The joys of metaarpa (sdf-eu)

	The joys of metaarpa (sdf-eu)
	Saturday Dec 21 7:11:40 2013

	When I joined sdf-eu a couple of years ago I stated that I basically
	wanted to do some coding and some irc'ing. Well, I'm not a coder,
	just a hobbyist but I do write a little bit of code occasionally and
	I irc at all times.

	But what I do the most here is learning new things (specially
	advanced stuff) each and every single day. Most of the new things I
	learn are very much related to being a meta member because it gives
	me access to the best things in life (technologically speaking, of
	course).

	I must admit that I couldn't have been able to learn many of those
	new things I'm talking about if it hadn't been for the invaluable
	help of other fellow sdf*ers, whom I consider my friends.

	I am an active phlogger. But admittedly, I guess this only makes me
	look like a weirdo in the eyes of younger people who have never heard
	about the gopher protocol at all. Being meta does not make me a
	better phlogger at all, but it allows me to use a cron job to once a
	month sync my gopher mirror at the other side of the pond. I use a
	script that I wrote myself here on sdf-eu of which I'm very proud of,
	because it works fine, never a failure in all this time.

	I hardly ever use X11 forwarding, but thanks to being meta here I can
	occasionally experiment and play with it. I heard and learnt about
	X11 forwarding for the first time in my life reading the tutorials
	section of the website.

	There are other things that I enjoy, I insist that learning new
	things from other fellow sdf*ers is the best thing one can expect
	regardless of the membership level. But I insist that some of the fun
	stuff is associated with being metaarpa.

	So now here comes my latest discovery: (Some background needed)

	I am on a LAN (relatively big lan with 120 members) behind a
	firewall. We all share the same ip when we connect to the outside
	world. It is a very well known fact that our isp is somehow blocking
	google services. Or better expressed, "limiting some" google
	services. When watching a video on youtube for example, I can usually
	see it without any pause but some days, oh my god, the playback stops
	after each ten seconds and it is just impossible to watch it.

	I always watch interviews on youtube. I'm a huge fan of Letterman,
	Conan, Jonathan Ross, Ellen... Anybody, absolutely anybody who makes
	fun and interesting interviews to famous people. Last night, it was
	just impossible to watch Craig Ferguson's late late show. Youtube got
	stuck every 5 seconds and I just couldn't help it. I built an ssh
	tunnel to sdf-eu and I forwarded the traffic to watch the interviews.
	It was absolutely fantastic.

	I do not intend to abuse the service at all. It was more an exception
	than a rule. Just when it is absolutely necessary. But this is part
	of the joys of metaarpa.

	Have a nice weekend and just in case I do not post anything else
	until next year, have a merry X-mas and a Happy New Year :)

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