i-am.ws

Ultra Computer Lab

Time to get this WebLog started. I waited long with initiating this blog, but that doesn't mean I'm "late on the web". My first web-server got fired up in 1995, at which time probably the toughest job was to put your hands on an old PC. Hard to imagine today, where you have to pay to throw away a computer, but at the time all PCs -- even a 386 -- were first generation and still hard to get at.

Anyway, I managed to steal one from somewhere, convinced the network administrator to give me a second static IP, put my first Linux (SlackWare) on the box, followed by the ncsa web-server. There wasn't much else, but it worked and then all the focus was on writing content, of course in raw HTML.

Let's skip forward, it's more than 10 years later. This picture of the lab in my basement is to illustrate what this weblog will be all about. You're looking at a mixture of Solaris X86, RedHat, Xinerama, TheWeatherNetwork, BrandZ, Cobalt Qube/RAQ, etc. That's what keeps me awake at night. :-)

I don't intend to write this blog about my food preferences, vacation travels, home reno's, etc. You can find all of that at www.schaik.com on my own domain, which I was lucky enough to secure in 1998.

On this WebLog, it will be all about hacking Solaris and Linux. A few years ago, when Sun's opinion of Linux was still very divided, I used (like many others within Sun) Linux in stealth mode at home and on my laptop. But my colleagues in the office knew how to find me to solve their "triple-boot" problems. Luckily Solaris and Linux are now treated equally, with for me the funny result that I'm currently using much more Solaris than Linux.

Of course with a good amount of hurdles. And that's the main reason for starting this blog. This will become my way to share my "solutions for problems" with the world. Yesterday, a Friday, it was one of those days to be frustrated about half the world just trying to make problems, while the other half is doing all their best to solve them. Unfortunately, I really beleave that that's the ratio. But this site will for 100% be part of the latter: "solving problems".

Final note: I saw this banner sign (I used this picture "top-of-page" when this blog was still part of blogs.sun.com) during our last vacation into the Mexico heartland. I came it across in the beautiful historic university town of Guanajuato. My Spanish is pretty non-existent, but if I'm right, a papeleria is a shop where you buy your stationary. There isn't much synergy between a stationary shop and this blog, but simply because of the word Unix I thought this a good enough reason to make it my banner. Of course I'm still wondering whether this is Mr. Unix himself or that there's something else going on .....

Posted at 11:26PM Apr 08, 2006 by WWWillem in General  |