Kim Bach . Org

Opdateret den 10-oktober-2008.

Vi har nu fundet stedet vi skal være. Det bliver på Københavns Teknisk Skole på Lygten 16, 2400 København NV. At vi har fundet sådan et fantastisk sted, betyder at vi udvider antallet af deltagere fra 50 til 100.

Så skal vi til det igen, for tredie gang i alt, og for anden gang i år, bliver der afholdt BarCamp Copenhagen (applause).

Det eneste der er helt klart på nuværende tidspunkt er at dDet kommer til at foregå i på Københavns Tekniske Skole, Lygten 16, 2400 København NV (doh!), og at det bliver lørdag den 22-november-2008 fra kl. 10:00 til ??.

Hvis du ser videoen nedenfor så lover vi i øvrigt at “blyanterne vil vende tilbage”, hvis vi ikke finder nogle sponsorer. Vi vil gerne holde BarCamp gratis, men også på et vist niveau, så hvis vi ikke finder sponsorer, så må vi skrue ned for ambitionsniveauet, og i januar var vores prop altså nogle blyanter - fine, jo vist - men vi vil så gerne give jer noget endnu bedre.

Reglerne kender i vist efterhånden, ellers kan i læse dem her.

BarCamp handler om deltagelse, så det der gør BarCamp interessant, er DIG. Vær parat til at dele!

Til de første to BarCamp Copenhagen handlede det mest om præsentationer, men i år håber vi at kunne få mere gang i nogle diskussioner, og måske vil vi forsøge os med et mere workshop eller open space lignende format, smid evt. en kommentar hvis du har nogle ideer!

Vi regner med at have plads til 50 100 mennesker deltagere, og vi har allerede nu 31 tilmeldinger.

Så skynd dig at melde dig til ved at redigere wiki-siden på BarCamp.org, eller ved at bruge vores Facebook gruppe.

Ses vi? Det tror jeg nok vi gør!

Læs også:

• Indlæg på KimBach.Org omhandlende BarCamp

I går, den 3die April, kunne Æbletræet.dk fejre sin 2 års fødselsdag. Æbletræet.dk er et Internetbaseret, indholdsdrevet, fællesskabs projekt der startede som en idé om at skabe en begynderguide til Mac, men er endt med at være en af de, ja måske det, største Danske online fællesskabsdrevne indholdsdrevne Internet projekter. Projektet er dog, for længst, gået skridtet videre, og indeholder nu artikler om meget andet end Apple.

Historien om Æbletræet, eller MacWiki som det oprindelig hed, er dokumenteret på Wikien, hvilket er ganske unikt, som du kan finde på http://www.theappletree.dk (jeg bruger - bevidst - den Engelske version - da projektet - naturligvis - som nogle af de første - benytter en IDN (International Domain Name) - nogle skulle jo starte, og det blev os.

Ideen til Æbletræet udsprang af det danske forum for Apple fans, Macnyt.dk, en gruppe af faste brugere var blevet trætte af at besvare de samme spørgsmål om og om igen, så det blev diskuteret om man kunne skrive en bog eller lignende.

Fra start af var det klart, for mig, at man absolut ikke skulle skrive en bog, men lave det online på Internettet, og jeg havde noget i baghånden, MediaWiki, det samme system som driver Wikipedia - der er åben og fri software.

Første møde blev afholdt den 3-April-2006, og da jeg kom hjem installerede jeg MediaWiki på min server og oprettede de første artikler.

Der gik noget tid inden de andre projekt deltagere forstod ideen, og indlæringskurven for MediaWiki er ikke just lav, derfor opsatte jeg også et traditionelt forum, som stadig kan findes på http://macwiki.kimbach.org/portal, og diskussionen flød.

Det er fantastisk at arbejde sammen om at producere indhold, og når man kan se at der er mange rettelser på MediaWikis recent changes, så virker det simpelthen ganske inspirerende, og man får lyst til at skrive mere.

