It was definitely a creative use of technology that went outside our normal channel to achieve our goal in a previously unheard-of time. It was an excellent hack, if you will. That’s hacking in its truest sense and not the nefarious activity that should probably be labeled as cracking these days.

The field of *hacking* has changed quite a bit over the last two decades. Gone are the days of pimply faced teens in their parent’s basements, war-dialing entire area codes and writing rudimentary shell scripts. These thirteen-year-olds have been replaced by thirty-somethings. Or maybe these thirteen-year-olds just grew up into thirty somethings.

Whatever the case, the “scene” is now an “industry” and the corporate term for these shenanigans is Information Security or InfoSec. (One definite perk to things going corporate is that most of the people in the industry can now afford digs outside of their parent’s domain.)

Information Security, for the most part, tends to be reactionary. AntiVirus vendors add virus signatures to their products only after the new virus has been spotted in the wild or otherwise detected by the vendor. The same goes for vendors of Anti-Malware and Anti-Spyware products. Anti-Spam tool kits also work along these principals, constantly improving their filters based on what is actually being seen in the real world.

In these arenas, it’s definitely a case of the bad guys leading the pack. In fact, the bad guys *often* find themselves on the cutting edge of technology. A great example of this is BotNets. It’s not uncommon to hear about BotNets that control hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers or nodes. To put that in perspective, the largest cloud based computing resources have, at most, just tens of thousands of nodes.

So it’s no surprise that the Bad Guys controlling these networks (that are often powers of ten larger than their corporate counterparts) have some pretty advanced technology to maintain control of these nodes and pass them instructions or workloads. These interfaces are called Command and Control structures and are just one of the topics covered in the Security B-Sides San Francisco Talks that took place yesterday and today on the West Coast.

B-Sides (think mix-tape) is a community driven unconference built for and by information security community members. The goal is to expand the spectrum of conversation beyond the traditional confines of space and time. It creates opportunities for individuals to both present and participate in an intimate atmosphere that encourages collaboration. Its an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants. It is where conversations for the next-big-thing are happening. If you’re familiar with the BarCamp format, you already know what these guys are about…

They’ve been streaming all of the talks via Qik the last two days, and while they are no longer live, they have been staged online for your viewing. Hit www.securitybsides.com and follow the B-Sides San Fran link or just surf directly to www.pathsecurity.com/pathtv/ for full videos.

While San Francisco is a little far away, Austin is not. The B-Sides Austin conference is happening Saturday, March 13th, in Austin, Texas, at the Norris Conference Centers. Titled, “BSides Austin 2010: Keep Security Weird” the one day event kicks of at 10:00 AM and culminates in an evening after-party called “Hackers on a Duck”. The group has reserved the Austin Cosmic Cowboy Tour for an evening of mobile hacking and drinking. The conference is free, and the Hackers on a Duck outing has been subsidized to the point where it’s just a few bucks to get on the duck. As with most water foul, seating is limited, so make your reservations now. There should be plenty of room on dry-land for all of conference attendees, so not to worry. Hit www.securitybsides.com/BSidesAustin for a complete run-down of the stationary event.

A little closer to home is our own open conference, covering all things tech: the March Geek Gathering. This is the Spring Edition, when the stench of “love of electronics” permeates the air. The downside to all this is that it’ll probably be too chilly to hang out on the outside patio, meaning that you may have to go home and explain why you smell like electronic love to a loved one.

Those who are unattached can come out in search of someone with which to bump, dock, or possibly practice what’s on the front of one of phliKtid’s home-crafted tee-shirts. Though I’d like to be the moral compass on this and say that you probably shouldn’t do that with someone you’re not twitterpated with. That’s a Bambi reference, by the way, not a nod to the fail whale.

Things get going this Friday night at seven PM at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. If you don’t see any geeks gathered inside, just follow the twinge of tech in the air out the door and to the right where you’ll find the Geek Gathering overflow room. I’m not sure if this was an upsell, or if JR’s just hiding us from the rest of his clientele, but it’s definitely been a lot of fun the last few months. There’s plenty of table space, so feel free to bring whatever interests you. We’ve had things from very high tech non-functioning robot rovers to very low tech yet
extremely functional toboggan caps built on site, so feel free to push the envelope in either direction or just aim for somewhere in between.

The Coffee Groundz offers free WiFi, and non-free food, beer, spirits and wine. Surf to www.coffeegroundz.net or just hit up our own website at www.geekradio.com for details and directions to Friday’s event.

