NBN diagnosed

The last time we got the NBN man out all the cable connections were recut, resheathed and reseated. A problem was identified in the street which was also fixed.  This resulted in a good signal for the last three weeks but in the last week it has been failing.  We have since removed the second foxtel box so the three way splitter was no longer needed. That splitter was replaced with a two way today and the signal degradation has gone away now as well.  In our new house we will be using a dish to deliver foxtel.

Faulty threeway

10000 Views

I have been writing this blog for four years now.  I'm not sure who the 10000 are but I have just ticked over 10000 views of my blog.  The monthly total seems to be around 500 views so at that rate 20000 will be less than 2 years, if I can think of something else to type.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Restore Points

I can't emphasize the value of regular restore points.  There are automatic points recorded along the way. I have used this facility before to restore my computer to a previous point that was working. Last night something tried to install which broke my machine.  There are a number of actions for recovery but I recommend a restore point as the first place to try. Saves a lot of grief, although I did have to reinstall Google Chrome just now.

Wayward Wandering Washer

Turns out the new Strathmore residence does not allow for a top loading washing machine.  These unit type residences can't waste bench space for a toploader.  It just so happens I have a spare front loader just laying around. Moving all the old computer gear reminded me of my old job back at CMG as I did that type of thing a lot.

Control Room to Paris

Technology Cleanout

I have been on a technology purge today. Access to some cupboards and wardrobes has been reawakened recently.  I did not actually pause to see if there was a spark of revelation around each object although on one item there was an electrocution of nostalgia. This was around my old turntable. I saved up $200 for this machine which in the late sixties was considered a piece of furniture.  I was 12 at the time and so now 50 yar later I dug it out for a test and the sound is still as good as ever.  That one will have to stay. The rest including a laptop, home theatre, dvd player, modems, digital receivers, monitors and a box of cables will have to go. 

This also plays at a 16 speed

School's Out

This would have to be one of my original favorite albums from the early seventies. I can remember queuing for tickets at Festival Hall for Alice Cooper. The queue went around the block.  My vinyl record has a scratch which looped endlessly in the digitised copy. But like any file you can edit it and delete the looping section.  It sounds a little messy at the join but the recording has been resurrected. One aspect I have not considered is the creation of the playlists.  One playlist per album is possible in the The Groove App.  I have placed these songs in the "ceiling". If you are outside the're in the cloud, if you are inside the're in the ceiling.  The playlist doesn't seem to stay with the songs but rather attaches to the device, i.e. devices in different rooms need the're own playlists.  I will have to check out the google home devices and chromecast devices.

I used a desk like this once

NBN revisted

We have a need for speed, and as long as the network is up the speed is OK. Our problems are the drop outs.  We have just had all the connections retapped including one inside the house, three at a splitter on the outside of the house and one in the street.  I still haven't seen any fibre  in our part of the network.  Another call has been logged about a degraded signal in the street which may take some weeks to be followed up.  There are other things that can be done. Step 1 remove the second Foxtel Box. Step 2 remove the last Foxtel box and dedicate the wired network to the internet only.  Foxtel can then be accessed by installation of a satellite dish.

This pit has some corrosion from water seepage

Comms Technology

When I think back to the days when I attended meetings at various locations. Drove into the city or drove to Mitcham or elsewhere.  I was just present at a meeting where there were 12 of us all face to face saying their piece. One from Canada and a few from the Philippines and it was all happening whilst driving along the Geelong Rd in the car.  Just a laptop and a phone,  the tools of business.

I could have saved a lot of time back then.

NBN eight years in the making

This is the first post I am making after switching to the NBN.  It certainly was a minimum of fuss. Having existing fibre cabling from previous Foxtel services helped as they just plugged in the box tested it and left.  I did get them to put in a three way splitter which got the Foxtel going to other parts of the house.  I was generally happy with the existing Optus fibre. It is supposedly weather warn having been hanging from poles for 20 years.  This cable is underground and much faster in both upload and download speeds.  This photo uploaded in less than a second where previously there was a distinct wait before publishing the post.

The NBN Connector is on the left, new router is the white box

4 Day Dilemma

Don't ever say 80 yar olds can survive without the internet.  We spent 4 days trying to workout why there was no connection to the Internet.  The main culprit was a Telstra pre-paid wifi modem that stopped working.  Or was it the Pryon unknown brand desktop.  After several calls to somewhere, maybe Singapore, it was determined the modem was faulty.  This resulted in a new modem being purchased. However it made no difference. This now points back to the desktop machine so the maintenance guy for this, suggests that the latest wifi drivers for the desktop's  Atheron device needs to be installed.
When I locate these via my laptop and get them across to the offending Pryon, Windows tells me that the driver already installed, is the latest.  So we go back to the Telstra support and they now say that the new Modem should not have had the original SIM moved across but should have used a new SIM.  So another drive to the Telstra shop is required to get a new SIM installed. All along both the old modem and the new modem have worked well within the environment of the Telstra shop. So we go back to try this new configuration and it starts to work.
Nowhere along the way can you identify what the problem actually was. The old machine, modem and SIM would nor work together. But separate them and they would work again in other environments. Not sure what the moral is but isolating each component helped.

