Category: Life

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Release Party

<copy-paste>

Hi All

The “Ubuntu 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon” Cape Town Release Party has been finalised.

The venue has been set as Cantina Tequila in the Waterfront. We’ll be
outside in the sun on the benches (which are undercover and heated in
case the weather gets crap).

Be there at 2pm for 2:30pm this Sunday (21 October).

Cantina Tequila is “under” the big flagpole in the waterfront facing the water.
http://www.cantinatequila.co.za/images/map.gif

If you *still* can’t find it you can give me (Jonathan E) a call on
082 xxx xxxx.

PLEASE RSVP SO WE CAN RESERVE A TABLE!

kthxbai


j. </copy-paste>

ps. Mail me arbitraryuser at gmail dot com to rsvp.

Letter to a well meaning friend…

She asked why I listed my religion as “Pastafarianism”:

Pastafarianism is the belief that the universe is controlled by a flying spaghetti monster. It is a theoretical belief closely linked to the philosophical concept of Russell’s teapot. In case you’re wondering, no, I don’t believe the universe is controlled by spaggethi, and yes, I am trying to make a point.

Do I believe in God? Who knows… Which one are you talking about? There are too many gods out there to believe in… and many, including the Christian god, have a lot of things going against them… I meet too many well meaning, well educated Christians who, despite their university educations, believe that evolution is “made up”, homosexuals are “going to hell” and George Bush is “doing what God is telling him to do”.

I don’t for a second think that any of us are just a coincidence. But I do believe it is, and excuse me if I offend you here, coincidence that you grew up in Pinelands, with Christian parents (I think?) and Christian friends, in an environment where being anything other than a Christian was a bad thing… You could have been born in outer Mongolia and believed in Baluti the Sun God.

It is however not a coincidence that, given the environment that you grew up in, you became a Christian.

I believe that we all get to make a choice for ourselves… and more importantly that nobody has the right to inflict their religion on anybody else.

I am just like you, I chose to not believe in the plethora of gods out there… we both ignore Zeus, Allah, Pulika the great, etc etc etc… except I take it one step further and feel that, given the option of thousands of gods to believe in, believing in the one I coincidentally grew up with is just too damn convenient to “surrender my life to”.

Another schoolyard war story – Telkom: 0, Khayelitsha: 1

I have a friend called Steve who got called something horrible by an older, meaner, guy in school. It was something that had happened time and time again and Steve was reaching the end of his tether.

So one day, milliseconds after being called the horrible name, Steve grabbed Ian, the bad guy, by the neck and shoved him up against the wall and said something like “DON’T EVER CALL ME A FSCKING @#$@! AGAIN!”

When I heard this story I was like “Wow, dude, that’s awesome! What happened?”.

Steve’s reply was priceless “Oh, he totally fscked me up at break time”.

But the message was clear. It didn’t matter how many times he got knocked down… He had stood up for himself and he was going to do it again.

From what I understand, short of a beating at break, Ian never messed with Steve again.

The parallels here are interesting, albeit a bit far fetched, but I love telling that story.

Telkom has been walking around calling everybody names for ages. They rip us off, hurt us, drive us to levels of emotional stress that should really only ever be reserved for ex-girlfriends and they just don’t seem to care. (I broke up with Telkom a while ago and don’t let that bitch into my life anymore)

Well, the industry is starting to stand up in the hallways.

Sure, individuals in the industry are probably going to get beaten up a few times on the field at break, but maybe only once or twice… When a bully realizes that every time they cause a fight they will walk away a little ingured too, that’s when they start thinking twice.

ath.

j.

ps. The adsl line that Joe’s story refers to has actually not been set up yet. Even though they had telkom in the building. I wonder if they just sent some techies there as a delaying tactic in hope that they would call off their toyi toyi.

Arcade Controllers, Coffee with Pascal Dornier and my ALIX.

I just uploaded pictures from some of my recent escapades to flickr. Check my stream out here.

Controller ButtonsOf particular interest to general geeks are the pics of Lourens’ prototype arcade controller that we put together to test the hack-job we did on an old keyboard controller circuit. The wiring is messy as hell but it worked perfectly (once we’d got all the wires soldered in the right place). He’s planning on building a full cabinet soon, and soon we’ll be rocking teenage mutant ninja turtles… just like I did when I was 13! In case you’re wondering, he’s running this on MAME on Ubuntu and with a 1.8Ghz CPU. It runs flawlessly and he thinks he might even be able to get away with a 1Ghz cpu.