That’s it for your Intro to InfoSec and that’s that for BarretTime.

The Independent Film Channel is midway through it’s Monty Python-athon. In what is probably a nod to the troop’s birthday, the channel is running several hours of Python fare each night, including episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, interviews, and most (if not all) of their movies. Python fans already possessing their own personal Python library may not need to run to the DVR right now, but this is a great chance for the noobs to indoctrinate themselves in Python fare.

And getting back to our birthday tradition, this week marks the 125th anniversary of the International Meridian Conference which decided that the Prime Meridian would run through the United Kingdom and that Greenwich would sit at a Longitude of zero degrees, zero minutes and zero seconds. At the time, over 70% of the world’s shipping charts keyed off Greenwich as the initial meridian, so it was a natural fit. This was also the conference that shot down Sir Stanford Flemming’s idea of having a single world time. Contrary to popular belief, while the idea of cutting up the world into timezones was introduced, it wasn’t actually voted on at this conference. We fall back an hour on November first, so take my advice and mark your calendars now.

Now, I don’t know if anyone took my advice last week on attending the Linux Workshop that wrapped up an hour or so ago, but if you didn’t: not to fear. The workshop happens every Wednesday evening from six to eight at the Houston Area League of PC Users Headquarters, aka HAL-PC HQ. It’s situated oh-so-conveniently close to Microcenter, for those of you who navigate by way of circuit board dispensaries. You’re welcome to bring both questions and hardware to the workshop, but if you are bringing your desktop box rather than a laptop, be sure to bring all the necessary cords and a keyboard and mouse, as generally just the monitors are supplied in the lab. So that’s everything except the monitor.

If you want some more info on the workshop, surf to www.hal-pc.org and check out the SIG Calendar.

Crypticon happened last weekend, and with both Oni-Con and Halloween right around the corner, costumes may be on your mind. If you have enough time, cardboard and paint, you can create some pretty impressive anime fare. This is an especially good choice because of the double-duty the costume can put in at both Oni-Con and at other activities (door to door or otherwise) you may attend over the Halloween weekend.

With enough *luminescent* paint and a willingness to slather it all over your body, you could be Marie Curie. Or is that too soon to be funny?

OK, with enough *blue* paint and a willingness to slather it all over your body, you could be the Blue Screen of Death.

And don’t gloss over found costumes; you’d be surprised what kind of geekery you can pull off with an old pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. For instance, if you’ve got an old pair of 501’s, a black mock-turtleneck and an iPhone, Fake Steve Jobs is a costume possibility for you.

If you have the ability to talk in a very monotone voice about very mundane things, then the scientist Neils Bohr should be at the top of your list. It’s kind of a stretch, but we’re on a budget here. Luckily, having to repeatedly explain your costume will give you plenty of opportunity to get Bohring part down cold.

If you can meet the aforementioned requirements for Neils and you happen to be exceptionally hairy to boot, then maybe this is the year you break with tradition, leave the Hobbit costume in storage, and don the monotone to become Neil’s brother, Harald Bohr. For all of our science school dropouts, that would make you a Harry Bohr.

Access to a wheel chair and a speech synthesizer? Stephen Hawking.

A blue dress shirt, khaki slacks and a small spray bottle to keep the sweat stains fresh? Steve Ballmer.

Something with which to cover your face and a command of all things BSD? Our own phliKtid.

A laser, a head band and a shark fin? You get the idea.

You’ve got nine or ten days to get something together before the Oni-Con anime convention that kicks off Friday, October 30th at the Houston Marriot Westchase. The con will bring in voice actors, animators and script writers from anime such as Desert Punk, Samurai 7, Speed Grapher, Burst Angel, Full Metal Alchemist and One Piece. I’ll give you some time to get your costume together before breaking down the highlights of the con next week.

For now, hit www.oni-con.com for details and directions and costume inspiration.

That’s it for your secret to becoming a costume contender and that’s that for BarretTime.

Special Interest Group Meetings run from nine AM to two PM, with a break at eleven for the main presentation.

One SIG name worth mentioning is the Green Apples SIG for new Macintosh users who have switched from another Operating System or who have never used a computer before. Hit www.haaug.org for details and directions.

