the corner office

Wicked stuff. Bob Congdon recently pointed to TechBooksForFree.com.

Quick link for future reference - I'm brushing up on my vim skills, using the Vim book by Steve Oualline, which is downloadable as a pdf here.

Not bad, not great. Freedom and equality for all under a feudal king! Gimme a break. Is my cheese-o-meter overly sensitive these days? Having said that, it was an enjoyable watch. It ends up being "a week in the life of Arthur" story and a little less, uh, epic than expected, but this "alternative" Arthur was a nice change from the usual Arthurian Legend fare.

Cool. I've noticed the power LED flickers every time there's hard drive activity, but that's easily fixed. Apart from that, my old MMX seems to be working just fine:

[root@mirkwood /root]# uname -a Linux mirkwood 2.4.2-2 #1 Sun Apr 8 19:37:14 EDT 2001 i586 unknown

I think it's time for an OS upgrade, though.

The week's gone by and myself and Ronwen haven't forgotten that it was this time last year when we lost my partner Mohammed and his wife Safiyya in a car crash. It's been in the atmosphere the past week, but the saddest thing is that when we talk about it the discussions go down the same old paths. It's impossible to say anything about Mo and Safiyya's passing without also dragging out the absolute mess that happened after they died. Instead of being able to just enjoy and honour their memory I end up bitter knowing that everything Mo worked and sacrificed and stood for is being perverted and wasted away, and angry now that I've discovered the scheming and lying and BS that was going on behind their backs before and after their deaths. Mo and Safiyya deserved better than this.

I miss them.

Off to the airport again today to meet Ronwen's cousins on their way back to Ireland.

In the meantime I have good news - got admission into all my exams, and my final timetable is out. The timetable isn't too bad, and not too hostile towards my sister and bro-in-law's short visit to Joburg in October. In the meantime though, it's time to crack open the books and get down to work again.

In 2002 my old PIII died with a fried motherboard. About a year ago, my old MMX which had been serving me faithfully as a gateway and web server and general Linux sandbox gave up the ghost as well. I've been half-heartedly looking around for replacement mobos for ages, but I finally got my A into G and got lucky. I found a small company in Wynberg that flogs refurbished old computer components, and (as I discovered when I visited them), repairs components as well. I got both motherboards sorted for 200 bucks, which is far less than what some people ask for on BidOrBuy, and these mobos now have a 3 month warranty on them. They could blow again, but they worked fine in the electrician's "PC-without-a-case" contraptions in his workshop, so I'm hopeful.

The real fun is going to be remembering how to wire up a 7 year old AT motherboard again. Watch this space.

Business Day: 'Big Bang' to cut Telkom monopoly:

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri yesterday unveiled the most dramatic overhaul in SA's telecommunications sector to date, in a "big-bang" liberalisation that will break Telkom's much-criticised stranglehold over the industry.

VoIP and everybody-can-play deregulation can bring only good things. Follow the rejoicing over at Hellkom.

It's still some time before any of this will actually kick in, so I'm inclined to wait and see what happens before getting too excited, but kudos to the government if they actually follow through with all of this.

I can only imagine what sorts of goings-on are happening away from the public eye right now. Telkom were whinging that they weren't given warning or consulted with... can't help but suspect that their own arrogance and greed played a large part in pushing the government to this decision.

I'm doing a major clean-up/purge of my junk at home, and as I sift through everything, I'm having a royal procession down memory lane. I'm finally throwing out the last of my study notes from my BCom degree, over a decade old now. I never regret having moved into IT but I do often have a slightly bittersweet feeling when I think that there were good things about the profession I originally trained for, that I do miss.

What makes it hard to throw away some of these old notes, which I know I'll never need or use again, is just remembering the amount of sweat and effort I put into them. So neat, so tidy, so unlike the half-hearted scrawls that pass as my study notes these days. I want to keep those old notes as a reminder of my former uber-diligent obsessive-compulsive self, but ultimately, they're just wasting space. It's time to Let Them Go.

I will say this, though. I think in our modern world of computers, printers, scanners, keyboards and mice and monitors, we've gained convenience and all sorts of good things, but we've also lost something. The bland uniformity of fonts can't match the expressiveness of handwriting, the bland percussive smoothness of typing on a keyboard and clicking mouse buttons just isn't the same as the tactile magic of writing, and working with paper.

Sounds rather naff, I know. But still.

Well that's a bit obscure. The Wages of Sin, with Thee Spectres front-man Jesse James.

The Wages of Sin play traditional music for non-traditionalists. They mix Celtic with country with Appalachian with rockabilly with Tex-Mex with bluegrass, and follow the whole mess with a bracing shot of punk rock.

Demo mp3s. I'm tapping my feet as I type this, so I think I like it!