Why the command line is an indispensable tool for using the

internet as expert user

Tonight I have for realized once more, that making use of the internet as an advanced  or even
expert user demands that you use the command line tools of whichever OS you are working with.
There are severeal reasons for this.
1. Unless you have a dedicated line to your computing or other resources, the
]competition with other users of the same pipe to your varsity/employer etc.
means that you will normally not get the kind of reliable turnaround time to
run graphical user interfaces over the internet.
2. In addition to the meagre consumption of bandwidth resources the
command line world allows you to do things, that nobody has yet written a GUI for
and probably nobody ever will do so!

3. A modern command line shell with history ,filename and command completion
is a highly productive interface between the human brain and the CPU.

Of course there are a few things that I also use GUI's for:
- editors using xwindows, like emacs or sublimetext2 http://www.sublimetext.com/
- jobs, that I do quite often , like burning dvd's or making bootable memory sticks
- three dimensional plotting using for example mayavi2 or paraview

However, the big advantage is,, that many of these advanced interactive tools
also have scripting interfaces, for example in python www.ptyhon.org
to automate your jobs once you have found the perfect parameters and look.

Thus, in conclusion the old and dusted terminal is actually the friend you should
learn to love!

It has been a very long time, that I have posted something on this
blog!
My job as Professor at UNISA has kept me quite busy.
Today It was rather hot here Pretoria, up to 34 degrees Celsius.
We also heard  in the news, that the Government is still delaying the
announcement about when the E-Toll system will hit us!
Of course tolling is used world-wide but the problem is simply, that
the overseas companies  that were hired for  these contracts 
to build the system are going to be paid some gigantic amounts.
But In the end the government will probably push it through.

I have started my very own blog! It was high time that I also contribute to the blogo sphere.
This now happens on a Friday Evening TGIF!
I refer to myself as a South African which is only kind of correct, since I am a German Citizen, but have lived in SA since 1994.
Today was an interesting day at UNISA.
In the morning I was in the institutional forum of UNISA as Senate representative. The meeting
took about one hour and dealt with an appointment at management level.
From 1pm to 2pm I had a very  enjoyable one-on-one discussion with with the Vice Principal  organizational development at UNISA on many topics of common interest. I left the meeting in high spirits!