weirder it gets the better I like it. So I will ditch the rules of commercial writing for a while and just shoot straight from the hip and try to share with you what geeky finds I came across while cowering the fringes. Because we do live on the edge of real and cyberspace .. do we not ?

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Back to Basics

Reset button

1 > 0

It’s the title of a very impressive YouTube video made by Gary Vaynerchuk in which he presents you with a verbal weapon of mass destruction against any form of procrastination whatsoever. In short it breaks down to “whatever you do, it’s better then doing nothing;” and “only by doing small things do you get to the big thing.”

It has been kind of my mantra in the last couple of months. In a time of my life where I’m trying to make heads or tails of the many simultaneous “program threads” that I seem to have running in my mind. Running my own company has drastically changed my life over the last two years. It has been both a successful outlet for my creativity (I give talks about IT to entrepreneurs, which are basically stand-up versions of podcasts with slides) and work full-time as a consultant with my main client. Aside from that there are various “side projects” running around with smaller clients that require my attention. The overall result? My creative energy has been scattered across many channels and the knightwise.com website has been pushed to the wayside a little.

But aside from you guys not getting your daily dose of geekery, I have also started to loose touch with the most important part of Knightwise.com: its community. That crazy bunch of geeks across the world that I can call my friends. And for that I am truly truly sorry. Because your friendships and your support are the one thing that make Knightwise.com worth doing. So this week (after some soul searching and a long talk with both kdmurray and our resident photog Konrad) I think it is time to pick up the geek gauntlet and get cracking.

Reset!

Whenever you think you are lost, just backtrack to the last waypoint that looks familiar. It’s a handy trick for not losing your way in the woods or in the 340th level of some Dungeons & Dragons game. I kinda got “lost” as a geek. Not really knowing what to do with my geeky energy any more. The blog has gone by the wayside and so have many of my geeky projects. Instead I have degenerated (yes !) into scrolling Facebook, watching TV shows and scrolling 9gag! My God, I’m almost mainstream!

One of the things that I have been listening to in the car (I do long drives to work again) have been episodes of the Daily Source Code. The ORIGINAL show that got me into podcasting way back in 2004. For those kids who are oblivious: It was a show hosted by former MTV VJ Adam Curry and marks the very beginning of what we call podcasting today. What it perfectly communicates is the raw energy that ensues when you give a geek a mic and let him talk to the world without any rules or regulations.

One of my favorite episodes (and the very first where the name “Knightwise” is mentioned in a podcast) is where Adam pops on a lapel mike and leisurely takes us on a drive to the local mall to have a coffee and check his emails. Back in the day this was called ‘a sound-seeing tour’. Today’s podcasts are mostly scripted, have a steady ‘form factor’ and sound more like satellite radio than satellite radio, but back in those days it was different.

The most important lesson that I learned from re-listening to those old shows is that the most boring, dull and mundane things might be the most fascinating to share. One of the reasons I haven’t blogged for a while is because I thought I had nothing to share. Turns out there are things that i’m working on (as small as they may seem) that might be of some importance to the listeners. Hopping back to 1>0: ANY content is better then NO content at all.

Blog Reset.

So I’m gonna turn back the clock a little to 2004 (and before) and try to share simple geeky things with you that happen in my life. The fact I got a new monitor, a little app I found to listen to audiobooks in the car, a link to a nice Star Trek fan series on YouTube and so forth. Some of it might be utterly uninteresting to you, so you can just skip it. At least its better then total radio silence. But hey… one IS greater then zero.

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Take your Chromebook to work day. : Can you do your job on Chrome ?

Last weekend I bought a Chromebook. A somewhat controversial device that sits between a laptop and a thin client. A laptop that hardly cost me 249 euro’s and is basically an network card with a screen. A device that is almost useless without an internet connection. And I challenged myself : Could I survive on the Chromebook alone… for a week ? Here is my Day to day rapport.

The second day : Out to the races.

Monday morning marked the end of the honeymoon weekend with my Chromebook. Sitting at home on the couch, playing around and getting to know the machine… it was fun ! But now its time for the serious work. Since I was going to survive on the Chromebook alone for a week, this meant that the Chromebook was going to be a major part of my workflow. Aside from being a cross-platform internet blogger-podcaster-superstar I’m also a freelance IT Consultant. So taking along the Chromebook meant that it was going to have to earn its keep.

That and we had several things on the To-Do list that needed to be done : A blogpost for Knightwise.com, Checking emails, Updating some online job-profile sites, a conference call and a visit to a client. Just some of the things we needed to do.

