Twitter – job description

So… joining Twitter on December 21st 2006 (and leaving shortly thereafter, re-joining 9 months later – check on When Did You Join Twitter) makes me what? A web developer? An IT journalist? A pro-blogger? Or maybe a futurist or innovator?!

Guess I should have joined 5 months sooner…
(Larger view.)

Apple – Gramps added to the family

“Our” Apple-family welcomed a rather old guy this weekend, a Power Macintosh G4, the one with AGP and gigabit ethernet. Thanks to Apple for pointing me how to differentiate between models.

I just love the design of these machines: the graphite color; the big Apple-logo on the sides; the handles on the top and last but not least: the easy way to open the hood.

FYI: this particular PowerPC is app. 10 years old, has dual G4-processors at 450MHz, 896MB RAM and two hard disks: 30GB for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server and 80GB for data-storage.
Maybe it ‘ll end up replacing the old PC-hardware that is powering this site, giving it a fresh install of FreeBSD during the summer holiday.

IPv6 – Now working. Now what..?

Over the last couple of weeks this blog hasn’t had a proper post. Instead it was filled by automagically created Twitter updates. In the meantime lots of things happened: too much to write down here. Instead I’ll focus on my (re-)achievements with IPv6.

I had IPv6 enabled a couple of years ago, using a 6to4 tunnel, offered as an experimental service by my ISP XS4ALL, but neglected it after installing a new hard drive.
This time around, I choose SixXS for the tunnel broker portion and installed their AICCU-tool on my aging FreeBSD-host.
FYI: experimenting with OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54GL wireless access point failed kind of (since Tomato-firmware is not supporting IPv6 yet) and left me with this single-host option.

It turned out the so called router advertisement daemon (man 8 rtadvd), needed to propagate IPv6 addresses to our MacBooks and my Linux- / WinXP-host, was able to route between the interfaces /dev/tun0 and /dev/net/fxp0. Not the most cosmetically sweet option, but nevertheless: it’s working like it should – with a local IPv6-subnet in my LAN.

And now what?! What’s the use in running IPv6 when no one else does?
Create demand. Think pr0n!
In fact, have a look at this presentation below to illustrate that statement:

_{F*ck, the f*cking Thing is f*cked – Props go to b10m for pointing me to this one!}

Just as in the days of VHS, Betamax and V2000 it’s pr0n that matters. And where do you find pr0n these days? Right: on USENET and Torrent-sites!
Regarding USENET, this blogpost will get you started once you have IPv6 up-and-running: Easily Get free newsgroup access over ipv6 in Ubuntu.
Of course it’s not about Ubuntu but on the USENET-providers (with high retention!) that will give you free access to their newsgroups containing a huge amount of (semi) illegal content, not only pr0n, but also warez, ebooks, DivX-movies and the whole lot, as long as you connect over… IPv6!
And since “The Pirate Bay” is having an IPv6-tracker but is in stormy waters, more and more people will turn to USENET for their “specific needs”.

So? It’s only a matter of time until the RIAA will find out about IPv6 and call for appropriate actions… In the meantime do whatever you think is right (or not).

Noorderslag – hit and hits

It seems like the Dutch rock-festival “Eurosonic / Noorderslag” is becoming more and more of a hit over the last years. Is it because of the growing attention (esp. on Dutch public television) for festivals like Lowlands and Pinkpop or is it something else..? Like a growing level of Dutch and European musicians, great marketing or maybe even the recent recession (people want to forget and have fun, right)?

Lets focus on the marketing-issue for the moment.
I happen to start working recently at the company <theFactor.e> (TFE), that sponsors the festival and (hence) builds the above mentioned website. Building up to the event, TFE has launched accompanying websites like the “Interactive Award” and “The Frisian Writers’ Week“. Good exposure, using new media.

Since I’m only working there for two weeks now, I was hesitant in begging for free tickets to actually be there, so I spent the evening watching a movie and catching up on the telly.
But working at TFE gives me the opportunity to keep a keen eye on the logging and server-stats of the servers that power www.noorderslag.nl. So take a look with me at this Webalizer-chart below, from January 18th 2009, 00:01h:

That’s almost 1.8 million hits in one day! And no sign of slowness or unresponsiveness.
But how can a website cope with that amount of requests? Using free, open source-software! Linux as the OS; two Apache2-webservers, Typo3 CMS for the content, MySQL and PHP are powering the backend and Pound is used for balancing the load.

In the meantime – while the browsers keep hitting these webservers – I congratulate “De Dijk” with winning the Dutch Popprijs 2008 this evening and return watching TV!

Poken – joined the hype

It was only yesterday afternoon that I heard about “Poken” and less than 24 hours later I got my own… Thanks for the heads-up, srcr!
“Poken” has become a huge success (or should I say hype?) in the Netherlands over the past two / three weeks, though the product itself is from Switzerland and does exists for almost a year now.