Jeg føler det er nødvendigt at aflive nogle myter, da den slags opstår når folk ikke taler sammen.

• Jeg har ingen ambitioner om at være leder eller bestemme noget som helst
• Jeg er blevet beskyldt for at tage Æbletræet som gidsel - det kan jeg ikke se - grunden til at vi ikke er på PHP5 - som jeg helt ærligt - ikke forstår er så vigtigt - er at vores udbyder Site5 ikke understøtter det, og da projektet er baseret på gratis og frivillig arbejdskraft, så har det været svært at få ejeren af serveren til at bruge tid til at få flyttet server

Og så et par ord om hvordan jeg fungerer: jeg bliver stresset af at tænke på produktions-problemer, og i påsken forsøgte jeg at opgradere Æbletræet.dk, det gik ikke helt som ventet, jeg bad derfor om, først at få os på PHP5, derefter ville jeg installere MediaWiki 1.12, og så flytte til Gigahost (hvilket jeg ikke tror er så god en idé), hvis man spørger kan man jo få svar, og jeg venter på min frivillige hjælper.

Fundamentalt hader jeg simpelthen drift, og her mener jeg ikke den første installation, men de problemer der - næsten altid - opstår når man skal opgradere serveren - så vidt jeg husker - så har vi nu ikke haft de store produktions problemer - en enkelt gang var vi nede i 48 timer - fordi Site5 havde skiftet IP adresser.

En grundregel - som gælder al drift - er: “if it ain’t (totally) broke - don’t fix it” - på Dansk: “pil ikke ved noget der fungerer, også selv om det ikke fungere helt optimalt”. At dette så betyder at “change” ikke sker, er uheldigt, men det er simpelthen ikke noget man kan byde frivillig arbejdskraft - så ting tager tid!

Jeg har - længe - forsøgt at få vores server opgraderet til PHP5, men igen - frivillig arbejdskraft skal man ikke presse - man må væbne sig med tålmodighed. Tro mig, jeg ved det - for 3 år siden prøvede jeg at køre et del-projekt i min Frivilliggruppe hårdt, det faldt ikke i god jord - og folk hadede det jeg producerede, men jeg producerede! Siden dengang har jeg væbnet mig med tålmodighed.

Efter 2 år kan projektet dog, sagtens, stå på egne ben, og jeg føler at min fortsatte deltagelse i projektet ville betyde en fragmentering af fællesskabet, der - efter min mening - ganske enkelt ikke brug for endnu et Dansk Apple site, og nøj hvor er det imponerende med de nye Apple fora, som i kan se havde vi et Drupal baseret forum allerede for 2 år siden.

Jeg vil derfor, fremover, ikke deltage i projektet som andet end bidragyder, med mindre jeg bliver udelukket - hvilket jo ikke kan udelukkes (pun intended).

Faktisk er det eneste jeg er ked af, at jeg har mistet en fantastisk god ven - det bedste minde jeg har er dengang vi bagte en kage til brug for Dansk Flygtningehjælps 1000 flere arrangement, og jeg undskylder MANGE MANGE gange for Beyoncé, som blev Skypet til dine sarte ører mangen sen nat.

Det sjoveste er faktisk at vi, mest fordi vi havde en åben proces, blev udsat for en domænehaj. macwiki.dk blev registreret af en af den slags personer ,der ikke burde have lov at betræde Internettet, sjovt nok blev navnet jo æbletræet.dk, så fjolset brændte inde med domænet LOL.

God vind kære Æbletræ, det har været fantastisk sjovt! Specielt tak til David, Esben men også Thomas x 2, Wendelboe, Sebastian, Allan, Liv for at have holdt mig ud så længe, noget af en bedrift ;-).

Et par fakta - Æbletræet.dk kører videre, så længe det ønskes. Hvis der er interesse i at bevare navnet, hvilket jeg da tvivler på, så kan det redelegeres, jeg ejer det p.t. I øvrigt sletter jeg aldrig indhold, men da vi ved at dublikeret indhold er noget Google ikke bryder sig om, trækker jeg stikket så snart der er flertal for det.

