Yes yes , its the time of the year(s) again that the Knights in the Knightcastle get a little uneasy with the colors they painted on the walls , get bored with the arrangement of furniture and get overdosed by all the 'home improvement' programs on the tv. We dash out to the DIY store and go looking for paint. Now I must say I'm blessed with the fact that Nyana has excellent taste in colors. She picks out two shades of gray (that to me are not even different colors) and says.. 'This will go good together. ' As we left the store I remember grumbling and fretting that we did not go for some cappuccino like shades, and turning the room into one big Starbucks. But when the paint went on .. the result was amazing.The rooms we did so far are the bedroom and the office / small living room upstairs. Now in our bedroom we obviously sleep. (get your brains out of the gutter). But the office / living room is a different matter. This room used to be my office. But because I had room to spare we shoved in an extra couch and a tv so Nyana could hang out while I was behind my beloved workspace. It worked out so well that we spend the most part of the winter upstairs. Nice and cocoon-y. The wife in front of the tube, the resident geek on you-tube. But the mutter was in the clutter. Soon enough Mr geek thought it was needed to overstock the room with computer books, extra systems, a sound-mixer, microphone, main boards and cables lying around etc. To be honest , it sometimes looked like the lovechild of an overturned dumpster truck and a main board factory. This was neither relaxing nor efficient. Thus : The new office. Or could I say : The office 2.0.
We started out with a ruthless philosophy. This place had to be clutter free. Asides from the absolute essentials this room would have to breath out calm and efficient vibes. In order to achieve a TV-room / loungeroom / workspace we made sure to check some markers.
Relaxing colors. Shades of gray replaced the beige and blue on the walls. The colors of the room should reflect calm-and-easy and by far attract any attention to themselves.
Furniture : As little as possible. My big office (the biggest one Ikea had) was sized down to its smallest by removing some extentions. Every bit of furniture is color coordinated .. well thats more something of a coincidence since we buy everything at Ikea and it matches nicely.
Cables : The lovely misses had an absolute zero tolerance policy for ANY cabling that was exposed to the naked eye. Also : NONE of the cables , power plugs or power supply's was allowed to hit the floor. A downpour of black power cables in front of an exposed office ? No way. Don't get me wrong. The girl is as geeky as can be .. But the place should not look like a fishing trawlers , nets included.
No clutter : Books, ornaments and what-have-you's that where otherwise crammed in our cabinets where removed. Just a little plant here, and a model of my Enterprise NCC 1701 there. (and some nice starship diagrams nicely framed on the wall).Division bell ! : But probably the most important redesign was dividing the OFFICE (where you work) from the Lab / Studio / library part of a geeks room. Now 10 years of research have given us the conclusion that you cannot keep the geek out of the living room. And you cannot keep the clutter out of the geeks setup. So unless you want a TV room / IT-ground-zero.. You have to seperate the working geek , from the tinkering geek. Our conclusion ? Move the books / spare parts / lab equiptment of the resident geek to the hobby room upstairs. This meant that podcasting- studio setup went upstairs and is now safely out of direct sight.
The results.
What can I say : The results are great. Allthough reluctant to give up my 'matrix style' surroundings of screens and keyboards piled up together. i'm honestly impressed by this new approach. My main desk now consists of my Macbook (docked) and one 19'' widescreen display. When in need of dual screen work , i just flip it open and am able to use my isight camera and more. Instead of using speakers and amplifiers I just routed the audio to either my headphones or the internal speakers of the monitor and thus having less clutter around. Next to this setup resides my Ubuntu machine hooked up to another 19” display. Because the resolution matches up to the resolutions of two other systems I have around the house (my TV computer and my test system) it can run remote desktop sessions to these machines full screen. Its like having them around.. Without having them around. Next , instead of using yet another computer to run Windows , i've opted to use virtual machine to emulate and run any other system I required. This all works fine on my AMD XP 3200 machine that has enough ram to run a nice little Windows XP either in Vmware Player or Paralells. So you see : More machines at my fingertips without taking up space.
And then there is the matter of the home server / media TV machine.
