“Turn it into a server“, I responded. Sven thought about it. “My old Powerbook? Why would I turn that into a server?” I didn’t know. Everybody seems to turn old computers into servers these days. But why, and how? We considered an e-mail server, a file-server and even a distiller server. Having a server at home defines you as a person, so we had to find a server for Sven. I think it makes for a great paperweight now.

I discovered command-line browsing. This is just too geeky. For the lot of you: imagine that black DOS screen you learned to hate over the years, with those white blinking letters? You can surf in there on a Mac. You type the address of a site you want to see, and you get the code of the page. That’s right: no images, no fonts, no nothing. Just the raw, naked code baby! Go Curl!

3 years at research center IMEC in Leuven had me believing the future is in low-power wearable electronics. Jokingly, I sometimes said: why don’t we just make the batteries charge faster? Toshiba seems to agree with me.

There it is: my wireless dream. It lies on the floor defaced before it ever had a chance to blossom. Let’s have a moment of silence (…). OK, that’s enough. Now we can shout at the disgustingly high-priced GPRS service of former state company Proximus. How do they expect us to go wireless charging half a euro per half megabyte transferred? That’s one euro per six web pages. Wait: it gets better. Hotspots are 7.5 per hour for customers. Subscriptions start at 25 euro per month, on top of the regular 45. Sigh. They got us by the 8alls, knowing we’ll never wipe the dust from our dial-up modems and start making squeaking sounds again.

Don’t laugh. It’s a mistake anyone could have made. “Billy”, that’s a boy’s name, right? How could I know Billie Holiday was with “ie”? Still prefer Nina Simone of all the Ancient Music Makers I’m discovering. Who’s that police-guy called “String” anyway?