Jeg er blevet beskyldt for gidseltagning - intet er mig fjernere - jeg er SUPER stolt af at have været med til dette - og det var det jeg kunne få jer med til. Fremtiden tilhører egen-produceret indhold, som man selv hoster og ejer, websitet er dødt! Elvis har forladt bygningen.

Billedet der ledsager denne artikel er en manipulation udført af Esben Thomsen, det er Copyright Esben Thomsen, men jeg håber at dette falder under fair use. Esben kender mig bedre end de fleste, og det “grønne skrig” opsumerer “mig” ganske godt (man kunne sige perfekt)

Q:
Har du forslag til besparelser indenfor print/ kopiering (sort-hvid/farve tryk) og/eller papir-forbrug, - (også gerne systemændringsforslag), så skriv dit forslag og send det til postkassen: xxxxxxxx

A:
Det gælder jo ikke kun om at begrænse medarbejdernes papirforbrug, men også den mængde papir der sendes til kunder i form af regninger, og her er der også en stor logistisk omkostning da brevene jo skal bringes ud.

Det skal også nævnes at man udover at benytte dobbeltsidet tryk, også kan udskrive flere ark på samme side, og personligt er det meget få af de dokumenter jeg udskriver på den måde, der bliver sværere at læse.

Ellers er det også relevant at vælge en papir-leverandør der prioriterer miljømæssig bæredygtighed højt, og det er ikke kun for at opnå en økonomisk besparelse på “papiret” (bevidst vittig ;-), det må nemlig gerne koste mere, hvis det samtidig er bæredygtigt, og så er det et godt signal at sende til omverden. Noget andet er at hvis prisen er højere, kan det også virke som et inictament til at sænke forbruget yderligere.

Bortset fra det kan man rent faktisk ofte undgå helt at udskrive, det kræver bare at man lettere kan finde informationerne, og så er det vigtigt at man ikke længere sender f.eks. Word dokumenter til hinanden, men i stedet henvisninger til Intranettet/Lokalnettet, så man vendes til at læse informationer på skærmen i stedet for at udskrive den.

Systemer til vidensdeling som wikier, diskussionsfora og team blogs kan også hjælpe til at begrænse mængden af papir, der er heller ikke længere diskussion om hvilke versioner af et dokument man har. Man kan også med den slags systemer begrænse behovet for møder da projekter lettere kan diskuteres og resultater fastholdes når man bruger den slags systemer.

Det kunne også være en idé hvis der var en computer i mødelokalerne der var koblet op til lokalnettet og en storskærm, som man var SIKKER på virkede - det er min opfattelse at der bruges en del tid på at være sikker på at et mødelokale har fungerende netforbindelse etc. På denne computer vil man så kunne hente projekt dokumenter, inklusive diskussioner, så de kan diskuteres på mødet.

Principielt kan det diskuteres om det overhovedet er nøvendigt at have en harddisk i en computer, afskaffelsen af den lokale harddisk vil betyde at man altid vil gemme informationer på en sådan måde at man kan få fat i dem fra en vilkårlig computer, og derfor ikke har behov for at udskrive dokumenterne når man går på besøg hos kolleger for at diskutere dokumenterne.

Dette vil dog stille større krav til netværket, og derfor vil det være en idé at tænke i en distribueret infrastruktur, f.eks. ville det være smart hvis en udviklingsafdeling havde sin egen filserver på lokalnettet, der så blev replikeret til firmaserverne automatisk.

Konkurrencemailen er i øvrigt et “sjovt” eksempel på forkert brug af elektronisk distribution, da der er en vedhæftet fil medsendt, i stedet for et link til Intranettet.

As it might have caught your attention, the second BarCampCopenhagen took place this Friday (25th of January 2008), and there was great energy in the building. It’s evident that there’s a strong interest in having an event like BarCamp in Copenhagen, and it was inspiring, just to try to tap into that energy.