And not this weekend, but the next, is the Houston TechFest at the University of Houston. TechFest is more of a tech conference than a tech show. Meaning that if you attend in hopes that booth babes will be showing off the hottest new tech gear, you’re setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. The point of this event is to confer with other people in the tech industry. So unless you find automated builds and continious integration sexy, this may not be the show for you.
If you do fancy those things, there’s plenty more where that comes from. There will be Test Driven Development, Practical Inversion of Control and a track called Making Productivity a Priority from President to Peon. If any of this floats your boat, you’ll want to head over to www.houstontechfest.com for details and registration information. (Registration is free, by the way.)

The Houston TechFest takes place on Saturday, September 26th at the University Center at the University of Houston. Registration and check-in starts at eight am, with the keynote taking place at nine.

And if you’re a Houston Web Developer or Designer, then there’s a meetup for you, too. The Houston Web Design Meetup Group will be getting together for the fourty eighth time this coming Tuesday,

September 22nd. The group devotes itself to all thing web. Interactive activities with a good chance to learn and participate are halmarks of the groups’s meetings.

This month’s meeting gets started at seven PM. If you attend, you’re invited to bring your laptop, as attendees will getting a chance to work with 960 Grid and Blueprint, two popular CSS frameworks. You can find details on the meetup at meetup.com slash web design dash seven seven.

And finally, there are those that say you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to get a leg up on the crew of Technology Bytes. Well, according to HAL-PC, you just have to wake up early enough to attend the 9:30 AM PC Upgrade and Trouble Shooting SIG at the HAL-PC Headquarters this Friday morning. www.hal-pc.org for details and directions.

That’s it for this week’s wakeup call and that’s that for BarretTime.

No, that’s not a distress call from the RIAA’s legal team, but rather the day on which all Houston metropolitan and surrounding area geeks gather for the month of May.

This month’s geek gathering will continue to go down at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston at the corner of Bagby and McGowan. We’ve survived extreme chillyness on the back patio in past gatherings, but May will be here and with its entrance, gone the need for geeks to huddle around Pentium 4 laptops for warmth. The Coffee Groundz has a light menu and a full bar. Don’t worry – there’s a gelato bar for the kids. And, of course, coffee, wifi, and a whole lot of geeks from seven o’clock on. If you get there late, you may have to circle once for parking. Just stay off McGowan, as they will tow your car faster than Steve Ballmer can sweat through a blue shirt at a developer conference. I generally give out the website for those seeking details and directions, but this time I want to drive everyone plagued by Fail to the website for some sage advice from Dr. Dwight.

www.geekradio.com

And on the opposite end of the world from the RIAA, you have Miro, a non-profit group that is pushing for open internet TV in High Definition. To that end, they’ve built a free, open source HD video streamer that can play just about any video file out there in addition to connecting to their streaming network of some 6,000 shows. There’s some competition out there in the video arena, even among the free players. The unique thing about Miro is that in a time when money for server space is tight, they’ve chosen not to sell their biological first born to cover the bandwidth bills, but rather make it go spend time with its adoptive family who bought it on the internet for less what Sally Struthers spends on coffee.

Now that may sound a little harsh… What they’re doing is paying their bandwidth bill by letting users adopt a line of source code for a nominal fee. Miro is supposedly the first to try this type of payment model. They’re also unique in that you still don’t have to adopt anything to use Miro’s service or player, and I guess you don’t really have to use the Miro player in order to adopt a line of source code.

In any case, adoptive parents get a real line of Miro code, it’s name along with a cute picture of the code, an official adoption certificate on a Web page where their buddy will grow older, and a widget they can embed on their blog to show off their proud new child to friends and family.

It sounds a lot like a modern day geeked out version of a cabbage patch kid or a 70s pet rock. Except you don’t really own it, like you did the rock.

Since information and open source software want to be free, you’re only choice is to adopt.

Now, when the hippies of the sixties said you should love the earth and take responsibility and ownership of it, the pet rock fad of the 70s probably wasn’t what they had in mind, but I’m sure any currently surviving hippes who had qualms with rock ownership would be OK with rock adoption. And just to cover all the bases the last fifty years, we need a fad for the 90s…

Beanie babies, I guess?

Will I adopt any lines of Miro source code, myself? Not with our own fund raiser coming up, but that doesn’t mean I won’t check out their website to see how cute the infant lines of code are. It’s like, just because I smile at a baby in the park, it doesn’t mean I’m ready to run right home to bring new life into the world.. Especially when I already have hundreds of thousands of legitimate source code kids of my own to feed and maintain. Anyway, www.getmiro.com/adopt/ for adoption details or just to check out the cute newborns.

That’s it for your foster four one one and that’s that for Barret Time.