Instead of having a big ass tv in our little office/loungeroom we use a mac mini with a 19” screen and a TV tunercard. This whole setup (along with the main router) is compactly crammed into the little TV cabinet that we use. Having all that gear installed in that little space and just one cable leaving the setup makes up for serenity and no clutter whatsoever. To be on the safe side I did mount a smokedetector INSIDE the cabinet. Since the server keeps running at night, I want to be sure we are alerted should anything go wrong. This is a tip I give to all of you geeks who have machines running at night. Smokedetectors are cheap so , mount them over your “beyond midnight” machines.Epilogue.Allthough I did not expect it ... the results are quite fab. Keeping the clutter out of the room has given us a very relaxing inviting room to be in. The screens are still the main focalpoints of attention, but due to the lack of crap around them, it works out just great. My main desk is this minimalistic fortress occupied only by 2 screens and two sets of keyboards. I thought this was going to bugg me. No extra stuff to twiddle and fiddle with seamed cumbersome. No pheripherals piled up around the setup was something to get used to . But imagine my surprise when I actually found out that I was much more focussed on my systems and could work in a concentraded manner. Also the lack of phisical devices makes one use the virtual possibilities of ones computer more. Less craptime = more screentime. The wife is very happy with all this having a couch strategicly posted in the middle of the room , facing the tv. I can look over her shoulder and peer along to the mainstream mayhem withouth having to leave my chair. All in all .. its a match in heaven.
I hate TV, any form of mainstream digital entertainment that involves none time-shifting entertainment and is pre-chewed for the masses is sure to send me reeling for my laptop or otherwise nukes me to level 5 of the coma scale. Especially reality tv is extremely unnerving. But since there is only room for either my laptop OR my tv dinner , sometimes I get caught in the crossfire and have to watch an entire episode of this crap while having lunch. So enter "America's Next Top Model" where 12 arrogant good-for-nothings get selected to walk and jump around for none other then catwalk washup number one : Tira Banks. With molecular precision we are introduced to the world of the beginning model and the challenges it brings. Like for example : Living together. The daunting task of having to share a luxury apartment, (jacuzzi and all included) with other people is quite hard (so we learn)... Oh my .. model X touched the mascara of model Y, Model Z said that model A was fat , Model A said that model Z said that model U said model X doesn't know her alphabet. In short : There is more gossip going on then in an old Basic program.
But there are more challenges to come. Riding the bus to get to a photoshoot is extremely difficult. In includes reading timetables and .. god forbid : Watching the clock. That means time lost commuting and not shopping. And of course : The hardest challenge for any model : Simply showing up on time for work ... Oh my .. The horror ! And once they get there they have to " Work it " (that means: put one foot in front of the other when traversing the catwalk .. veeeerrry hard !I) Or they get other taks like ' Show us your Bonestructure'' and .. " More P-zazz honey' . Meanwhile this infamous cesspool of entertainment revolves around Tyra Banks fading career like spacedust encircles a black hole. Incredible ! I swear some of these girls are so shallow an fly could not even drown in the pools of their minds. And all along this stupid contest they get voted of one by one ( I personally think that the losers should work in a refugee camp in Soudan for two weeks straight , cleaning toilets ) because they constantly tell us (along with miss Banks) its "'soooo haaaard" being a model. If it indeed is , you would be cut out for a job at the camp in Soudan.. Here is your plane ticket .. But the worst is ... The voting of ceremony. The girls that stay have to walk up to Tira where she hands them some kind of token or picture ( to get the message across the dirty blond hair into the hollow head) and Tira sais : "Congratulations, you're still in the running to becoming america's next top model" .. Now that would not annoy me if she just said it ONCE .. NOOOOO ... The malicious model has to say it EVERY time to EVERY girl. Either SHE is autistic or I'm having problems with my short term memory. I think its the latter. People spontaneously have a brain hemorrhage after watching 20 minutes of this .. disease of a TV show.
But .. here comes the internet to save us all. With graphic cards getting stronger and stronger, CGI machines going into near infinite resolutions , the days of the model are OVER . Instead of having to work with the likes of Tira and here America's Top Model goons with all their flimsyness : Break out the Digital Model. She can BE however you want , WEAR whatever you want .. Work IT like YOU want it to. And perhaps she is shallow .. but thats OK. as long as she fits on an DVD. Look HERE for the fullsize picture and astound yoursellf that THIS IS a computer generated image. Congratulations.. you are still in the running to become America's next Digital model.
Found this great link with the Top Ten Ubuntu hacks and applications. For you fans out there its a must have when you want to move that linux desktop of yours to the next level. Including XGL the fancy shmancy Desktop style.
Carpe Diem. Aah , weekend comes and an entire sunday lies waiting for the plucking. Carpe Diem ! I shout as the half cooked idea for a day to the sea side pops up in my brain. I awaken my significant other and convince her to join me in an exiting day full of sea, sand and relaxation. Some 18 hours later we come back home.. The brisk sea-breeze still in our hair, the views and the food not completely digested, but with an aching back and but after spending almost 6 hours in the car traveling a pathetic distance of some 400 kilometers.So lend me your translucent screen as I give you some tips and pointers how to tune technology into your life to avoid (and if push comes to shove , survive) “Coast Traumatic Stress Syndrome.”