Writing the Blogpost.

The days of Dreamweaver are far behind me. Both blogs I write for are WordPress blogs so I didn’t think the Chromebook was going to give me any trouble connecting to the web interfaces. Before I just “surfed over” I did check out a couple of Chrome Apps/Extentions in the store that were WordPress related but .. to no avail. Most of the apps/extentions (very confusing) were mostly just shortcuts to the WordPress backend page. No offline love there. No matter, I never write my blogposts in WordPress directly anyway. “Writebox for chrome” is a great app that lets you punch out simple text files in a clutter free environment. Available offline I lets me write up a Blogpost that gets synced over to my Google Drive. You can play with the colors (I went for green letters on a black background) and felt like Doogie Houser writing his dairy. To add some comfort I propped up the Chromebook on a notebook riser and plugged in my external Logitech keyboard. Thing works like a charm. Write blogpost, copy over to wordpress, publish. Ding ! Chromebook wins.

Before I left for my client I needed to take a long a couple of multimedia files to show them. How was I going to connect to my NAS ? One of the great things about owning a Synology Nas is that it comes with a pretty powerful web interface. This allowed me to select and download the files I wanted to the Chromebooks (tiny) harddrive. Chromebook Wins.

Arriving at the client I was unsure that I could connect to their wireless guest network which gave me some trouble the last time when hooking up my Macbook Pro. The Chromebook connected ok and it was great to have this simple ‘instant on’ experience while waiting for the meeting to start. Just like whipping out your phone and checking Facebook, you whip out your Chromebook, open it up and start surfing. No boot times .. no restore. However : During the meeting I suddenly noticed that I had forgotten ONE FILE at home on my server. How was I going to get to it ? VPN ? The Chromebook DOES have the option to use VPN but not all protocols are supported. Luckily I was able to pull a copy off the file from Dropbox and all was good. The HDMI connector on the back allowed me to connect to the big TV in the meeting room and the “Subtitle Videoplayer app” was up for the job. The sound was a little tiny .. but my client was impressed with the tricks my little 249 euro machine could do.

When I got back home it was time do do some more work. One of the tasks that needed to be done was to print out our Christmas cards. Printing with the Chromebook is pretty easy for me since I have our home printer setup as a network connected “Cloud printer’ allowing me to print documents from any Chrome browser.
Printing 2 copies of our Christmas card on ONE page proved to be beyond what Google Print (and the Chromebook) can do. Its a functionality that is not supported : Fail for the Chromebook. I had to do this from my Mac.

The rest of the day went off without a hitch.

Doing Emails, Visiting websites, downloading and forwarding attachments and even hosting a Google Hangout was easy. I was getting impressed by the little machine AND the fact that most of my workflows don’t need some expensive device to get stuff done. At 9Pm (!) the little machine beeped to remind me that its battery was running low. I had been working away on it all day long .. and still it had some juice to spare.

Use-Chromebook-for-business

So can you take your Chromebook to work  ? 

The question if the Chromebook is right for you (and suitable for work) is not a matter of what the Chromebook can or can not do. Its a matter of how your workflows are organised. If you can get stuff done in a browser .. there is hardly anything the Chromebook cant pull off (its just a browser in a box) The device is nice, cheap and simple and buying a Chromebook is easy. But tweaking your workflows to be device independent is what makes you a Cross Platform Jedi Master.

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KW Videoblog for 7-6 : Cyberpunk Librarian tells us about cross platform sliding at work.

Together with some great community content from viewer Cyberpunk Librarian who is showing us “How he uses cross platform technology at work” we also have a guesthost for this weeks videoblog.

Shownotes

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KW Videoblog for 6-15. Drunk dialing half your community and a call to arms.

We pick up the weekly video blog tradition at Knightwise.com to give you a peek behind the scenes of whats going down. I talk about the new google hangout client and how I accidently connected 62 ‘wiseguys’ from over the world AND how YOU can contribute to the Knightwise.com community. We also ask you whether or not you want these episodes in the mediafeed or on just on the blog. In short : It’s time for your feedback people.

 

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Time for a reboot.

“A Reboot” The term has been used many times of the last couple of years whenever it was time to “reinvent” an older concept or tv show into a new fresh format. Take “Battlestar Galactica”, “The A-Team”, “Star Trek”. Many of these old but gold cultural icons have been re-invented into a fresh and novel skin pleasing new crowds with old content.