On the practical level, BarCamp was a great success, especially thanks to generousity of Beaconware (Troels, Allan and Kimmy) and of course Toothless Tiger (Henriette and Thomas) and Laura who moderated the “Kangaroo?” sessions, and thanks to the sponsorship from BridgeIT (my employeer), the event could be taken to such a high level, without having to charge the participants.

I must say that I’m amazed by the group of dedicated and interesting people that showed up, this is what they do for a living, but they’re also interested in sharing their ideas openly - thank you all!

To me the greatest moments were that I, finally, got to meet some people, that I’ve been following online, in real life.

If you have to criticise the event a little, I think we had some “growing pains” - in 2006 the event was more intimate, since we could all fit around one table, this meant that we could have more of an “open space” type of event, and that is the format that I prefer.

Civilisation 0.1

I did a presentation - Civilisation 0.1 - a pun on Tor Nørretranders Civilsation 2.0 - and I had some (understatement) difficulty making my points, that most likely had something to do with the fact that I had the wrong audience, since they’re all “believers”. Knowing the audience is, I believe, number one on the list of things to remember when doing a presentation of any kind, so that was sobering.

Since I failed to get my points across, talking about Pyramids, Archs and Fountains, I’ll try to do better here.

My presentation was inspired by this famous quote from Alan Kay:

If you look at software today, through the lens of the history of engineering, it’s certainly engineering of a sort—but it’s the kind of engineering that people without the concept of the arch did. Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

My argument is that we’ve, so far, been building pyramids, but that we’ve invented the arch.

“The Pyramid”, is current ICT businesses, and their monopolistic pratices
“The Arch”, is “open source” and MM(O)C (Massively, Multiuser (Online) Collaboration)
“The Aqueducts” is the “Internet”
“The fountains” and “Temples” are the “things” we can build using “the arch” and the tremendously powerful tools and technologies we have in our hands.

I also tried to make these points:

• Basic infrastructure should be free
• We’re busy building “Pyramids” - using brute force
• Civilisation is still in beta
• We actually have the power to change things - get involved
• The beer isn’t free - it will cost money
• Join the revolution

Like I said, and this was obvious if you attended, I wasn’t too good at getting these points through, and to me, one of the main ideas of BarCamp, is to throw ideas on the table, even half baked ones, and have them tested, and even shot down.

My ideas was mostly shot down, and I got a “Emperor’s new clothes” type of comment: “To build the aquaeducts that feeds the fountains you already need an arch”, and someone else pointed out, that “something” was missing going from “The Pyramid” to “The Arch”, did it just appear out of the blue? I didn’t really answer that too well, my point is that the technological equivalent of “The Arch” has been/is being invented, now we can go build the aquaeducts and fountains armed with that knowledge.

Christian Schade was the most sceptical, I need people like him to question my ideas, so thank you Christian.

I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about this, basically I’m a strong believer in utopian ideas - they’ re getting a bit old, and others are better at getting them across than me.

I enjoyed the discussion we had afterwards, and I think that I managed to sell some of my ideas. It’s really quite simple, don’t wait for the revolution to happen, get involved. Like I said, this was the wrong audience, since they’re all already involved in the revolution.

My presentation did align itself, almost perfectly, with the two that followed, those of Christian Schade and Tania Ellis.

The Digital Divide

I was very pleased to, finally, meet Christian Schade, a person that I’ve been following for some time. I’ve never met him before, and I only knew him because he, sometime ago, added me as a contact on the online service Jaiku. The way he’s using a microblogging service is very similar to the way I use it, he often posts short messages that only he can understand - like a song that he had some sort of association to.

Christian talked about “the digital divide”, and he started out by stating that the difference between the things he was going to talk about, and the things I talked about, was similar to “the glass is half-full” (me)/”the glass is half empty” (Christian). You could say that I’m the optimist and Christian is the realist.