PascalNext up is breakfast with Pascal Dornier, the designer of the WRAP board and now more recently the ALIX. For those of you reading this who have no idea what a WRAP board is, it’s one of the best embedded computers on the market and it’s tiny. The ALIX is slightly larger but has everything, including vga and usb. Pascal is based in Switzerland and offered to fly to South Africa and deliver my ALIX personally. He also brought me Swiss Chocolate which was almost as sweet as the ALIX.

Mini AlixI haven’t had a chance to get the Alix up and running yet, but this weekend will be fun!

(ok ok, he didn’t fly here just to deliver my ALIX, there was some synchronicity involved too)

You can find out more about ALIX and her friends here.

ath.

The 10 Types Of Trade Show Visitors

So Frogfoot has a stand at Futurex and we quickly realised that there are 10 different types of attendees.

1. The “I know more than you” or the “My product is better than your product” visitor

These guys are fun. They stand a few meters away from your stand and then, once they’ve formulated their attack, they step forward and launch into a tirade about why what you’re doing is wrong or how what they’re doing in their garage is better. Some of them are the “Leading xyz gizmo provider and we’re launching next week” kind of winners.

2. The “You have breasts” visitor

I don’t have breasts… (shut it!) but we do have a girl who works for us. She does have breasts and there are many lonely men walking around at these kinds of things who obviously don’t get too see too many girls in the wild. They generally will talk to the girl until someone else makes it very obvious that they are no longer welcome.

3. The “I know nothing about techmologee, please teach me” visitor

People. If you don’t know how a computer works it is obviously not the best time for me to be explaining the intricacies of 802.11g. Also, you, lady who couldn’t operate a track pad, need to stop blaming our internet connection for yor inability to remember your yahoo mail password. I *promise* it has nothing to do with the hotspot.

4. The “Defend your product!” visitor

Similar to visitor #1 these guys chose to be as evasive as possible while constantly telling you how crap your idea is and how it won’t work. You usually get the idea that these are the guys who tried something similar a few years back that failed dismally but they remain evasive about who they are and what they do because they believe it adds an aura of mystique… mystique of course is something we all love… not.

5. The raving lunatic visitor

These guys are cool… well they were cool until the nutcase that lives downstairs from me appeared on the horizon. I quickly darted away and hid until he had moved on from our stand. Upon returning I learnt that he had mentioned how lame this trade show was. “Fishing Shows… that’s where the action is at…. They give out free caps and everything”. Thanks buddy. We care. Now go back to spreading your conspiracy theories and accusing me of “that clunking sound” at 4am.

6. The serial hoarder visitor

This is the visitor who goes from stand to stand not saying a thing, but collects every single brochure, pen, balloon and knick-knack available, quietly stuffing them into his trade show bag and moving on to molest the next stand.

7. The “I can’t grasp basic business concepts” visitor

These are people who can’t seem to understand why they would want to “do this hotspot thing”… even after you explain that they will make money.

8. The “Synergy” visitor

If you follow Dilbert you should equate the word “Synergy” with loathing and fear. Synergy is what marketing types refer to “symbiotic” relationships. The Synergists will try and explain why your company and their company should “work together”. They will find synergy even if they sell paint stripper and you sell internet.

9. The “I represent foreign money” visitor.

These are the types of people who try to convince you that you should contact them because they represent some people who have money. This could be complete rubbish or it could be our next meal ticket…

10. The Perfect Visitor

This is the great visitor. The guy or girl who realise how great our product is and see the value of it without too much explanation. They ask all the right questions and some even sign up right then and there.

ath

j.

Contrary to popular belief…

I’m just going to say this; I know that most of you who read this will already know it, but it’s still worth saying.

Mark Shuttleworth did not program Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution, and like all Linux distributions, it is a collection of a hundreds of software applications, written by a whole stack of open source developers, that all work together to make an operating system. All Mark did was have the vision to start a new distribution, and a stack of cash to make it happen. Yes, he’s a cool guy, but no, he didn’t program it.

