Legitimately Stealing Internetz
I moved in to a new house about a month ago which goes to show how little I’ve posted here. After leaving Stafford I moved back home to Newark in a nice house. It didn’t have internet as you’d expect when moving in to a new house. As a networking student I was pondering what to do about this, I saw a couple of options here which were; One: get Virgin Media installed, Two: Get BeThere installed. That’s really the only options for anyone looking to get broadband in the UK; Cable or ADSL. I was hoping I could get ADSL that way I could get a nice block of IPv4 and/or IPv6 and host various services after cancelling my co-lo server. However, being Newark the ADSL availability is rubbish and the providers I’d want to go with don’t even provide in Newark… So like many I was stuck with only one option. Virgin Media…
I gave them a go, ordered the 10mb service well in advance to avoid being without internet at the new house however they messed that up. For a start the nearest installation date was a week after moving in and the day before installation they advised they couldn’t install it just yet as they needed to do some work before they could come around, apparently 2 1/2 weeks isn’t a large enough time-range for them to get their act together.
This was going to leave me without the internet for about 2 weeks and as networking student (now with a networking degree) I thought I could solve this problem and I did!
One of the advantages of the house is that it is a stone’s throw away from my parents’ house, the house I grew up in, the house with the internet. I quickly worked there is an option three. Steal some internet from someone else. Having discovered this I noticed that the houses are near enough to setup a wireless bridge and as I have access to my parents’ house it was very easy to reconfigure everything so I could setup two D-Link DIR-615 access points running DD-WRT to provide a wireless bridge.
An hour later I had the internet. My parents have Virgin 10mb and now so do I. So I thought to myself, do I even need my own internet connection? The answer is probably not, I have access to the 10mb via the wireless link, I get 10mb speeds, I do all my downloading at night, I’m now at work all day and the wireless doesn’t affect xbox live game play… So I got my Virgin install cancelled and now I’m saving just a little bit more because I’m stealing my parents internet and they’re OK with it.
I’d recommend it to anyone, if you’re in the position to do so… I may even write a how-to on it sometime although the information is already on Google.
Upgrading Windows Home Server
Its been a week since I have finished placement and I decided as well as preparing for univeristy which if I am honest has gone as far as checking if I have any days off, thought I would take on a not so small project. Upgrading my Windows Home Server! Its getting on for 3 years old and the hardware is much older and well due for an upgrade.
Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC. The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.
The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.
Arduino
My latest purchase came in the post today, although it was rather late. I got my self a little starter kit for experimenting with an Arduino board. Arduino is an open source programmable PCB. Its quite jazzy and this evening before it got too hot in my room and I headed for the pub, I setup my first circuit using the handy manual that came with the kit.
The kit its self if quite cheap, £55 and it comes with everything to get started, lots of cool LED’s! A mini servo and motor, push buttons as well as photo resister. I’m not going to reel off the list of its contents you can check it out here.
I’ll leave you now with some nice photos from my iPhone but more on this later and what my plans are with it!
All Set-up!
Well I’ve setup my awesome new 24in monitors and already watched a couple of BluRay movies to bask in the awesomeness that is 1080p. I got my self two BenQ G2420HDBL 24″. I have to say the quality it pretty good. These were very much a self birthday present if you like but I’d been after some new monitors since starting placement. The BenQ comes highly recommended and the quality and price is pretty neat, its got over 40 reviews on OCUK.
Anyway, another picture…
New Monitors
I woke up late today for work. I’m quite glad I did, as I walked to the door I heard a loud knock. It was DPD with my overclockers order… Two new 24in monitors…
MythTV and XBMC
I said a couple of weeks back that I have been playing around with MythTV. At first I installed Mythbuntu, messed around a little then restored the computer back to XP using Windows Home Server but then I decided i wanted to have a play with Mythtv on Gentoo I tried but my CD drive couldn’t burn the Gentoo disc so I got annoyed and reinstalled mythbuntu.
I’ve now been recording various TV shows with easy and no real issues for the last couple of weeks. Although I have to say I have not really hit the limts and don’t really watch that much TV. I got a second TV card so that I could watch and and record a different channel but I have to get the proper cables to split the ariel feed.
It was nice to wake up at a normal time and watch the Chinese Grand Prix before the replay on BBC One in the afternoon. The web interface it pretty simple to use and I’ve set it all up so that if at work I remember I want to watch something I can login and set it to record. Bet Sky+ doesn’t let you do that now does it! I have a suspicion that it doesn’t properly flag up commercials but I’ve only watched recorded shows from the BBC channels so not sure yet.
The whole system though is pretty much complete now I got a MCE remote control off ebay which gives its the proper feeling of a TV rather than controlling it from a keyboard. I’ve had to wait a while though I think it got held up at the airport what with the UK airspace being shutdown, it was a seller in Hong Kong.
I was surprised at how easy the remote was to set-up, I just had to select the MCE remote from the Myth Control panel and reboot. I expected an evening of a mixture of googling and pulling my hair out…
I’ve been pretty much mainly using XBMC as a frontend as XBMC can access Myth’s recorded files which is pretty neat! Next step though is to hook it up to my 5.1 speakers, the Logitech 5500′s and get a HD tuner, oh and a bigger TV and a new laptop!
