Eskom has developed a great webapp it calls MyEskom. Once you create an account and tell it where you live, it’ll give you localised information on the state of the power grid.
It looks pretty good on a phone, better on a tablet, and aweful on a proper web browser.
Its great that they’re making the information freely available, I’m just not keen on having a web page open that hurts my eyes. I want a simple 2-line summary of what’s going on.
So I dove into the background and figured out which HTTP POST to fake to get all the information I needed. Then I wrote a simple python script to do just that, and print out what I wanted to know.
The output I get now is very simple, but it contains everything you need.
Power Status: high/up/red
Turn off: Electric Stove,Geyser,Pool Pump,Dryer,Dishwasher,Heater,Normal Lights
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)
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.
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 mpeg4irelandalready 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…
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).
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.