I have this image in my head, which is the image I’m imagining some people have in their heads, of this geeky programmer dude frantically writing new features and bug fixes and and and… oh, and in my head, when he was done he used his casio keyboard to record the startup sound. This is not how Linux works.

It just dawned on me that perhaps the saddest thing about the success of Ubuntu is that some people don’t even know what Linux is, but they know the story of the dood who went to space and programmed Ubuntu.

ps. I am an Open Source evangelist and run Ubuntu pretty much everywhere.

A long weekend.

Right, I’ve decided to start doing more stuff. Getting out. Taking photos etc… as part of that mission I’ve decided to start documenting the banality of my life. This is the equivalent of a scale when you’re trying to lose weight. Except you share the results with everyone which can be a bit scary if you spent the weekend in bed watching Dilbert. I also have a crap memory, so please correct any misreprentations I might have put you in.

  • Friday evening I arbed around the house until Lourens came over and got the craving for macdonalds. I tagged along and didn’t partake.
  • Saturday morning I went to cocoa wah wah with Terri for breakfast then went home and watched cricket while falling asleep on the sofa.
  • Saturday afternoon I  went to Cape To Cuba for Thea’s birthday party and met a whole stack of interesting people. Photos to follow.
  • Sunday morning I went to Canal Walk with Lourens and then afterwards went to work and updated my Ubuntu.
  • Sunday afternoon I met up with Bobby to give him his keys to my parents house.
  • Sunday evening I had drinks with Neil and Skye.
  • Monday morning I got up, cleaned up my parents house and fetched them from the airport, had apple crumble with vanilla custard and answered questions about the breakup…
  • Monday afternoon was a braai in Stellenbosh with some very interesting guys. The most interesting of whom seems to have a thing for Dolly Parton lookalikes. Eww.

I think that’s a pretty respectable weekend.

J.

I am not a broken felt tip pen…

I recently joined the ranks of the unwashed, well, single people. It’s similar I think.

Anyways, my dad’s friend Bobby, (who is my dad’s age, they grew up together etc), asked me how I was doing?, who I was dating? etc, ie, nobody.  He proceeded to give me advice. I didn’t ask for any advice, he just gave it. His advice ended with a statement in earnest; “Just wet the tip”.  I could not have been more uncomfortable had you stuck a syringe in my ass. What kind of advice is that?  I know what he’s getting at, and I don’t like it. I’m not about to go “out there” and “get what I can get”. I don’t want to. I chose to chuckle nervously and say something stupid like “I’d rather not”, but he reiterated his “wisdom”.

This unfortunately comes from the same generation of men who believe that you can never *really* enjoy your job. You just have to find one that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself and wait for the gold watch at 50. I disagree. I disagree so wholeheartedly that it i justifies a blog post.

I still, perhaps foolishly, believe that I will meet someone who I can make as happy as they make me and that I’ll be able to stay on that winning streak until I’m old and decrepit. And I wont need to run around playing fast and loose in order to find them. There, I said it, I’m a relational optimist.

As for now, I’m still quite busy getting my life back online. It’s a process. I’ll see you when I’ve finished booting up.

j.

The next geekdinner… Dangerous Drumstick

The next in the series of awesome get-together-and-talk-all-things-geek geekdinners is on Thursday the 27th of September at Summerville in Camps Bay.

Amongst other great talks, my friend Derek will hopefully get to share a bit about his experiences running an online business… A subject that usually wouldn’t be all that interesting except for the fact that Derek is/was a big time old-school marketing director type person for airlines, hotels and large travel consortiums spending multi-million budgets on traditional media marketing… Only to get better results out of his kitchen and some well thought out online advertising.

The wiki is still where it’s always been. Sign up there.

ath.

j.

A word from the wise

“Maybe this is where it starts, this great journey to courage. Maybe it starts right here, today, among the blossoms of bliss. Maybe, all the courage you will ever need to face all the despair and hardships in life, is nurtured and grown in these days of solitude and peace. Like a baby grows and develops inside a womb until it is ready to come out and scream at the world and the unseen. That simple act is an act of great courage. And no baby decides to stay in its mothers womb. That is how we all began, with an act of great courage.”

– Parcleve