Blog van Foppe Hemminga

Yes my internet connection is the fastest in the neighborhood according to speedtest.nl. I do trust the numbers. This site is around for quit some time. However what's weird are not my marks but the others. This would mean they have a poor setup. And 'they' are nearly all of them.
I can believe that for the cable clients. The cable in our region is severely limited and hugely popular. With cable this means they share the first part of the backbone (the cable in the street to the signal house). I live 1.5 km from the first distribution point (ADSL2 through telephone cable). That's not record breaking but ADSL is supposed to be more or less dedicated (not true but more than cable).
Here is the table. I needed to take a snapshot because the table was poorly coded (Ajax through ASP with the XML header intact, the table in HTML4, that is plural tables because each line is a table).

When I choose high speed internet there was a choice between cable and ADSL. I took the latter because setup was much cheaper and I was lacking cash. In that time cable was more reliable and faster. Yet I was happy. I had a great provider (Planet Internet). Later on with ADSL2 I became faster than my friends on cable. What's more I found a cheap provider that delivers on the KPN network, the same I had before.
Some time ago I noticed the signal falling away. I checked the cables and one of them must have been broken. I replaced that one and took all four wires of the telephone cable for the signal and I removed the splitter. According to my modem packet loss was zero and the speed was reported maximal. That's about what is confirmed by speedtest.

In Sweden cable gives 100Mb up and 100Mb down.

Today I ran into a cute tool for Linux called Conky. It's a highly configurable program that's able to show all sorts of variables of the computer and the Operating System. As you might know that Operating System is Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex in my case.

Here's a screenshot:

As you can see I placed in a corner of my Background. It blends completely into it.
The program itself is lean and takes less than 1Mb memory. The configuration is -as usual in Linux- done in a file and it uses the Bash language. I'm getting more and more into grips with that. I will start writing some basic scripts soon.

This is a portion of the script to show how that looks:

CPU:1  ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
CPU:2  ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}

This shows two of the three bars for CPU usage. CPU:1 is text, ${cpu cpu1} throws a (percentage) number depicting CPU usage, the % is text again and ${cpubar cpu1} is the small bar displayed.
The variables are well described (even good software requires excellent documentation). Furthermore this is lovely stuff to play with so there are zillions of prefabricated scripts around like in Post your .conkyrc files w/ screenshots in the Ubuntu forums.

More information on Conky on their website: http://conky.sourceforge.net/.

'a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical.'

Randall Munroe, author of XKCD
Cartoon-Off: XKCD (must read for fans)

Source: The World Wide Credit Crunch

Absolutely fascinating. They found another previously unknown tribe in the rain forests (Amazon) in Brazil. Actually this is not really uncommon. There are supposed to be some one hundred of these communities left in the world, half of them in Brazil and Peru.

The plane flew over the village. The tribe was sitting outside but the plane scred them and they ran in the houses. afterwards the men reappeared, painted red and shot at the plane.

The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, took these photos and published them Thursday. According to CNN, "it tracks "uncontacted tribes" -- indigenous groups that are thought to have had no contact with outsiders -- and seeks to protect them from encroachment.
(source Huffington Post)

They and their relatives apparently live in six communal shelters known as malocas, according to the government, which has tracked at least four uncontacted groups in the region for the last 20 years.

The photos were taken during 20 hours of flights conducted between April 28 and May 2.
(source Huffington Post)

e buildings are quit remarkable. Obviously this is not a group wandering around.
From what I know these tribes are often plagued by ilnesses, whiping out half the population.

This tribe will be left alone. Others have been visited by scientists and clergymen. It is possible to make contact with tribes like these. There language is related to that of other tribes. However you still have a chance of being killed and eaten.

The black figure in this picture is thought to be a woman.

I wonder what the tribesmen think about the big bird in the sky.

Watch the documentary Uncontacted Tribes online.

Uncontacted Tribes.
posted on: 31 05 08

This makes me sad and angry at the same time. You probably heard the news about footage of uncontacted tribes. The reason they made this footage publicly to the world is because uncontacted groups in the region, whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger from illegal logging in Peru. What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the "civilised" ones, treat the world.

There are more than one hundred uncontacted tribes worldwide, with more than half living in either Brazil or Peru. All are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and decimated by new diseases. Survival has launched an urgent campaign to get their land protected, and a unique film narrated by actress Julie Christie.

Over one hundred tribes around the world choose to reject contact with outsiders. They are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. Many of them are living on the run, fleeing invasions of their land by colonists, loggers, oil crews and cattle ranchers. They have often seen their friends and families die at the hands of outsiders, in unreported massacres or epidemics.

This is their story, and a big shame to our so-called "civilised" world.

All pictures: Brazil National Indian Foundation (Funai)
sources: Huffington Post and BBC News