I have become a suit.I used to watch them from time to time. Whenever Nyana and I had a day off we would drive to the seaside and stop over at some restaurant along the freeway. There you would see them, tapping away at their laptops while having dinner. looking mighty busy and mighty important. I was a little envious of them. The freedom of working on the road.. The adventure of going from place to place to  place. Meeting new people, new situation. Not flying a desk.. but being out there.  Today I look at my reflection in the window. A freeway filled with  busy cars. My laptop rattling away confidently and the shimmer of  white shirt-dark tie wearing Knightwise in the window. As I wrote  before .. its great to be out here on the far frontier. Being on  your own, solving problems.. getting stuff done. It took me a while to get where i'm at . Some ten years ago I was literally cleaning up actual shit from actual floors in my darkest days as an educator. Today I get to reap the fruits of not settling for "good enough". Life takesfunny bends sometimes.. I'm just happy to be along for the ride

Some say they have too much time on their hands, Some say they are supernerds, Some say they are the only hope for a quality-content-deprived Star Trek Starship fan like me. ( I for one am screaming out the latter). Enter the first part of the word 'Fan Fiction' The Fans who have been pumping out content in the forms of stories, artwork, movies, audio or in this case : Starship models.  Now we all now Star Trek fans can be enormous nerds. I'm talking uniform-wearing klingon-speaking Millhouse-style laughing superneds who will never even have sex.. Not even with their own right hand. BUT ! Some of these 'fans' are way much cooler then that. What am I saying : They are masters at what they do. True, the Paramount art-team does design some cool Starships from time to time. (I'm a big starship fan .. does it show ? ) But what these guys do is even more cool. Putting together one of these models with glue and stuff is hard. They take it one step further. They buy several models of existing starships, break ou the glue and the sandpaper and.. make a new ship. This are of "kitbashing" as it is called, where you smash 2 different models together and make something new can end up producing some horrible mutations (leave it up to the fans to daisy-chain 4 Constitution class secundairy hulls without any sence of style) But this guy has produced some gems.

 The Uss Langestraat (strange Dutch name for a starship, meaning "long street") is a great combination of a Miranda class starship and the terrible NX01 Enterprise from the "Enterprise" series. Talking nerd-talk here we can just look at the great design of this baby. 2 impulse engines instead of one, no secondary hull, 4 megaphaser mountings and one large shuttlebay. This looks like one fast maneuverable ship. I'm sure she gurgles down tons of Diterium slush with these impulse engines so range must be limited. But its by no  means a deep-space explorer. And just look at the level of detail on this baby. This guy is an artist ! Its thanks to these guys that fan fiction writers, fans, writers have inspiration for making Star Trek content while Paramount sucks monkeyballs in making new content for the average trekkie.  Engage !! !  (here is more )

Sitting down in the afternoon , recovering from a fairly nice Sunday, I rattle away at my Macbook while waiting for Vista to install on one of my workstations. I've decided to give Microsoft latest yet another go, but choose a slightly more powerful workstation then last time. Reason ? Not curiosity or something like that, but just that I need to have a Windows based workstation for work, and my "finding how to do stuff in Vista skills" need some touching up. Cause whether I want it or not, i'm gonna run into people who have had the OS forced upon them in the OEM install of their newly acquired laptop. Not a whole lot going on today accept for some painting and lounging around at home while slurping coffee. Picture perfect Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile my reputation is being dragged through the mud over the internet thanks to my "Frenemies" @ the Global Geek Podcast. Having half a brain and being subscribed directly to the RSS feed of my Blog , they stumbled upon the pictures of the Mega Mindy incident and decided to have a little bit of fun with it. Getting a Skype-in call on my cellphone this afternoon from Dave Gray ( With cait snickering in the background ) gave me a "dark brown suspicion" something was afoot. And yes of course ! They had taken the Mega Mindy incident one step further and mutilated in in their favour. Childish ? perhaps. I hold no high opinion of the collective intelligence of the crew of the GGP. ( Let alone their taste) but I had it coming. 

