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 !  

Well, unless you are using a screen reader and suffer from the same proverbial blindness as a bat (Holy Smokes Batman) you might have noticed that the look and feel of the website has changed just a tad. Reason for this is a: The old logo and look and feel was getting.. erm ... old, AND I did not really know how to change everything around without breaking it.

The Knightwise.com website runs on a Joomla Backend, Joomla being an open source (of course) content management system that makes building of dynamic websites by html illiterates like me .. easy to do. I got talked into Joomla by the ever so powerful Codemonkey Rob who had been using the system for quite some time. He helped me overhaul the site and understand the basic concepts. But all the fancy stuff (setting it up, creating modules and components and organizing menu's) was a little beyond me. After two years of using the system a got the hang of it a little bit, but I stuck to adding content and moving stuff around, nothing major. A shame really that I did not find (or make) the time to dive into it further.

Until last week when me and my big mouth talked about using open source and content management systems at work. Only to be baffled by the request to : "Set it up and make it happen" Talk about being thrown in in the deep end. I do not need to mention the fact that the learning curve was so steep I needed a safety rope and suffered from altitude sickness. But it was worth it. Getting to play with Joomla and the whole LAMP back end thought me how CMS systems like these work AND also : What you could do with them. Adding themes, installing components, moving around content and what have you.. And also : Setting the whole thing up from scratch ( Like : from a linux server with LAMP installed and talking it from there ) Let me tell you : Doing stuff like this is like Porn with a keyboard ! You learn stuff, find out things, get to tinker and play.. get frustrated, have epiphanies.. Its like bloody childbirth !

So you know your geek right ? When he gets a new toy : He wants to play with it. So when I learn an new skill I want to implement it. What better subject to experiment on then my own website . (You should be happy I did not study to be a plastic surgeon, otherwise my wife would have six breats by now). So with the help of some co-workers (who knew the HTML mumbo-jumbo that was alien lingo to me) we managed to take down KW.com, overhaul it .. and put it back on line. Et voila .. here is the finished result. 

This morning, before heading off to work, I pulled over to snap this pretty picture.

After a week of silence, I have returned. I have returned with an excuse why the podcast has been slow in coming and why posts have been so far in between. Over the last month we (Nyana and I) have pulled of yet another trick that most people take months to complete. I am proud to inform you that " El Casa Del Knights " is officially SOLD ! Yes, shock and awe for some of you but its true. Or lovely little house in Hasselt has been Sold and pretty soon, the Knights will be moving.

So .. the back story.  We bought this lovely little crib in Hasselt four years ago (feb 18th to be correct) and completely renovated it (thanx to the help of many of our friends). There where still a few details that needed to be done but overall the house was in picture perfect shape. One problem : It had four bedrooms. And since Nyana and I don't plan on children (those of you who want to convince us .. Don't start) the house was a little too big for us. So with the real estate market becoming a sellers market it was time to sit down and talk about our options. It came down to the  fact that the house was just too big for us. Giving the cat and the dog a separate bedroom was a little too much. And the massive office I have upstairs (suited for a big workstation and a small PC lab) sits a little empty now everything has been replaced by laptops, Virtual machines and TFT displays. 

A few weeks ago we started looking for something smaller. Something more compact to better suite our needs. And when I say a few weeks ago.. I mean it. Nyana (who is the equivalent of real-estate google) found this cute little house in nearby Tongeren that has been completely renovated , is smaller AND sports a cute little backyard with a minute lawn. Minimal maintenance, nice space, classy and very very well oriented ( 3 minutes from the nearest freeway and very close to a nature reserve) So our initial visit to the place ended up with deciding to buy it straight away (our real estate broker was a little gob smacked.. but still) So in two weeks we had found, visited, approved and bought the house. Next up : Selling our own house. This proved to be an even faster ride then we had thought. Over the last month much of our free time had gone into prepping our house for sale. Painting the hallway (Nyana did almost ALL of the work in her spare time) and arranging furniture, taking pictures and preparing everything for the buyers. It was all terribly time consuming but after a few weeks our house was ready for the market. It went on sale last week on Friday ( at 11am ) at 1 PM we had already booked 3 visits from possible buyers, the first hopping by the next day at 1 pm. By 5 pm we had 5 planned showings for the coming Monday. 

Monday comes along and strange people walk through our house, peering and peeking in every corner. I just got so sit there, shut up and let the real estate guy do his work ( actually NOT being the salesman was pretty hard for me) But we managed. By 9pm everybody was gone and we had the first offer. By 9 AM the next day that offer had been matched by another buyer and the first buyer offered us the total asking price. We accepted and 3 days after the house went on the market .. it was sold.

So we will keep you posted about everything that is going down on the whole house behalf. I'll post of the "catalogue" pictures of our house on Flickr , so the voyeurs among you can have a peek in our Crib.

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