I’ve been familiar with peek and poke since Sinclair BASIC came around in the early eighties, but what is this specific kind of “Poken” anyway? Well, check out for yourself at “how does it work” – that’s what hyperlinks were invented for!
The word itself must be a mix up of poke and token, but I wonder whether it is going to become a new noun (the poken) or verb (e.g. let us poke(n))? Or both…

Well, after unpacking I set up my Poken-account to synchronize contacts with to social networks like Hyves.nl, LinkedIn and Twitter. Which makes up the best part of this little gadget IMHO: so called social networking 2.0 until recently only involved a computer and an internet-connection. With the “Poken”, real life, face-to-face interaction has become part of the deal!
But let’s get down to earth: so far I have not been able to check out how it goes IRL. Maybe at work someone has bought a “Poken” by Monday too. Or… maybe I’ll end up as the only new kid on the block.

New year – new things

A little late but nevertheless a happy new year to y’all!

Quick update

Today also was the first day of my new job at <theFactor.e> aka TFE.
So lots of new people to meet, new impressions and expectations, a shiny new laptop (for the geeks: it’s a Dell E6500 with 4GB RAM – I installed 64-bit Ubuntu next to WinXP) and last but not least: new business-cards too.

_{The snap was taken with my iPhone and a plastic looking glass in front of the lens for the close-up. Hence the lack in quality…}

Apple – new books

This month our household welcomed two new Macs: my girl bought a unibody MacBook on December 6^th and I ordered a MacBook Pro on the same day. Since mine was CTO (Configured To Order) with more RAM (4GB) and a faster disc (7200RPM), I had to wait until Monday December 15^th to pick it up at my local Apple-reseller MacMe.

The MacBook is a plain Jane one, with a 2GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM. It’s going to be used for the basic stuff like internet and Office 2008 for Mac. This bargain-package came with a set of beautiful and free JBL Duet-speakers!

My MBP is one hell of a speedy machine compared to the aging Pentium4 Intel-PC I’ve used over the last 5 years!! But that was no surprise concerning the fact that it has four times the amount of memory and a dual core 2.4GHz CPU.
The backlit keyboard comes in very handy when typing (like now) in a room only lit by Christmas-lights and the shiny screen is a pleasure to look at. It’s mirror-effect is in fact not as bad as shown on this Flickr-snapshot. For this to happen some extra light from above is needed.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve installed a great deal of the applications I (used to) run on the iBook G4, plus some new ones like WideMail. Also Windows XP is running “fine” on it’s own partition, thanks to Boot Camp! Not that I’m planning on using it on a daily basis, but I was aching to see it run on a Mac…

Since I quit my job last week and start a new one this January, I received some gifts from my (now former) co-workers. One was an Apple wireless keyboard, which I traded in for a full sized wired one plus a Rain Design mStand. The result is a shiny new, all aluminum setup that will last for the next coming years.
I have yet to test the Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI connector to connect the machine to my 22-inch widescreen monitor and see if QuakeWars can be run without overheating. I’ll keep you updated!

Oracle – backwards

Another funny one about Oracle after last weeks post.
Spell “Oracle” backwards. The results is a word (well ok, two words) from a European language widely spoken all over the world. Translate this word into English or Dutch or even German and post it in a comment. The outcome is quite funny and can be related to the previous post.
The first commenter with the right answer will receive a virtual beer!

Update

Explanation: Oracle spelled backwards = elcaro –> el caro. That’s Spanish for “the expensive”.
The virtual beer goes Down Under: sboiling

Oracle – 17 out of 20

Nothing new for those who follow me on Twitter, but I think I’ve found (one of) the origin(s) of the recent financial crisis:

Only three weeks left and I’ll be no longer an Oracle DBA. And to say the truth: I’m pretty much fed up with most of Oracle’s products, especially the (buggy?) database with all it’s useless ORA-600′s…
Besides: Open Source Will Save The Economy.

Debian – quiz

What am I missing here?! I just did the Debian Quiz 2005 and failed with a score of only 19 of 42 (45.2%) right! I guess I’ve become too much of a Red Hat-guy over the years and I have to catch up on Debian, since my new employer is using this Linux-distribution.
But… upon looking into the correct answers I bumped into 2 contradictory answers:

Question 9: Most debian.org machines are named after

I answered –> 1: characters from “Toy Story”

The correct answer is 4: Most machines are named after classical composers, as explained by Joey.

Then comes question number fifteen:
Question 15: What is not a Debian distribution codename?

And I answered –> 2: joey

Correct: Joey is of course not a Toy story character, but a real person.

So..?!? I’d always thought the Debian-releases were named after “Toy Story“-characters. Was I wrong or is the quiz?

Spot the loony!

Oops, I was wrong indeed! debian.org machines vs. distribution code name…