Reminds me of the fact that ANYTHING you put on the internet is like flushing a baby crocodile down the toilet. You might know where it all begins, you DO NOT know where it wil end. I'm sure my little pink escapade will by no means mount up to the legendary "meme's" like the Numa Numa dancer, The star wars kid  or countless others who found their little anonymous escapade become part of modern geek culture .. overnight.

Let us review some of the classics.

The numa numa kid.  According to legend (and Wikipedia ) " The Numa Numa phenomenon was first popularized by Gary Brolsma's release of Numa Numa Dance onto Newgrounds.com, on 6 December 2004.^[3] By February 25, 2005, less than three months after Brolsma released the video onto Newgrounds, it had been viewed more than two million times on that site alone"  I mean .. with a face like that .. a song like that and a video like that the guy was surprised that he became popular ? 

The Star wars kid.  Now really ..  We are not making fun of people who a slightly at the chubby side of the scale (no pun intended) but somebody should not have watched "The Phantom Menace" one to many times.  At some point in the video I am waiting for him to go for his Epilepsy meds .. Yet there is nothing (medically) wrong with this kid. Wiki says :  On November 4, 2002 the boy made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a weapon, presumably imitating the Darth Maul character from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace who wields a double-bladed lightsaber. The video was filmed at the studio of his high school, and the tape was left forgotten in a basement. The original owner of the videotape discovered his recorded acts and immediately shared it with some friends. Thinking that it would be a funny prank, they encoded it to a WMV file and shared it using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharingWithin two weeks, the file was downloaded several million times. An adapted version of the video was created, adding Star Wars music, texts, and lightsaber lights and sounds to his golf ball retriever. As of 27 November 2006 it has been estimated by The Viral Factory that the videos had been viewed over 900 million times, making it the most popular "viral video" on the Internet. t.^[1] .. Aha ! Major mistake ! Don't film yourself doing god knows what and then forget the tape ... The little aligator has come back to byte this dark lord of the Sith .. some 9 million times.

And this brings us to Fat kid nr three ..  Let me point out .. I LOVE German people and by no means want to keep pointing back to the war .. but sometimes you just have to . This little f**** NEEDS to take his meds.  Even Wikipedia does not have the balls to post an article about this peace of internet culture but ...  I'll just post the last video of another German who has just learned .. he can't play his Xbox anymore.. Wonder when this will hit the net.

Randomy browsing through my Twitter followers I came accross this guy ! Interesting Tweets, Interesting pictures .. Looks like an interesting life .. Damn .. I wanna be this guy for a day or two. If I look at his lifestyle I'm stunned he's following MY twitter feed :).

On Twitter : Fotograaf 

On FlickR : Bart.la

His Blog  

Living in Europe is a lot like living on Tantooine. All the fun stuff seems to be happening on the far side of the galaxy. When it comes to tech stuff that is. Macworld, CES, the OLPC project, Netflix, Renting movies on Itunes .. It are just a few things that are mentioned so many times on blogposts, websites podcasts and what have you. All fine and dandy if you live in the US, bummer if you are in Europe. Movies on Itunes (hire or download ? ) forget it. Ces ? No way to get there without blowing a lot of cash, Podcast expo ? only if you honeymoon to Vegas and get a chance to swing by.. But for the rest ? Some of these major tech meme's sound a lot like a loud party in the house next door. Fun .. but no way to get in. The only thing the net has done is peeked my desire to "get in" on all this. With the whole " Asus EEE Pc " it only got worse.

