Hmm .. Thursday morning. Quick cappuccino before we are off for a day to Antwerp. As Nyana is getting ready to present her lovely sellf to the people of planet earth, I softly send tapping sounds along the silent kitchen, tapping away on my Ibook. Many of you who may read this might be in the same spot then I am. Willingly or unwillingly you are : The family Geek. The one uncle Paul and cousin Dan turns to when computers go astray. The one people call for advice when they want to buy a new gadget. The one that helps them out when they are in techno trouble but always gets introduced as 'the computer freak' ( MAN I hate it when people do that.) For me its the same thing. From time to time the family rings me up that there is trouble afoot in computer land and if I could please stop by and fix it. This week was no exception. My niece phoned me up to gently declare that the two computers she had where 'not doing anything anymore' and if I could please take a look at them. "If they are dead" she said "just tell me if I have to buy new ones". As noobs can be noobs (and she is a darling noob) they cannot see the difference between hardware and software errors. The fact that she has 2 kids rattling away at the machines is not realy helping to improve the stability of the XP systems they own. I had however reinstalled BOTH machines some 4 months ago and was surprised to hear that they managed to frack up these pretty sturdy installs. But probably clicking YES to every single pop up does that kind of thing to windows.

Now I have the choice. Do I go down and once again reinstall the whole deal or do I do something different. Because quite frankly I know that when you do the "same thing" to the computer you did last time, and THEY do the "same thing" to the computer they did right now, we will be in the SAME PLACE in exactly four months and journey to the dark side is complete (oops , wrong quote).

So i'm going to look into their 'computer behavior'. What do they do on the computer : Surf around, do stuff for school, email, chat .. Stuff like that. And if their computer needs are not eccentric or proprietary oriented (what a word) : I might just hook them up with linux. Grandma Jeanne (the Gran-EEE grandma) has been using Linux on her systems for over 2 years now and is loving it. Perfect stability.. Perfect performance record. Even now, when she is planning to go online, I'm not worried at the slightest. Looking at what the average user does, a Ubuntu distro would be perfect to meet their needs and give them a perfect computer experience.

Because, you have to think of it. We all are techno-geeks right.. We love to embrace people into our world of technology and communications. Get on Skype, Get on Facebook, Come join me on Gmail etc etc .. But being this kind of cyber-preacher does mean you have to support all the stray souls you brought into our brave new www-world. And that means that we need to give them something they can use and that will free us from the bother of having to spend every family visit behind their computer removing spyware.

So I'll keep you posted on my nieces situation and wether or not I can "Ubuntify" yett another one.

There are things you dream of, Things you aspire to own one day. Things that linger behind shop Windows and call out your name when you walk by. Most of these things we pass up on. We look at the price and gently remind ourselves that there are bills to be payed and there is still a little bit of common sence left in that one part of our brain that makes sure the Visa card stays tucked away.

 I have been looking at the 24 inch Imac from the very first day I owned a Mac. To me it was like a computer for giant people, because quite frankly, it looked out of proportion. But still.. The size of the screen is fantastic. A compact yet giant workstation .. something of a paradox.  This week I got lucky cause I managed to sell both my old G4 powerbook AND my 17 inch Intel Imac. The trick for buying new stuff ever so often, is not holding on to the older stuff until it isn't worth anything anymore. So the 17 inch Imac that had been my companion for nearly a year will find a new home this week. The powerbook ( that i aquired of the course of this year true a very nice deal ) is also out the door. If you want a new toy ? You gotta sell and move fast. Both sell offs brought me to the point where I could choose what i wanted next. 

I had looked at the 20 inch Imac model and thought it was really great. But ... there was also the 24 inch model... and I went for that one. What can I say. Its fracking fantastic. I actually have to move my head from right to left when I want to see the total surface of the screen. The only thing I have circumvented is the size of its internal hard drive. The 300 gig drive is nice, but I would like to have that little bit of extra storage space to make sure I can store all my music and movies in the bowels of this "power station". Planning to use it as the central computer of the house it will also take care of the central filestorage.  So i'm really looking forward to finishing up our office upstairs so I can plop this baby down and ..Uzze MA Bigazzz Imac.

Its almost ten o'clock on this lovely summer evening. I sit outside, in the comfortable deckchair that overlooks our garden. The dramatic, almost pathetic screams of one of our neighbors peacocks echoes eerily through the silence of the city. A pale pink moon turns its face towards the setting sun over our ever rotating planet. Light classical music plays from the speakers of my Macbook pro.. its tones reaching no further then their audience of one. The titanium (is it titanium or just aluminum) of the laptop feels cold to the touch. Something I never quite got used to after trading up from the warm plastic of its white predecessor. Stalking me, on the edge the table lies the creature responsible for my bad blogging behavior of late. Kate Mosse's "Sepulchre". Its six hundred pages beckoning me to read them. To be engulfed by the mystery that lies in waiting of the next page turning. Of the scent of paper and ink, the rustling of the pages as they shuffle through the silence. Their story, capturing my imagination and making me pause in this mad world that we live in. Somehow, reading this book ( The Dutch version !) has reminded me of times long past.