Christian got his points through, and they’re quite sobering. It’s possible that the younger generation is tech-savy, but they’re basically IT illiterate, yes they know how to use their cellphone, but the Nokia N95 they’re carrying around really is an extremely powerful computer, that they’re just using to TEXT each other.

Since the current trend is that businesses, and the public, use more and more advanced electronic solutions - yes: e-mail qualifies as advanced - IT skills are increasingly important, skills that the educational system isn’t focusing on.

So the digital divide is getting bigger, even in developed countries, and no one seems to care, like Christian pointed out, no one has really seriously looked at the problem with the digital divide, since the Dybkjær report, and when that was issued, they weren’t even sure if the Internet should be the backbone of the “Digital Denmark”.

Of course part of the problem with technology has to do with accessibility, and the general computer really is too complicated to be the basic tool of the digital revolution - no-one should have to know what a firewall and an anti-virus program is…We have a great challenge ahead of us, but no-one seems to care.

I later had a long discussion with Christian, and that was great.

Capitalism with a human face

BarCamp was also graced by Tania Ellis, author of the book “De nye pionerer” (The New Pioneers), and her presentation was about “Social business” – new alliances (oops ;-)) between economics and humanism.

Tania started out by showing a picture of the two choices of careers you’ve had since the 70ies, either you’re the poor, “peace and love” hippie or the greedy business man, but could a third way be emerging? A way where you can merge and/or mix the two, achieving balance and the best of two worlds.

Tania has been giving this a lot of thought, and the examples she found were ranging from the relatively well known (Life Straw), to the “interesting” (Solar Powered Vibrators) to the self-contradictory (Environmentally friendly munitions).

After Christian’s venture into dystopia, Tania presented hope for the future, maybe that is an attribute of the feminine? Afterwards she said that having children certainly helps, something that Christian tried to protest ;-).

I think that Tania managed to put words to my ideas, and present them is a structured manner - the “exercise” of writing a book is probably helpful ;-). Seen as a whole, the pre-dinner presentations by Christian, Tania and me fit extremely well together.

BTW, the splash screen on Tania’s web-site is a quote from Alan Kay. It used to be part of the name of my PowerBook, until I discovered that iTunes Music Store doesn’t like long computer-names, strangely enough the fact that I’ve written about the solution, is the biggest driver of traffic to my blog!

del.icio.us

After these three Kangaroo? tracks, it was time for dinner, and that was just del.icio.us (sorry or soz as I’ve begun to say recently).

Ruby don’t take your love to town

After the break, I decided to stay truer to my Geek roots, and attended the session “Ruby, Rails <meta>?” by Casper Fabricius. This was a great introduction to Ruby. Ruby is definitely very cool - like Neo cool - and I do love interpreted languages. I got a flash-back to the strangest language I’ve ever worked with, APL - an interpreted language that I have mainly used on an IBM mainframe.

One thing I find interesting is the trench-digging, and categorisation of people based on what programming languages they use - with the possible exception of Perl, I haven’t seen a programming language I couldn’t master with relative ease, and I’m, of the conviction that you need to have some general awareness of the different languages and tools that you have at your disposal. If Ruby can get the job done, quicker and faster, you should be allowed to use it.

Unfortunately Denmark is Microsoft country extraordinaire, and .NET is way too dominant. I totally agree with Casper that Reflection in C# is very hard to grasp, within this field Ruby is pure simplicity, and it is just beautiful.

As with all interpreted languages, there are justified performance fears, but if you can deliver solutions quicker, the benefits might overshadow those concerns.

Casper asked the question: so what can you use all this Neo-coolness for? He didn’t really have the time to answer this, but Ruby is being used to build world-class applications.

If you want to get started with Ruby, Casper pitched the web-based Ruby development environment Heroku, and it looks like a good place to start venturing into Ruby coolness. Heroku is in closed beta, but you might be allowed to pass through the Pearly Gates to Ruby coolness, by contacting Casper. [Casper has made me aware (see comments) that Heroku is for Ruby on Rails development, it's important to distinguish between the two].

Quo-vadis?