Tip nr One : Get your gear. - Before you head out : Get your geeky gear together. There is nothing more annoying than having the family geek turn around the family car to pick up some more geek stuff. My advice is , better to take more then to take less. The times i’ve been caught with my digital pants down have been too many to count. You forget your camera : Something cool to film will appear. You forget your MP3 recorder : you can bet you’ll run into some marching band worth while to record. Forget your Ipod : You can bet you will run into a situation you would have wished you brought all those nice episodes of “sponge-bob square-pants” to watch. When my wife started saying : You should have brought “ Insert Geek tool here ” I thought ... what the heck . So on excursions take your digital survival kit !
Tip nr Two : Entertainment. - Listening to your Ipod with headphones on is not very social. But using speakers in the car beats listening to the radio. It brings atmosphere, lets you set the mood and turn a long drive into a romantic / fun / trancy / adventurous experience. NEVER trust mainstream radio to bring quality content : Always carry your own. - The long drive back is the hardest part : Avoid falling asleep by talking to eachother and if you are alone or your passenger has blissfully dozed off into lala-land : Listen to some podcasts. Hearing people talk and paying attention to what they are saying keeps you awake more easily (although there are some podcasts out there that might put you straight into a coma) - If you have kids in the car or your passenger is bored : Bring your laptop. Its great to keep people entertained : Play games in the car (not the driver off course) or watch a DVD. Beware that as a driver you don’t peek over the passengers screen while you are driving. Better to let them wear headphones. - Have a car charger for your laptop / ipod. Never trust entirely on their batteries. Avoid Battery deprivation syndrome to ruin your digital day.
Tip Three - Know your GPS. The most important part is using your GPS when you have one. You should think of it as an aircraft. The navigator doesn’t suddenly say : “Where are we going to to today “ after the plane has been airborne for an hour. Most people use their gps to give them directions when they are lost. I use it to PLAN my trip. Using technology while driving can be dangerous. So be sure you know your GPS and have tuned it right. Pull over when having to adjust settings / routes etc. I’ve seen people do the most crazy things with their gps and veer off towards the left line on a collision course with a dairy truck . “ Destination : Afterworld ... BOOM .. you have arrived’ .. thank you GPS. - BEFORE you leave do a pre-flight check of the GPS : Is it on , is it working, does it have power etc. THEN (if your gps has this) check the TRAFFIC INFORMATION SYSTEM. This will give you an overview of where all the traffic jams are. I have one that not only shows them on the map , but also lists them down so I can see WHERE the jams are and plan my route accordingly.- Simulate your route. Let your GPS “demo” the route your are going to take. Nothing more annoying then suddenly having the thing say “ GO LEFT” as it makes you drive onto the causeway of your worst nightmares. Be sure you know where it is going to take you.-Beware of auto-calculated alternative routes your gps might propose. Other people with the same brand of device or program then yours might also be on it. All GPS’es from the same brand think alike. Make your own alternative route by zooming out and planning your own beeline manually. I cannot stress this point enough : Don’t be afraid to deviate and use your own wit to navigate. You can always use your GPS to get back on track.So with that in mind you will be able to survive any trip to the coast or another place without going mad in that four hour drive.
Meanwhile in the real world Dell owners walk around with their laptop-bags with beads of sweat on their forehead. Packed with a heavy load of a overstuffed bag on one shoulder and a fire extinguisher on the other, their own mortality is very apparent to them As they leave for bed the laptop is stored outside, on an inflatable mattress in the middle of the swimming pool, if only to comfort its endangered owner that no indoor fireworks will go off inside the house thanx to of the Nr 1 hardware supplier DELL. It might sound funny, but just imagine having one of these baby’s in the house. Ok, on a statistical scale the rate of failure / explosion of a dell laptop battery is remote at best .. but still ! Would you sleep at night ?So yesterday when I read an article about Apple recalling 1.5 million (hello !) laptop batteries in the US, I was not really worried. Nothing to affect little old me here in downtown Belgium. Although I am an owner of one 12 inch Ibook (confiscated for personal use 6 months ago by my wife) I didn’t think much of it. But just to be on the safe side I surfed over to the Belgian Apple Site where indeed there was a link to the battery recall program. (you had to go under SUPPORT and hire a private detective to find the link, but none the less it was there). So i popped the battery from my wifes Ibook and law and behold the type number AND serial matched those of the ones that where franticly recalled to Silicon Valley. Imagine my surprise that 1.5 YEARS after selling me my Ibook, Apple suddenly comes to the conclusion that .. ‘oh yes .. there is a little issue of a Fire Hazard’ And if I would not have been an avid listener to Slashdot Review I would not have even found out about it.
