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Well, the real name is Kaido Kikkas... :-) (and you can find my English homepage [L]here.) But Owl is my long-time nickname, therefore the home server that I set up in early 2002 got the name of "Kakupesa" or "Owl's Nest".
Up to 2004, the place used the domain kakupesa.pri.ee. The pri.ee means "private" - such a third-level domain can be obtained as a private person in Estonia (you need to be a company or an institution to get a 2nd-level domain). But I finally decided to take a parallel .net domain too as it is a bit shorter and easier to spell. But the old domain keeps working as well - although since the latest news of the Estonian Internet management (who got way too greedy) it's likely that the .pri.ee domain will close due to no willingness to pay extortive taxes.
I also do some voluntary translation work - I'm the main Estonian translator for [L] WordPress blogging software and [L] The Battle for Wesnoth strategy game.
The translations can be found respectively [L] here and [L]
For multiple purposes. I work as an [L] associate professor at Estonian IT College as well as at Tallinn University, lecture at a number of other facilities (I keep all my teaching material here, at the page titled [L]The Owl Academy - but right now, these are mostly in Estonian only; see [L] OwlWiki for some more material in English) and sometimes have side jobs as an ICT consultant for various projects. But there are lighter things as well (see links below). Plus, maintaining the server has taught me a lot and keeps doing it.
Times change - what was earlier possible for professionals with large budget, can today be done by nearly any enthusiast and with a really small amount of money. At present, Kakupesa is running on a 2.6GHz AMD64 dual-core machine with 4GB RAM and 2x500GB RAID1 HDD (but it started as a lowly 233MHz Pentium II) and [L]Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64-bit operating system, the network connection is via a 1Mbit SDSL line provided by [L]Elion.
Since 2000, I have been using solely [L]free software (also known as [L] open-source software, although purists point out that these are two different schools) both in the server and all my workstations, and strongly encourage its use for everyone (especially for government and non-profit entities - as a taxpayer, I don't look favourably at those huge software bills paid by many governmental agencies). So, I live happily without things like MS Windows, MS Office, Adobe PhotoShop etc. Some of my everyday tools include
From server tools, I use quite typical ones:
After all, there are some software companies that deserve the quote of a well-known song by the Offsping:
He wants more dinero just to stay at home
well my friend, you gotta say:
I won't pay, I won't pay ya, no way
Why don't you get a job
Most of the content is still in Estonian (my native tongue), but I plan to extend the English section. Right now, you could check
You can also browse the [L]Estonian pages - they are older and more numerous; maybe you can even learn some Estonian! :-)
© 2002-2010 Owl