My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Category: Me (Page 26 of 27)

Sjoerd Jongens

Sjoerd at Greenpeace

Sjoerd at Greenpeace

Sjoerd Jongens met with an accident in the early morning of wednesday november 12th, 2008. He suffered severe head injuries – possibly caused by a stroke which resulted in a fall off his bike.

He did not awake from his coma. Sjoerd passed away in the night of that same wednesday.

I worked with Sjoerd for five years when I was a hired Linux consultant at Greenpeace International. Sjoerd was the driving force behind the design and maintenance of Greenpeace’s global network infrastructure. The Greenpeace archive has a nice timeline of this: http://archive.greenpeace.org/history.html He was a Linux enthousiast and a man of principles (easily mistaken for ‘grumpiness’ if you did not know him well enough). After I ended my assignment at Greenpeace we stayed in touch and had regular conversations about Linux, Greenpeace and Australia (the country where he intended to spend the last part of his life).

It is a sad day today. Sjoerd, it is awful to see you go like this. This page will remain so that you are remembered. The Greenpeace weblog honors him as well – go read it.

My thoughts are with his family.

Eric

Beter herrie dan kutmuziek

What is the alien listening at – when it is the midnight hour?

Simple: I never know in advance.

At home I run a Slackware Linux server on which I have installed Icecast. Icecast is a Shoutcast-compatible (and Open Source) multimedia streaming server. In other words, my server outputs a continuous stream of music (exactly like Internet Radio stations work), which I can tune into with my desktop computer.

I have digitized a great deal of my music collection and Icecast enables me to listen to these songs – any mediaplayer that understands ShoutCast streams is able to tune in. On Linux I use XMMS, sometimes Audacious, but Amarok and even mpg123 work just as well. On the Windows computer in the living room I like WinAmp most.

Now, Icecast is nothing special, but I added a playlist manager which randomly selects songs from my collection (unless I select songs from the database myself). Every new song that plays over the speakers is a surprise 🙂

And how does that playlist look in the management console?

** now playing **
Rubicon (Chris Kimsey Mix)
Killing Joke
For Beginners
** on deck **
Flowers of Love • Deine Lakaien • 1987
Domestic Departure • Au Pairs • Playing With A Different Sex
[Untitled Track] • Chumbawamba • Singsong and a Scrap
Spoeida Menneke • Les Tueurs de la Lune de Miel • Special Manubre!
You’re The Reason I’m Leaving • Franz Ferdinand • You Could Have It So Much Better With Franz Ferdinand [UK]
Gib mir mehr • Unheilig • Gastspiel – CD 2
le Chant Du Cygne Du Serpent • Mecano • Snake Tales For Dragon
I’m not angry • Elvis Costello • My Aim Is True
Kill The Great Raven • Snakefinger • A Collection
I Thought • Nitzer Ebb • Big Hit
Slice Of Life • Bauhaus • The 4AD Dark Sessions Part 2 C
Misty In Roots – Judas Iscariote 6.mp3 • Various
Lam Phouthay • Jah Wobble And The Invaders Of The Heart • Molam Dub

I hope you find inspiration in this shortlist. Surely it shows my age 🙂

Cheers, Eric

O yeah… about the title for this post. Me and my flatmates once held a big party in our student flat, and my choice of music was somewhat “off-beat”. We had covered part of the corridor wall with paper so that the guests had something to leave their comments on, and somebody wrote “Beter herrie dan kutmuziek“. Which translates to “Better to endure this freaking noise than having to listen to lousy music”. Not all of those present agreed but I owned the stereo! I still use the phrase as a slogan to describe my record collection.

Banner picture

I had a second banner picture cut out and (appropriately coloured with a blue hue) ready to use when I was setting up this blog. However I decided that the view from Greenpeace office (did anyone ever notice the text “save the whales” cut out in a steel plate there?) was nicer to look at.

I am going to use this brittanny cloud scape as the blog’s eye catcher for a while, but no worries: the winter view of the Hamburg harbor is still on disk.

If anyone prefers one over the other – let me know in a comment.

Cheers, Eric

Slab!

I thought this would be a cool post to make.

It has nothing to do with Slackware – or computers – at all. It is about my past as a musical “junkie”. Before computers became the rage, and when there was no Internet, I spent a lot of time and money on my main hobby which was music.

My musical taste was definitely not mainstream, and I should really write some more about it someday. But for the purpose of this post, it suffices to say that I visited the local “pop temple” a lot. Eindhoven’s Effenaar was well-known in the indie circuit (and still is, although it’s targeted audience has changed quite a bit). I have seen so many bands there in the 80’s and 90’s that I lost count of them (not to mention it was less than healthy for the condition of my hearing). One of the bands I saw there, early 1988, was Slab! I was used to a lot but their concert blew me off my shoes. The sound was vicious and the bass guitar sounded simply amazing. I had bought a vinyl album before the show (Descension) and was fascinated by it. But the live experience was so much better!

After the concert, it appeared to me like no new material was released by the band. I assumed they had dissolved and I kept playing that old album from time to time (when no one else was in the room – the Slab! sound is quite dominating). Now that we have arrived in the age of computers I started looking for more information on the Internet about Slab! at irregular intervals, and I was very surprised to actually see some signs of life.

A blog site (Unfit for Print) wrote an article on Slab! in mid-2007, some of the former band members found out about it, a lively discussion started and the result was that two of the Slab! band members actually dug up their unfinished recordings and took these into the studio to work on a new album. This was 19 years after they sort of decided to discontinue the Slab! adventure. The new Slab! homepage has more information about what they are up to. The blog as well as the Slab! homepage made it clear that the Slab! discography was larger than I had originally thought. Some of it can be found on the internet in mp3 format now (even the Slab! members no longer had possession of some of their old material), like the Peel Session they recorded and their “Music from the iron lung” and”Sanity allergy” albums. I am afraid I will have to digitize the crackling Descension vinyl myself, because there is no digital version of this to be found. I think it is the best album they made and really need to have a digital version now that my old turntable is no longer hooked up to the stereo.

Somebody was friendly enough to digitize old tapes of Slab! live recordings and posted them to YouTube. Here is one – keep in mind that this was 20 years ago:

I am in anticipation of what they are cooking up in 2008!

Eric

Network configuration

I am at home because I can not work… due to recent surgery (inguinal hernia) I can only “sit” (or rather, lean back) in a soft couch and can not wear other trousers than jogging pants. But this is boring! So I thought of stuff to do – things I had been neglecting.

My Wiki was in dear need of new articles and article updates… voilá I had a goal!

The first fruit of my labour is a new article about Slackware’s network configuration. While the online books like Slackware Linux Essentials (the official Slackbook) and Daniël de Kok’s Slackware Linux Basics are good introductions to ?ettin? the network up and running, an in-depth overview of the (im)possibilities and further background information on the format of the configuration file rc.inet1.conf has been lacking in Slackware. I know, maybe I should write a “man rc.inet1.conf” someday. And such a man page may even spring to life in the near future… certainly, the material I wrote for the Wiki will serve as input for that.

Apart from documenting “normal” wired configuration, I spent a lot of time on wireless networking, because that is one of the areas people struggle most. And it really is so simple to setup – but without properly documented parameters it is harder than it should be. I hope the Wiki article will help people and if not, I always welcome questions, advice, hints and corrections. There is a chapter with some historical facts about the advancement of Slackware’s network support because I was involved in it a lot.

Without further ado, I suggest that you take a look at “Configuring your network in Slackware“.

Have fun reading! Eric

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