FIRE in Babylon.
I mean : We are talking fire here people. We are talking Laptops that lie on the couch , are crammed in bags, lie in cars, or sleep UNDERNEATH my bed after a late night chat session. And the error here is not that the mouse cursor might go astray at any given time .. NO ! The flaming thing can BURN ! Its downright incredible that Apple only finds this out ONE POINT FIVE years after purchase AND does not yell “BEWARE ! FIRE ! “ on its homepage instead of hiding the recall program in some dark corner of the white website.
Laptop self-combustion risk... Nice .. very Nice.
Sure enough I entered the serial and got a nice little email that I will receive a NEW battery in four to six weeks. I was advised to remove the battery from the Ibook and work on main power until the new bugger comes. WHAT ? NOW i need to work without the battery ? For the last year and I have I have been a “human-with-laptop-self-combustion-risk” and NOW you tell me ? Djeez ! Now I Know the thing got HOT ( I made my wife use it on this little table whenever she wanted to set it straight down on the couch) but in my minds eye I see all the nights where the Ibook slept so near to flammable goods that my fire insurance policy is now stored off site in an Iglo !So BAAAD Apple for finding this out SO late and notifying its customers in a rather poor way. I’ll keep you posted on the whole story .. If my macbook does not decide to cremate itself while on my lap.
If you want more information about the Ibook and Macbook Pro issue go HERE and HERE.
Yes yes , its the time of the year(s) again that the Knights in the Knightcastle get a little uneasy with the colors they painted on the walls , get bored with the arrangement of furniture and get overdosed by all the 'home improvement' programs on the tv. We dash out to the DIY store and go looking for paint. Now I must say I'm blessed with the fact that Nyana has excellent taste in colors. She picks out two shades of gray (that to me are not even different colors) and says.. 'This will go good together. ' As we left the store I remember grumbling and fretting that we did not go for some cappuccino like shades, and turning the room into one big Starbucks. But when the paint went on .. the result was amazing.The rooms we did so far are the bedroom and the office / small living room upstairs. Now in our bedroom we obviously sleep. (get your brains out of the gutter). But the office / living room is a different matter. This room used to be my office. But because I had room to spare we shoved in an extra couch and a tv so Nyana could hang out while I was behind my beloved workspace. It worked out so well that we spend the most part of the winter upstairs. Nice and cocoon-y. The wife in front of the tube, the resident geek on you-tube. But the mutter was in the clutter. Soon enough Mr geek thought it was needed to overstock the room with computer books, extra systems, a sound-mixer, microphone, main boards and cables lying around etc. To be honest , it sometimes looked like the lovechild of an overturned dumpster truck and a main board factory. This was neither relaxing nor efficient. Thus : The new office. Or could I say : The office 2.0.
What can I say : The results are great. Allthough reluctant to give up my 'matrix style' surroundings of screens and keyboards piled up together. i'm honestly impressed by this new approach. My main desk now consists of my Macbook (docked) and one 19'' widescreen display. When in need of dual screen work , i just flip it open and am able to use my isight camera and more. Instead of using speakers and amplifiers I just routed the audio to either my headphones or the internal speakers of the monitor and thus having less clutter around. Next to this setup resides my Ubuntu machine hooked up to another 19” display. Because the resolution matches up to the resolutions of two other systems I have around the house (my TV computer and my test system) it can run remote desktop sessions to these machines full screen. Its like having them around.. Without having them around. Next , instead of using yet another computer to run Windows , i've opted to use virtual machine to emulate and run any other system I required. This all works fine on my AMD XP 3200 machine that has enough ram to run a nice little Windows XP either in Vmware Player or Paralells. So you see : More machines at my fingertips without taking up space.