In many ways THIS is a reboot too. A long overdue overhaul of not only the Knightwise.Com website, but also of the whole Knightwise.com idea that is now finally coming together. For those of you who are new I’ll try to shed some light on the history of the website, for those of you who have been around since the dawn of time, its a little bit of a rehash , but here it goes. Many moons ago I started blogging about my everyday life. Back in 2004 that was “the thing to do” and wether you had something interesting to tell or not did not really matter. More and more those everyday stories got permeated with the use of technology and so this everyday “blog” turned into the story of life on the edge of real and cyberspace.  As the audience grew so did the technology and aside from writing up posts everyday, I dove into the adventure of podcasting and later screen casting, bringing all of you the content you’ve come to know and love as the creamy goodness called “Knightwise.com”.

But when comparing the recent material on the website with the original material (that all got migrated over) from 2004 , I started to notice how much content is devoted to technology and “production of sheer content” and how the “backstory” (the “Life” side of the edge of real and cyberspace) has been pushed back. I have evolved from a blogger to a content producer in all those years. A good thing ? Maybe. Not all of you are interested about stories about our hamster, but do perk up when I talk about wiring its little wheel to a usb adapter for hamster powered tweeting. However .. the tech story would not be as interesting if you didn’t know the ‘life’ story behind it .. or would it ?

A major reason for this “shift” can be blamed on social media. I tweet, Facebook and instagram quite a bit, spinning out the yarn that is my everyday life onto the digital frontier, but lately have written almost nothing about it on the blog here.  Now lets face it. You guys are not fans of long articles , its a miracle you’ve gotten this far, but I DO want to reach back to the old roots of Knightwise.com a little in this reboot, giving you some more insights on the ‘real life’ behind cyberspace.

So strap in for the ‘reboot’ of Knightwise.com as both the podcast, the screencast and the blog get ready for season three. And you might want to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed just to say in touch with what is going on.

So whats your take on this story ? You want just the tech stories ? Or does the “life” part we tell make the difference for you ? Give us your comments while we do our reboot.

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Beamdown to Root-Ville.

alden biesenThe one downside in having a 256 megabyte memory-card in ones digital camera, is that it takes some time to fill up. So even at 2 mega-pixel per pop.. One still does get the “ow I forgot I had that picture” syndrome from time to time. Like last years holiday pictures still snuggled up nicely in the forgotten movie-roll on in the kitchen drawer.Holiday pictures are actually a nice analogy when it comes to the picture below. Although the “beam-down to Rootland” only lasted one afternoon… It did feel like a little bit of a holiday. A holiday in my own home town of Rijkhoven. A rustle with the bustle back home at the annual scottish festival on the castle of Alden Biesen. It was a glorious day, the first weekend of September of 2006 was like a warm summer patio where the last warmth of august refused to depart.

And then we went down south. So me and the missy went back down south to have our “wee bit” of annual Scottish atmosphere.  This being the first big bad beam-in since we “kinda secretly” got married we where anxious to get some “shifty” remarks from the townies. So we walked around the castle, not running into anyone we actually knew and just savoring the whole spectacle. But after an hour or two we had probably seen what there was to see and headed back home.But as we walked up the street, we passed one of the local pubs and suddenly heard our names called out. .. Well , not ‘our names’ but something along the line of “ Well well .. the townies !! ‘

Before I go on , let me explain what the big picture is here. I was born in a small town , I was born in this little town, and have moved away to the city of Hasselt two years ago. To some people of “Rural Rijkhoven” Hasselt is to Rijkhoven , what new York is to Alabama. That is in fact the perfect analogy. To anyone who has EVER seen the movie..    I’m no Reese Witherspoone , but I came close , story-line and everything. On with the story.“Well well .. the Townsies” we heard and froze in our tracks. Afraid for some comment where we where to be asked if “Rural Rijkhoven was not to small for our High Hasselt Taste” .. But what came next was a pleasant surprise “ Hey .. Come on .. have a seat ! “ So a few minutes later we where sitting together with some wonderful locals , old friends. Stefan, Gerry , Dirk and his wife .. Peace by peace these people are the strong fragrant colors in the painting of the town itself. People who make up the atmosphere.. Who with their wonderful personality .. make the town into what it still is today. “ We”re goin down to the Castle , Want to come along ? “ they offered us.

