De Linux fotoalbumsoftware van het Kruidvat hoeft niet als root geïnstalleerd te worden en bevat een installatie script (Perl) wat vervolgens de juiste software-bestanden download en ‘installeert’. Het is helaas geen proper .deb of .rpm pakket en je moet een EULA accepteren, maar het draait wel native onder Linux en dus Ubuntu.

Twitter is a website through which you can tell your ‘followers’ what you are currently doing and through which you can follow other people. They themselves describe it as follows: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

My first reaction, was the same reaction I had towards the SecondLife hype: “Really, I am NOT going to join it, just because it is a hype”. Then I had a interesting talk with Kim who convinced me to use Twitter and not because it is a hype, but because it can be useful. Examples:

• Let your colleagues/friends know which projects your are currently working on. A lot can happen very quickly and the 140 characters Twitter allows you to use is just enough for one good tweet (one Twitter message) to Keep It Simple Stupid.
• Let your friends know what you are doing. The best example I could imagine: “I am sitting in bar/cafe X in city Y, anyone want to join me for a drink/bite to eat?”
• It integrates perfectly with my G1 (using twidroid).

So if you want to see what I am doing, you can read my Twitter page. I will try not to post useless stuff, but I can not promise anything at this time

Er zijn inmiddels al heel veel knuffels verzameld, maar deze moeten nu nog verstuurd worden richting Afrika en dat kost geld (het klinkt al bijna ordinair). Toen besloot Giel van 3FM om Dorien een handje te helpen. Hij gaf de actie niet alleen maar aandacht, maar regelde ook de knuffels die men kon kopen voor 10 euro en de verkoop hiervan (ze zijn hier nog actief mee bezig). De opbrengsten hiervan gaan naar de knuffelactie om de transportkosten naar Afrika te betalen.

Toevallig hoorde ik vanochtend op de radio dat Dieuwertje bij de A4 stond om op een parkeerplaats de knuffeltjes te verkopen. Gelukkig lag het precies op mijn route, dus stopte ik even. Daar ruilde ik 10 euro om tegen een mooie knuffel en een goed gevoel.

Pros:

• Typing comfort
• Black keys, so visually less noisy
• USB hub in keyboard (if you need to charge your media player)
• Huge geek factor
• Compatible with Linux (duh)

Cons:

• ‘Typing sound’ needs some time to get used to. You hear every single keystroke, but after a short while I did not find it disturbing at all.
• The price

What would a geek do without some sort of gadget to keep track of the time, which is so volatile. This is about as geeky as you can get, the binary clock. I got the silver version with the blue LED’s (which are _very_ bright, when it is dark inside a room).

Pros:

• 12 and 24 hour mode
• Binary horizontally or vertically
• 3 Brightness settings
• Looks great

Cons:

• If you need to know the time when it is very early (and your brain did not boot yet) or when you are drunk (and your brain is too lazy to function properly), it takes a while to ’see’ the time.
• Sometimes the LED’s feel too bright in a completely dark room, even on the lowest brightness setting.

Since I have not had a proper vacation for 3 years, due to personal reasons, I was very glad I could escape my stuffy home and get a fresh perspective on things. The first few days I even had to learn to relax, quite a strange experience (alcohol helped a lot at this stage).
The hotel

I stayed at the Palmira Peguera hotel. The information provided at the check-in could have been a bit better, but the employees were very willing to help me out. There was a ‘internet corner’ which actually was one computer hooked to the internet, running Windows XP. (7 minutes of internet were priced at 0.50 cents, quite expensive) The food quality was mediocre, but sufficient, just stay away from the calamari. The rooms were clean and were cleaned every day, absolutely no problems there. I would recommend this hotel to anyone who wants to stay in Paguera, just do not expect too much from the food.
The town

Paguera (also called Peguera) is a town with a nice, yet small, collection of shops and bars. If you ‘really’ want to go shopping, you can take a bus to Palma and you will find anything you need. Paguera has a nice main street, 4 beaches (2 of them are the main beaches) and a nice scenery. If you just want to have a nice vacation without anything really fancy, this is the place to be.
The beach

