Its all over the TV these days. Celebrities trying to impress the crowds (and revitalise their dwindling careers) by doing some ballroom dancing. To me this kind of entertainment is enough to wish for some king of sensory failure of my higher brain functions, but luckily i can just zap away when it gets too much. As for my own attempts at dancing .. they have not been very successful so far. I have trodded on the virtual dancefloor and have been spinning my feet in a futile attempt to learn another dance : The Samba.

No of course not the real "dance" but the SAMBA server on Linux. Filesharing under Windows is based upon the SMB protocol, its open source counterpart is the SMB or SAMBA server.  A way to turn a Linux box into a file server where Windows clients can logon to. All pretty great, if you remember our 'Feisty for the Family' series, we managed to get some simple filesharing up and running using a Linux box, webmin and some windows clients. If you use webmin its pretty easy, click to install Samba, Click to install shares, click to add some users and you are basically done. Who said Linux was hard.

So far no problem, unless you try do to things that are a little harder, like turning that Samba box into a Windows Domain Controller. This means that the "linux" box recognizes all the users that log onto the system and gives them the appropriate rights. Instead of having to configure every user manually on the Windows clients, you create them on the Samba PDC (primary domain controller) and let him handle it.

Thats where the problem lies. Trying to let Linux machines do Windows things, works, but the documentation is very very hard to find and damn complicated if you are not an advanced Linux user. I have been wrestling through howto's, fighting with manuals, chatting on IRC channels... and all in all it gets more complicated by the minute. There are a few typical things that still exist in the Linux community and that really need to change : For one : If you ask a question about letting Linux do Windows things, some smart asses still go like " Well don't use Windows then " Thats not the real world now is it. The one and only way to get more Linux out there is to have it exist side by side with Windows. The other pain that is still out there is the "binary" way manuals are written. Sometimes a manual is very nice and easy to follow. Yet sometimes it looks like its been written by some highbrow Linux programmer with much better things to do then to write manuals for us noobs, so he just scrabbles down some commands and some endless code on a strip of paper and tells you to do "man - the command you dont understand because he did not explain it right" whenever you have a problem.

But I have decided not to give up on the whole thing and valiantly continue to stump my toe against the next hurdle, learning more and understanding more about linux in the process. Right up to the point where I CAN ... do the Samba.

Sunday afternoon, Nice and quiet, Upstairs in the central command center... (well, Office .. workplace) Powerbook munching away at some backups, turning them into ZIP files for later storage. And in the background : Music. True, I'm good at multitasking but suck at listening to podcasts and computing at the same time. Guess I'm not a woman. Music of choice ?  Nothing , that is , I let the choices be made by somebody else. Somewhere in my aristocratic status as a cyberlord, I have come across a little butler who queries me what my pleasure is. "What is your Flavor Mylord" I almost hear him whisper. As I blurt out a composer or artist that currently suits my whims, this little minion scours away and brings me his music and that of other artists like him. From my throne I vacantly pear at the old radio set that sits quietly in the corner. ITs power cord disconnected, scavanged to feed the powersupply of some pheripheral. I leer at it and bellow mockingly .. "You, my dear radio, are Dead to me." 

Having worked in radio as a DJ I have witnessed it wither away from the powerful medium it once was to the smoking remains it is to me today. As a DJ in a small radio station I thought I could do my thing, let people hear new music, new types of content. Talk about different things then the omnipresent commercial crap that was so omnipresent. But the station manager handed me a poorly copied hard copy of an excel sheet. Telling me to play 16 records in an hour , of which 4 should be in the current hit parade, 4 should be from the 70's, 4 from the 80's and 4 of the nineties (and four from the plastic box that housed the 'recently fell from the charts' category.) Creativity ? Trying to talk him into doing a show about computers and technology and interviewing people were met with arguments as being "Too High brow". I gave up. Listening to the radio these days is the exact reflection of that argument. Let us take a look at Q-music for example. One of the most popular radio stations in this part of the country. Filled with DJ's who think they are half-gods. These guys must at least once a week get caught at masturbating in front of the mirror. The music they play is an endless repetition of the 20 something commercial records that are brutally forced down every bodies ear canal for weeks and weeks on end. I mean it : Even F** autistic people could be fased out by this amount of repetition. And apparently this station is mainly directed towards goldfish. Since they posses the average memory span of 5 seconds, the radio station assures they remember who they are listening to by constantly jamming out the "Q IS GOOD FOR YOU" Jingles. I mean .. Come on. When I listened 5 seconds ago , it was commercial crap, Now, i'm still listening to commercial crap, I have not switched stations nor committed suicide so its safe to assume that I am aware this is still the same fracking radio station !.