Wi Oh Wi

Lattitude E5570

Yes this is the first post originating from my newest Dell laptop. The previous one was nearly 5 years old and as usual what a difference 5 years makes.  Most of the major specs are similar, CPU speed, RAM and Disk space however this one has no DVD player and no WiFi network on/off switch. It is a sign of network streaming, wireless connectivity and the always present internet that driver DVD's don't come with devices any more you just download them.

Between Planes

Were fully deviced! The IPad app for virgin is working well now. I had to delete and reinstall it after our last flight to get to Hamilton Is. The Everest film is around 2 hrs and the flight from Townsville to Brisbane is 1 hr 38min, how inconsiderate. We have also been in contact with the Tower here at the airport, not something you do everyday. I have arranged for our next flight to take runway priority. haha.  This is the second time I have been to Brisbane. The last time was in 1976 and I passed thru on a bus. This time just passing thru again. 

Ground Control

Big Screen Computing

The Winstar HDMI display adapter worked OK for the video but the audio was not working and the the unit ran very hot drawing a lot of excess heat.  I tried a Simplecom device, plugged in both ends and there it was,both video and audio duplicated on the TV.  I would still recommend the  smart TVs apps from each TV channel for viewing purposes.

Simples com

PS That beeping ping is still beeping. It sounds like the end of battery life signal from a Smoke Detector. There is one of those nearby outside this room.  But when I move towards it I think it is behind me. This has been going off every minute for the last 5 days.

Technobabble

Yes this house is riddled with network cabling as well as two WIFI networks getting the smart TV on the internet but even still having a laptop display with a second screen on your big TV is worthwhile. Also using the laptop's wireless mouse and keyboard is a lot easier than the klunky TV keyboard. Not so easy to do though.  The old TV provided a VGA port for easy plug in as a display. The new smart TV provides for HDMI no VGA.  I found an older gizmo in the cupboard that additionally routes the laptop display and audio via USB to the HDMI of the TV.  I got the display working however the sound does not.  The audio cable was also laying around in the cupboard. I have ordered a no excuses brand new gizmo that will do it via the VGA port.

USB display

There is a beeping sound in this room for the last two days that we can't find. There must be a dying battery in something.

Network trouble

No internet access is the modern nightmare.  Yesterday our router just stopped working! It was around 10 years old.  At the very start of the Optus fibre roll out, around 20 yar ago, the idea then was you could only have one device in your house attached to the modem.  I got round this by getting my own router and a series of switches through the house.  In all this time the original Motorola modem has kept on working and it was still going yesterday after 20 yar.  Optus now concedes that multiple devices are the norm, so in 2011 they sent me an all purpose wifi/firewalling/routing modem, however at that time everything was working so I put the routing modem away for a rainy day. And today is it. The old trusty one is now in the box, the router is in the bin and the five year old modem has got me typing this post.

Freebie modem

Internet Ticketing

Travel Technology cam save you. We bought one internet ticket to Museum Island. Not only did it mean one ticket for all venues, we also walked our way to the head of the line past huge queues in the 37 degree sun. But you need to have your smart phone for email delivery of a ticket that can be shown or scanned. We have been using Woolworths travel SIM.  So far it has worked well. You can also get the talking city guides going as if you were on an escorted tour.

Hotel Das Stue

Digital History

I have left a trail of discarded hard drives along the way, as my digital lifetime via photos and videos adds to the ever increasing mountain of bits and bytes.  I have always carried this history with me on the laptop, as you never know when a blog entry might need an illustration from 10 yar ago. At first it was on the laptop's hard drive then add a USB 100Gb drive. Then replace it with 250Gb then 500Gb then 1Tb. After that I added a second 1Tb drive both of which are now around 85% full. My Digital History is around 2Tb and I can't keep taking it all with me.
When I had an office we bought a large NAS device but soon after we sold the business. I have now opted for the Seagate Central, a cheaper option than Synology.  Soon I will have to check out VPN software.

Modern Expiry

I'm going from aqueducts that last thousands of years to servers that only last three or four years.  Even only 20 yar ago if you bought a server it would still be going 20 yar later.  We installed a server made in 2009 upgraded it to SBS2011 and thought we have a good run for at least 10 years. Not so it seems. Our server is being rebooted every Sunday to get it through the week.  Also the pressure is on to move from owning your own machine to renting the services you need via the cloud. There are no more SBS servers for small business! If you want a server then join the big boys and get an entry level Foundation server for around 10 Grand.   The Computer Nerds (Am I one of those?) are pushing you onto Office365 so for the bells and whistles at $25 per head per month means we are up for $3000 per year which is more than the cost of our server five yar ago. We are going to take the first step and install a NAS device which means at least our data will not be in the cloud.

Routers and ADSL

Spent two days in the office tracking down why there was no internet access. It stopped at 9:30 Saturday night.  Our Netgear router was about 5 years old.  Newer ones have more  LED indicators but looking at this older one it seemed OK.  Replacing components one at a time, I swapped out the phone cable then the ADSL splitter then tested the phone line by sending a fax.  So by the end of Sunday it was time to replace the router.  It was the middle of Monday by the time I sourced and bought a new one. 
We have generally used Netgear for our business. The DGN2200 had a rope style LED indicating activity back in the exchange as well as the internet activity LED.  So straight away I could see progress because the rope LED was lit but the internet was still off.  Router TIP take screen shots of all relevant configuration pages before your router dies.  By the time I got onto the service provider for the required username and password and all other required settings another day had passed.  At least the grey matter is still ticking over in retirement.