Perhaps the most widely known open source project outside of the Linux world is Mozilla Firefox, the free web browser, now in version 3.0. www.firefox.com is the address you want to hit to grab a copy today. For those of you using Microsoft Internet Explorer, this would be an alternate choice for web browsers. The coolest thing about Firefox 3 is the awesome bar. Having been using this for a week or so now, I’m not sure if I could go back to typing in the full URL.

Mozilla isn’t just pushing out products for web browsing… With Mozilla Thunderbird, you have a powerful email client, complete with SPAM filtering and a solid interface that is easy to pick up if you’re coming over from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.

If you’re looking to make some legal copies of DVDs or CDs, you might want to check out MediaCoder. MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which integrates most popular audio and video codecs into an all-in-one solution. If you’ve ever struggled with finding the right codec to rip or play a video, this could be your audio/video swiss army knife.

And if you’re not happy with only ripping audio, but walso ant to try your hand at cutting up tracks or even remixing things, you’ll want to check out Audacity. You can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital formats, edit ogg vorbis, mp3, wav and aiff sound files, cut, copy, splice and mix sounds together and a ton more.

On the office side of things, you have the aptly named Open Office.Org, the full featured suite of tools for wordprocessing, presentations and spreadsheets. Many of the applications look and feel like their Microsoft Office counterparts, with the added bonus of being able to read and save nearly every office document format known to modern man.

And the last open source application I’ll mention tonight? The Gimp. No, not a large leatherbound servant, but rather a large opensource photo editing package. If you’re familiar with PhotoShop, the Gimp, which stands for the GNU image manipulation program. Much like the plugin market for Photoshop, the gimp also has a number of feature-exanding plugins as well as something called script-fu. Script-fu gives users a way to load scripts into the gimp that will then be accible via the gui interface. These scripts can do anything from removing red-eye to taking normal text and adding effects for the web. Since anyone can write a script, they’re really only limited by the imagination of your fellow gimp-users.

As I said, all of these programs are free and available for Windows. Most of them are also available for OS Ten, though you will have to have an X11 environment installed for things like OpenOffice.org. To get links to all of the windows versions of these, hit www.opensourcewindows.org. In addition to the programs I mentioned, check out the links for handbrake, juice, mplayer, and xchat-2, an irc client. Its also important to note that even though I may say that Firefox is a Microsoft Internet Explorer replacement, I don’t mean that you have to uninstall one to run the other. Every program I mentioned tonight will co-exist peacefully with their non-free counterparts.

So, Once you get your feet wet in the open souce world with free programs on a non-free operating system, you may be ready to take the next step and check out a free operating system such as Linux. While there are a ton of bootable CDs out there that will let you try out linux risk free, you may still need a little bit of hand holding. If this is the case, there are a couple of avenues open to you. If you’ve already got a touch of linux experience, you may want to hit the Houston Linux Users Group meeting that happens this Saturday from two to four in the afternoon. HLUG, as it is called, meets at the HAL-PC Headquarters near San Felipe and 610. You can hit www.hlug.org or www.hal-pc.org for driving directions. While these presentations generally have content for linux newbies and greybeards alike, they do assume a certain familiarity with the OS.

If you’re a complete noob to linux, you might want to hit up Linux 101 this Tuesday at seven PM at the same location. Linux 101 is put on by the Houston Linux Users Group the first Tuesday of every month at seven PM and is designed to give you a good firm grasp on the obvious. Both the hlug.org and hal-pc.org sites have information on Linux 101.

And, as Jay said, things are looking good for the TechBytes Anniversary party in July at Dean’s credit clothing. This party will take place the second Saturday of July, and will replace the regular first friday geek gathering that would have happened on the 6th. Keep checking the techbytes website for the info; we’ll have it out there as soon as it is finalized.

That’s that for your free software four one one and that’s that for BarretTime.

(Hyperlinked version to follow!)

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, was thankful that everything that could be invented already had.

In 1927, H.M. Warner of Warner Brothers was thankful that his audiences would never want to hear actors talk.

In 1943, Thomas Watson, the then chairman of IBM, was thankful that there was a world market for maybe five computers.

In 1949, popular mechanics was thankful that computers may one day weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

In 1957, the Prentice Hall editor in charge of business books was thankful that this data processing fad wouldn’t last the year.

In 1981, Bill Gates was thankful that he’d never need more than 640k of memory.

In 1995, Wall Street was thankful for all those new dotcom companies.

In 1999, Nigeria was thankful that Al Gore invented the Internet.

