On the edge of real and Cyberspace there is one place you can go. The Knightcast media channel. Featuring a weekly podcast "The Knightcast" and a web Tv show "KW-Tv" Both deal with the everyday adventures of a modern day technofile, filled with tips, tricks, manuals and how-to's on how to tune technology into your everyday life and let tech work for you. All this and more using Windows, Linux, and Mac computers, Web2.0 sites, services and more to upgrade from geek to cyber-citizen. Real Technology for Real life.
Today was another perfect example of mobile computer done by the average slider.
Having to go on assignment to deal with two clients i was out the door
at the crack of dawn. The crow had not managed to belch its tune and I
was already on the train to Antwerp. Having to deal with to entirely
different 'mission objectives' i was faced with an awkward dilemma :
What laptop would accompany me. In front of me ? The Ibm Thinkpad
running Vista, fitted with every tool a pc-consultant needs in order to
"revise and repair" any Windows environment AND housing the bright red
UMTS datacard dat guarantees a slither of connection to the WWW from
just about every spot on the planet. A completely customized computer
that offered me every bit of the diversity that a Windows platform has
to offer + custom vpn connections to the network at the office. On the
other side my Macbook pro was waiting in its silver glory. Its sleek
brushed lines hiding a very diverse and powerful multimedia computer.
Where the Thinkpad would march like a Stormtrooper in the corporate
environment, stark, well equipped and uniform.. The Macbook pro was the
free mason that laid in waiting of whatever creative urge I could
muster up. Since I was going by train and had to carry everything
myself it was either going to be one or the other.
The choice was made and the Macbook pro got to ride along, mainly
because one of the "mission objectives" was editing video, re-encoding
and creation of a "compliant dvd movie" that had to play on just about
every dvd player in the country. The Thinkpad murmured something about
'creative hippies' and "you'll be sorry about this" but gave up in the
long run. But this gave the Macbook pro a difficult extra aspect to
its daily routine. Now the free spirited creative companion had to face
at least half a days work in a corporate environment where it needed to
interact with windows machines and active directories and stuff like
that. The absence of a 'full pcmcia slot" denied it the ability to gulp
down the pcmcia card so it was up to the stray wifi to hook us up to
the internet's. Because in all fairness ... we are lost without an IP
.. are we not ?
As i ride the train home I look back on a succesful day with my little 'free mason"
In the morning, while getting a cup of coffee at the local Foodmakers,
I made a crucial discovery to the success of my day. While waiting for
my latte to arrive I whipped out my ipod touch only to see I
accidentally left the wifi function on. This gave me a quick overview
of the wireless networks that where available in the area. A quick
hookup to the 'freewifi' SSID that appeared on my list was sufficient
to find out that indeed : unprotected (and not illegal) wifi was
available in this coffee shop. A well focused scan of the room provided
several locations with good seeting and nearby power outletts. My
mobile office for the afternoon was born.
Using the "ipod touch" as a quick wifi scanner is an ideal way to
swiftly scan the area for open wifi without having to break out and
boot up an entire laptop.
So after a windows-filled morning where my Macbook interacted
with the "winny world" through RDP clients and samba shares it was time
to get to the creative part of the day. I had an appointment with the
client at five to drop of the finished DVD's. So of to the coffee shop
it was. A few minutes later my "home away from home" consited of a nice
pluche loveseat, a low coffee table, a Macbook pro, some empty dvd's ,
a mouse and of course : a few latté's. With the free wifi i managed to
interact over the web with "company base" and by using web based
outlook, msn, twitter, google etc .. it felt like I was snugly in the
fold. Aside from the awesome power and the easy of multi-media use I
did not even notice I was on a mac. The Freemason danced through the
corporate maze like it had always belonged there.
in retrospect ? This was a true test for a slider. Leaving
behind the trusted and predominant computer platform to go out into the
world on a "creative computer" and manage to survive :) Wonderful. ..
and being able to do all this on the road ? even more wonderful.
Letting the web work for you and letting go of the ties that bind us to
our desk at the office is a very very liberating experience.
Back into the game with this weeks episode that is SO packed we could not even slide an extra music track into it. Lets get into the arts of the black magic bring back some beige boxes from the great beyond. A great show about talking old and discarded hardware and bringing it back to life.