Life on the edge of Cyberspace might be wonderful and exiting, but more and more I realize how we need to run and rush to keep up with its ever changing pace. Information, however carefully distilled and managed, still overpowers us with the daily tsunami of progress. Its pace ever faster, steps ever lighter.. Becoming more and more superficial. Closing the laptop lid and turning down the noisy chatter of interaction and interruption.. I listen only to the sounds of the world around me and notice the setting of the sun by the fact it is becoming harder and harder to read due to the fading light. As I look up, failing to pinpoint the crickets location that just disturbed me, I see how the skies pink ribbon of clouds is now but a deep purple velvet cloak. A rich evening gown before the clouds go to sleep. 

Too seldom do we take the time my friends. Hidden away behind our screens, hooked up to the ever faster moving cyberspace around us .. We seldom need to look up the location of the stray cricked.. Google earth might just do it for us. Or perhaps the cry of the lone peacock is washed out by the beeps and bleeps of yet another twitter message. My feline companion feels differently about our high tech-high speed lifestyle. As he returns from another evenings escapades through countless backyards, he pauses on the porch to overlook the evening fall gently. Yawning turns around and goes inside for the night. 

Tempted to join him, I endeavor to continue this little squabble, just to make my point to all of you (who by now, must be thinking I have suffered dementia) The more we slow down in the pace of life the more we sometimes enjoy it. True enough I love living on the cutting edge of technology.. And yet again.. There is no post on Digg that can ever compete with the simple joy of watching the moon rise .. Listening to the lone cricket... Sensing the sounds and smells of the coming night. My mind struggles to put the paradox of all of this into words. Somewhere someone must giggle at the absurdity of it all, perhaps that someone is me.. but .. In a world of progress and communication.. Powerful and potent. It is the absence of it all that empowers us to appreciate the simple things. To find peace and inspiration in the simplest of things. A setting sun .. a lone cricket .. A 600 page book that takes the time to tell us the story .. and that makes us slow down and take the time .. to listen.

The Knightcast : KC0015 "The Social Interactive web" 24-6-08.

In Kc0015 we unlock the Secrets of the Social Web and tap into pure peer power. Find out where to find the answers to your questions and put this powerfull medium to work. Where to find information, how to contribute and how to behave. Its all here .. for just 99.59$ .. oh wait .. thats another show :) Enjoy Kc0015 !

Shownotes for episode KC0015 "The Social Interactive Web"

• Timestamp
• Introduction "why todays topic".
• Part 1 : The social interactive web : How do you get there.
• Music thanx to Rich.
• Part 2 : Dont be a noob, how to behave in the social interactive web.
• Signoff 

	Download the episode by clicking on the Icon.
	Subscribe to the feed : http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburner/knightcast
	Looking for a new sponsor !

There is a point in time where things change, where a balance tips, ever so slightly, from one side to the other. Where a moment in time, even so briefly as a day ago .. seems like an eternity. Where tomorrow becomes today and yesterday becomes a long time ago. Today I feel, is such a day. After toying around with linux for a few years I get the distinct feeling that something has changed. Up until now I have been thinking in terms of " Things I can do with Linux and things I can't do with Linux" Even though I have been tinkering and fiddling with the whole operating system for a few years now, i'm mostly a command line noob skirting the fringes of Linux's true potential. Mildly intimidated by the myriad of commands and switches that lurked beneath the console, I looked for gui alternatives, workarounds and "other operating systems" when it came to solving my problems. There where a lot of things I didn't know about Linux and it felt like I would never be able to learn it all. So i just waddled and waded in the shallow waters of my experience, not daring to peek down the deep end.

But over the last few months that has started to change. Advocating Linux at my new workplace meant putting my money where my mouth is and letting linux do things. I've spent more and more time in the command line. At first copy-pasting manuals from the forums like some scriptkiddy, but gradually (through the process of making the same mistakes 100 times over and following the same manual an equal amount of times) the code mumbo jumbo started to make sense. Where I steered away from a tar.gz file in favor of a .deb installer.. I know ever dare to unzip it and try to do "make install" by myself. Its not that I have gathered a great amount of knowledge overnight, its more that the 'Fear, Uncertainty and doubt" is fading away. Instead of saying " These are the things I can do in Linux, these are the things I can't" I now dare to say 'These are the things I CAN do with Linux.. These are the things I can't do .. yet" 

Somehow that intricate system of commands, folders and pipes hold the "possibility of being mastered" instead of the complexity to scare me away. So I think i'm taking another small step in the world of understanding and using Linux. Sure it's not done all at once .. but somewhere along the way, you tipp the see-saw and the whole thing changes.