For those of you stuck under a rock , The Asus EEE (dubbed "Tripoli" by yours truly .. TRIPLE E = Tripoli) is a small lightweight linux based ultraportable. A little laptop with A 900 mhz processor, a 7 inch screen , a 4 gig solid state harddrive, 512 megs of ram, wifi and a webcam. It runs Linux (it can even run XP ) and is the Utopia when it comes to portability. There has been a lot of controversy about this little device. Most of it people complaining what it could NOT do. (Video editing, playing games, burning dvd's, getting Jenna Jameson to give you a blowjob) but that is not realy what it is designed for. This baby is built for sliding away in your geek-purse (yes there is such a thing) whipping it out whenever you have the chance and booting it up super fast to surf the web, read your email, pipe out a tweet or shoot a picture of your smelly socks with the built in webcam and sending it to the local dry cleaners. 

Looking at the combination of the price (400 $) and the ridiculous exchange rate dollar/euro I quickly calculated that this might be the cheapest 'porn surf enabled' device I could ever buy. So franticly surfing over to newegg and waving my Visa around .. I wanted to place my order. "Not available in the US" it read on the screen. Like poor old Luke Skywalker watching his friends Biggs fly our with the rogue squad while being left behind ..  I felt left behind too. Amazon ? Same shit different site. There was no way to get my hands on this baby.

So patiente is a virtue perhaps, but in hindsight (or should i say anticipation) I do think the "Tripoli" is a darn nice product. Forget the "macbook air" (snobbish peace of overpriced, underpowered anorexic excuse for a laptop) This is something you can really afford to forget on the train without knawing off your left arm in guilt. 400 bucks for an ultra portable ! What more do you want. Its like a PDA on Steroids.  Don't believe me ? Check out the video the guyz from It-idiots did on the Asus EEE pc.

Links : Asus EEE Pc    The IT - Idiots episode on the EEE-Pc

Its about ten PM on this Friday night. Outside, in absence of the better cold , a gay breeze dances through the sleeping city. Reminding all of us just how absent the winter is this year. Nyana has decided to call it a night, and even Neelix has traded his endless playfulness for a lazy lay in his basket. I sit downstairs behind my 17 inch powerbook, enjoying the rapping sounds of the keys in the silence. In the background Jean Michelle Jar's fourth track of the cd "Waiting for Cousteau" . 45 minutes of pure serenity. An Ideal moment for a reflection of what has been going on over the last few days.

The new job brought a whole new ballgame, a lot of drastic changes and challenges. A landscape very different of what I was used to. Swiped away from the old routine and structure of a giant multinational and being flung out on the fringes of the new frontier. Where first I was a cog in a giant mechanism, Now its like being the first second third and final line of support for the people that need my help.

One of the most drastic changes has of course been the way I look at the web these days. Up until now, I have considered myself a not very active part of the whole web 2.0. Tucked away between the corporate firewall for the most part of the day, Things like Twitter, Skype, Facebook, Myspace and other social networks where beyond my reach. In my job as a field engineer, there where clear guidelines to the problems I had to solve. Some things had certain procedures, some things needed to be passed on to third or fourth line support. Some things where within my jurisdiction, others where to be handled by other departments. But that has changed. In my job as a Mobile Field engineer / network administrator in a much smaller company .. its like getting command of the Enterprise.

Pardon the Star Trek analogy.. But that is really what it feels like. Instead of being tucked away in the folds of Earths solar system, preforming a predefined set of routine tasks, my captaincy now falls over a ship that is on (and beyond) the final frontier. Being out there, on your own ..You have to solve the problem. You are the first, second, third and fourth line support. The Captain Kirk who, far away from Starfleet rules and Starfleet assistance, has to solve the problem (and kiss at least one alien girl). What I mean to say is that I am cut loose of the giant corporate body and am flying solo amids the challenges of every day. Bending the rules, being on your own ..