The beaches are clean and the water is clear. In the main season, if there are a lot of people in the water, the water gets a little muddy (solution: go early in the morning or late in the afternoon). You can rent a beach parasol (3 euros) and two stretchers (each 3 euros) which really is worth the money. The guys who you pay for the beach parasol and stretchers also clean the beach and take out the garbage.
The nightlife

If you are fond of large discos, you will be disappointed. There are some clubs/discos, which was more than enough for me, since I’m more of a ‘bar’ guy. On my first day I found (IMHO) the best bar in Paguera and went there every night. We had loads of fun and I met some very interesting people there. Most of the bars close at 02.00 and the clubs are usually open until 06.00. If you ‘really’ want to go clubbing you can always take a cab to Palma, which costs about 40 euros (don’t forget the money to get you back home though).
It’s good to be back. I’ll try to get my normal rhythm back ASAP.

Let me start with the fact that this is my blog depicting my personal opinion. Having that said, I often find myself in the situation in which I turn away from someone asking help on IRC. Why? Because I would otherwise would like to say: “RTFM”. Why? Because it’s a very short acronym, for people who ask questions that are perfectly documented. Luckily the IRC bot ‘uboto’ helps, by providing a few standard lines for those who are still asking some documented questions. This really lowers the frustration for those trying to help.
Nevertheless, I’ve been experiencing this phenomenon for quite some time now, even far beyond the borders of IRC. Nobody actually takes the time anymore to search for an answer and just asks, because it’s less work for them. On the other side, it’s more work for us! Furthermore people do not read the howto’s/documentation/etc. carefully or even the tips/solutions that are given them. This can be very frustrating for someone who’s trying to help you in their spare time. Since this seems a very general phenomenon, please help educating the people by not providing the actual links, but let them make that extra step themselves. Just tell them to search for ’some searchengine query’ and click on the 5th result or search for ’some wiki entry’ on the Ubuntu wiki. They won’t like it, but next time they’ll probably search the wiki first.
Getting help:

OK, I am feeling much better. Let me continue with something else. If you want to be helped by someone on IRC (or perhaps anywhere else) please

1. search the wiki first
2. search the forums
3. search using a search engine and avoid bad software like Automatix and Envy

If you still haven’t found your answer, you can state your problem and solutions you have already tried briefly. If someone feels that you have put effort into fixing your problem, you have a bigger chance of getting some help. Note: this still does not guarantee help.
You should always use proper netiquette, when you’re asking for help on IRC. There are also a few other tips:

• Do not join the channel, ask your question and quit a few minutes later. Wait for an answer, which can take quite a while (read: hours)
• Do not suddenly join a conversation and try to help, while ‘your’ questions have been asked seconds earlier. If you have just joined the channel, wait a while before helping people.
• Do not use ‘chat’ language. Try to speak proper English (or in my situation Dutch)
• Do not ‘paste’ any output longer than 2 lines to the channel. Use pastebin!
• Try to keep your sentences long. It’s easier to read 1 long sentence, than 5 short ones. It also makes it easier for us to ‘read back’.
• Actually read and try the possible solutions that are provided
• Please don’t ask “Why this?” or “Why that?” all the time. Some things aren’t easily explained. We can either focus on answering your technical questions or provide you with possible solutions for your problems. If you are eager to learn, please search the internet.
• Please… Please, check your grammar. You would not believe how many grammatical errors we see every day. This does not include real typos
• Do not spam or ‘test’ the bot. You can PM him.

One more frustration:

One thing I have found really annoying about mailingslists are the people who mail the mailinglist with the question: “Please unsubscribe me”. This is, again, a sign that people do not read. In the first e-mail you get from the mailinglist, it states how to unsubscribe and gives you a lot of information. So please don’t bother us with something we can not do for you. And if we tell you, that you have to unsubscribe yourself, just do it!
Correct behaviour?

That felt great, I’ve got it off my chest now. It’s better to ‘vent’ it here, than ‘venting’ it on the people you are trying to help. Some of these situations could require a “RTFM” answer, but that’s usually not given. Often a softer approach is better by telling the person to ’search the internet’ or ‘read the documentation’. This is, in my perspective, CoC approved behaviour. But how far should we take it with being ‘nice’?