Birdy Me

I've had a Twitter account for about 4-5 years now, and at one time had two of them, but never really used either of them. For the first time I am starting to use my Twitter more, and I want to perhaps think - profitably as well. @abissom (a weird nickname given to me by a dear friend who recently passed away)

Swaziland

I am originally from Swaziland, even as I reside in Johannesburg, South Africa at the moment. While the country has its fair share of problems, particularly economic, it has a special place in my heart. Quick shots taken in Mbabane:

My First Computer

Everything has a story behind it. My computer life/history also has a humble beginning:

This computer was bought by my father around 2000 or 2001. In my culture, children are not allowed to play with or use things belonging to adults, so none of us had permission to use it. Obviously, a few rules can be broken sometimes, isn't it?

Around 2002, my final year of high school, I was regularly using this computer without my father's permission to play chess (ET Chess, http://eric.triki.pagesperso-orange.fr/frames_en.html). So much that I arrived 15 minutes late for my Mathematics final exam 😂

I used this computer up to around 2008, when I left home, and my father had bought a Pentium 4 computer by then, running Windows XP.

In 2011/2, I finally could buy myself a computer, which I still use to date, based on a G40 Motherboard, 250GB HDD, and 8GB RAM.

Specs of the Digital Venturis 590, as far as I remember:
RAM - 32MB
HDD - 850MB (interestingly, this HDD still works even today!)
CPU - Intel Pentium 1, 133MHz
OS - Windows 98, and soon updated to Windows 98 SE
Other - MIDI card - loved MIDI in those days

Blogging is difficult, apparently

So it has been a rather long time since I made my first post here. Let me see if I can maintain a better blogging schedule than my efforts so far.

July - Personal Linux Month

July 2016 ends in a few hours, and to start off this potentially useless blog, here are the highlights for what I will label my most interesting month of 2016:

1. For all who had more than passing contact with me in July, it is obvious what qualifies for the top position - DebConf16 held at the University of Cape Town, South Africa from July 2-9. On the 7th, I also got an opportunity to give a talk at DebConf. More about this life-changing event to come later
2. After years of anti-laptop tendencies, I became a laptop owner. DebConf16 is to 'blame' for this, as the laptop was generously given me by one of the developers there. Old IBM ThinkPad X40, but Debian runs smoothly on it
3. For the first time on Linux, I tested and eventually switched to KDE on my laptop. I have mostly been a Gnome user since I started using Linux in 2011, with some testing done of LXDE, XFCE, Enlightenment/E17, etc. Verdict? Any Desktop Environment works fine for me. For my use cases, I do not particularly find big differences between Gnome and KDE, and therefore cannot be part of the corresponding 'holy war.' I simply kept KDE because I installed and it worked, and therefore had no reason to uninstall it. In passing, I was rather disappointed to find that Cinnamon is such a resource hog! KDE5 and Gnome3 run just fine on the ThinkPad X40 with 1GB RAM, while Cinnamon brought it to a grinding halt
4. I bit the bullet and switched from Debian 8/Jessie with systemd and started using Debian Testing. I have yet to see anything 'bad' - Debian really is a rock-solid distribution
5. Another obvious one: I started a blog - this blog. It will mostly document whatever I find interesting in the following subjects and more:
   
   • Debian/Linux
   • Maemo/Nokia N900
   • Mercedes Benz vehicles, particularly from the Bruno Sacco era (W124/W202)

The month of July has been special in one other respect even before 2016. On July 4, America commemorates independence, and on the very same day in 2011, I became the owner of a shiny new Nokia N900, which would play a pivotal role in my use of Linux down to this day. I am now in my 6th year with the device and still going strong.