Instead of having a big ass tv in our little office/loungeroom we use a mac mini with a 19” screen and a TV tunercard. This whole setup (along with the main router) is compactly crammed into the little TV cabinet that we use. Having all that gear installed in that little space and just one cable leaving the setup makes up for serenity and no clutter whatsoever. To be on the safe side I did mount a smokedetector INSIDE the cabinet. Since the server keeps running at night, I want to be sure we are alerted should anything go wrong. This is a tip I give to all of you geeks who have machines running at night. Smokedetectors are cheap so , mount them over your “beyond midnight” machines.Epilogue.Allthough I did not expect it ... the results are quite fab. Keeping the clutter out of the room has given us a very relaxing inviting room to be in. The screens are still the main focalpoints of attention, but due to the lack of crap around them, it works out just great. My main desk is this minimalistic fortress occupied only by 2 screens and two sets of keyboards. I thought this was going to bugg me. No extra stuff to twiddle and fiddle with seamed cumbersome. No pheripherals piled up around the setup was something to get used to . But imagine my surprise when I actually found out that I was much more focussed on my systems and could work in a concentraded manner. Also the lack of phisical devices makes one use the virtual possibilities of ones computer more. Less craptime = more screentime. The wife is very happy with all this having a couch strategicly posted in the middle of the room , facing the tv. I can look over her shoulder and peer along to the mainstream mayhem withouth having to leave my chair. All in all .. its a match in heaven.
I hate TV, any form of mainstream digital entertainment that involves none time-shifting entertainment and is pre-chewed for the masses is sure to send me reeling for my laptop or otherwise nukes me to level 5 of the coma scale. Especially reality tv is extremely unnerving. But since there is only room for either my laptop OR my tv dinner , sometimes I get caught in the crossfire and have to watch an entire episode of this crap while having lunch. So enter 
But there are more challenges to come. Riding the bus to get to a photoshoot is extremely difficult. In includes reading timetables and .. god forbid : Watching the clock. That means time lost commuting and not shopping. And of course : The hardest challenge for any model : Simply showing up on time for work ... Oh my .. The horror ! And once they get there they have to " Work it " (that means: put one foot in front of the other when traversing the catwalk .. veeeerrry hard !I) Or they get other taks like ' Show us your Bonestructure'' and .. " More P-zazz honey' . Meanwhile this infamous cesspool of entertainment revolves around Tyra Banks fading career like spacedust encircles a black hole. Incredible ! I swear some of these girls are so shallow an fly could not even drown in the pools of their minds. And all along this stupid contest they get voted of one by one ( I personally think that the losers should work in a refugee camp in Soudan for two weeks straight , cleaning toilets ) because they constantly tell us (along with miss Banks) its "'soooo haaaard" being a model. If it indeed is , you would be cut out for a job at the camp in Soudan.. Here is your plane ticket .. But the worst is ... The voting of ceremony. The girls that stay have to walk up to Tira where she hands them some kind of token or picture ( to get the message across the dirty blond hair into the hollow head) and Tira sais : "Congratulations, you're still in the running to becoming america's next top model" .. Now that would not annoy me if she just said it ONCE .. NOOOOO ... The malicious model has to say it EVERY time to EVERY girl. Either SHE is autistic or I'm having problems with my short term memory. I think its the latter. People spontaneously have a brain hemorrhage after watching 20 minutes of this .. disease of a TV show. .JPG)
Carpe Diem.
Tip nr Two : Entertainment.
Meanwhile in the real world Dell owners walk around with their laptop-bags with beads of sweat on their forehead. Packed with a heavy load of a overstuffed bag on one shoulder and a fire extinguisher on the other, their own mortality is very apparent to them As they leave for bed the laptop is stored outside, on an inflatable mattress in the middle of the swimming pool, if only to comfort its endangered owner that no indoor fireworks will go off inside the house thanx to of the Nr 1 hardware supplier DELL. It might sound funny, but just imagine having one of these baby’s in the house. Ok, on a statistical scale the rate of failure / explosion of a dell laptop battery is remote at best .. but still ! Would you sleep at night ?So yesterday when I read an article about Apple recalling 1.5 million (hello !) laptop batteries in the US, I was not really worried. Nothing to affect little old me here in downtown Belgium. Although I am an owner of one 12 inch Ibook (confiscated for personal use 6 months ago by my wife) I didn’t think much of it. But just to be on the safe side I surfed over to the Belgian Apple Site where indeed there was a link to the battery recall program. (you had to go under SUPPORT and hire a private detective to find the link, but none the less it was there). So i popped the battery from my wifes Ibook and law and behold the type number AND serial matched those of the ones that where franticly recalled to Silicon Valley. Imagine my surprise that 1.5 YEARS after selling me my Ibook, Apple suddenly comes to the conclusion that .. ‘oh yes .. there is a little issue of a Fire Hazard’ And if I would not have been an avid listener to Slashdot Review I would not have even found out about it.