www.nickhodge.com

Pas­sion is dif­fi­cult to hide.

Glenn and Kings­ley from Inter­node have per­sonal pas­sions for gam­ing — and they jobs that take this pas­sion and unleash it on the unsus­pect­ing gamers in Australia.

Find out how to get a ping­time of 1, the inside of a server rack in a secret Adelaide loc­a­tion and why Kings­ley uses mois­tur­iser in this On10.net interview

If you are not a par­ent or teacher with chil­dren between the ages of 5–15, you might want to read some­thing else. I know how it gets when people talk about kids.

If you are a teacher or par­ent, wel­come to the new inter­net gen­er­a­tion gap.

An art­icle pub­lished in the New York magazine, Say Everything, details the online lives of Gen­er­a­tion Y. The art­icle takes a moralistic-angle to cre­ate a story; and asserts that the gen­er­a­tion gap is greater now than when Elvis, Cliff Richard and The Beatles rock-and/or-roll per­ver­ted the lives of Generation-X’s par­ents in the 1950s/1960s.

It’s more than mor­als. It is about how the world is at the pivot point of a dra­matic change.

This quo­ta­tion from Clay Shirky sum­mar­ised where we are at:

“Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in some­thing old people are not allowed to, it makes us bit­ter. What did we have? The mall and the park­ing lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.”

The moral side is important,Look at your internet-connected kids: what are they doing, right now?

As a com­par­ison, I took a photo of Liam over the week­end that illus­trated this major gap:

1. Liam has both MacOS X Tiger and Microsoft Win­dows XP run­ning, and is using both flu­ently. Vista will not be installed until he’s backed-up his PC, and he’s sure his games work.
2. MSN Mes­sen­ger is his con­nec­tion to the out­side world: rarely will one of his friends call on the phone; but I am sure he com­mu­nic­ates more widely than I at the same age. His peers are world-wide, not local.
3. There is a Fire­fox ses­sion run­ning on the Mac with his favour­ite web sites (for­ums, not blogs) going. He says that he’s had a Fire­fox browser win­dow run­ning for 2 weeks, solid. 
4. On the Win­dows box, he is cre­at­ing an Adobe Premiere video clip (adding titling+encoding). Not only con­sum­ing con­tent; he is act­ively adding bits to the world. The video comes from cap­tur­ing an anim­a­tion cre­ated using Garry’s Mod for Half-Life 2.
5. He is listen­ing to ABC’s Triple-J not via radio, but via Internode’s stream.
6. Liam watches less broad­cast TV than Avril and I. Way less. Yet his know­ledge of what is cur­rent and news­worthy is no dif­fer­ent. There  is no man­u­fac­tured scarcity (either in time, or in phys­ical atoms)
7. Wiki­pe­dia answers everything.

Hyper-connected & digitally-creative.

Com­pare this to your world.

Mak­ing a ‘social net­work­ing’ plat­form that assumes you are con­nec­ted and are writ­ing, not just read­ing from the web: that’s next. THe next gen­er­a­tion is cre­at­ing these tools as the Baby boomers and Generation-X keeps look­ing at its col­lect­ive navel.

Quiet week in the ‘cottage.

Phase 1 of the de-installation of Big­pond as our ISP: Inter­node, all the way! Added ADSL via Inter­node: the highest qual­ity Aussie-owned ISP in Aus­tralia, to the home net­work. Once Tel­stra Whole­sale get their act together, the next step is 8Mbit/s. It seems that Tel­stra has not cor­rectly pro­vi­sioned their IT for ADSL resellers.

Based on the low qual­ity of cable modem inter­net in our part of Sydney, 8Mbit/s will match our so-called “up to 17MBit/s” on Big­pond Extreme. This is due to the shared band­width nature of cable.

Internode’s back­haul, or through­put to their serv­ers and to the inter­net the US, is amaz­ing. That’s why they have a 97% refer­ral rate accord­ing to CRN.

Also signed on to Node­phone, Internode’s Voice-over-IP ser­vice. Plugged in the land­line to the Bil­lion Router, and we have low Aus­tralian calls. Installed X-Lite on my Mac, and now I have a softphone.

Also took the oppor­tun­ity to increase the secur­ity on our local wire­less to WPA. Leav­ing WEP and MAC layer fil­ters in the past as they are eas­ily cracked. We don’t wish to become the local ISP for the neighborhood.

Yes, my super­fund is an investor in T3. But Bigpond’s recent com­ments as to net­work con­trol is a major con­cern: and I am vot­ing with my liquid dol­lars. Business-wise, I trust that Tel­stra man­age­ment grok the new IP/digital world ahead.

So, on the Xmas list: ADSL2+ and Node­phone Direct-in-Dial.

1. Churn to Inter­node Issue in our house­hold is the nGb/month — not mGb/second. Whilst Inter­node has yet to install ADSL+ into our exchange, I am happy to wait for ‘em, and rid out­selves of Bigmuddle/Bigpuddle.
2. Pur­chase Node­phone ser­vice, and get a “incom­ing” phone number
3. Install Aster­isk on our Debian server
4. Install a Soft­phone, maybe buy an ATA (or just get a Bil­lion router)
5. Poke hole in Fire­wall for SIP access, or use IAX.
6. Con­fig­ure incom­ing voice­mails, exten­sions, out­go­ing call dial­plans. All that stuff
7. Save at least AU$20/month on comm calls with x2 bandwidth