So I tuned out of radio altogether 3 years ago, switching to my own music collection and of course tons of podcasts. Tailoring the content to my interest and weeding out the narcissistic DJ's all together (including Adam Curry). But once in a while my head is on the virge of exploding with yet another info-rich podcast so its time for some music. Itunes playlists ... yeah .. but I know all my content. I would like to listen to some "custum tailored radio" if I may. But without the talk, Without the commercials and introducing me to new artists and content within the boundaries of the genre I get to select. If possible provide me with information about the artists and a direct way to purchase the music online. Could you do that please ? 

The answer ! Yes you can. From the ashes of commercial radio and through the pipes of the internets flows the sweet power of last.fm. The minion I mentioned above is a free service that you can use to listen to music online. High quality music, and its free. Just go to their website, type in the genre or artist of your liking and Last.fm will give you a cristal clear free stream of music filled with related music and more. A great free way to listen to music, a magnificent way to discover new artists and music. No jingles , No Dj's. No being stuck in the same playlists. The phoenix of radio has arrisen for me . .And its called last.fm.

When I take a peek at the receipt of my Ipod Video, I see its almost three years old. When I take a peek at the receipt of my First 3G Ipod i see its over 4 years old. That is pretty long for a portable device considering that none of their predecessors ( A Rio, A creative Zen Jukebox and some others) never made it over the one year mark. And both those Ipods do not lie in the "drawer of obsoleteness" that has become the resting place for some of my gadgets, nor have they been sold online even though they keep their value pretty well. The reason for that is : Both devices are still active today. My first Ipod (bought back in the days BEFORE Podasting) has been going around with me to work for a few years, has been the major source of music throughout our renovations of the house (with all the dust and that) and for the last 2 years, has been in Nyana's possession for daily use in her car. Yet the thing still keeps working.  My Ipod video  ? 3 straight years of daily use (from 2 to 10 hours) have still not worn it down. But still it was time for a change.

One of the possible successors for my Ipod should bring something extra to the table. And I must say I was not tempted by the Iphone for one second. To me the Iphone falls into the category of the Macbook air : Overpriced and Overhyped. What did peek my attention was the Ipod Touch. Wifi on board, Video display and now, with the software upgrade, some cool little applications to come along with it. For its price it looked like pretty good deal.

For once I did not scour the internet for reviews. I heard Kd Murray (The maclabrat at the GGP) talk about it and was convinced. Having had an early model of the Ipod touch in my hands a few months ago, I knew the interface was up to Apple's reputation. Sure I was looking for a replacement for my Ipod video (on which I did not watch a LOT of video) but I did not think it would surprise me like this.

Looking at the amount of content I carry around with me : I decided to go for the 16 gig version. I'm not somebody who carries around their entire music collection. I listen to a lot of podcasts so the content is always 'fresh' and changing every day. No massive music collection, just 3 recent episodes of about 25 podcasts, and I'm settled. But when I got my hands on the device the Wifi functionality proved to be kicker. This is not an MP3 player equipped with a screen. To me the Ipod touch is a wireless tablet that lets me read my email (though Imap !) Surf the web (with a browser and an interface that makes the pocket pc os look like something from the stone age). And in addition it lets me play my podcasts and video's. Oh yeah : There is also a youtube channel that plays content straight from youtube. That was something I found amazing. The combination of the screen and the wifi turns the "core value" of the touch into a tablet pc instead of an MP3 player. The on-screen keyboard might not be "novel writing" material , even writing a quick email is not very obvious, but still : When it comes to Hotspot hunting : It beats the crap out of my (far more expensive) "htc-Windows-mobile" cellphone that is also equipped with wifi.

If the keyword is "letting technology work for you" I would give the Ipod Touch a silver medal for coming in as one of Apple's best Ipod models so far: Who the crap needs GPRS connection using the overpriced Iphone when you can steal wifi with a much easier and cheaper device. The added value of being able to make phonecalls, just does not justify the price for the iphone, where the added value of wifi / email / youtube / safari to a "horizontal ipod video" surely makes the Ipod touch a bargain !