Bless the Matrix for the web. For now (more then ever) I feel just how it can bring us all together. I"ve written before how I don't have a lot of "real life" friends and acquaintances but have buddies where I can sleep-over on every continent of the planet. With my job its the same thing. My "Army of Peers" is not located three doors down in the landscape office, its not on the other side of an email address that allows you to "pass the buck" to somebody else .. My army of peers is on Twitter, in Facebook, on Msn, Skype, Googletalk, on forums ..  Listening to Barbara on the last "Mike tech show" round table she summed it up perfectly. As troubleshooters, field engineers, network administrators who are out there in the field .. these web based "communities" are our tribes. Our place where we can go for help, our digital bar where we can hang out with peers who understand us.

I must revise my cynicism in looking at a lot of these social networks. Hammering down on Dave (of the Global Geek Podcast) that most social networks are a waste of time, only suitable for teens who have nothing else to do now their "texting credits" have run out, might have been a bit harsh. I feel that a well filled IM list (with useful contacts) some nice long productive email threads with colleagues around the globe, and of course a friendly helpful reply in a forum, are good things to have. And where it feels good to be supported, understood and accepted.. there is of course no greater joy.. then to contribute and give something back.

So I lay down my sceptic words and find my way back on Twitter, check my contacts on Facebook and start noticing the names before a post on the forums. Cause even in cyberspace .. it pays to be a people person....

I could do a long long post about why I have not updated in quite a while, summing up all the things that have been going on and why its been so busy and stuff . But that would constitute an excuse and would only bore you to death. It is pointless to summ up all the reasons why i've been busy because you must know they are valid. I much rather work on my website and hang out with my buddies then do anything else.

But i'll try to give you a little run-down of all the stuff thats going on. Just so you know where I'm at these days.  I realy enjoyed the holidays and took my time to relax and kick back. Right after new year it was time for the big wrap up at the place where I worked. I had three more weeks before I switched jobs so I had to train my replacement and tie up all the loose ends. The fact these people where in the midst of a gigantic migration from W2K to XP did not help to lighten the load. So busy days where very plentyfull and where followed by the occasional crash on the sofa.. To tired to touch a keyboard.

The last day at work was very special. Having worked with great colleagues I was kinda surprised that they had thrown me a little goodbye ceremony. Well , having teased and annoyed them for 2 years did put me up for some major payback, but the kind words they said really touched me. Its not always easy being a Field engineer, fixing everybody's problems.. But on the other hand people realy appreciate what you do. I know "its our job" but .. when people speak out and tell you they are going to miss you .. It is realy touching.

Onto the part why everyone is hitting the blog these last few days : The "Mega Mindy Incident". My colleagues at Phillips knew I was going for a new assignment as 'flying field engineer'. This means : Driving around from client to client, solving their computer problems. Its kinda like being a superhero.. Or like being a baywatch babe .. minus the bikini. So in tune with the whole superhero theme they thought they would give me a suitable goodbey present : They gave me .. A Mega Mindy costume. Mega Mindy (for you foreigners) is the star of a local kids show. Kind of a 21st century tame version of wonder woman (minus the sex appeal)  ... I'll put the video up and then you'll understand.

So .. Thinking I would be embarrassed , receiving this costume, they also thought I would NEVER put it on .. Not in front of 30 of my colleagues.. They where wrong. I have the balls (you can see it in this suit if it where not for the little purse). So here is me .. as Mega Mindy.

Is it a bird ? Is it a plane ? No .. its Mega (mindy) Knightwise.

Me and the Goon Squad : Steven (on the left) And Stoffel (on the right).

The superhero catches the vilain and rescues the babe. In this case Kurt and An :)

As a webmaster, Sometimes you must type. You must write and think stuff up. Yet sometimes you must just have the ballsy balls to go out there and shamelessly point your audience towards an article somebody else wrote yelling : "Lookie Here !!!" This article is one of those. A great article on LIfehacker that tells you how to tweak your Windows, Mac or Linux installs with cool howto's and killer apps. There is nothing left to say aside from the fact that you just cannot afford NOT to click the link.

Lifehackers : How to setup your new computer.