The most surprising presentation of the evening, was the presentation by Henrik Biering of the work NETAMIA has done to develop a single-sign-on (SSO) engine, called net-safe. Net-safe is a standards based, plug-able SSO infrastructure, that also contains address validation etc. Running a successful on-line business depends on correct identification of the users, and having valid user data, also means that the users are better behaved.

Henrik knew what he was talking about, based on the experiences of the huge user base of heste-nettet.dk, which he runs. I guess it is obvious, but it really was an eye-opener to me, correct/valid information of users is extremely important, if you want to run a serious web-site.

Everyone in the room was blown away by seeing how polished a product Net-safe is, and when asked how much it had cost to develop it, Henrik answered: hmm, it was something I did together with my son…Amazing!

Embracing the chaos

Henriette talked about how to get businesses to embrace the chaos of the net, it’s a topic she’s writing a book about, and I look very much forward to it.

Engaging the geek warp drive

After all these sessions, I really needed a break, but when Michael Widerkrantz aka. MC, started rearranging the chairs, I just knew that I had to attend.

MC talked about IPv6, and why it’s important. In case you don’t know, IP is the basic communications protocol of the Internet, and the version we’re currently using, has a build-in limit of the number of allowed network addresses, that we’re about to hit, MC said that a recent session of RIPE, estimated that it would happen in less than two years.

I know just a little about networks, but this was mostly over my head, basically I’m sitting somewhere above layer 7, and just want the network to, ahem work, so it beats me why the ISPs just don’t get started rebuilding the infrastructure for IPv6, before it’s too late.

An interesting side-note is that a friend of mine just recently returned from South Africa, and I found out, because her computer acted strangely, that it was because she had been using IPv6 - as seems to be common with developing countries, South Africa is skipping the legacy infrastructure completely, a legacy that will soon hit us, and the entire digital economy, which today is synonymous with the economy.

Thank you

That concluded the official program of BarCamp Copenhagen, and what a great night it was, the air was literally buzzing with energy. Events like this are important, and I hope that this will get people talking and taking similar initiatives.

I’m so envious my dear brother, this day October 4th - your birthday - seems to coincide with one of the most important days in modern civilisation, a day that has importance for exploration of space, as well as important steps in the history of human thought and the move towards true democracy.

Today, October 4th 2007, it’s 50 years since the first man made satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched, and the world was changed almost overnight. 12 years later man had already walked on the moon

The first stage of the race towards space, has to be one of the single most impressive feats of human kind in history, really on a par with the building of the Pyramids.

Building of Pyramids was, like the space program, put on hold - it was just not efficient, even though the monument still stand, in the form of immense launch facilities at Kennedy Space Centre, it was only really a demonstration of power, and funding had to be cut, or else it could have ruined the economy, like continued pyramid building could have done to Egypt

Flash forward 47 years, three years ago, the era of real space exploration of space was ushered in, with the successful flight of SpaceShipOne, the first commercially developed vehicle, capable of reaching space.

So happy birthday to you all, and humanity for giving us the inspiration to do the impossible, which is escaping this cosy spaceship we’re all living in, or should I say on, the spaceship called Earth.

ps. I also found out that today marks the 23rd anniversary of establishment of The Free Software Foundation (FSF) by Richard Stallman. FSF and the thoughts behind it is slowly changing the mindset of people, and is the foundation of the current explosion in true knowledge sharing. Today also marks the 14 anniversary of the failed attempt by the Soviet military to stop the move towards democracy - October 4th truly is a historic day.

pps. If I had the energy to do so, I’d love to have made a picture showing the faces of Sergei Korolev, Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Richard Stallman, Boris Yeltsin and my brother René, to accompany this article - sorry but you have to make that - mentally - yourself.

Instead I’m showing one of the most important pictures of mankind, the “Earthrise” picture taken by Apollo 8, just a little over 11 years after the Sputnik 1 launch.