I take a look at my computer screen and brush my gaze through the myriad of icons on the desktop. Each one representing a file i'm working on, a piece of music I like to listen to, or a picture I made with my digital camera or downloaded somewhere from the internet. Below my menu bar is filled with countless programs I have downloaded from the Internet or that came with the heavily tweaked Ubuntu distribution I have downloaded onto this little laptop. If I take the time to wonder just how powerful this little machine is, and think of the capabilities it and its software has, that I haven't tapped into.. It all adds up to an astonishing amount. Video editing, Word Processing, Blogging, Programming, Network administration, Audio manipulation and even good old fun and games .. Its all there. A abundant bouquet of possibilities waiting to be tapped into. And all of that .. is free. I payed zero euro's or dollars in software and licensing costs and have been given a system that does all that I want to do and more. So I peer over my laptops screen at the slumbering city outside my window and wonder "Where they are". And with They i mean the open source heroes. The ones that make this miracle possible. This special brand of superheroes who are the real legends behind this whole open source movement. Shy, perhaps a little weird or even a tad nerdy, the wander through the streets of the real world and go hardly unnoticed by the general public. Except for the tux sticker on the back of their car, or the Ubuntu case badge that sticks to the corner of their laptop-lid you would not think that these are members of an exceptional theme of superheroes.

No bat caves, Iron man suits, Wolverine like Claws or spandex suits (at least not that I know of ) are required to join this special brand of supermen who make open source happen every day. They are the secret army that moves the free software movement. No balding overpaid middle aged men, swaggering across  a podium, yelling some kind of mantra as sweat pools underneath their armpits. These are the real heroes. Some of them code, some of them fix bugs, some of them even podcast or publish a magazine. And others help. No flashing business cards with "developer of this and that", no " Space : been there done that" stickers on their windshield.. No amazing piece of software on their repertoire. No .. these heroes just help out the average joe like you and me.

When I got into Linux they told me about " The Community " which I, at first mistakeably dubbed "Nerdville". I was in the misconception that this was just a big bunch of super intelligent nerds who mostly talked among themselves and patted each other on the shoulder, ensuring one another they where very cool. But as I said. I was wrong. " The Community " is not only a powerful race of supermen who make it all happen, It is also built up by those who help those who don't have the hang of it yet. They fight the FUD every day. Help out those who are stuck. Give solutions to those who are without hope and patiently direct some of us to at least try to use the search function of the forums before asking the same question for the gazillionth time. 

To me .. these are my heroes. I"m an open source advocate. Trying to push Linux wherever I can. Saving a lot of money in the process for companies, schools and for the average user. Not to mention I convert the occasional Windows user to see the light. I tend to babble that Linux can do just about anything they want and am right most of the time. But I'm not an advanced Linux user. Sure I know what open source software can DO .. I just don't always know HOW.  This week for example i had suggested to move some of our old servers to Linux so we could use them as VM-ware host systems. An ideal solution for using older hardware to virtualize all the beige boxes we test stuff on at work. Explaining the pro's of the whole "Linux instead of something else" scenario I managed to get my boss pretty enthusiastic for the idea. (although I must say : When it comes to selling .. I have this bridge for sale ...) Wired up about the prospect he said : Ok .. DO IT ! I looked around for the Linux guru that must be standing behind me .. cause he didn't real mean ..ME ? Turns out that he did. So with limited Linux skills I took to the challenge. The old server fought me every step of the way .. but i had powerfull friends in the right places. Its now three days later and everything is working just fine. The chief is happy and I have learned a lot about Linux.

But the real kudo's  go out to the community. Whenever I stumbled or had a question .. they where there. Pretty soon I had found out that Google is not the answer to everything. So I went to the forums. I explained my problems and people helped me out .. just like that.. For Free ! They pointed me in the right direction and took the time and effort to help a noob like me bring Linux to yet another computer.  And if all of that was not enough .. there was Twitter. I asked and I did receive answers from total strangers who took the time to help me out. And when all of that failed and the FUD was ready to send me packing .. The people at IRC pulled me through. Holding my hand step by step. A few hours of their time went up in helping me get through it  all.  Helping this noob get it all done. 

So today I salute my heroes ! These guys at the forums who help us out when we are stuck. The guys making the howto"s, sharing the knowledge they have found. I bow my head in tribute to they guys at IRC ( Thank you Popey of #ubuntu-uk ) for being there for me. These guys are the heroes that saved the day.

When I look at the closed-source world and the prices for support, the openness to share and the ability to grow .. I just know that Linux is going to be very very big. All thanx to the Open Source Superheroes who have helped me see that, with linux AND with the Linux community,  there is nothing we cannot achieve.

I have seen one of these little projectors a while ago on the web. A complete R2D2 media system : Very Cool. But these guys have taken it to the next level and pushed the geek factor up a little. The Little ARtoo unit is rigged to their Nagios Server Monitoring software and "alerts the helpdesk guyz" when something is wrong. Don't mind the poor acting , take a look at how this 3000 dollar gizzmo wakes up the guys in the helpdesk. Now I do wonder : What IT department has 3000 dollars to spend when it comes down to a gadget like this ? And who sold THAT to their IT Manager  ?  " Now Seriously Mr Conichiwa , We need to hook up a mobile R2-Unit to the Nagios System for advanced server monitoring" .. Wait .. to a manager guy thats all technospeak anyway. He might as well approved it right away ! Wait until I catch the boss today ! :)