My mini Christmas tree

I made a Christmas tree, in the only way I knew how.

Mini Christmas Tree

Its not fancy or big, but its certainly nerdy and awesome!

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wearPi – Stripping down the MyVu for an HMD

A few months back, I got my hands on a Raspberry Pi. As soon as i got it, I realised I didn’t have a use for it.

Then a week back, I had a pair of MyVu Solo’s. Sure, they’re not exactly the latest and greatest in Personal Media Viewers, but they would serve the purpose of displaying information.
The problem though, is (apart from looking ridiculous), they completely occluded my vision when I put them on.
So I’ve hacked them apart, and am in the process of turning them into a monocular display.

Here’s how I did it (and as far as I can tell, I’m the only person who didn’t destroy bits in the process)

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Imagine WiMax

Yes, WiMax (or WiMAX for those that care).

I spent a few weeks, a long time ago, getting the Imagine WiMax Motorola USBw35200 dongle working under Linux using the Sprint 4G Developer software, but it was a nasty hack.

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HOWTO: Multicast Irish Freeview (Saorview)

If you’re in Ireland and you’ve been watching TV, you probably know about Saorview and the migration to Digital Terrestrial TV.

Being a geek, I decided that using a TV to view TV wasn’t really the way to do things.
So instead, I decided to find a way of viewing Saorview on my PC.

So the easy way, is to get a DVB-T receiver for a PC, and tune to the channel you want to view. I’m not going to show you how to do this, because the guys at mpeg4ireland already have.

I’m going to show you how to receive every Saorview channel at the same time.
Although I’m sure you’re not going to be able to watch them all at the same time…

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Freedom!

Freedom

Squeaky Toys must die

Izzy is learning to play. She’s come a long way since we got her from the rescue shelter.

Recently, she’s decided that anything that squeaks, shouldn’t. So she makes it.

Video after the break
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Perching Planes

Found this interesting article.

Looks like some smart people at MIT have been studying the aerodynamics of birds and planes, and have designed a Glider that can perch on a wire (like a bird).

Read on to watch a video of it in action.

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Seacom problems

Or the alternate title of “Why your inability to access international content is your ISP’s fault, and not Seacom’s”
Or “Why your cheap-as-chips residential ADSL Broadband account is broken, and why I don’t care”

I could go on with all the complaints that I’ve heard over the last 24 hours, and all the stupid reasoning behind those complaints. But I won’t. I’ll try and be helpfully informative.

So we’ll start with the facts:

• Seacom is one of the Submarine fiber cables that connect South Africa to Europe.
• There are other ways out of South Africa to Europe, that do not rely on Seacom.
• Residential ADSL users are quite far down the list of priorities for most ISP’s.
• Business users on leased lines account for significantly more income than ADSL users.
• You get what you pay for.

Your choice of ISP should take all of these facts into account:

• Does your ISP have multiple international circuits?
• Are these circuits physically diverse (ie: not the same cable).
• Are you actually paying for a service that will make use of the backup circuits in the event of a failure?

Chances are, unless you have a leased line service, and you pay something in the region of R20000 a month for it, you will be affected by the Seacom problems.

It would be incredibly naive of any ISP to expect that a single upstream provider will be up 100% of the time. Seacom do not promise a 100% uptime, so how can you expect that level of service if you rely solely on them?

The solution for the ISPs? Use one of those other forms of international connectivity. Such as the SAT3-SAFE cable. Sure, thats expensive, so only use that for your “premium” customers. Like those guys paying R20000+ a month for their leased lines. They’ll get what they pay for.

And that there, is the difference between the R900 you pay a month for 4mbit ADSL, and R20000 per month for 4mbit leased line.

You get what you pay for.

Izzy broke her toe

Not much to say really. Izzy broke her toe on Tuesday, so we took her to the vet. And this is what came back.

mini-guide: Basic OpenVPN Server

This post is especially for Rommel. He saw my last mini-guides on OpenVPN on RouterOS, and wanted to know how to set up an OpenVPN Server on Linux that operates the same as the OpenVPN Server in RouterOS.

So, this one will be short and simple, as there are a thousand different ways to do an OpenVPN Server on linux, but this way will make it work the same way its configured in my mini-guide.

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