The IT Student Blog

My first keyboard

Robert Broberg, a Swedish artist, once wrote a song with the following paragraph “Det som göms i snö, kommer upp i tö” which roughly translates to “What’s hidden underneath snow, will show in thaw.” Since we actually have a white Christmas this year and most everything in my dad’s garden is covered in snow I thought it would be more wise to do some cleaning in my old room. It has basically been aggregating stuff over the years I’ve been living on my own, of which a large part is old computer hardware that’s been rendered unusable.

In the cleaning process I uncovered my first computer keyboard, later elegantly marked “UBC-Router 1″ short for United Broadband Clan which a friend and I created sometime in the very very early broadband days. This has been the keyboard for my router ever since the 28kbps modem served our house. (Yeah, for those older than me there was a time before 28kbps too but I’m not that old!) The router has been running various versions of GNU/Linux, including Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo (for a long time) and when the hard disk crashed, it was replaced with FreeBSD which it ran up until this summer when a lightning finally killed the whole thing. Poor bastard.

Dual CPU Sockets

There was also an old web/mail server running on a Pentium Pro. The motherboard supported two CPUs, however, I only ever acquired one, but it was definitely a killer. This machine was running Gentoo from the start to the very end. I hope to recover the data on these disks when I get back to Göteborg, who knows what crap I’ve been storing on them over the years?!

Today, my so called server room was transformed to its original purpose again. Its glory days are well exceeded, but it will be remembered as the place where I began experimenting and for taking me into a field in which I’m studying today. Who knows what I will uncover in years to come?

What have you found beneath the snow this Christmas? Do you already know where it has taken you or are you still waiting to find out?

Lars Pareto eagerly examining some new piece of technology.

Actually, physically it is not that hard. Chalmers is generous enough to give us cards to enter the doors we need (most of the times). Then there’s the not-so-tangible areas which is crawling around on the Interwebs.

IT-Sektionen – http://its.ituniv.org -
To this one we all belong. Make sure to pay your union fee and the board treats everyone nicely. Also follow them on twitter @itsektionen

ITIT Students – http://www.ait.gu.se/student_pa_itit/ -
Refreshed with lots of practicalities that students ought to know about.

Systemsex – http://systemsex.net -
The students with something orange and black attached to their leg.

Camera Obsüra – http://camera.ituniv.org -
Ka pika picha? (+ spelling, my Swahili isn’t very good) They take photos.

IRC – irc.ituniv.org -
There’s always current and alumni students available to discuss even the craziest matters.

Shell – http://shell.ituniv.org -
Need a *nix shell account to deploy that latest hack of yours?

Wiki – http://wiki.ituniv.org -
Useful, and not so useful, content. Feel free to add more!

Forum – http://forum.ituniv.org -
Maybe this picks up speed again, or is forums too much 90s?

Google – http://google.se -
Also called Brain by some students.

IT-universitetet Official Website – http://www.ituniversitetet.se/ -
So far no one has been able to explain in simple terms what the IT-university really is. I bet a more comprehensive description can be found here though.

Gothenburg University – http://www.gu.se -
They have links to your grades and so on from here.

Chalmers Mail – http://www.outlook.com -
This one is new, let us know if it works please.

GU Mail – http://gmail.com -
They also sold their soul, but to Google instead.

I’m sure there are many more to be listed. Please drop a comment if you spot one which ought to be here.

Oh, and by the way, a warm welcome new students!

This stupid, entertaining, yet instructive video actually sums up all you need to know, considering famous accidents, people  and stuff on the Internet. Everything from the grotesque Goetse, to Chuck Norris, Paris Hiltons sex tape, to the more innocent Star Wars Kid and the insane german kid, is covered in the joyful lyrics. It’s really good to know at least 95% of all that stuff before your nollning which is something you newcomers cannot escape. Last year we had to draw: Lemonparty, Goatse, Tub Girl and Pedo Bear. It didn’t went that well, ’cause all the people who knew what it was refused to grab the pencil, while all the others looked like big question marks. I wouldn’t recommend any Google searches on those four stupid things, but the video below is cool.

Here you go, THE METH MINUTE:

Internet People! from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

How would you describe the Internet for a person unknown to it?

It’s not very easy. How would you start out? Maybe you would chatter about a digital world where you can do pretty much anything… date people, buy cars, play games, listen to music, talk to your friends around the world, read magazines, watch movies, learn new languages… But would the ignorant person believe you? Probably no.

When thinking about it, the Internet almost seems impossible. But still, we use it everyday without even thinking about how amazing it is. So how did it become this amazing? Let’s take a look at the history of the Internet!

An animated documentary by Melih Bilgil which depicts the history of the Internet by explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

-Awesome, huh?