November 20, 2010

New toys!

I just got onto NewEgg and ordered one of these. It's a combination firewall, ethernet hub, and wifi hub. Given that Saten, my Slate 500, looks to have no kind of wired internet capability, I'll have to have wifi if I want to be able to call Windows Update (even if for no other reason).

Still no clue at all when it will ship. Could be after the end of the year (sob). But getting the hub set up and working doesn't need to wait. Uiharu, my iPaq, also has wifi and I can use it as a client to make sure everything works.

Uiharu does 802.11b/g. The Slate does b, g, and n. The hub supports all three of those.

The hub says it supports 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz. I have no idea whether the other two do the higher frequency. (Uiharu, probably not. Saten? It's anybody's guess.) Once it's here and set up, I'll experiment.

Anyway, you have to give a wifi hub a name, and this one is gonna be named "Railgun".

I probably won't set it up to be my system firewall right yet. I'll let the Qube keep doing that job. But the Qube is coming up on 10 years of continuous service, and I really can't expect it to keep going forever. Someday it's going to die, and then I'm going to need another solution. (The Qube's processor runs 300 MHz. The HD in it is 20G.)

I know jack about setting up Wifi and I'm sure my experience using the Qube as a firewall and NAT proxy will not be very relevant to setting up this Netgear hub. I do hope the documentation that comes with it is good, especially since I want to make sure I don't inadvertantly set it up to be an uncontrolled public access point.

That's another reason to use Uiharu to test it, to make sure it needs a password and won't work without one.

Right now Uiharu can see ten wifi hubs, two of which are rated as having strong signals. (And one of which is named "Netgear" heh heh.) I wonder if it will be possible for me to find a clear frequency?

And... once Uiharu has wifi access to the internet, I wonder whether it will be able to access Microsoft's update site? I never was able to using the USB networking.

Another interesting experiment will be to go out for a walk with Uiharu to see how far away I can see Railgun. If it's only a hundred feet or so, then it means I live in a building of total geeks. (And fit right in.)

(What, me? A Railgun fanboy? Whatever gave you that idea?)

UPDATE: Well, crap. UPS says I'm scheduled to receive it on the 29th, a week from tomorrow.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 09:05 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 472 words, total size 3 kb.

1 By the way: Pete, one time I asked you to recommend a firewall, and you did. Problem was, they had stopped making it. So it's not that I ignored your advice, but that I couldn't follow it. Thanks for the help, anyway.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 20, 2010 10:25 PM (+rSRq)

2 No problem. I saw the post and was going to bloviate about USB networkt adapters and spatial bit density of WiFi but really there's not much point. You probably did the right thing here.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 20, 2010 11:00 PM (9KseV)

3

And this morning Newegg sent me a shipping notice. I didn't even pay the "fast processing" bribe.

I chose 3-day ground, from  SoCal. If the clock starts tomorrow, then it would be Thursday, except Thursday is a holiday. So for the moment I'm expecting it by Friday.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 21, 2010 02:07 PM (+rSRq)

4 Ugh. I wish I could reconfigure the wireless I'm on now, but the box comes pre-configured from AT&T. I get to log in to the memorable name of 2WIRE*** along with about 8 other wi-fi hubs in range. At least they come with the security activated. (And the password is already helpfully printed on a sticker right on the unit for that extra layer of security.)

Posted by: Will at November 21, 2010 08:00 PM (rgo15)

5

I infer that this is your internet access you get from AT&T? A wifi hub instead of something with an ethernet connection? Yeesh... That's bizarre.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 21, 2010 09:25 PM (+rSRq)

6 Yes. The house I'm in is currently on DSL (there's more to it than that, but I need to write a post), and the modem is also the hub. I've not checked to see if I can plug into it. It's in the exact wrong room to be of any use for a hard connection.

Posted by: Will at November 22, 2010 06:29 AM (Tvu/M)

7 Love the names.

Posted by: Merril at November 22, 2010 04:26 PM (TZw1/)

8 Well, rest assured I'm not going to name anything after Kuroko. She's just a bit too strange for me.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 22, 2010 05:10 PM (+rSRq)

9 I only went to ANN to find some names and saw Minako Kotobuki as Mitsuko Kongou, Kana Ueda as Mii Konori, Satomi Arai as Kuroko Shirai. What are you doing to me, Steven? The temptation is overwhelming.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 22, 2010 06:35 PM (9KseV)

10

What? You haven't seen it? I recommend the Mazui version. These days that's the one I usually watch. (We compared Chihiro, Ayako, and Mazui here.)

Since then there's been a fourth, AtsA. But AtsA's translator is an idiot. (Translating "177" as "117", for instance, and I noticed a lot of other major mistakes just in the first episode.)

And yeah, it has an awesome cast. Konori-sempai and Kongou are not primary characters, but Kuroko is one of the central four. Konori got her own plot arc, in eps 15 and 16. And though Kongou is a "chew toy" for most of the series, she gets a couple of pretty major moments of awesome in the final arc.

When I recommended it to the guy who was looking to get back into anime, I was serious. I wasn't just recommending "things I like" (I didn't recommend Asobi ni Iku Yo, did I?). Despite the fact that it's more of an action-adventure series than day-in-the-life, it really does have a lot in common with Azumanga Daioh on a deep level: the main characters are well conceived and presented very well, and the interaction among them is a major attraction of the series.

This isn't a gimmick show. It's a character-driven show.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 22, 2010 07:47 PM (+rSRq)

11 Can you watch Railgun without having seen Index first?

Posted by: muon at November 22, 2010 08:15 PM (JXm2R)

12

Absolutely so. In fact, it's probably better that way. While I was watching it (having seen Index first) I kept expecting things that didn't happen.

If you watch it without having seen Index, you won't have any preconceptions to get in the way.

There are a few references to Index, and some Index characters make cameo appearances, but they won't really confuse you. Just a "huh? Who was that?" maybe four or five times over the whole series.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 22, 2010 08:19 PM (+rSRq)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
      [spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)

At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.

How to put links in your comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
13kb generated in CPU 0.0079, elapsed 0.0229 seconds.
21 queries taking 0.0166 seconds, 29 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.