Shownotes for episode KC0011 "Zombie Nation."
Timestamp
Introduction.
Moving date is out and a little talk about my upcoming macbook Pro.
Well, I wanted a job on the road, looks like I got one. Once again coming to you from an authentic "truck stop" ( We only have on in the area) The weekend has been pretty busy, with a major bummer on Saturday when I found out that I could not pick up my Macbook Pro because the shop was closed. I am not one to sulk but boy did I sulk ! :) Nyana said I sounded like a six year old, and she was right. But I have managed to bide my time and wait until this morning for going out to collect my precious prize. The weather was fantastic (hardly a cloud in the sky) so I decided to take the scenic route to Aachen in Germany. I only took the freeway up to Tongeren, where I headed through some of the most pretty landscapes near the Belgian border. A sun coming up and tainting the trees orange, and the frostbite still clinging to the grasstips. There was no traffic and I could just dance through the landscape, listening to the soundtrack of season three of Battlestar Galactica. I managed to pick up the macbook , grab a great cup of coffee and arrived work at 10.30. Man I love these flexible hours. Sometimes its late .. other times its great to "steal away" a morning from the daily drudge. Because I need to go to Antwerp tomorrow I quickly installed the Macbook and its ready for action. Still need to finish of some details, but you know what I mean when I tell you this thing is going to be my "very brawny friend" for the coming months. With the move coming up i'm gonna be producing the podcast AND the videocast from that machine. The only thing that is not so great is the fact is has no room (or love) for the pcmcia card i'm using on my Thinkpad. Although speeds are a little low, I love being able to connect from just about anywhere. Even from my Vista-Running-Thinkpad. (So far i'm not impressed with Vista and still think its an overbloated peace of crap) But hey .. I need to get used to the interface if I run across it at clients computers. So far.. not impressed at all. Not freakin fuming foaming MAD at it either, but that is all thanks to the fact that I nuked the User-Annoying-Crap (or is that User Access Control) right after installation. In all fairness , this Thinkpad manages to carry Vista very well , but boottimes remind me of a 468 running Windows 98 on 8 mb of ram). Anyways. I must go, have a dentist appointment in about 20 minutes and its going to be a pain. (Thank you Neelix for head-butting me and chipping away a piece of my tooth). Thus the roadwarrior who now has constant connectivity to the grid (thank you PCMCIA datacard) must dash into the toilet, brush his teeth (toothpast included in laptop bag) and move on. The things we do for connectivity :) See you tomorrow !
There are days in your life that you can't wait for your alarm clock to go off and herald in another day. Like for example your first day when you got to go to the "big school" ( Back when you where a naive kid ) or many of those christmas mornings. Today is one of those days for me, cause quite frankly it is a little bit of christmas morning for me. Unfortunately the guy in the red suit coughing up the dinero will be me since i'm paying this little extravaganza out of my own pocket. But not to worry : I have been an good boy and I have been saving up. For today i'm going to get my first ever Macbook Pro. Ever since the first day I owned a Mac i've been "jonesing" for one of these, and now with selling the house, selling the old Ibook and being a "I won't blow cash on silly gadgets" nazi when it comes to my own cash, I can go out and get me one. I have owned a G4 powerbook (a 17 inch model) which is very nice to work on (wonderful thingie) I'm more in more in need of a powerfull beasty to take with me on the road. And the new Peryn processor, some extra ram and a faster drive in the Macbook I bought, hopefully make sure I get my wish.
I ordered my Macbook Pro in Germany (we only live about 60 miles of the German border) and there is a very good shop over there that sells Macs. When assembled my order on the Apple webshop I almost had a stroke when I went from 2 to 4 gigs of ram on the standard configuration. 360 euro's EXTRA ? For two more gigabytes ? 130 euro's extra for a 7200rpm drive instead of a 5400 ? Man, this baby was expensive and I was tempted to go for the standard model. But the store in Germany made me a very nice quote. 90 euro's extra for the faster hard drive and (drum roll please) 85 euro's extra for the extra 2 gigs of ram ! WTF ! ! ! ! 320 euro''s on the Apple store ? ? Does Steve Jobs screw in the memory sticks himself ? I mean everywhere on the planet prices of Ram drop dramatically, except in Cupertino. There Steve Jobs reality distortion field also disrupts the common laws of offer and demand and keeps prices at an insane level.