“We close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

Friday I went to the Science Fair - dubbed Science After Dark - that was held at Copenhagen City Hall Square (Københavns Rådhusplads), and I enjoyed it very much. I didn’t really know what to expect, but when I read that there would be live electronic music, I knew that I was going.

The first thing i noticed was that attendance, despite the location, was disappointingly low. I feel that it was because the venue looked quite uninviting, due to the fence, and the rather closed looking pavilions.

I also got the feeling that the PR for the Science Fair had been less than satisfactory.

ConDio - Controlling Audio

Anyway, the first thing that grasped my eye was the ConDio, Controlling Audio. The ConDio is a device with which you can control the playback of sound, simply by moving physical bricks around on a table surface. The ConDio uses pattern recognition to determine the position of the different blocks, which translates into a specific function, for instance one brick changes the track that is being played, others applies filters.

It’s remarkably simple, efficient and intuitive to control a computer in this fashion, and it was a real crowd puller.

The ConDio has been developed by the medialogy branch of the University of Aalborg, and It was really great talking to the students that were responsible for the project. They were really feeding from the enthusiasm of the people that were looking at it.

I’m really envious that the students of today get to play with technology like this, to quote Haladjjan, the founder of Violet (manufacturer of the Nabaztag intelligent WiFi bunny):

“le début de l’internet a été une aimable kermesse… Maintenant les choses sérieuses commencent” - (translation: “the beginning of the Internet has been a friendly festival…Now the serious stuff begins”.

What a great time in history to be alive in.

Kim Bach - The failed scientist

I also enjoyed visiting the Bio Chemistry tent, where I had a discussion about how to bring science to the public (”videnskabs formidling”). The scientist in charge asked me it I’ve heard about Jens Martin Knudsen - and the regular reader would know that I just posted a tribute to him - we need more like him - since he was able to bring across complicated matters in lay-mans terms - we also discussed the great Richard Dawkins.

What I really hope is that someone could take up the reins from Jens Martin Knudsen, because we need those positive role-models from the scientific community to teach us the importance of understanding our world.

I also had a chance to redeem myself. I label my self a “failed scientist”. I’m really a product of the inspiration of the space program and the lunar missions, and when I was a kid, I desperately wanted to become a scientist - but “something” happened along the way - and it’s too complicated to talk about here - but I basically got fed up with boring educational system.

But it does seem like I have some basic scientific intuition, and I got some high marks from “the teacher” for thinking like a scientist, when I was observing the strange creature the Daphnia.

It was also interesting talking to the students from the Nano technology line. They’re looking into how to produce solar arrays that are less harsh on the environment, it turns out that you can use fruit juice from black berries as the base of a solar cell, instead of silicon - amazing.

Bend my circuits

But what I really enjoyed the most, was the tent dedicated to audio, which also included live performances from Dødskuglen, Rumpistol and Bjørn Svin (who I missed).

In the tent some interesting and simple demonstrators were set up, one was a Theremin that was controlled by a plant. You could actually play music by touching the leaves of the plant - very entertaining. Another was a tube with a number of nozzles from which gas could escape, and be lit, if you then played music, the sound-waves would modulate the flames - Daft Punk’s Robot Rock looked quite good “going up in flames”.

Dødskuglen plays with circuit bending, and they had gutted a lot of electronics with audio capabilities, for instance a couple of Furbys, that now looked - and sounded - like mean birds, and when you hooked them up to a keyboard, they were capable of making some wonderful noise.

Dødskuglen has their name from a dome shaped device, that is the center-piece of their show. According to them it’s filled with gutted electronics from Happy Meals and the like - I’m not surprised.

We also got a live demonstration of how to circuit bend - don’t try this at home - you might hit the AC power-supply and die - but if you’re careful, just take a cheap electronic keyboard apart, and try to apply some wire patches live - it was amazing to hear how the standard drum-machine suddenly went into a completely different state, and sounded completely different, only to return to it’s standard loop after being reset.

Kim Bach - The failed musician

After Dødskuglen, Rumpistol took the stage, and he’s using his computer in combination with analogue synthesisers to produce great electronica.