In 2003, SCO’s Darl McBride was thankful that there would be a “day of reckoning” for Red Hat and SuSE.

And today, you might be thankful that that’s it for BarretTime.

The First Year: 1995

• Twelve years ago this month, Windows 95 hit store shelves. The day was August 24th.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer is also launched as part of Windows 95, though at this time there were only 18,957 websites on the Internet.
• In September of 1995, online auction site eBay is founded as Auctionweb, and in December, the first multilingual search engine, Alta Vista, is launched.

The Second Year: 1996

• There are now 342,081 websites online.

The Third Year: 1997

• Domain name business.com sells for $150,000.00.
• Web commentator Jorn Barger coins the term weblog.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone hit British bookstore shelves. In the US, the book is titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

The Fourth Year: 1998

• Kozmo.com launches. This was the site that promised they could deliver just about anything in under an hour. Google opens its garage doors for business.
• The Diamond Rio PMP300 is launched.
• The Recording Industry Association of America, files a lawsuit in the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco claiming Diamond Rio player violated the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. The three judge panel ruled in favor of Diamond, paving the way for the development of the MP3 portable player market. The Rio retailed for $200 and had the ability to play 12 songs at 128 kilobits per second.

The Fifth Year: 1999

• SBC rolls out Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Lines to those lucky enough to be close enough to an SBC Central Office.
• Everquest is launched.
• Shawn Fanning founds Napster.
• The original MySpace site is launched as a personal file sharing service.

The Sixth Year: 2000

• On January 10th, AOL buys TimeWarner for $162 Billion, the largest corporate merger ev4r.
• On the 14th, the Dot Com Bubble reaches its peak.
• There are now nearly 20 million websites online.

The Seventh Year: 2001

• Three years after the launch of the Diamiond Rio, the first generation iPod hits the street.
• Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is founded by Jimmy Wales
• Pope John Paul II sends the first papal email from a laptop in his office. Sadly, the name Pmail didn’t stick.

The Eighth Year: 2002

• This year saw the rise of the bootable linux CD distro, Knoppix being the most notable of the group. This is why Knoppix has difficulties with motherboards that have a BIOS created before 2002.

The Ninth Year: 2003

• Apple launches the iTunes Store.
• The first flash mob is organized in Manhattan via the Web.

The Tenth Year: 2004

• Amazon.com makes the first ever full-year profit since its launch.
• Tim Berners Lee becomes Sir Tim Berners Lee, as he is knighted for his contribution to the Internet.
• The Mozilla Firefox web browser hit 1.0 this year, with Houston Geeks celebrating at a local launch party at the Saint Arnold Brewery.

The Eleventh Year: 2005

• Video sharing site YouTube.com comes online.
• The web grows more this year than during the whole Dot Com Boom as 17 million new sites go online.

The Twelfth Year: 2006

• The iPhone and the end of Harry Potter.
• As of August 2006, there are 92,615,362 websites online.

For the purpose of this BarretTime, we’ll count the thumb as the first finger. Ours is opposable, though contrary to popular belief, we’re not the only species with this trait. The Bornean Oranguan has them, as do Gorillas, chimpanzees and the lesser apes. The opposable thumb has helped the human species develop more accurate fine motor skills.

The next finger is the index finger, aka the pointer finger, forefinger, digitus secondus or digitus two.

Next up we have the middle finger, the third digit of the human hand. It is also known as the third finger, digitus medius, digitus tertius, or digitus three. In western culture, extending the middle finger is, more often than not, construed as offensive, because, according to wikipedia, it symbolizes a certain part of the male anatomy.

The fourth digit of the human hand is the ring finger.

The names of the ring finger in many languages reflect an ancient belief that it is a magical finger. It is named after magic or rings, or called nameless. In Old English, it was called the Leech Finger. In japanese, kusuri-yubi, or the medicine finger. In German, it’s the Doctor’s finger.

Many cultures avoided the true name of a powerful entity, and referred to this finger indirectly or, as I mentioned before, nameless. This holds true for the Bulgarian, Cantonese, Finnish, Persian and Russian languages.

And lastly, we have the little finger, often called the pinky in American English, from the Dutch word pink, meaning little finger. It is also called the anti-thumb, the fifth finger, the baby finger, or the fourth finger. A pinky promise (also known as a pinky swear) is made when a person wraps one of their pinky fingers around the other person’s pinky and makes a promise. Traditionally, it’s considered binding, the idea being that the person who breaks the promise must cut off his or her pinky finger. In a similar vein, among members of the Japanese yakuza (gangsters), the penalty for various offenses is removal of parts of the little finger (known as yubitsume).