So my German friends helped me (and my hard earned cash) out very well. This afternoon i'm off to Aachen to pick up my new portable best friend that will help me get through the coming weeks of "Boxing and moving" while still having a powerful computer to produce the podcast from and stuff. I'll try to keep my greedy claws away from the box until we get home and I can give the thing a "proper unboxing ceremony" with the pictures to match.
Oh hell now I sound like a fanboy ! ... Not good .. Not good at all !
Finally, I'm back with another blogpost. Don"t know how many times i've started over, my brain somehow turning to liquid gellato halfway along the post. Reason for that is a total overload of stuff to do at work. Having to wear "different hats" all the time, (Sales, Sys admin, Developer, Helpdesk) is a very challenging situation (I morph faster then a changeling). But the end result is, just like with Odo on Star Trek, that my cerebral functions tend to liquify whenever I get home. So today I crawled behind my powerbook to write at about 7.30 am, before going to work.
The last few days have been quite hectic. The "big move" now coming ever closer. When I look around me more and more boxes are lining the walls as Nyana uses the spare time she has in the morning to pack stuff in and get it ready for shipping. I've even packed up my Imac ( the last remaining desktop in the house ) after Leopard died on me during an update. I'll reinstall the Imac from scratch once we touch base in the new pad. So i'll manage to survive on my old second hand 17" G4 powerbook ( that is not worth the name portable, its just too darn sluggish, but will do nicely as a stand in for the Imac) I'll ride out the last three weeks without the Imac, since I need to get ready for a bit of a mobile life anyway.`
Because when I look at the near future, its going to be a little bit of an adventurous ride. Packing everything in, Moving, Touching down in our new house (that we have only sparsely visited to take some measures) Its going to be like crash landing on a a strange planet for me. When we moved here, we had had 2 months to prepare, we had been renovating and fixing up things BEFORE we actually moved in. With the new pad, we don"t have a lot of renovating to do, the "moving in" is going to be even more abrupt. No time to scan out the new place in absolute detail, walk around, take a look at where I'm gonna run my cabling, where I'm gonna set up everything and all that. Sure we have been there on one or two occasions , quickly taking measurements for the placement of a new window or door, but since the house is still occupied, those visits are not very extensive. So its going to be a bit different this time.
The renovations that we need to do (there are only a few) are going to be done once we live there. So its gonna be a little "dust and paint" for a few weeks. Thus setting up the full blown computer - core is going to have to wait until that dust has settled. It makes me very very happy that I've ordered my 15" Macbook Pro BEFORE the move instead of waiting untill we got there. It will at least give me the ability to work on a powerful system in the absence of "the big workstation". Its quite funny once you think of it. Working wirelessly, only using laptops is the dream of many computer user. As for us its kind of an "emergency survival scenario") Guess we are just weird geeks.
So as the countdown clicks away I'm browsing the web for some cool idea"s on how to setup my computer workstation. Sites like Ikea Hacker give me some directions but its hard to choose between a stark minimalistic and very stylish setup and the cluttered, over-the-top, bring-in-neo-and-the-rest-of-the-matrix overcrowded setup. Sigh :) Its gonna take a lot of doodles until i figure that one out.
The Knightcast : KC0010 "Soundseeing in Antwerp" 30-3-08.
Time to take a break from the Tech Stuff for one episode and take you on a little sound-seeing tour of Antwerp. We walk through deserted Hasselt, Hitch a ride on the train and get a Cup of Coffee. All that and more with great music from No Plastic Inside and Ex Posthumus. All Aboard !
Shownotes for episode KC0010 "Soundseeing in Antwerp."
Timestamp
Sponsored by Shinywhitebox.com Visit their website and their great Apple Screencast application called "IshowU"
I've had this little piece of equipment for three years now, no almost four. Back when I started as an IT consultant I had to drive to Beerse (near Antwerp) every day. In the beginning I took Cd's along but, that started to bore me pretty quickly. I had owned an Ipod for a few months and was looking for a way to listen to my Ipod in the car, without having to use the headphones. After discovering podcasts, my Ipod became the center of my entertainment and the need for "pod-content" in the cabin rose even more. I had heard about the Logitech MM50, A portable little boombox that held your Ipod and gave pretty good sound. It ran on a 12 volt power adapter and also had an internal backup battery, so you could take it with you outside. 12 volts is the same voltage as a car battery so my father in law and I removed the power adapter and hooked up one of the cigaret lighter plugs. And what do you know, the thing worked like a charm. For 2 years the MM50 went everywhere, from Hasselt to Antwerp to Mechelen .. Everywhere the little bugger was playing my podcasts. A few months ago it started to malfunction , the little delicate power plug inside was starting to come loose. It wasn't that bad because by that time I had gotten my new company car that had a line-in jack and did not need the MM50 that much anymore.