Besides being a failed scientist, I also consider myself a failed musician, but with the simple technology being showcased here, that is so much more fun and intuitive to control than a traditional instrument, I might be able to express myself - I know that I have some music in my head - maybe I can finally make some music - I know that I want a copy of the guitar simulator for the Nintendo DS called Jam Sessions.

A child’s mind

There’s a strange unifying synergy between science and music. When doing science and music, you really need to have a child’s mind, and like to play. That’s something I still, I’d say increasingly, possess - so I might still become a scientist/musician. It’s also noteworthy that a number of my heroes for instance RMS (Richard Stallman) and N (Peter Naur), actually play music themselves.

I went home after having had a great time, with renewed faith in our educational system, it seems to be producing playful scientists - I wished someone had told me that science was about playing, when I was a student.

I hope that Science After Dark will become a recurring event.

Show your <3 for science - make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

I did, however, hear some rumours the Science After Dark has been frowned upon from the established scientific community. Come down from your ivory towers, Science is FUN and NOISY. Show your <3 for Science - make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

Welcome to ICT Mythbusters Episode One - who needs prequels, start your numbering scheme at one!

ICT Mythbusters is inspired by the great Discovery show Mythbusters

It’s also premiering a new concept in advertising that will revolutionise it:

Commercials that the host - in this case me - don’t make any money from, so click the banner and support the REAL Mythbusters, if you want to me support, send me some money ;-).

Was Bill Gates wrong?

A very famous quote from Bill Gates is:

640KB of RAM should be enough for everyone

Everybody has been laughing at that statement, but was he actually right?

I can access the web in high-fidelity from my Nintendo DS, and any modern phone with Java ME can run the Opera mini browser, and these phones rarely have more than 1MB of RAM. I’d say that approximately 4MB should be enough for everyone.

So Bill Gates was right, or? Why is it that he wasn’t? It’s of course because we’ve moved our storage to the server, as a college of mine was so friendly to point out - actually I think he was quite annoyed with me - but that’s only because he didn’t understand what I meant.

The desktop and portable computer is an anachronism, as I’ve written before, and we need to move ALL the storage to the server - where it belongs, and run only thin clients. VERY thin clients would actually suffice for something like 90+ percent of the worlds business users.

So yes my college is right, yes 640K isn’t enough for everyone, neither is 4MB, but how much is then?

And we’re talking server storage, to cater to the computing needs of the entire world, at the time, not considering the more than exponential growth we’re likely to se in the future.

Help me do the math, or should I just submit it to Jamie, Adam, Toby, Grant and the red-hot Kari.

LinuxParty - LinuxParty
LinuxParty kan måske blive sjovt i år

Da jeg skal til at “spise hundemad”, har jeg seriøst brug for hjælp, hvad mon der sker hvis man medbringer en “pristine” Vista maskine, og slipper nørderne løs med at gøre den til den sejeste Linux kværn i byen!

Jeg skal nok give et par omgange gutter!

Flickr: SCHPAASTLER MOVIES

Kunne godt tænke mig at lege med det selv, men de burde tage den til et højere niveau, og lave deciderede spoofs, ikke bare ændringer af teksterne, men også ændre billederne.

Oh well det er jo ikke deres koncept, men da de er så dygtige, kunne det være spændende at se hvad de kunne få ud af at deltage i en konkurrence som denne: Steve Jobs goes to the movies.

Og hvad med at tage den videre til album covers. Jeg kom også i tanke om en vellykket manipulation jeg lavede for 8 år siden, den ryger på Flickr på trods af tvivlsom copyright.

SOSUME

Listening to an old issue of one of the best technology podcasts Go Digital from the BBC, I was reminded of John Perry Barlow ((born October 3, 1947) is an American poet, essayist, retired Wyoming cattle rancher, political activist and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead (source Wikipeida)).

In 1996 he formulated a Decaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and after listening to the BBC, I’m focusing on this quote!

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Amen!