Back down. We of course did not say no and found ourselves amid the same surroundings we had left an hour ago .. but now surrounded by the warmth of the people of my home town . We drank, we talked , we laughed , we told tall tales of days gone by and reminisced on “how the town used to be” It was my own personal “sweet home Alabama” and I loved it. It felt like we got hugged by ancient arms, shook of the digital lifestyle and tasted the ale of how things used to be. Perhaps the   small town is no longer what it used to be. A lot of new people have moved in and the warm soul of the little town is getting watered down by the anonymity of the new arrivals. So when the “old ones” , who spiced the salad of the taste how things used to be , now get together .. we remember how great things used to be. It was a picture perfect moment, Nyana, my lovely wife together with my dear old friend Stefan ( Fellow Dj in the DYSC DJ squad for eight years) and the legendary “ Wild Gerry”

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Star Trek Theme Day.

Tatadaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ratatata taaaaaa  !

Just a little bit of pop-cyber-culture for you today with this great mashup of the original Star Trek song and the theme music from the Simpsons. Though the guy looks like he just had brain surgery done and the patients front and rear lobes have been successfully removed, its still a great track to listen to.

 

 

 

 

And speaking of theme music.

If one thing annoyes the hell out of both me and Nyana, then it has to be the theme-song of the new series Star Trek Enterprise. I cannot believe the dumbed down the opening credits into some idiotic theme song that makes it all just a little more hey hey USA. Bless the power of the internet to let the true creative souls stand up and produce their own theme. Using title music of StarGate Atlantis (great music – bad show ) they combine it with shots from Enterprise and Stargate to make a truly great opening trailer. Maybe if Mr Berman (Producer behind Enterprise) would have listened to these guys , Enterprise might still be on the air and he would not have been fired from Paramount (although I think its a GOOD thing). For those Blissfully ignorant : Here is the Original version .

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Things that make you go Wii !

What game are you going to play tomorrow  ?

There is one question that I always ask younger people. Kids who are into games and stuff. Kids who where born after the great eight to sixteen bit revolution of consoles. Kids that don't know what PONG is if it bit them in the behind. You know them. When I talk to these teenagers-blessed-with-technological progress.. who are immersed in some on line game of super strong first person shoot'm up I ask them : What if the graphics in games become photo-realistic tomorrow …  what will the next step be.

Kids these days.

 As they wipe the perspiration from their forehead they look at me puzzled. Like I just dropped from the sky and have presented them with an electronic aigo version of Santa Clause and if they would please ride this thing across the north pole. " What do you mean .. well .. erm.." they stumble. As I try to clarify myself I mumble " What if the graphics in games are as real as they can be, where we come to the point where there are no more progressions in frame rate, in resolution.. When your gaming environment around you is as realistic as looking in the mirror" .. more blank stares and then a pointblank answer. " We"ll .. we"re done then .. aren"t we".

 Asking the same question to older (when you are over 25 on the edge of real and cyberspace, you're ready for the cyber-old-farts-home) they give you a different answer. As they start to memorize about their first game console (an Atari) and the games they played on it. As they talk about chunky sprites that somehow had to resemble ET, Some brown flying blob that was a desert falcon .. And the anger of their mothers as their kids kept hogging the TV with the old game console. Grandpa Simpson is bleak by comparison to this useless banter so I once again post the same question. But this time the answer comes direct and clear : "We'll then we have to work on the content".

Polygon shaped boobs.

And its true. Most games these days (Certainly the ones on the major game consoles) are either shoot"m ups, race games, toombraider-esque games or on p's Massive on line games and varieties of those mentioned before. Once you know how to play one game . you've just about seen them all. Ok , the characters are more defined , their boobs containing more roundness and less polygons, the shading is better, the lighting is better, more detail etc. But nothing really changes.  So when E3 came along (the annual game festival where  games and console makers show their best) I was not even paying attention. Until I saw this video below.The Nintendo WII was far from the great expectation. It was the underdog.

WII  

And then those funky Japanese inventors came up with a revolutionary controller. It looked like a slimmed down version of a tv-remote. "How the hell am I gonna play with something like THAT" I wondered. But while companies like Sony and Microsoft made their game controllers even more ergonomically , letting them look like a sex toy that has been forgotten on the living room table .. Nintendo did something different.  I do not know what awed me the most. The revolutionary design of the thing OR what happened if you moved it around ! (see video for details) But WHEN I saw it in action I realized that it offered an enormous creative opportunity for game developers. And THEN I saw what they had done with it so far ! Amazing . The console is BACK .. not only in the center of the living room .. but in the center of the family. The Nintendo approach is turning the WII into the heart of Sunday afternoon entertainment for everyone. With the right games that don"t include shooting people or flip flopping a half naked girl over Popsicle stand, the WII offers something for everyone. An innovative approach , a new vision in game entertainment .. and … well.. See for yourself ! 

 

 

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