But Wednesday night we took out the welding bolt and put humpty dumpty back together again. Taking of the little powerjack we soldered the powercables straight onto the mainboard and the MM50 is purring (on net power) again. So far I have parked it in the kitchen where Nyana and I plop in our Ipods whenever we need to to either charge them or listen to music. So far I have found the experience of listening to podcasts while doing the dishes WITHOUT using either a pc or headphones to be very pleasant. The MM50 has a much warmer sound and strangely enough its like all the podcasters you are listening to are much 'closer' to you. It makes it all sound much more "professional". And with that the classic media has taken another step back here at the Knights castle. And if its up to Nyana, after the move we shall be going even one step further. A friend of ours showed us the B&W Zeppelin. Both the sound (and the price) of this system put the MM50 to shame, but it is an AWESOME peace of kit. Hearing it in a demo the sound blew us away. And the idea surfaced : If we have this we don't even need a stereo anymore. No 5,1 surround sound hassle, no stupid little stereo deck on the kitchen counter .. just this thing. Insert Ipod (or external sound source) and you are good to go. It was one of the first "serious" ipod-speakers I saw out there and looking at the design , its just fracking ALIEN. So I wonder if the Zeppelin will find a new port once the move to our new house is complete. What I do know is that once we are there, analogue content will take another step into the realm of oblivion.
Home 
Today was another perfect example of mobile computer done by the average slider.
Having to go on assignment to deal with two clients i was out the door
at the crack of dawn. The crow had not managed to belch its tune and I
was already on the train to Antwerp. Having to deal with to entirely
different 'mission objectives' i was faced with an awkward dilemma :
What laptop would accompany me. In front of me ? The Ibm Thinkpad
running Vista, fitted with every tool a pc-consultant needs in order to
"revise and repair" any Windows environment AND housing the bright red
UMTS datacard dat guarantees a slither of connection to the WWW from
just about every spot on the planet. A completely customized computer
that offered me every bit of the diversity that a Windows platform has
to offer + custom vpn connections to the network at the office. On the
other side my Macbook pro was waiting in its silver glory. Its sleek
brushed lines hiding a very diverse and powerful multimedia computer.
Where the Thinkpad would march like a Stormtrooper in the corporate
environment, stark, well equipped and uniform.. The Macbook pro was the
free mason that laid in waiting of whatever creative urge I could
muster up. Since I was going by train and had to carry everything
myself it was either going to be one or the other. 
Well, I wanted a job on the road, looks like I got one. Once again coming to you from an authentic "truck stop" ( We only have on in the area) The weekend has been pretty busy, with a major bummer on Saturday when I found out that I could not pick up my Macbook Pro because the shop was closed. I am not one to sulk but boy did I sulk ! :) Nyana said I sounded like a six year old, and she was right. But I have managed to bide my time and wait until this morning for going out to collect my precious prize. The weather was fantastic (hardly a cloud in the sky) so I decided to take the scenic route to Aachen in Germany. I only took the freeway up to Tongeren, where I headed through some of the most pretty landscapes near the Belgian border. A sun coming up and tainting the trees orange, and the frostbite still clinging to the grasstips. There was no traffic and I could just dance through the landscape, listening to the soundtrack of season three of Battlestar Galactica. I managed to pick up the macbook , grab a great cup of coffee and arrived work at 10.30. Man I love these flexible hours. Sometimes its late .. other times its great to "steal away" a morning from the daily drudge. Because I need to go to Antwerp tomorrow I quickly installed the Macbook and its ready for action. Still need to finish of some details, but you know what I mean when I tell you this thing is going to be my "very brawny friend" for the coming months. With the move coming up i'm gonna be producing the podcast AND the videocast from that machine. The only thing that is not so great is the fact is has no room (or love) for the pcmcia card i'm using on my Thinkpad. Although speeds are a little low, I love being able to connect from just about anywhere. Even from my Vista-Running-Thinkpad. (So far i'm not impressed with Vista and still think its an overbloated peace of crap) But hey .. I need to get used to the interface if I run across it at clients computers. So far.. not impressed at all. Not freakin fuming foaming MAD at it either, but that is all thanks to the fact that I nuked the User-Annoying-Crap (or is that User Access Control) right after installation. In all fairness , this Thinkpad manages to carry Vista very well , but boottimes remind me of a 468 running Windows 98 on 8 mb of ram). Anyways. I must go, have a dentist appointment in about 20 minutes and its going to be a pain. (Thank you Neelix for head-butting me and chipping away a piece of my tooth). Thus the roadwarrior who now has constant connectivity to the grid (thank you PCMCIA datacard) must dash into the toilet, brush his teeth (toothpast included in laptop bag) and move on. The things we do for connectivity :) See you tomorrow !
