We’ve been working on Node SeaCCP, a SeattleWireless node that covers much of Capitol Hill from the 30th floor window of the Westin building, and although my node already has strong signal from the roof, I wanted to see if we could connect with something a bit less beefy than a Metrix Mark II. We (Metrix) recently started carrying the Ruckus Metroflex (it kind of looks like a plastic taco) as a low cost CPE, and I had heard good things about the new Dual Zone (DZ) features, so I thought it might be a good idea to toss one in the window.
Just sticking it in the window, I was able to get 2 (out of 4) bars to swn-seaccp-yagi. Initial tests got about 800k through speakeasy’s speed test. Not bad, but I was sure I could do better. I added an Ikea mesh ‘plate cover’ to the mix, and bumped it up another bar and 2mbps. Not bad at all. I still haven’t spent any time messing with the angle to get an optimal install. I have a feeling if I get the distance right on the reflector, and actually point the thing correctly, I’ll be able to pull down packets a whole lot faster.
Dual Zone, enabled after a really easy one button firmware update, turns the ruckus into a single radio repeater, something that we’ve played with in madwifi-ng for some time now, but is rarely seen in a consumer grade device. I don’t think I’ll have a problem recommending these for people who want to connect on the cheap, and as an added bonus, I’ve knocked 15 bucks off the metroflex for the entire month of April.
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We headed down to the Kids’ Parade for a Better Waterfront today, and it was a blast. It was raining out, but we dressed appropriately, and brought the rainshield for Mason. He wasn’t too thrilled about being pushed around in a bubble, but the music and other kids seemed to make up for it. Orkestar Zirconium broke out the brass, and it was awesome.
We started out at Victor Steinbrueck park, walked down to the waterfront, back up the stairs (elevators for the strollered) and then through the market. Originally we were supposed to head over to the new Sculpture Park (which I would have liked to see), but it was pretty cool watching the band play on up three flights of stairs. As we walked along, it became really obvious to me that the people crying for a rebuild haven’t spent a lot of time at the waterfront. Even as a carless Seattleite with a bad photography habit, I haven’t spent a lot of time at the market looking around, Taking the time to walk from Pike Place to the water is just a shocker. The Viaduct, even on a rainy Sunday is loud, ugly, and a blight on an otherwise touristy area. If you stand at the park, you’re instantly aware of it, If you walk down the hillclimb, you have to walk under it, and if you walk down to the piers, you’re surrounded by parking lots and freeway. Granted, there were Tourists wandering around at the Market and the piers, but I can only imagine what it would be like if the area didn’t have a freeway running through the middle of it.
I’ve heard people talk about a working waterfront. Tear down the Viaduct, and we might just get one.
Vivace’s David Schomer is featured in Business Week. Good article on a great coffee shop.
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A while back, I picked up a Nikon TC-16A teleconverter as part of an ebay auction. It seemed like a nifty little widget. It’s an older piece of hardware (1985), from when Nikon first came out with Autofocus bodies, but still hadn’t caught up with their lens line. It allows you to mount a fully manual lens on an AF body, and get about 5mm of autofocus (get the full rundown at mir). Since I have a lot of Manual lenses at this point, it seemed like it could be pretty useful, if not just a great novelty.
It turns out however, that this widget only works on the cameras from that era, and 2 modern day DSLRs, the D2H and D2X. If you’ve been watching prices on either of those, the minimum buy in for this thing to work is about $1300. So it has sat on the shelf.
Yesterday, everything changed. I was reading the Nikon forums on photo.net, and ran across a link to this page on converting a TC-16A for use on a D200. The step by step instructions made things look not-too-difficult, and it was just sitting on the bookshelf, so I broke out the tools. A couple hours later (lots of time looking for springs on the floor), I had a semi-working TC-16A. It does AF, as advertised, but it doesn’t handle aperture settings. It has a CPU, so you can actually shoot in A on a D50 with a manual lens, but the chip reports the min/max aperture as f/1, and the focal length as 8mm, so EXIF data is pretty messy.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a great hack, and I think it can be a pretty useful addition to the camera bag. It’s small, it allows one handed shooting (with the other holding a light or beer), and for the most part, it works. I even got to test it and my portable strobist kit last night at EN. I think this shot of Frank drinking came out the closest to what I was looking for.
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I was cleaning up today and found an abandoned Swiffer pole in the corner. I’ve been following the way of the strobist lately, and thought to myself, wow. what a nice 3 section monopod. The stock bolts wouldn’t fit a hotshoe or light mount (that would be too easy), but a bit of dremel action on a 1/4″ bolt, a hotshoe, and some velcro later, and I’ve got a nifty way to get flash away from my body but still under my control.
I wouldn’t trust anything heavier than a mini flash on this (my carena mini is pictured here), but it is small enough to toss in your lighting bag and forget about. Until you need it.
Apparently the WRT died at the Joe Bar. Rob just stopped by to pick up my never-been-on FON router and is reflashing it with DD-WRT. You may go back to your regularly scheduled table camping.
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This Windows based installer is very cool. Still some bugs, but it definitely works. Dual boot with no commitments. Make sure c:\boot.ini is read/write first.
I’ve been running ubuntu on our TV. It’s a Powerbook G4 (867) booting off of the firewire drive hooked up to an Olevia 30 inch LCD. If you have the same setup (it’s possible!?) xorg.conf | yaboot.conf
Edgy in a VMWare appliance. Boot a LiveCD in the VMWare player. Good for the Pyramid PXE ISO.
Anyone have Beryl working with an ati x1400 mobility?
For the past couple of days, I’ve been in the San Diego SuperComputer Center, talking to folks at the CAIDA COMMONS Workshop. It’s hard for me to accurately describe here what happened there, or what will come of it, but I did get some pictures, and there is a reading list. The one line irc summary would probably be something like.
“old Internet #0, making new Internet #1″
I’ll give a rambling talk about it at next week’s hacknight I’m sure. It’s one of those things that could turn into a really big deal ™
Michael Mee of SocalFreeNet was also in attendance, so a bunch of us got together and climbed up on the Pink Palace roof. Here is a shot of Sascha, Ralf, Michael and Dana up on the roof. A definite highlight of the event. The Canadian Michael was there too, but he didn’t make it out for the climb. His adventures were a bit more… gastric.
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A few (or was it several) of us braved TEH BLIZARD OF 2K6 to discuss AT&T microwave sites, optics, apache upgrades and the drinking of milk. In other dairy related news, the Online Coffee Company serves coffee with shots of Irish Cream. Phear.
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