Also in Japan, holding up a pinky while speaking of two people signifies that they are in a relationship. This pinky substitution is considered vulgar and old-fashoned, however, and in some anime scenes is intentionally used to enhance its silliness.

The importance of this is that you now know the difference between your index and ring fingers.

A survey of academics at the University of Bath has found that male scientists typically have a level of the hormone oestrogen as high as their testosterone level.

These hormone levels are more usual in women than men, who normally have higher levels of testosterone.

The study draws on research which suggests that these unusual hormone levels in many male scientists cause the right side of their brains, which governs spatial and analytic skills, to develop more strongly.

The study, which has been submitted to the British Journal of Psychology, also found that:

-These hormonal levels may make male scientists less likely to have children.

-Those men with a higher level of oestrogen were more likely than average to have relatives with dyslexia, which may in part be caused by hormonal
levels.

-Women social scientists tended to have higher levels of testosterone, making their brains closer to those of males in general.

The study drew on work in the last few years which established that the levels of oestrogen and testosterone a person has can be seen in the relative length of their index and ring fingers. The ratio of the lengths is set before birth and remains the same throughout life.

The length of fingers is genetically linked to the sex hormones, and a person with an index finger shorter than the ring finger will have had more testosterone while in the womb, and a person with an index finger longer than the ring finger will have had more oestrogen. The difference in the lengths can be small – as little as two or three per cent – but important.

So here is the big broad stroke: If you’re a male and your ring finger is longer than your index finger, you are predisposed to be better at math and spatial relations. IT departments everywhere will slow down tomorrow as they all compare finger lengths…

That’s it for your finger four one one and that’s that for BarretTime.

Head over to www.goitec.com for details and registration.

That’s it for this week, but two reminders for the weeks to come.
First, the Houston Linux Users Group will be holding a Data Backup Seminar
at the HAL-PC Saturday, May 26th from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon.
www.hlg.org for more info. And secondly, our own Dwight Silverman will be
talking at the Houston Area Apple Users Group, aka Haag, Saturday May
19th. The event goes from nine am to two pm, though I suspect Dwight will
only be speaking “oficially” at the eleven o’clock hour.
This will be taking place at the Rice University Media
Center. Hit www.haaug.org for more info.

That’s it for your technology fun raiser and that’s that for BarretTime.

This Friday is the first Friday of the month, meaning that it is once
again time for the Technology Bytes Geek Gathering. Jay Lee and crew will
be on hand at our not so new home of Tropioca tea and coffee to drink
drinks, pick at the occasional pizza and weigh in on all things techy.
Free WiFi is available for fast fact checking and the Tropioca staff will
be on hand to deliver all the balls you could possibly want. 2808 Milam
at Drew is where you want to be starting around 7:00 this Friday.

After the geek gathering, I’ll be heading down the street to catch Junkie
XL, who has been working under the moniker of JXL on a large number of
console and PC games here in the US since leaving his home in The
Netherlands in 2002. In addition to his remixes that have found their way
into the mass media, such as his remix of Elvis Presley’s A Little Less
Conversation that found itself in an ad for the 2002 World Cup, his video
game credits include the theme music for The Sims 2: NightLife and the
entire soundtrack for the XBox game Forza Motorsport. His song “Today”
was featured as one of Burnout Legends’ EA Trax. There are also 2 tracks
remixed by Junkie XL found on the Need for Speed: Carbon soundtrack. His
works was also included in the videogame Test Drive 5. JXL is responsible
for the SSX Blur original soundtrack, Blur being Electronic Arts’
snowboarding game for the Wii. He’ll be at 6400 Richmond this Friday
night doing live remixing of whatever he feels like playing. My Cylon
girlfriend will be opening up the show around 10:30, with Junkie going on
sometime after midnight. You can hit www.junkiexl.com for details.
That’s junkie with an IE.

The Houston Linux Users Group is having the first of their two monthly
meetings this Saturday form two to four at the Hal-PC headquarters near
610 and San Felipe. While the information on this Saturday’s presentation
is a little sparse, the meeting scheduled for the fourth Saturday of the
month will be a data backup seminar. More information will follow in the
next couple of weeks, but for now, put May 26th on your calendar and hit
www.hlug.org for details.

That’s it for your Friday Night Geek Goings-On and that’s that for
BarretTime.