There are days in your life that you can't wait for your alarm clock to go off and herald in another day. Like for example your first day when you got to go to the "big school" ( Back when you where a naive kid ) or many of those christmas mornings. Today is one of those days for me, cause quite frankly it is a little bit of christmas morning for me. Unfortunately the guy in the red suit coughing up the dinero will be me since i'm paying this little extravaganza out of my own pocket. But not to worry : I have been an good boy and I have been saving up. For today i'm going to get my first ever Macbook Pro. Ever since the first day I owned a Mac i've been "jonesing" for one of these, and now with selling the house, selling the old Ibook and being a "I won't blow cash on silly gadgets" nazi when it comes to my own cash, I can go out and get me one. I have owned a G4 powerbook (a 17 inch model) which is very nice to work on (wonderful thingie) I'm more in more in need of a powerfull beasty to take with me on the road. And the new Peryn processor, some extra ram and a faster drive in the Macbook I bought, hopefully make sure I get my wish.
Finally, I'm back with another blogpost. Don"t know how many times i've started over, my brain somehow turning to liquid gellato halfway along the post. Reason for that is a total overload of stuff to do at work. Having to wear "different hats" all the time, (Sales, Sys admin, Developer, Helpdesk) is a very challenging situation (I morph faster then a changeling). But the end result is, just like with Odo on Star Trek, that my cerebral functions tend to liquify whenever I get home. So today I crawled behind my powerbook to write at about 7.30 am, before going to work.
I've had this little piece of equipment for three years now, no almost four. Back when I started as an IT consultant I had to drive to Beerse (near Antwerp) every day. In the beginning I took Cd's along but, that started to bore me pretty quickly. I had owned an Ipod for a few months and was looking for a way to listen to my Ipod in the car, without having to use the headphones. After discovering podcasts, my Ipod became the center of my entertainment and the need for "pod-content" in the cabin rose even more. I had heard about the Logitech MM50, A portable little boombox that held your Ipod and gave pretty good sound. It ran on a 12 volt power adapter and also had an internal backup battery, so you could take it with you outside. 12 volts is the same voltage as a car battery so my father in law and I removed the power adapter and hooked up one of the cigaret lighter plugs. And what do you know, the thing worked like a charm. For 2 years the MM50 went everywhere, from Hasselt to Antwerp to Mechelen .. Everywhere the little bugger was playing my podcasts. A few months ago it started to malfunction , the little delicate power plug inside was starting to come loose. It wasn't that bad because by that time I had gotten my new company car that had a line-in jack and did not need the MM50 that much anymore.
But Wednesday night we took out the welding bolt and put humpty dumpty back together again. Taking of the little powerjack we soldered the powercables straight onto the mainboard and the MM50 is purring (on net power) again. So far I have parked it in the kitchen where Nyana and I plop in our Ipods whenever we need to to either charge them or listen to music. So far I have found the experience of listening to podcasts while doing the dishes WITHOUT using either a pc or headphones to be very pleasant. The MM50 has a much warmer sound and strangely enough its like all the podcasters you are listening to are much 'closer' to you. It makes it all sound much more "professional". And with that the classic media has taken another step back here at the Knights castle. And if its up to Nyana, after the move we shall be going even one step further. A friend of ours showed us the